McCain Running The Zachary Taylor Campaign

I mentioned this yesterday, but it's important to ponder how John McCain either doesn't believe in recording equipment or has so much faith in the people doing the recording, i.e. the BBQ-stained media, that he has no problem saying 100% different things to different audiences. Conservatives hear "I don't support the DREAM Act," Hispanics hear the opposite.

When I was in high school, I remembering learning about Zachary Taylor, our 12th President, put up by the Whig Party almost entirely because of his military background. He would visit different areas of the country and give completely different speeches, citing his support of slavery in the South and his opposition to it in the North, among other things. It worked in 1848 because there wasn't a lot of regional spillover in how information was disseminated. But now we have things like the television, and videotape, and YouTube, and archives, and there's no way for the new "Old Rough and Ready" to be as successful with this tactic as the old one.

Or maybe there is. There's been such a balkanization of the media landscape, with so many people only referring to friendly sources, and there's been such a devaluation of facts in the age of Bush and his spinners who create their own reality, that McCain's campaign might figure they can lie with impunity, deny it when challenged, and never give it a second thought.

That's kind of chilling to think about.