The American way
Preach on, Brother Ross. Preach on.
An Election About Nothing
This is why politics and people involved in it are so endlessly stupid. Why, again, are we looking to such morons to tell us which directions to take with our lives and with the country? Why should I trust such idiots to know how to handle the most serious problems America and the world has to face? I shouldn't, is the obvious answer to that really pretty self-evident question.
And if the goal is to convince me that the folks in Washington - politicians, activists, the press - are unworthy of that trust, this election is quite the validation of that notion.
The more you talk about nothing, the more people realize you really have nothing to say or offer. And, over time, the less they trust you and the more they seek out their own answers.
And that, ladies and gentlemen, is how progress takes place in a democracy.
2 comments:
This isn't a direct response to your post (which I agree with at about an 80% level). It's just something I feel like mentioning.
I've been watching the media beat the shit out of McCain for being rude and dismissive toward Obama. They're comparing Obama's graciousness to McCain's grumpyoldmannishness.
The funny thing is that I was reading a few liberal blogs and the folks there were pissed off that Obama didn't go for the jugular a few times.
Those comments came right on the heels of a week's worth of editorials begging Obama to get rough with McCain.
Everyone wants him to go apeshit and to channel some righteous rage. Then, the debate hits and he goes all mellow. Bummer?
Maybe. But pure genius.
Nice Obama/Mean McCain is just another example of Obama's best trick as a campaigner.
Unlike McCain or Hillary Clinton, Obama figured something out long ago... You don't need to be mean. You don't need to call people out. It's just not necessary.
Know why?
The media will take care of it for you.
Obama doesn't need to use the debate to mock McCain over showing up at the debates after his campaign suspension stunt. He doesn't need to allude to it. He can just brush it off his shoulders and move on... Because the papers and the TV pundits will take care of it for him.
Why get up in McCain's face when the rest of the world will do that for you and you can be the nice guy?
It was the same way in the primaries. Hillary would do something mean or nasty and people would look for Obama to "fire back". He didn't take the bait.
What did he get out of that? Tons and tons of coverage about how Obama wasn't attacking Hillary for X, Y or Z.
When Barack didn't go nuts on the Bosnia sniper fire thing, the media took care of it for him. When Hillary mocked him for his sunshine and change speeches, he said she did a good impression and smiled. The press took care of yelling at her for him.
All of these TV jackasses keep talking about how Obama should rip McCain a new one for X, Y or Z and he doesn't do it.
In return, he gets to keep his hands clean while all of these soulless TV half-stars take care of it for him.
He doesn't pull this trick ALL of the time, but he does it enough to get the job done.
I know you think the dickishness of the media is a root of some evil. You might be right. One thing is for sure, though... Obama knows how to work it to his advantage.
Barack isn't going to bitch about McCain being a dismissive prick. He'll let the TV guys do it for him.
McCain & Palin don't do it that way. They actually come right out and level their own attacks. They still treat the media as interpreters and transmitters of the campaign's comments. They're using them like a simple tool.
Obama is using them as part of his team, and they don't even know it half of the time...
Sure, some of them do. Keith Olbermann and Rachel Maddow are certainly Obamabuddies. But he's got guys like Bill Bennett and Pat Buchanon working for his campaign right now.
By not fighting back, he opens the door for others to rip apart his opponent while he walks on the high road.
During the primaries I was shocked about the way 38 different talking heads would all get the Obama campaign wrong. They wanted him to be tougher, more responsive, more "down and dirty" and he wouldn't (for the most part) play that game.
I'd watch and say, "you guys don't get it. It's the refusal to act that way... That's what's working".
The truth, however, was that a secondary component was really making it work. The media was doing the dirty work for him because he wouldn't.
This deal with Palin and the freaky witch doctor is a perfect example. Obama's camp isn't talking about it officially. So, you get 100 different TV hosts showing the footage and asking "why isn't Obama grilling her for this after the whole J. Wright issue?"
