I gotta say, this makes me smile ...
http://firedoglake.com/
Tom,
I agree. I just posted more or less the same observations, though less coherently, over at Alicublog where occasionally roy's commenters jump off the sarcasm train and start talking about the nitty gritty side of politics.
I think your "elections in gringolandia aren't about issues, they're about supersition" is a very important observation. My favorite book in the world (now I'm dating myself...right back to the thirteenth century) is "Njal's Saga" which is about fortune and luck. Its a very old trope, but an important one to remember. Some people are just "unlucky" and they make bad stuff happen, to themselves and other people. They can be "good", they can be brave, they can be whatever but their luck rules their fate.
Americans are very impressionable voters, they are incoherent voters, they are angry voters, reactive, spiteful, but hardly ever truly thougthtful. In fact my image of the " truly thoughtful voter" is one who pretends to agonize while holding the edge of someone else's borrowed glasses against their lips while furrowing their brow. In the political contests we see before us, between a wholly corrupted and evil intentioned republican leadership and a mildly corrupted and sometimes ineffectual democratic leadership there is simply no contest. And yet american voters persist in acting as though there is and it can be determined not by a coin toss but by "character."
This is a long way around to say that "Character" the way the mass media have defined it works in McCain's favor as long as it is limited to such fakery as "maverick" and "former prisoner" but works against him when other equally salient aspects are held up that don't conflict with the original observations but rather inform them or inflect them differently. A former prisoner who withstood torture and refused to go home on time? Angry, bull headed, short sighted, physically brave but emotional, old timer, played out, etc...etc...etc..
I myself think we should focus on all the things you've listed and simply take the courageous former prisoner stuff as read. Hell, I'd have obama say he'd be happy to appoint McCain to our international liason with the Geneva Convention if he wants to be remembered as mr, I was tortured but I'm not sure its illegal any more" McCain.
aimai
Crazy John: a loose cannon, reckless and impulsive, who will lead us into more crazy self-destructive wars with countries that aren't actually a threat. Think bomb-bomb-Iran; think 100 years.
Cranky Old John: the Bob Dole of 2008, with a nasty mean streak and an uncontrollable temper. And having himself made nasty jokes about old people, he can't well complain now that he's in a position to be the butt of them.
Absolutely every McCain critic on the right and left would agree with this -- except me. And I have no way of proving that I'm right and everyone else is wrong. I just think the sense of humor makes him seem (if you don't have a preconceived image of him as an angry old coot) genial (yes, even the cruel jokes) and nimble of wit (i.e., not creaky and decrepit).
I say this and I get told I'm missing the obvious. All I can say is that I'm convinced this is not at all obvious to the average voter. Well, the next nine months will tell us which image the country has of him.
steve m,
I certainly do think that this can come across as "genial" and warm and personable *for a while.* Lots of bush's humor came across as genial and warm for a while--specifically the shorter the interaction. But I think the actual history of McCain is that he does have a terrible temper and its not hard to believe that during the long, tiring, weeks of a major campaign that he's going to end up dropping the warm and genial and following up one of his "amusing little quips" with something really unpleasant and outrageous. My model for this is allen's macaca moment. Its up to the dems to portray the Mccain they want the public to know and I think that you have to work with what you have. There will always be assholes who actively like a guy who jokes about killing other people. In ordinary times I think that's a pretty big portion of the electorate. But these are not ordinary times. I think the way McCain's hectoring " anyone who understands the military..." lecture on how we must be at eternal war is going is going to show us just how dangerous that cranky/angry/old thing is going to be for him as a candidate.
aimai
Being a simple and snarky person, I tend to use the few tools I have at my disposal: simplicity and snark. So for the next nine months I will refer to John McCain as either The Angry Man or Senator Hundred Year War (or some combination thereof).
Steve, I don't disagree, but I think (as Aimai says) those attributes can be framed either way. The "bomb-bomb-Iran" gag doesn't make him look that crazy unless it's understood in the context of McCain's overall belligerence; that makes it our job to make sure it's framed that way rather than as genial fun.
And to expand on what Aimai says, someone who is generally perceived as a nice guy can get away with barbed humor that would be perceived as thoroughly offensive coming from anyone else. The more we can highlight the angry, mean side of McCain, the less funny and endearing his 'humor' will be.
And Aimai, I agree with everything in your earlier comment. (Especially the part about not attacking McCain's heroism--Steve M had a post about that a few days ago, and I heartily agree.) I may post some more thoughts on the lucky and the doomed, and how that could play out in this election.
