McCain Shows How Lying Can Make Your "Larger Point"
F
rom Katie Couric's interviews with Obama and McCain on CBS this evening:
Obama: There is no doubt that our troops helped to reduce violence.
Less than two minutes later:
McCain: To deny that their sacrifice didn't make possible the success of the surge in Iraq I think does a great disservice to the young men and women who are serving and have sacrificed.
Huh? He didn't say it -- in fact, he implied the opposite -- but Couric let McCain have the last word on that, regardless of whether it reflected the truth she'd just reported herself. But she was looking for a fight between the two, not any real examination of the issue.
For example, much as I want to like Katie Couric, she tends to ask dumb questions and makes dumb comments: "Senator McCain, you sound very frustrated with Senator Obama's perspective." Even he indicated that wasn't really relevant.
What actually is frustrating, Katie, is that you and everyone else are buying McCain's line that "the surge in troops has brought down violence in Iraq, therefore I have the better judgment." Violence has also declined in some places we don't even have troops. More importantly, this is basically saying, "See, we're making progress in fixing the problems we created," whereas Obama is saying, "Not only should those problems not have been created, your obsession on them has kept us from addressing even bigger problems that are becoming an even bigger threat."
But you don't get a real exploration of that in the binary world of media coverage -- he said, he said; who's right, who's wrong; answer the question, yes or no -- which, not coincidentally, the right-wing likes to frame everything in. And because this makes the media's job easier, it works.
Obama's right to keep the focus on "what is strategic." Because even if he does, the network news certainly isn't.
Stephen Colbert summed up the ridiculous way this is currently being discussed, in his interview Monday night with Sen. Jim Webb (who also made the point that, surge or no, fighting in Iraq wasn't and isn't in the strategic interests of the U.S., even though our military will do the job that's put to them and almost always have). Colbert argued, "I will grant you that perhaps it was a foreign policy disaster to go in, based on shoddy evidence. But now that the surge is working, it was worth it!" As usual, Colbert's character on Comedy Central shows just how stupid what passes for punditry is elsewhere on TV.
Nouri al-Maliki Suggests Obama Gets Iraq Better than McCain Does
So the American people want a timetable for getting us out of Iraq. Barack Obama has said he wants us out of Iraq in 16 months, more or less (assuming he means from the time he's in office and able to set that in motion). Now the Iraqi prime minister, Nouri al-Maliki, says he thinks the US should be out of Iraq in about the same timeframe. Which is, to say the least, awkward for John McCain, who has said we'll get out when al-Maliki thinks we should. John McCain, check your voicemail... .
In other foreign affairs news, as Obama makes his way eastward (and middle eastward), McCain has a new ad slamming him for never once holding hearings on Afghanistan as chair of a Foreign Relations subcommittee. Only two problems with that: Joe Biden, the Foreign Relations chair, has held a number of hearings on Afghanistan, and Obama attended at least one of them. And John McCain, the ranking Republican on the Senate Armed Services committee, has attended none of the six Afghanistan-related hearings his own committee has held in the last two years.
I'm cynical enough to believe that McCain's ad will work with many voters, anyway. And, apparently, McCain is that cynical as well. Just a bit ago, he and his party were accusing the Democrats of "playing politics" by voting to restore doctor's fees under Medicare. Only problem with that is that when it was time to vote, where was the GOP's nominee? Out on the hustings, playing politics. In fact, he was the only senator to miss that vote. But he says he would have voted against it, anyway. Apparently he's one senior who thinks his health care is just fine and doesn't need to worry whether his doctor will opt out of Medicare or not.
"If you can't do irony on the cover of The New Yorker, where can you do it?" — Bill Maher, The New York Times, July 15, 2008
I honestly do not get this controversy about The New Yorker cover. If you haven't seen it, I'm not sure how you've missed it. But here it is (click for a larger version):
It's obviously satire, showing Michelle Obama with a big '70s Afro and Black Panther radical garb and gunfire, giving a "terrorist fist jab" to her husband, dressed in a dashiki and turban. There's an American flag burning in the Oval Office fireplace, and a portrait of Osama bin Laden above the mantel.
Basically, it's demonstrating the ridiculousness of all the goofy e-mail rumors your "low-information" voter friends may be sending around. Along the same lines of Stephen Colbert's mentions of Obama as a "secret Muslim," or Jon Stewart's nightly "Baracknophobia" segments. But many Obama supporters (and I count myself one, but certainly part company on this issue) are up in arms that someone has drawn a cartoon illustrating all these slanders that are already out there about the Obamas.
