The Metaissues
"Until this moment, Senator, I think I never gauged your cruelty or recklessness..." - U.S. Army Special Council Joseph Welch, speaking to Senator Joe McCarthy
It wasn't supposed to be this way.
Years ago, I said that I didn't care whether the next president was a Republican or a Democrat, as long as it was a someone who could heal the country and bring it together again after eight years the most deliberately divisive administration within my political memory.
I applauded when John McCain received the Republican nomination. As the Republican party fractured into several ideological extremes, each candidate staking out a different spot near the edges, he wound up being the last person left standing. McCain was the one Republican I had the most respect for.
On the Democratic side, I didn't have much of a preference between Hillary Clinton or Obama. I tipped towards Obama when the undercurrent of "wait, you don't think a black man can be elected present can you?" started oozing out of Hillary's camp - her husband did her no favors here. But, I would have been happy with either one.
I felt positive about the direction of the country - whether Clinton, Obama, or McCain became president, I had confidence that the damage of the last eight years could begin to be undone.
But you know what happens to the best laid plans of mice and men...
It started with the nomination of Sarah Palin, who, curiously, was someone McCain barely knew and had only met a few times. She has morphed into a figure even more divisive and far to the right than George Bush. I was flummoxed. How could McCain, a moderate, pick someone so extreme? Then, as McCain started to slide in the polls, the McCain camp started to go deeply negative in their desperation. I have no illusions here; I am sure that Obama's camp would have started to go negative too if they had been as behind.
But McCain's camp pushed it further. They didn't just go negative - they went dark, showing an unprecedented willingness to embrace fear, and moreover, exploit ignorance as political tools. Both sides of the political spectrum have their extremes. On the left, the most extreme elements seem to have run off to do their own thing - see, for instance, Cynthia McKinney. On the right, the most extreme elements seem to have become the "base," and that base has built a feedback loop of right-wing blogs and radio talk shows, egged on by McCain's campaign, particularly Palin's incendiary pronouncements. (Does she think through the implications of the things she says before she says them?) Consider the 23% of Texans who think that Obama is Muslim (which I'm flummoxed by given Palin's criticism about his two-decade membership in a United Church of Christ - he can't be both!), or the neverending rumor that he wasn't born in the U.S.. (Ironically, a good portion of the Muslim, etc. rumors got started during the Clinton/Obama contest, and may have originally arisen from Clinton's supporters.) Obama's suggested minor tweaking of the progressive tax code had been labelled "socialist" and/or "communist" by people who have no idea what either term actually means, and Joe the Plumber, McCain's new mascot, recently agreed with a questioner's comment that an Obama presidency would mean "death to Israel." (A Fox news anchor, of all people, called JtP out for having no clue what he was talking about.) And those are some of the least inflammatory of the rumors out there, rumors that people often quote as reasons when they declare allegiance to McCain. What hope does the future of America have in the face of such willful ignorance? And what does McCain think of all this? The irony must not be lost on him, considering his presidential chances were derailed in 2000 through a slimy "push polling" campaign that implied he he fathered an illegitimate black child.
There have been a few moments of sanity, such as when McCain said "He is a decent person and a person that you do not have to be scared of as President of the United Stated" (sadly, he was booed when he said that) and corrected a woman who said "I can't trust Obama. I've read about him, and he's an Arab." But such moments have been few and far between, and by the time McCain tried to briefly reign in his rhetoric, his "base" had already been whipped into a frenzy. To paraphrase Batman's chastisement of the mob boss in The Dark Knight, the McCain campaign let the joker out of the box. There is no way of stuffing it back in.
I've become unhealthily obsessed with reading election coverage, to the point that I've barely got any work done over the past couple of weeks. I finally put my finger on why. The issues in this campaign go beyond the particular candidates - they go beyond Obama and McCain, Biden and Palin. They go beyond the usual suspects of the economy, education, and national security. They go to the metaissues of the death of reasonable discussion and questions of how political races will be run in the future.
If McCain wins on Tuesday, the lesson learned will be that going dark works. They will have been rewarded for behaving badly. This will become the template for every presidential campaign from now on: Dredge up people's darkest fears. Slander with unsubstantiated rumors. Hell, even redbaiting has made a comeback, and this was evident long before Michelle Bachmann wished "the American media would take a great look at the views of the people in Congress and find out, are they pro-America or anti-America?" or Barbara West came just short of asking Joe Biden if he was now or has ever been a member of the Communist Party, right after asking him if he had stopped beating his wife yet. The Obama camp was widely lambasted for canceling all other interviews with West's station, but I don't see how cutting off one single station, whose reporter had served John McCain nothing but cooing softballs, is any more severe than Sarah Palin hiding from the press entirely - and no, I don't consider Rush Limbaugh to be a member of the press.