Because he doesn't have to. Everyone's watching the footage and Obama doesn't need to say a word.
McCain and the Keating 5 is another perfect example. All the would-be D hardballers are talking about Barack should stir the ghosts of the K5 as the financial crisis unfolds.
You get Paul Begala on TV yelling and screaming about how the K5 thing proves how crappy McCain is and Obama should get off his ass and start reminding people of McCain's role in the S&L scandals.
Obama and his official camp? They aren't doing it. They don't have to do it.
One could say that Obama avoids this kind of shit because he thinks so highly of the American voter's ability to see through the junk... One could say it's because he's such a genuinely good guy.
The truth, I'm beginning to guess, is that he just doesn't need to get too direct in order to get the memes out there. By NOT taking the easy bait, the bait becomes a topic of discussion and enters the public consciousness without his fingerprints on it.
I think it's intentional. Yes, he levels some attacks, but really--if you look closely--he usually avoids the easy hits. I think he does that intentionally, gambling that CNN MSNBC FOX CNNI ABC CBS NBC ETC will raise the topics on their own.
It'll be the same way with the new debate meme. McCain was a nasty old bastard who wouldn't even look at Obama.
Obama and his official people won't say too much about that. They'll just let Chris Matthews carry the water for them.
It's brilliant, really. Why mock Palin when you know that everyone will do it for you? Why call out McCain on his bullshit moments when you can count on the press doing it for you as they wonder aloud "why isn't Obama going after this?"
Everyone can say what they want about Obama, but I think he's the first candidate to use the modern media to his advantage. He's using the 24 hour news cycle and the constant exposure to news programming to his advantage. He's not just broadcasting, he's making the media an active participant--even when they THINK they're criticizing him....
But the issue, Carson, is what is he fighting for?
I don't have the confidence you do that Barack has more answers to questions of the war, the economy, especially - where he is incredibly weak, I must say, when I listen to him; he just doesn't understand the fundamentals of the economy enough, from what I'm hearing - and other issues we face to be focus on tactics.
It's actually really remarkably similar to warfare, actually, since that is the analogy partisans like to use for what should be honest, substantive, and reasoned engagement.
In war, those with stronger purpose, generally and in the long term, given enough military firepower or means to get enough, win the war. That isn't always true obviously. Hiter and Stalin both ran over quite a few armies that should have beat them by any sort of calculation of justice in the world.
But they also both lost, in the end. And they both deserved to lose and have the shit kicked out of them, in the end. And deserve to remembered as the meanspirited, heartless pigs they were.
This is exactly what I think Victor Davis Hanson, who is a brilliant tactical military historian - if you ever read his work, Carson, he writes really excellent histories of wars on the ground - is not one of the great military historians, more broadly, except by less discriminating standards, because his focus is on military strategy and tactics and not on the broader political claims at stake the ways that war is a function of political claims and not the other way around. Victor just doesn't understand that, in the broadest picture, purpose drives the fight, not the other way around. And those who get lost in tactical calculations generally lose, long term, which is going to distort your outlook on war and politics, if you can't honestly face that fact of war. Hitler wins a lot of battles. But he loses in the end. Alexander the Great amasses a remarkable Empire, that does not still exist, today, and falls apart in 900 A.D. Stalin helps the Allies win World War II. But his regime is in shambles by the end of the century.
And, in the meantime, these assholes reap all kinds of needless and tragic death and destruction all so they can amass power. They're major assholes. And they all deserve to be remembered as such.
Political claims can be legitimate and not just claims to power for self-centered purposes. But you have to make the arguments for them, as such. And you have to be accountable to the debate about those claims and not just ignore those who disagree with you if you are going to get honest legitimacy for those claims.
You don't go through that process because you arrogantly assume you have more answers than you do, you deal with the consequences of losing poll position - as Barack has the more he goes on the attack; I don't care what partisans or pundits say, the empirics are clear on this: when he goes on the attack, as they did with Sarah Palin, their poll numbers dip, every time; when he runs a more honest campaign, he beats his oppoents. The fact is that the assholes are wrong, and, as always, they don't have the courage to admit it.