You read arguments like: "Too many voters won't read The New Yorker, they'll just see the cover and it will confirm their suspicions." "If National Review or the American Spectator had done this, what would be the difference?" "We can't afford the possibility that this will give fodder to the right-wing."
Each of those are stupid arguments. If this cartoon confirms anyone's suspicions, they weren't pulling the lever for Obama anyway. If National Review or the American Spectator had displayed this cover -- unless they're making fun of their own audience, which is unlikely -- it would have been a form of commentary about their worst fears, not satire. (And using a cartoon would be sending a decided mixed message in such an instance.) And I still don't see how this provides any fodder to any of the wingnuts that they're not already employing -- that, in fact, is the point of the satire.
For every idiot who sends this around as proof that "even the LIBERAL New Yorker thinks the Obamas are radical Muslims," I'm convinced there will be even more on-the-fence voters who see this as the satire it is, and in their minds, it takes the issue off the table: "Ha ha, Yeah, I guess those are pretty ridiculous suppositions my crazy brother-in-law keeps sending me." Even if they don't see the satire, but are offended on Obama's behalf, it makes them more sympathetic to the idea that the right-wing is slandering him, and so has the same effect.
Other than Internet fundraising and the Bush Administration's own ineptitude, the only consistently effective weapon in the progressive movement's arsenal has been satire. We'd be stupid to throw that away in the fear that someone might not see it for what it is.
Maybe I'm more loyal to The New Yorker than I am to the Obama campaign (I've been a reader and subscriber a lot longer than I've been a Democrat, I guess). But I don't think you win an election by demanding everyone on your side be as dumb as the people you're opposing. You need to be more politically savvy, you don't need to be dumber.
And if there are people crazy enough to see this cartoon cover as confirmation of their suspicions that Barack and Michelle Obama are Huey P. Newton and Angela Davis for the iPod generation, maybe they'll subscribe to The New Yorker. They may think they're getting Sean Hannity in print, but they'll really be getting Seymour Hersh and Hendrik Hertzberg. and there's a nice poetic justice in that.
The title of the cover, by the way, as reported on the ToC is "The Politics of Fear." Prescient, that.
Another thing I don't get: all the talk about Obama "moving toward the center" -- or moving rightward, leaving the center in the rearview mirror, in some people's eyes.
On almost all of the issues cited, as he said himself, if people think he's now moving to the center, they haven't been listening to him. He was already on record as believing that the Second Amendment recognizes an individual's right to bear arms (rather than a state militia's collective right, as I believe). He was already on record that some crimes (including the rape of a child, although he'd always included "and murder" in that formula) could warrant the death penalty, whereas I don't believe the state has any right to commit revenge murder on behalf of citizens. And Obama was already on record that local institutions, some of them faith-based (e.g., churches) often provide the most effective social services for the population that most needs them. (A position with which I agree; my own politically liberal Episcopal parish's food pantry relies in part on federal funds in order to hand out groceries to people who need them.)
Only on the new FISA law can I see signs of shifting positions, and I admit I don't know enough about the details (other than the telecom immunity) to judge whether this newer law really is better than the older law or not, and whether telecom immunity was worth getting it. I suspect I'd disagree with Obama's position here, too, but maybe not. However, I'm pretty sure it was the wrong choice politically, and will show up in lackluster fundraising at exactly the time Obama can't afford lackluster fundraising.
Speaking of fundraising, that wasn't a flip-flop. Or if it was, it was probably a good one. (And we've had almost eight years of a president who refused to change his mind about anything, so I don't see a foolish consistency being anything other than what Emerson said it was.) He hadn't committed to public financing, just to exploring it, And I think -- if he can remain an inspiring candidate people want to donate to, which is a big if -- he made the right call there. Public financing from the actual public really is better than forced spending, if you've got a wide enough number of contributors participating. Otherwise, it's just special interest money. The McCain campaign tried to portray Obama's decision to eschew public financing of his campaign as evidence that he's just another typical Washington politician -- which hardly flies. After all, he's the first presidential candidate to turn public campaign money down since the program was created in 1971.
