JOHN McCAIN IS AN HONORABLE MAN

According to The New Dictionary of Cultural Literacy (Third Edition, 2002), "Brutus is an honorable man" is a phrase employed by the character Mark Antony in Shakespeare's play, JULIUS CAESAR, to portray Brutus as ungrateful and treacherous, and to turn the Roman people against Brutus. In the hands of a crafty orator, a seemingly benign compliment can be a cunning trick, a deceptive artifice designed to attribute nefarious qualities to the subject by misleading the spectator into believing it is graceful flattery.

There is no more cunning orator in the political scene today than Barack Obama, and he has attempted to use a sugar coated dagger against John McCain, turning John McCain's greatest attribute -- his hero status -- into a codeword for something despicable and vile. As demonstrated by Shakespeare, the technique is rather crude -- simply repeat a compliment (like "Brutus is an honorable man") coupled with facts that contradict the compliment and voilà!: instant insult.

Thus, when Obama said "John McCain is an American hero" on February 12, 2008, he immediately followed this faux flattery with the statement, "But his priorities don't address the real problems of the American people." On June 9, Obama said, "John McCain is an American hero whose military service we honor." He then went on to bash McCain as a George Bush toad. Time and again, Obama has coupled his false praise of John McCain's service with real vitriol intended to taint John McCain's honor. The key is that in many of these quotes, Obama is contrasting the praise mirage with an allegation of dishonorable conduct: essentially, being a traitor to the honor of his own service.

• "Now, I respect John McCain. He'll be a worthy opponent. But he's been a staunch supporter of Washington's failed policies." April 10, 2008.
  
• "While I honor John McCain's service to his country, his ideas for America are out of touch with these values." May 6, 2008.
  
• "I have great respect for John McCain's service to this country ... But he is one of the few Senators of either party who oppose [the G.I.] bill." May 12, 2008.
  
• "John McCain [is] a man who has served this country heroically ... [but] independence has not been the hallmark of his presidential campaign." June 03, 2008.
  
• "Now, I respect John McCain, and I honor his service to this country ... [But his] policies that are no different than the ones that have failed us for the last eight years." June 5, 2008.
  
• "John McCain is an American hero whose military service we honor ... [But] for all his talk of independence, the centerpiece of his economic plan amounts to a full-throated endorsement of George Bush's policies." June 9, 2008.
  
• "Senator McCain came before you. He is a man who has servedthis nation honorably ... But instead of just offering policy answers, he turned to a typical laundry list ofpolitical attacks." August 19, 2008
  
• "The Republican nominee, John McCain, has worn the uniform of our country with bravery and distinction, and for that we owe him our gratitude and respect ... But the record's clear: John McCain has voted with George Bush ninety percent of the time." August 28, 2008.
  

(The examples listed above are by no means an exhaustive list of the instances Obama has used this trick: just a convenient and illustrative sampling.)

I think most Americans would find such an artifice to be offensive. To use a man's service to his country against him, by means of a rhetorical trick is profoundly un-American. Of course, it's also an insult to the public's intelligence to think no one would be able to figure out the obvious device being used when in so many Obama speeches, the false praise is floated, immediately followed by a transparent attempt at character assassination. This Orwellian DOUBLE-TALK is also such a marked contrast to John McCain's STRAIGHT TALK, which ultimately may be John McCain's best defense mechanism against this stealth line of attack. In our case, John McCain IS an honorable man!