I was uncomfortable with the way John Kerry was introduced at the convention in 2004. The whole “reporting for duty” thing felt hammy and over the top. It also challenged the narrative about Democrats and Kerry himself in ways that were too sudden. In other words, repeating the claim of Kerry’s war service and the fact that he is a war hero should and could’ve started earlier and more consistently.

So, keeping that in mind (that it’s OK to reference your war service to build an image of your patriotism, etc.), the McCain campaign’s use of McCain’s POW experience as a universal defense of all criticism is weird and uncomfortable. Just listen to their latest response defending McCain for the can’t-remember-how-many-houses-he-owns gaffe:

“This is a guy who lived in one house for five and a half years — in prison,” spokesman Brian Rogers told the Washington Post.

For those of you who haven’t kept track, the McCain campaign just recently cited McCain’s POW years in explaining away the Miss Buffalo Chip gaffe, and in dealing with the allegation that he broke the rules and listened in on Barack Obama during the Rick Warren forum.

I have no idea what that even means in the context of how many houses McCain owns.

So, let’s recap: He’s so rich he doesn’t know how many houses he owns, he is the son and grandson of Navy admirals, and went to the Naval Academy, which isn’t exactly the local community college. After being freed, McCain has been in Congress for 30-some years. He then divorced his first wife, and then married a very rich woman in Cindy McCain.

But, Obama is the one that the press reports as elitist. Obama was raised by a single mom who moved a decent amount. He went to college on a scholarship, and made his money by writing books that people actually bought and enjoyed.

There’s nothing wrong with McCain’s life story. There’s nothing wrong with being rich, and with being the son of powerful men. That’s not what bothers me. What bugs me is these guys (McCain’s campaign) can’t just embrace it (or ignore it) and stop lying about Obama.

Then again, after hiring most of Karl Rove’s team to run his campaign, lying and dishonesty shouldn’t really be a surprise, I guess. Which is why I’m just tired of all of this. Can we get to October already and have debates and stuff?

It’s Jake Tapper, but it’s the only source I’ve found so far on this story. Here’s the headline: Political Punch: In Pennsylvania, McCain Tells a New Version of Heroic P.O.W. Story — Subbing the Pittsburgh Steelers for the Green Bay Packers.

Let me repeat: this man is a liar. If Obama had done this, we’d have wall-to-wall coverage about whether he could win. McCain lies about stuff, and he gets a pass. Silence from the media.

First, some background (mostly lifted from the best summary of the week I’ve seen so far at Balloon Juice), let’s go through the week.

Here’s how the Huffington Post’s Max Bergman summarized the week:

This is the week that should have effectively ended John McCain’s efforts to become the next president of the United States. But you wouldn’t know it if you watched any of the mainstream media outlets or followed political reporting in the major newspapers.

During this past week: McCain called the most important entitlement program in the U.S. a disgrace, his top economic adviser called the American people whiners, McCain released an economic plan that no one thought was serious, he flip flopped on Iraq, joked about the deaths of Iranian citizens, and denied making comments that he clearly made — TWICE. All this and it is not even Friday! Yet watching and reading the mainstream press you would think McCain was having a pretty decent political week, I mean at least Jesse Jackson didn’t say anything about him.

Even with this litany of things, for reasons that are inexplicable, Time Magazine’s Mark Halperin declared this week a win for McCain and the Republicans.

(OK, here’s where I stop cribbing from John Cole)

What’s amazing about the controversies this past week, and pieces like Mark Halperin’s is that the items that Obama gets dinged on are created by the media. We’ll take Halperin’s piece as the template here, but it’s generally true everywhere. On his Public Image, Obama said what he has been saying from mid-2007 on the 16 month timeline. There’s video and transcripts available online from previous debates and public speeches going back until at least October 2007 (that’s the earliest one I personally saw). Yet, he’s been labeled as “refining” his position and painted as somehow breaking promises.

Meanwhile, McCain lies about something central to his personal story, and we get a blog post about it. He demonstrates that he doesn’t understand Social Security and how it works, and the press lets him go with a “he made a mistake” (twice, on different days, in front of different audiences, in unprepared remarks, so he wasn’t reading a speech — but who’s counting). He pulls cap-and-trade from his environmental plan after making it the centerpiece of how he would tackle global warming — media silence. Don’t get me going again about Carly Fiorina. You get the idea.

On Iraq, Obama’s position is starkly different from McCain. The media is treating McCain’s position as “assess what’s happening on the ground” without talking about his idea that we would have a permanent or long-term presence there. The Bush plan is to use Iraq as an ally a la Germany. We’d have bases there, a friendly government, and a PR victory. This is central to McCain’s vision of the war, though he is willing to lie about it to get votes.

Obama, on the other hand, says the reasonable thing, which is that his goal is to get 1-2 brigades a month out, but that he would obviously keep an eye on what’s happening on the ground and adjust that plan accordingly. Heck, that was the critical problem with the Bush folks in the first place. They had their plan go south pretty much from day 4 and they didn’t adjust. Why would we want a President who would say that he wouldn’t look at the situation on the ground? Regardless, Obama’s emphasis and strategic goal is to remove the troops and no longer have a presence in Iraq. This seems to be a pretty big difference to me, but to the media it’s “nuance” that doesn’t translate well. Even though I can summarize it in a sentence. (ARGH!)

If it seems like I’m frustrated, I am. We have two candidates who are starkly different. At the most basic level, we have one candidate, Barack Obama, who is paying attention to the people, has proposed concrete plans to deal with problems and who is willing to propose solutions that focus on solving problems vs. checking off an ideological checklist.

McCain, on the other hand, seems to build policy from ideology first. Cut taxes, no new taxes, no PAYGO, approves of torture (even though he once opposed it), approves of warrantless spying (though he once opposed it), and privatizing Social Security (though he once opposed that too).

He’s also willing to lie to people’s faces at town hall meetings and campaign appearances to tell them what they want to hear.

Yet, the candidate with the “image” problem is Barack Obama. This country is f****d (sorry) if this continues. It’s how we’ve made it through 7 years of the Bush presidency without the broader public recognizing the amount of corruption and cronyism that has permeated the government.

So, yes, I am frustrated. The country that I care about deeply is getting screwed over. Again.

Personally, I like the list that the Carpetbagger put together, which is both more comprehensive and more illustrative about McCain’s real legacy: he says what you want to hear when you’re in a position to hear him. So, he goes on The Daily Show and says things that appeal to the younger, slightly more left leaning crowd, and goes on the campaign trail during the primary and says things that appeal to the right-wing extremists that he’s weak on. He goes back and forth, back and forth, and yet, no one calls him on the “Double Talk Express” (clever, btw).

This is, quite frankly, amazing. I can’t believe someone could stand in front of a microphone as the spokesperson for the President of the United States and simply lie continuously. He is literally stating the opposite of the truth in EVERY statement. Snow is getting close to the reality denial of Saddam’s old spokesman.