America Got You Down? Ask Your Doctor About Obamacil (TM) Today!
May 15, 2008 at 9:18 pm | In Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, John McCain, MSM, WH '08 | 1 CommentTags: change, Iraq, Jeremiah Wright, Joe Biden, NRCC
Pity the GOP. Not only will Republicans be fighting for their very lives this November in what has to be the worst climate for them since Watergate, but some deeply myopic soul in their ad shop thought it’d be super-sweet to try to co-opt Barack Obama’s “Change” message. How very fitting it is that said message — “Change you deserve” — is also the slogan for an antidepressant.
Rep. Tom Davis is probably right: Congressional Republicans are in for a bloodbath this fall if the atmospherics of this country continue to hold. The “wrong track” response broke the 80-percent ceiling in last week’s ABC/WaPo poll because Americans are in a deeply pessimistic and, frankly, pissy mood these days. Historically, the state of the union isn’t as bad as CNN et al. would have you believe. (Enough with the round-the-clock gas price coverage, already.) There’s just something about President Bush that provokes a gut reaction in a lot of Americans, and it’s not always rational. But it’s there. And his party will pay for it big-time this fall unless something spectactularly dramatic happens.
So, yeah. I’ve been refraining from saying stuff like “American voters want a national colonic” on the air, even though I think it every damn day. Now I’ve got a new metaphor to bandy about, thanks to the NRCC. Americans want to swallow a gigantic Prozac. And that Prozac looks an awful lot like a certain junior senator from Illinois.
The metaphor isn’t necessarily flattering, though.
Obama’s hopeyness appears to have trumped Hillary Clinton’s buzzkill realpolitik, but not by a whole lot. If you’re like me and suspect a lot of psychiatry is hooey, then the Prozac metaphor isn’t flattering at all. I seriously doubt HRC will run as Obama’s veep, but am grateful that the eminently soundbite-worthy Joe Biden has reminded Americans that owning a pair is pretty helpful in leadership. I am quite sure HRC has a pair. Maybe two pairs. What I’m not sure of is whether Obama has shown that he’s got a pair too, especially considering his worryingly slow response to the Rev. Jeremiah Wright affair. That Wright hasn’t killed Obama’s election hopes speaks volumes more about the intelligence of the voting public than it does about Obama. (And may I plead once again for a media worthy of said public?)
Speaking of media foibles, 2013Gate is getting on my damn nerves. John McCain never committed to ending the Iraq war within one term in office, but you wouldn’t know it from headlines like “McCain Predicts Troops Will Be Out Of Iraq By 2013” or “McCain Predicts Iraq War Over By 2013.” Watch the now-infamous speech here:
Where’s the pinky-promise commitment in ”This is the progress I want to achieve during my presidency?” Like his competitors, McCain was laying out a vision for America under his watch. Someone explain to me how saying Iraq could be “a functioning democracy” by 2013 is any more fantastical than vowing to immediately withdraw most American troops from Iraq without any serious OMFG consequences. Should he win in November, McCain will probably achieve about 30 percent of what he promised voters his first term in office, just like nearly every president before him. Since when is promising the untenable a disqualifier in politics?
McCain does sort of owe Mitt Romney an apology, though. He avoided timeline territory before on principle, but his people must have calculated that principle wouldn’t help him against a Democratic candidate promising an end to the war. Unlike Obama or Clinton, McCain is still refusing to make a promise about the war that he’d most likely have to break once safely ensconced in the White House. But he is indicating that he would not be cool with four more years of heavy engagement there, which will come in handy once the “100 Years 100 Years” chanting from the DNC begins in earnest.
Also: “Change” is quickly overtaking “chink” as my least-favorite Ch-word. Everybody just stop it. Please.
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After living in Somerville for two years, I started to have it up to here with “Chow-dah.” I have recently marveled at the reasons people will cling to in order to justify voting for or against a candidate. I have a buddy who (though I am sure he has other reasons) is leaning toward McCain because they’re both “Navy Men.” I don’t know if that is a better or worse benchmark than presence or lack of lapel pin. Moyers recently gave an interview with Olbermann (yes, I know… I know) where he talked about the over-simplification of the rhetoric saying that the best candidate nowadays is the one that can be the most elequent in 10 words or less (I am paraphrazing of course and I hope appropreately). I really mean to read his book if he can explain how, why, and how we reverse it.
I think that all three of the remaining candidates have the intelectual firepower to be elequent at length. I suppose the public will have their day to decide who is the most elequent in brief.
So Bully for John McCain for presenting a vision. Incidentally, he is not by a stretch the only republican to do so. Ron Paul (if you bother to listen to him) has presented a vision that is at once, scary, radical, harebrained, brilliant, utopian, insightfull, inconcievable, and utterly doomed to fail. But it’s a vision and he has been beating his drum like a rented mule since he started running. Some people are giving him credit for being the closest in the GOP to (old-school 1976) Reagan of all the candidates since the beginning. Which is enough to set my teeth on edge, but appealing to certain groups nonetheless.
You’re right when you reflect that the Dems still in the game haven’t mirrored the vision production of the Republican candidates. I mean, they have entered their 10 word phrases: “ch-words,” “Dubya’s 3rd term,” “Ready on Day One,” “Bring them home,” “transparency,” “Health Care,” “Cross the isle.” but they haven’t painted a picture of “America 2012.” Admittedly, they’ve been busy trying to run eachother’s undies up the flagpole. Maybe they are each saving their visions to be rolled out for the general. Who knows? It will also be interesting to see if the general becomes about competing visions for America, or about 10 word phrase fencing and lapel pins.
One last thing: I have to give oustanding credit to HRC’s campaign in setting the tone of the coverage in the last few weeks. It has been subtle, but the major questions about Obama’s eluctability that have gotten so much play have been as creative and strident as they are completely specious. First, the assertion that he is weak because he can’t deliver a “knock-out blow” in Ohio, Texas or Pennsylvania. These were all states that Clinton pretty much knew she would win, but her campaign made them seem like Obama should have been able to launch her to the political Ort Cloud with victories in all of them. Then he has a problem with whites. Which was something that was inconcivable directly after Iowa. “ZOMG He won a 94% white state, bring out your Kryptonite!” And just recently West Virginia, which he lost by a lot (which is, incidentally, what tends to happen when the other candidate is the only one campaigning there) is now a “pivotal battleground” state that is an indicator for success in the General, if you believe Terry Mac. Yeah, right, WV with its 5 electoral college votes is the real bellweather; ignore everything else. I am struck all at once by awe at the strategy’s mastery, and revulsion by the way people buy it. But this is why I think she manages to stay in even after the lifeguard has whisteled the end to the adult swim.
Comment by munkfish — May 16, 2008 #