Finally, among the things I also don't understand is the lingering animosity between Obama and Clinton supporters. I mean, I get it, but it was way out of proportion throughout the primaries and continues to be even now. I voted for Obama in the primary (my first choice, Edwards, having dropped out); the person I'm closest to voted for Clinton. We were both fine with that, and both said we'd be happy to vote for either of them in the general election.
But we're obviously off in some fantasy land, because to read the online commentary, at least, Hillary is an angry, conniving witch who is willing to say anything or do anything to get elected. And Barack is an unqualified empty suit who is willing to say anything or do anything to get elected. He's a confirmed misogynist. Bill and Hillary are lifelong racists. And I'm like...huh?
What I would find amusing if it didn't show signs of so many people I know and respect becoming so seriously unhinged is that most of the critiques of one side against the other are near mirror images, or at least cracked mirror images. Hillary supporters see misogyny in every anti-Hillary statement during the campaign -- of which there was some, sometimes a lot, from the pundits, to be certain -- but don't see any racism at all in Bill's or Hillary's (or even Geraldine Ferraro's) comments that alluded to race and racial lines in voting. Obamaniacs see racism and the assumption of white privilege in every utterance of the Clinton campaign -- but can't even hear themselves when they say really hateful things about Hillary Clinton that were probably last said when they were 15 and screaming at their mothers because she wouldn't let them stay out late on a school night.
Or, to put it another way, what Democrats liked about either of these candidates is one-half of what was Bill Clinton's appeal for them. For some, his policy wonkery made him a superb president, and they see how his wife shares that passion for the details. For others, he was an inspiring speaker and a personable character, and they want Obama because he makes them feel passionate about politics again (or for the first time, for many of them). Although I'm sure Bill doesn't see it this way, Hillary and Barack were each running against the other half of Bill's personality that people found appealing.
NB: Given what we've had in the years since, I miss having someone smart like him as president, but I was never that thrilled with him when he was in office. His returning to Arkansas during the campaign to deny a mentally retarded man a stay of execution was, for me, the equivalent of Obama's FISA vote. And when he signed DOMA -- and then crowed about it in campaign ads on Christian radio stations -- I figured he was about as ideologically pure as, well, Obama's critics are now calling him.
In fact, now that I've gone there, I suppose I have viewed both Hillary and Barack this year with some ambivalence, and therefore find the charges of sexism and racism so overwrought. After all, both candidates have trashed my demographic's full equality, but you don't see me running for the door marked "Nader." Or feeling much sympathy for the other poor put-upon folks being told to stand in line for their issues.
I don't think Hillary lost because of sexism; I think she lost because (a) she's been a polarizing figure all her public life, and had the highest negatives of any of the Democratic candidates, and (b) she ran a stupid campaign after Super Tuesday. She had a senior strategist who hadn't grokked that the Democratic primaries awarded delegates in proportion to the primary results, and couldn't figure out how to win caucus states, so didn't really try. She also had way too much infighting on her campaign to wage an effective general election battle.
She lost, in other words, to someone who proved to be a better politician, and so I guess I'm glad he won. I'm hoping (and voting, and contributing on the premise that) he can trounce John McCain as well. He wasn't my first choice when all this began, and we may well look back on this as yet another stupid nomination by a party that can't win even the unloseable elections. ("Here's an idea: let's nominate a liberal Democrat from Massachusetts who actively protested against fellow soldiers in the Vietnam War. If we remind people he fought in it, that's all they'll remember." Uh huh.) This year may best be remembered as the year the Democrats nominated a little-known black senator from urban Chicago, a self-described "skinny kid with big ears and a funny name" (and an even funnier middle name), and we'll have to add Obama as a partner to the firm of Mondale, Dukakis & Kerry, losers-at-elections. Maybe not.
So have we ended up nominating a John F. Kennedy this year or an Adlai Stevenson? Only history (and the election results) will tell.
Apropos of nothing, and certainly not worth a post in the heat of a presidential campaign on which I haven't written anything in two months, but I found the following interesting facts about my name on WhitePages.com:
There are 30,193 unique 'Derek' first names in the United States. Derek is the #461 ranked first name in the United States.
# 460 Franklin
# 461 Derek
# 462 Glenda
Top States for first Name Derek
1. California 2482 listings 2. Texas 2188 listings 3. Florida 1601 listings 4. Michigan 1179 listings 5. New York 1130 listings
Most Popular last Names for Derek
1. Smith 402 listings 2. Johnson 293 listings 3. Brown 208 listings 4. Williams 195 listings 5. Jones 188 listings
