There are people out there who actually want an old father figure, who has an ability for daring stunts of drama in the White House.
Driving a car comes to mind for some reason.
There is a lot to comment on regarding what has happened just in the past week of the Presidential Rat Race. Most of which revolves around how we are slapped in the face again regarding the fact that everyone is giving into their emotions with their decisions.
And the whole experience argument borders on irrelevant. No matter what side of it you are on. It’s a futile question to even bring up. Putting importance on experience means one of two things. First, we can test it through an examination of sorts. If you say we can’t test such a thing as experience, then that most likely means you’re providing a value on the ability for a leader to make decisions from “his gut.”
Nevertheless, why are we having these conversations? Our congress can pass anything it wants into law. Given a certain number of votes, a presidential veto also would prove to be irrelevant..
Overwhelmingly, I wonder if there is a yearning for an authoritarian father figure, and if we manifest that desire in our own politics. Each day, we can witness people who want a leader to tell them what to do, or they want to tell other people what to do. Fewer people seem to be holding only themselves accountable. Rather, either they blame their problems on someone else, or they need to tell others what their problems are.
I agree with IOZ that our problems revolve around our enmeshment within an economic and political system, which claim to be transparent, but are hardly even visible to the average citizen. However, Andrew Sullivan has also made claim to something that I think even IOZ might agree with (although I would not be surprised if he still disagreed).
Suppose for a moment that IOZ is right, and that there is no real difference between Barack Obama and John McCain. As well, there is no difference between Democrat or Republican. If - for whatever reason you have made up in your mind - you still find it necessary to vote only for a mainstream candidate, would not temperament make the difference in who you voted for? Would that not mean Barack Obama is the man to vote for, as Sullivan suggests?
Here’s the rub though, what you want the president to have in terms of temperament is still entirely a judgmental choice on your part. There are people out there who actually want an old father figure, who has an ability for daring stunts of drama in the White House. You might argue that McCain is more hawkish than Obama, but that is also a futile argument considering that Obama displays just as much vehement support for our allies (e.g. Israel) as McCain.
In the end, I’ve found the more important questions revolve around how we got here. Where, at some point, did politics become less academic, and more advertising and marketing? It is at that point where you realize that your ability to make a difference relies on how much money you make, and how good you are at crafting a message. Substance, at this point, is irrelevant.
The race, that is. From the McCain campaign:
“From the minute John McCain suspended his campaign and arrived in Washington to address this crisis, he was attacked by the Democratic leadership: Senators Obama and Reid, Speaker Pelosi and others. Their partisan attacks were an effort to gain political advantage during a national economic crisis. By doing so, they put at risk the homes, livelihoods and savings of millions of American families.
“Barack Obama failed to lead, phoned it in, attacked John McCain, and refused to even say if he supported the final bill.
“Just before the vote, when the outcome was still in doubt, Speaker Pelosi gave a strongly worded partisan speech and poisoned the outcome.
“This bill failed because Barack Obama and the Democrats put politics ahead of country.”
TPM has a great rundown of the talking head blather about McCain’s decision to “suspend” his campaign and “postpone” the first presidential debate. Unsurprisingly, this move by McCain seems to have caught all of them off guard. Look, this is McCain’s modus operandi. He doesn’t care about the presidential debates. He doesn’t care about the quality of his veep pick. He does care about becoming president and believes that his odds improve if he pretends to be president during every crisis. Remember Georgia? The immigration legislation? To pull it off, though, he needs the media to Lewinsky him after every bold proclamation. Unfortunately for him, it looks like the sore throat virus is especially contagious this week.
The one piece of news that’s getting lost amongst this bailout brouhaha and McCain’s decision to-I doubt that this is the correct word-suspend his campaign is Sarah Palin’s CBS interview. It’s a god-awful train wreck:
I do give her points though for wearing considerably less makeup than Couric and for possessing the ability to be so confusing that, while your brain is processing her words, you suddenly realize that their semblance is meaningless because you’ve forgotten the question.
WALLACE: All right, and for fair game, what is McCain doing that goes a step too far?