And all of this is not at all to mention the much more substantial reason to engage in serious debate: because each of these candidates needs to prepare to do the goddamn job. And neither of them are ready, at this point, because they are not engaged in enough substantial debate to understand what they are doing well enough, at this point. Debate exposes your weaknesses. It exposes arguments that aren't as solid as you pretend them to be. It gives you an opportunity to face where you might be wrong.
The irony, of course, Carson, is that the kind of assertive engagement that journalists and the cynical assholes in the press say that they want to see in politics occurs often most rigorously in debates. And then when it happens, those asshats sit around and crow about how it isn't going to make a difference anyway and how demeanor or perception or some other bullshit are what really matter when the substantive questions and answers they've been crying about not being asked are sitting right their in front of their smug little faces.
But they just can't face it because they can't face the fact that they are responsible for much of the failures of substance in campaigns and the reason why we get so little of the stuff that really matters in campaigns. And fuck them for it. I will be calling out those smug little pricks until we get more substantive campaigns, debates, and press coverage for as long as it takes. We are going to get a more honest democracy whether they fuckin' care or not. Because I'll going to give fodder to their competitors for what stupid, small-minded little shitheads they are for not covering the substance. You don't cover the substance, you deal with everyone calling you an asshat for not covering it, you fuckin' piece of shit. You don't like that, cover the fucking substance and insist on it within the campaigns. Same goes for the campaigns. You don't fuckin' like it. Go do something else, you fuckin' pussy. This ship will be turning in the right direction.
So, the truth is that Barack does deserve a lot of criticism for not engaging that more substantive debate. Last night was a good start. Now all of the campaign needs to operate like that. And they can each deal with being called out of the shitbags they are until they can face up and engage the substantive debate that their little pussy, mindless hearts just don't know if they can withstand. And too fuckin' bad for the pussies who cry at night in their soft little pillows that they can't handle more serious, substative policy discussions. Boo fucking hoo.
You know, Carson, watching that debate, last night, I realized that McCain is actually much stronger on economic matters, in particular, than I had assumed. Meaning that while Barack gets a marginal edge from me, right now, because he understands the foreign policy challenges ahead of us marginally better, I think - except for Iraq, where he is weak, I think - John McCain, thankfully, is going to make this a race. And I want these assholes working for my vote. And that means thinking.
And the truth is that all the evidence, in poll numbers, is indicating that voters are getting tired of this shit that passes for honest discussion in political debates - because those who engage in it keep losing, these days; Barack's numbers dropped and Palin's numbers were in the 80's after the slew of attacks on Palin after her nomination was announced. And the really fucking stupid part, Carson, is that that loss should have been an easy win because Palin really is a moron, so there is no reason her poll numbers should be so high except that leftists are also retards who can't get their tiny little brains wrapped around the fact that the more I attack, the more their poll numbers go up, not the other way around. Americans have figured out this little game and it is backfiring, in a serious way, these days - and those who engage in more honest discussion - like Barack, in the Democratic primaries - get rewarded. That may have always been true, actually. Who knows. At some level, it definitely is true (the Americans and the Indians each beat the strongest empire in the world, at the time, because their claims on self-determination are more legitimate than British claims on power over Americans and Indians). But parsing out the power dynamics would make for an interesting political scientific study.
But it is definitely true that if you are watching this election objectively and not as a partisan that the poll numbers reflect a backfire each time, that I've seen, that candidates go after one another in more personal ways that do not reflect substantive leadership priorities.
The debates offer them an opportunity to correct for this. But it will take more than one debate to do this. We have a long way to go. And I expect more of what I saw from last night and for these children to be called out for anything that falls short.
I'm tired of this bullshit, Carson. I'm not putting up with it, anymore. I don't put up with it from my kids. And I won't put up with it from the children who want to run this country.
And if they don't fuckin' like it, they better grow up quick.
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