I do not care how much Sarah Palin's wardrobe cost, or care about what lapel pins Obama has or has not worn. I don't care about McCain's association with G. Gordon Liddy, or Obama's association will Bill Ayers, or care about both McCain's and Obama's association with Rashid Khalidi. I don't give a rat's ass about "Troopergate." I don't care about Obama's sitting in the pews listening to the crazy conspiracy theories of Jeremiah Wright, and I don't care whether Sarah Palin sat in the pews listening to David Brickner explain that terrorism is God's punishment on Israel for not accepting Christ. I don't care about Louis Farrakhan's endorsement of Obama any more than I care about McCain's endorsement John Hagee, who said that Katrina was God's punishment against New Orleans for hosting a gay pride parade and that the Holocaust was God's way of punishing the Jews. I don't care that Sarah Palin is protected from witchcraft, or that the preacher that gave her such protection gained fame by claiming to be a witch hunter. This is all nothing but noise, and both political parties and the news media have been in a conspiracy to hide the signal in that noise.
I care about the future of political discourse in this country, and it appears to be in shambles. I am saddened when I see Republicans called "Repugs" or "Rethuglicans" just as I am saddened when I see Democrats called "Demoncrats" or "Dumbocraps." Right-wing posters sling the word "lib" with the same level of spittle usually reserved for the horrible epithet "fag." McSame, McPain, Scary Palin, Osama, Nobama, Obamabots, McCainites, Palinites - no amount of name calling can add weight to an argument.
My favorite non-argument: "B. Hussein Obama." Is that it? You expect me to think that your absurd conspiracy theory that Obama is some sort of Manchurian candidate that will establish Shariah law and change the U.S. flag to show both the star and crescent and hammer and sickle will somehow have more credence because you pointed out that he has an unusual name?
Nearly every other blog post, by both McCain and Obama supporters, has "WAKE UP AMERICA!!!" splattered somewhere in the text. Both sides see doom in the victory of the other. Regardless of what happens on November 4th, one half of the country will believe the end is near. Many Obama supporters are convinced that a Republican victory will entail McCain nuking Iran on the day after he's sworn in and Palin establishing a Pentacostal theocracy. Many McCain supporters are convinced the Obama will resurrect Vladimir Lenin and Henri-Philippe Petain and appoint them Secretaries of Labor and Defense, respectively.
None of these extremes are likely - but the sense of impending doom on the Republican side, stoked by the McCain campaign fueling the rumor mill, seems to be substantially more virulent. If Obama wins, I expect his Secret Service detail will be very, very busy.
The joker is out of the box.
What would the John McCain of 2000 say to the John McCain of 2008?
It wasn't supposed to be this way.
It wasn't supposed to be this way.
Years ago, I said that I didn't care whether the next president was a Republican or a Democrat, as long as it was a someone who could heal the country and bring it together again after eight years the most deliberately divisive administration within my political memory.
I applauded when John McCain received the Republican nomination. As the Republican party fractured into several ideological extremes, each candidate staking out a different spot near the edges, he wound up being the last person left standing. McCain was the one Republican I had the most respect for.
On the Democratic side, I didn't have much of a preference between Hillary Clinton or Obama. I tipped towards Obama when the undercurrent of "wait, you don't think a black man can be elected present can you?" started oozing out of Hillary's camp - her husband did her no favors here. But, I would have been happy with either one.
I felt positive about the direction of the country - whether Clinton, Obama, or McCain became president, I had confidence that the damage of the last eight years could begin to be undone.
But you know what happens to the best laid plans of mice and men...
It started with the nomination of Sarah Palin, who, curiously, was someone McCain barely knew and had only met a few times. She has morphed into a figure even more divisive and far to the right than George Bush. I was flummoxed. How could McCain, a moderate, pick someone so extreme? Then, as McCain started to slide in the polls, the McCain camp started to go deeply negative in their desperation. I have no illusions here; I am sure that Obama's camp would have started to go negative too if they had been as behind.
But McCain's camp pushed it further. They didn't just go negative - they went dark, showing an unprecedented willingness to embrace fear, and moreover, exploit ignorance as political tools. Both sides of the political spectrum have their extremes. On the left, the most extreme elements seem to have run off to do their own thing - see, for instance, Cynthia McKinney. On the right, the most extreme elements seem to have become the "base," and that base has built a feedback loop of right-wing blogs and radio talk shows, egged on by McCain's campaign, particularly Palin's incendiary pronouncements. (Does she think through the implications of the things she says before she says them?) Consider the 23% of Texans who think that Obama is Muslim (which I'm flummoxed by given Palin's criticism about his two-decade membership in a United Church of Christ - he can't be both!), or the neverending rumor that he wasn't born in the U.S.. (Ironically, a good portion of the Muslim, etc. rumors got started during the Clinton/Obama contest, and may have originally arisen from Clinton's supporters.) Obama's suggested minor tweaking of the progressive tax code had been labelled "socialist" and/or "communist" by people who have no idea what either term actually means, and Joe the Plumber, McCain's new mascot, recently agreed with a questioner's comment that an Obama presidency would mean "death to Israel." (A Fox news anchor, of all people, called JtP out for having no clue what he was talking about.) And those are some of the least inflammatory of the rumors out there, rumors that people often quote as reasons when they declare allegiance to McCain. What hope does the future of America have in the face of such willful ignorance? And what does McCain think of all this? The irony must not be lost on him, considering his presidential chances were derailed in 2000 through a slimy "push polling" campaign that implied he he fathered an illegitimate black child.
