Nation

Setting the record straight

MoveOn ad distorts truth, NY Times defeats McCain

By Margaret Mele
From the September 2008 Print Edition

"Not Alex" is the title of the new ad MoveOn.org began running in some swing states in early June. The ad has created controversy, drawn criticism, and has been compared to the 1964 Johnson campaign’s infamous “Daisy” ad. That ad, which preyed on nuclear war fears, featured a little girl counting petals on a daisy followed by a voice-over counting down to an atomic blast complete with mushroom cloud.

MoveOn’s ad is similarly simple, preying on every parent’s worst fear, losing their child. A pretty young mother holds her baby boy on her lap: “Hi, John McCain. This is Alex. And he’s my first. So far, his talents include trying any new food and chasing after our dog. That and making my heart pound every time I look at him. And so John McCain, when you say you would stay in Iraq for 100 years, were you counting on Alex? Because if you were, you can’t have him.”

The ad refers to a comment Senator McCain made at a January 3, 2008, town-hall meeting in New Hampshire where an audience member told McCain that he would not vote for him and then made a snide comment about Hillary Clinton. The audience member asked again why we can’t leave Iraq and what did McCain hope to accomplish. In a very straight-forward answer Senator McCain responded, “A safe and secure environment” in Iraq. McCain then continued:

"And then what happens is American troops withdraw and they withdraw to bases and then they eventually withdraw, or we reach an arrangement like we have in South Korea, and with Japan. We still have troops in Bosnia. But the fact is it’s American casualties that the American people care about and those casualties are on the way down rather dramatically."

Without this part of the exchange, McCain sounds like he doesn’t have an exit strategy and is happy about unending combat. It is clear from his reframing of the issue to be about American casualties, not American presence, that he is just enthusiastic about the end result— security and peace.

When an audience member said, “President Bush has talked about our staying in Iraq for 50 years…” McCain interjected to say “Maybe a hundred.”

McCain continued, “We’ve been in Japan for 60 years. We’ve been in South Korea for 50 years or so. That would be fine with me as long as Americans are not being injured or wounded or killed. [A big if] Then it’s fine with me, I hope it would be fine with you if we maintain a presence in a very volatile part of the world where al-Qaeda is training, recruiting, equipping, and motivating people every single day.”

When the audience member accuses him of having an open-ended commitment in Iraq his rejoinder was, “I have a quote open-ended commitment in Asia…I have an open-ended commitment in Europe. I have an open-ended commitment everywhere,” reminding people of just some of the many—mostly peaceful—U.S. military commitments worldwide.

The New York Times, one of the most respected mainstream media news sources— and certainly not one of McCain’s biggest supporters—has published numerous articles criticizing MoveOn, some even outright defending McCain, all illuminating the facts.

Katie Phillips, of The New York Times, recognized that in the interest of accuracy, “100 years” was misleading. She notes McCain’s response was a “nuanced answer… a long broad worldview that encompasses many regions not just Iraq… [in which] he drew parallels to the longstanding presence of U.S. troops in places like South Korea and Japan.”

The newspaper’s “Ad Campaign” analysis of the baby Alex ad also concluded it was misleading, but lamented: “Because advertisement fact-checking reports like this one are never viewed as widely as the spots themselves, a good many people may take from this advertisement that Mr. McCain is supporting 100 years of an overwhelmingly unpopular war.”

William Kristol, the most critical of all The New York Times columnists on MoveOn’s new ad, points out that little Alex will only be nine years old when McCain leaves office in eight years, far too young to serve, and that the U.S. has an all-volunteer Army. “Alex won’t be drafted and his mommy can’t enlist him. He can decide when he’s an adult whether he wants to serve.”

Like Phillips, Kristol notes that McCain meant 100 years of a peaceful military presence similar to our arrangement with Japan, Germany, or Kuwait.

The most cutting criticism in his article about the ad came from a post on BlueStarChronicles.com written by a mother whose son was recently deployed to Iraq: “Does that mean she wants other people’s sons to keep the wolves at bay so that her son can live a life of complete narcissism? What is it she thinks happens in the world? Someone has to stand between our society and danger. If not my son, then who? If not little Alex then someone else will have to stand and deliver. Someone’s son, somewhere.”

Kristol concluded: “The MoveOn ad is unapologetic in its selfishness, and barely disguised in its disdain for those who have chosen to serve — and its contempt for those parents who might be proud of sons and daughters who are serving. The ad boldly embraces a vision of a selfish and infantilized America, suggesting that military service and sacrifice are unnecessary and deplorable relics of the past. And the sole responsibility of others.”

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