The perils of honesty in politics
Verbal slips by the presidential candidates and their aides can tell us a lot.
John McCain's senior advisor, Charlie Black, is in trouble. Not because he's a former lobbyist whose professional history undermines the reformist credentials of his candidate. And not because he said something untrue in earshot of a reporter. His mistake was much larger: He accidentally said something true.
Speaking to Fortune magazine, Black was asked about the potential effect of a terrorist attack on McCain's White House chances. "Certainly it would be a big advantage to him," Black said. Outrageous! Within hours, Barack Obama's spokesman, Bill Burton, had released a statement saying "the fact that John McCain's top advisor says that a terrorist attack on American soil would be a 'big advantage' for their political campaign is a complete disgrace, and is exactly the kind of politics that needs to change."
At a fundraiser the next day, Black apologized. "I deeply regret the comments," he said. "They were inappropriate. I recognize that John McCain has devoted his entire adult life to protecting his country and placing its security before every other consideration."
What he doesn't say, you may notice, is that his comments were wrong. And that's because he doesn't believe they were wrong. Black got caught in what Washingtonians know as a "Kinsleyan gaffe," named after the journalist Michael Kinsley, who once said that "a gaffe is when a politician tells the truth." The McCain campaign's position on this subject has long been known: If the race turns on the issue of terrorism, McCain might win. But if the dominant issue is the economy, he definitely loses. It's just that his aides aren't supposed to say that.
That's why, in the very same article in which Black uttered these unspeakable remarks, McCain replied to a question about "the gravest long-term threat facing our economy" by saying, "the absolute gravest threat is the struggle that we're in against radical Islamic extremism, which can affect, if they prevail, our very existence. Another successful attack on the United States of America could have devastating consequences."
The interviewer, rather than asking if McCain had failed to hear the word "economy" in the question, marveled at McCain's facility for "deftly turning the economy into a national security issue." In other words, when Black said a terrorist attack would be good for the McCain campaign, he was roundly criticized. When McCain used a question about the economy to remind voters of the possibility of a terrorist attack, no one said a word, except his interviewer, who called him politically "deft."