There have been a few moments of sanity, such as when McCain said "He is a decent person and a person that you do not have to be scared of as President of the United Stated" (sadly, he was booed when he said that) and corrected a woman who said "I can't trust Obama. I've read about him, and he's an Arab." But such moments have been few and far between, and by the time McCain tried to briefly reign in his rhetoric, his "base" had already been whipped into a frenzy. To paraphrase Batman's chastisement of the mob boss in The Dark Knight, the McCain campaign let the joker out of the box. There is no way of stuffing it back in.
I've become unhealthily obsessed with reading election coverage, to the point that I've barely got any work done over the past couple of weeks. I finally put my finger on why. The issues in this campaign go beyond the particular candidates - they go beyond Obama and McCain, Biden and Palin. They go beyond the usual suspects of the economy, education, and national security. They go to the metaissues of the death of reasonable discussion and questions of how political races will be run in the future.
If McCain wins on Tuesday, the lesson learned will be that going dark works. They will have been rewarded for behaving badly. This will become the template for every presidential campaign from now on: Dredge up people's darkest fears. Slander with unsubstantiated rumors. Hell, even redbaiting has made a comeback, and this was evident long before Michelle Bachmann wished "the American media would take a great look at the views of the people in Congress and find out, are they pro-America or anti-America?" or Barbara West came just short of asking Joe Biden if he was now or has ever been a member of the Communist Party, right after asking him if he had stopped beating his wife yet. The Obama camp was widely lambasted for canceling all other interviews with West's station, but I don't see how cutting off one single station, whose reporter had served John McCain nothing but cooing softballs, is any more severe than Sarah Palin hiding from the press entirely - and no, I don't consider Rush Limbaugh to be a member of the press.
I do not care how much Sarah Palin's wardrobe cost, or care about what lapel pins Obama has or has not worn. I don't care about McCain's association with G. Gordon Liddy, or Obama's association will Bill Ayers, or care about both McCain's and Obama's association with Rashid Khalidi. I don't give a rat's ass about "Troopergate." I don't care about Obama's sitting in the pews listening to the crazy conspiracy theories of Jeremiah Wright, and I don't care whether Sarah Palin sat in the pews listening to David Brickner explain that terrorism is God's punishment on Israel for not accepting Christ. I don't care about Louis Farrakhan's endorsement of Obama any more than I care about McCain's endorsement John Hagee, who said that Katrina was God's punishment against New Orleans for hosting a gay pride parade and that the Holocaust was God's way of punishing the Jews. I don't care that Sarah Palin is protected from witchcraft, or that the preacher that gave her such protection gained fame by claiming to be a witch hunter. This is all nothing but noise, and both political parties and the news media have been in a conspiracy to hide the signal in that noise.
I care about the future of political discourse in this country, and it appears to be in shambles. I am saddened when I see Republicans called "Repugs" or "Rethuglicans" just as I am saddened when I see Democrats called "Demoncrats" or "Dumbocraps." Right-wing posters sling the word "lib" with the same level of spittle usually reserved for the horrible epithet "fag." McSame, McPain, Scary Palin, Osama, Nobama, Obamabots, McCainites, Palinites - no amount of name calling can add weight to an argument.
My favorite non-argument: "B. Hussein Obama." Is that it? You expect me to think that your absurd conspiracy theory that Obama is some sort of Manchurian candidate that will establish Shariah law and change the U.S. flag to show both the star and crescent and hammer and sickle will somehow have more credence because you pointed out that he has an unusual name?
Nearly every other blog post, by both McCain and Obama supporters, has "WAKE UP AMERICA!!!" splattered somewhere in the text. Both sides see doom in the victory of the other. Regardless of what happens on November 4th, one half of the country will believe the end is near. Many Obama supporters are convinced that a Republican victory will entail McCain nuking Iran on the day after he's sworn in and Palin establishing a Pentacostal theocracy. Many McCain supporters are convinced the Obama will resurrect Vladimir Lenin and Henri-Philippe Petain and appoint them Secretaries of Labor and Defense, respectively.
None of these extremes are likely - but the sense of impending doom on the Republican side, stoked by the McCain campaign fueling the rumor mill, seems to be substantially more virulent. If Obama wins, I expect his Secret Service detail will be very, very busy.
The joker is out of the box.
What would the John McCain of 2000 say to the John McCain of 2008?
It wasn't supposed to be this way.