I’ll give you the truth — over the last few days, I’ve become slightly anxious about the presidential race. I’d say that I think the “Obama = Celebrity”/”Obama = Messiah?” attacks are troubling to me. They’re the kind of personal attacks that build a narrative that sticks. They’re emotive enough to elicit responses — it’s got powerful imagery (you can just picture it), and it’s new enough (fresh arguments tend to permeate the most due to a psychological principle called sensory adaption. It’s like when you’re in a smelly room long enough. Eventually, you just don’t smell it any more).
And what’s most troubling is that we, as Democrats, don’t realize that always use nuance and logic to argue against it. Sure, it might win the argument — maybe — but it doesn’t even matter. It’s repeated too much.
Think about situations like the Obama “keep your tires tire inflated” suggestion. Of course, it’s true..making sure your tires are inflated would save energy. McCain’s charge that it’s Obama’s entire energy plan, and his campaign’s handing out tire gauges is of course an oversimplification. But you need to explain nuance to dismiss it. Meanwhile, it’s worked to build McCain’s narrative about Obama — that he’s out of touch with everyday Americans. And while it comes from the guy who says he hasn’t pumped gas in a while and “(doesn’t) see how it matters” that he doesn’t know the price of gas (his defense was that he has Secret Service protection and it had been a while, but in reality, he had only been under protection for a mere two months before that point) somehow it’s Obama that’s “out of touch.”
It then becomes, like Swift Boat Veterans for Truth, legend. And as the quote goes, “when the legend becomes fact, print the legend. (By the way, I did a paper, back in the day, on Swift Vets. It covers a lot of these psychological principles, and has an interview with its creator about the concept and design of the campaign, so please feel free to take a look.)
So, how does Obama attack McCain?
Up until now, the Democrats have been working to pair McCain with President Bush. And of course, that makes sense. That’s a logical argument, and can totally be made — in a video I’m posting below, McCain himself says he at that point had voted with Bush 90% of the time (and it’s more like 95% of the time now, according to an independent source). Not to mention such line items as giant and unnecessary man-bear hugs and rounds and rounds of talk show promotion of nearly all of the Bush Administration’s Iraq strategy.
But the truth is that the Democrats were going to pair any Republican nominee with Bush. Thus, it’s just not personal enough. It’s not unique…and it’s just not as down deep into the psychology of the candidate for it to really resonate.
Most of America still seems to think that McCain’s the “maverick,” so it’d make sense to bring that down — after all, that does go with the Rovian strategy to pull the carpet from underneath a candidate by attacking their core strength — and the Obama campaign has already started to do that with this video, called “Original”:
But I think this again misses the point. There’s one key argument that remains for McCain even if you tear that down. “Okay, so he’s not the maverick he says he is,” it might go. “So, he’s a regular politician. But he’s still a politician that I can trust in these strange times.”
So, I started pondering a bit — is the “maverick” label really what has made McCain successful in this election? I’d argue no — because McCain was the maverick when he was down in the polls a year ago and was branded “washed up.” It was, actually, his gamble on the “surge” that brought him back to life. And he’s still talking about it, because he plays it up as a strength. So far, the success of the “surge” has worked as a benefit for McCain.
But I thought about it for a second. The campaign seems to be arguing that because the surge has worked, our national foreign policy over the last 7 years — which McCain actively promoted and endorsed again and again on television — has been, in his own words “worth it.”
So why not ask the American people if the surge has made the Iraq War worth it? The lives, the dangerous world we now live in — and especially the economic costs. Run an ad on the latest news that the Iraqi government will have a $79 Billion surplus and yet we’re funding the reconstruction — but yet, McCain says the war has been “worth it” for the American taxpayers. How out of touch is that?
The “surge” is the biggest empty suit that exists. And it’s the entire foundation of McCain’s campaign — all arguments about his superior judgment point towards it, in fact. Without the surge, McCain would’ve been nowhere in the Republican primary, and I wonder where he’d be without it in the general election.