ROVE: Well, McCain has gone in some of his ads — similarly gone one step too far, and sort of attributing to Obama things that are, you know, beyond the 100-percent-truth test. They don’t need to attack each other in this way. They have legitimate points to make about each other that are beyond, you know, the…
WALLACE: Real quick question — 30 seconds. Do they need to be 100 percent passing the truth? Just, in other words, when you were running Bush’s campaign, did you care whether some fact-check organization…
ROVE: No, and look, you can’t trust the fact-check organizations, with all due respect. They’re human beings. They’re individuals. They’ve got their own biases built in there. But both campaigns ought to be careful about it. They ought to — there ought to be an adult who says, “Do we really need to go that far in this ad? Don’t we make our point and won’t we get broader acceptance and deny the opposition an opportunity to attack us if we don’t include that one little last tweak in the ad?”
Greg Sargent on Rove on McCain:
Wow. This is a bit like being labeled a sleaze merchant by Bob Guccione or Larry Flynt.
Rove’s words will make a nice news cycle soundbite for the Obama campaign, but Sargent is incorrect. The McCain campaign is blatantly lying. Rove is aware that, because every word and every image is archived, a campaign can’t get away with that. Instead, a campaign should use three basic strategies:
- First, a campaign should remove context from its opposition’s quotes and repeat ad naseum. All that matters is that it’s 100% true that those words can be attributed to the opposition.
- The second strategy is infinitely more devious: If the truth is being taken for granted, raise doubts. For example, if one of Obama’s daughters was relatively pale-skinned, the McCain campaign could have hinted that Obama’s wife had an affair with a white man. Or, perhaps Obama smoked crack and had sex with a disabled gay man. As an added bonus, “value voters” love to swallow this sort of shit and will repeat it for free.
- Finally, a campaign should always grant its candidate plausible deniability. If a campaign is going to blatantly lie or use the preceding strategies, it must use proxies. Otherwise, the candidate is made vulnerable to attacks from the very journalists who should be dutifully transcribing the attacks made by the proxies.
Rove has used these strategies to successfully win elections for years. So, in all fairness, Rove is not calling the McCain campaign sleazy. He’s calling both campaigns inept.
The Sunday Telegraph has a must-read article that will be the first of many on Obama’s deteriorating poll numbers:
“These guys are on the verge of blowing the greatest gimme in the history of American politics. They’re the most arrogant bunch Ive ever seen. They won’t accept that they are losing and they won’t listen.”
After leading throughout the year, Mr Obama now trails Mr McCain by two to three points in national polls.
Party leaders and commentators say that the Democrat candidate spent too much of the summer enjoying his own popularity and not enough defining his positions on the economy - the number one issue for voters - or reaching out to those blue collar workers whose votes he needs if he is to beat Mr McCain.
Others concede that his trip to Europe was a distraction that enhanced his celebrity status rather than his electability on Main Street, USA.
Since Sarah Palin was unveiled as Mr McCain’s running mate, the Obama camp has faced accusations that it has been pushed off message and has been limp in responding to attacks.
One complaint: Was it necessary to quote Peggy Hyperbolizer-Noonan?
I think, in general, Republicans lie more than Democrats. When I imagine the typical Republican, I, as screenwriter Mark Andrus wrote, think of a man and I take away reason and accountability.
FOX News reported:
McCain supporters, claim[ed] they rescued 12,000 miniature American flags from the site of Barack Obama’s nomination acceptance speech last Thursday…McCain supporters said the flags were discovered by a vendor at Denver’s Invesco Field after the conclusion of the Democratic National Convention. The vendor supposedly found trash bags full of flags in and near garbage bins, and turned them over to the McCain campaign.
Of course, if they were abandoned, they were likely abandoned on accident. Can the Republicans account for every flag used at their convention? With all of the ejaculations that week, the answer is no. However, the truth is not permitted in the Eighth Circle of Hell.
Apparently the PUMAs, the Party Unity My Asses, have started a new Democratic Party. They feel that the old Democratic Party wasn’t sycophantic enough. Or something. The irony is mindblowing.
“She’s going to learn national security at the foot of the master for the next four years, and most doctors think that he’ll be around at least that long,” said Charlie Black, one of Mr. McCain’s top advisers, making light of concerns about Mr. McCain’s health, which Mr. McCain’s doctors reported as excellent in May.
I don’t know which part of this quote is more significant: The “for the next four years” part or the “making light” of McCain’s age-health part. Why not “for the next eight years” and why even jokingly say that “We think he’ll make it four years.. Maybe longer!” That’s just not very funny.
