WP, Eugene Robinson: Obama Faces The Smear Machine; "Here come the goons..."

[DeepModem Mom]

Obama Faces The Smear Machine
By Eugene Robinson
Friday, August 15, 2008; Page A21

Here come the goons, right on schedule.

The "author," and I use the term loosely, whose vicious lies damaged John Kerry's 2004 presidential campaign has crawled back out from under his rock to spew vicious lies about Barack Obama. Right-wing radio talk-show hosts are dutifully transmitting this concocted venom. This presidential campaign has officially gotten ugly.

The "author" I'm talking about is a man named Jerome Corsi....Corsi would be known as just another visitor from the outer fringe if he had not been the co-author of "Unfit for Command," the book that slimed Kerry's exemplary record as a Swift boat commander in Vietnam. The allegations in that book were discredited, but not before they had been amplified by the right-wing echo chamber to the point where they raised questions in some voters' minds -- perhaps enough to swing the election.

It was an abominable trick, but quite remarkable. Kerry's opponent, George W. Bush, had avoided Vietnam by taking refuge in the Texas Air National Guard. Kerry was a decorated war hero, yet somehow his valor and sense of duty were turned into a political negative and used against him. Now Corsi, in what he acknowledges is an attempt "to keep Obama from getting elected," has come out with a book that similarly tries to turn one of Obama's strengths -- his compelling life story -- into a liability.

Corsi's new volume of vitriol, "The Obama Nation," seeks to smear Obama as a "leftist" and add fuel to the false and discredited rumor that he is secretly a radical Muslim, or at least has "extensive connections to Islam." The liberal Web site Media Matters has already demonstrated that the book is riddled with factual errors -- for example, Corsi repeats the charge, thoroughly disproved, that Obama was in church for one of the Rev. Jeremiah Wright's most incendiary sermons. But the point isn't to tell the truth. The point is to repeat the lie and thus give it new life....

***

The Obama campaign faces a classic dilemma. If smear attacks are left unanswered, voters can get the impression that the lies are true. But there's no way to respond without giving the falsehoods wider circulation....Yesterday, the Obama campaign released a lengthy rebuttal of Corsi's book. The vacationining candidate himself remained silent, leaving it to others, such as Kerry, to give a more full-throated response. Kerry knows better than anyone what it feels like to be Swift-boated, and he's determined not to let it happen to anyone else.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/08/14/AR2008081403057.html?nav=most_emailed

[jojo54]

1. Hopefully the Dems are on top of their game this time around.