The NY Times has run a straightforward article exposing the falsehoods in one of McCain's recent ads. At the end, in good media fashion, the article provided a comment from each campaign, as follows:

<i>The Obama campaign expressed outrage over the commercial, with Bill Burton, a spokesman, describing it as “shameful and downright perverse.”

But Tucker Bounds, a spokesman for the McCain campaign, said, “the Obama campaign did not and cannot dispute a shred of the content in the ad.”</i>

People like Bounds fascinate me. I mean, it's not easy to make Baghdad Bob, Saddam Hussein's former press secretary, look credible and transparent. (Baghdad Bob was the man telling journalists that US soldiers were committing mass suicide out of despair at their failure to advance into Iraq...when the soldiers were in fact outside the building where Bob was talking to the media). Baghdad Bob set a high standard for being truly and monumentally out of it, and for shamelessly repeating the most absurd lies.

But Bounds has got him beat, I'm afraid.

And one has to wonder: what sort of moral formation, what sort of education and shaping of a person's personality, could result in such utter disregard for elementary truthfulness? Bounds' disinterest in the truth is so obvious and extreme (as shown in his notorious CNN interview, recently) that it is clearly dysfunctional for the cause he thinks he's supporting. He's too obviously dissimulating, his agenda is too easily visible, for him to perform his function effectively. But apparently he doesn't see this, nor does Senator McCain.

One more strike against McCain's judgment -- though it's hard not to feel a little pity for an elderly and frequently confused Senator who was clearly given an ultimatum by his party's insiders to hand over the shreds of his campaign to the Rove team headed by Steven Schmidt and fronted by Tucker Bounds.

Schmidt is a familiar type in politics since the days of Rome; ruthless, focused, and absolutely confident that pure power is the only reality that matters. One can respect him even while recognizing that his approach to politics is loathsome and ultimately destructive. But Bounds can't play the same role, because he actually has to talk to people who want real information, or who disagree with his boss. Thus, constant dissimulation and mendacity is his fate, until it swallows up his whole persona. Not just a liar, but one who has sold his soul to his lies...it's simply sad.