John McCain is funny and genial the way the late Earl Butz was funny and genial.
He says stupid thing because he isn't very smart. He tells jokes that are funny if you think killing Iranians to the tune of a ditty is funny.
I really hope that the seafarer's theme of the Jonah/albatross gets stuck to the old sailor. He could explain his membership in the Keating 5 to bad luck...for the other members.
I watched Obama speak following his victories last night. He was damned good, as expected (although I now know I am a junkie, because I heard an awful lot of themes I have heard four or five times already), he was forceful, eloquent, clear and inspiring.
On MSNBC, they cut immediately away from Obama when he was finished speaking, to McCain.
Talk about your contrasts.
Where Obama was inspiring, McCain was cringe-inducing.
Where Obama's rhetoric soared, McCain's came across like a lead balloon.
While Obama hammered home -- with that little twangy dipthong he uses in words that end in "Y" that make them sound like an "A" -- his theme of hope (he really, really does a great job with that theme, it's the strongest part of his speeches), McCain brought his own version of hope and all it inspired in me was the thought "I HOPE he finishes quickly."
Obama's speeches have rhythm, they flow, he's a master orator, and while that's a thin reed for supporting a man for president, when compared with McCain you end up saying to yourself, "this is no contest, no contest at all."
McCain appears old and cold in light of the youth and warmth Obama projects.
McCain is stilted and stiff when he speaks as well as unoriginal, last night's offering could have been boilerplate from a speech he gave at the Omaha VFW in 2004.
As a vet and an avid reader and student of military history, I admire John McCain, but he's in way over his head on this one.
I am but a single observer, not at all unbiased, but if the stark differences between the two men are this great, this clear, McCain stands as much chance of winning the general as I do.
Many good points in post and comments. Defining the Republican candidate early and mercilessly might seem an offensive play, but given the history of elections over the past three decades, it's really a defensive necessity.
At one early point in '99, I actually thought that for once we might not be in too bad a shape if Republicans were to win the White House again, if McCain was the winner. I preferred a Democrat, but after so many WH losses over so many years, I was bracing myself for it to happen again.
Watching Mccain through the campaign triggered a change of mind. A big reason was how many times he appeared to be seething inside, as though he could blow up at any moment.
I disagree with Tom's statement about his lacking control, though. Even in the face of vicious provocation in '99-2000, McCain did not, to my knowledge, actually lose control of his temper in public. I credited him with industrial-strength self-discipline, albeit that '99 AP item about his temper gives me second thoughts.
What puts me off as much or more about Sen. Straight Talk is how he has flip-flopped on issues, prostrated himself before the evangelicals and brown-nosed Bush. Maybe he's slightly less pronounced and transparent than Romney at being an obcessive- compulsive political chameleon, but he definitely is one.
humboldtblue, you lost me at "twangy dipthong." But I heard part of McCain's speech this morning on NPR and I cracked up. He blew his lines and wound up saying, essentially, that a strong and determined america was a mistake. Bush said stuff like that all the time and the press protected him by cleaning up his speeches in the transcripts, or by playing them but refusing to point and laugh at his malapropisms and confusion. But I just dont think mccain is going to get a pass *from his own audience*. He *does* sound lame, and tired, and weak. the dems have to keep pointing that out, but the contrast is going to point it out for them, as well. If mccain has some true believers at the end of the process, what of it? We are fighting for the margins and I think we can get them.
aimai
Defining the Republican candidate early and mercilessly might seem an offensive play, but given the history of elections over the past three decades, it's really a defensive necessity.
Amen, A-men, A-MEN! This cannot be said often enough.
But McCain is already well defined in voters' minds, isn't he? Wouldn't we have to re-define him? And isn't that a hell of a lot harder?
Oops, sorry -- that's your title.
But I do think McCain is much, much more of a media star than Dole; also, the re-defining of Dole was basically not re-defining at all (it was just reinforcing the cranky-sourpuss image he already had).
Yes and no. As I said in the post, I think most people have a kind of vague fuzzy positive feeling about him ('straight talk', 'maverick'). Once he's actually the nominee, those soft impressions will harden fairly quickly; right now is our window of opportunity to define him.
But this is a technical question, steve, as to what is the best way to define someone like mccain. Marketing and advertising do this sort of thing all the time. People don't really "know" McCain--he's not that high profile nationally. They have a loose assocation of terms they think of with him but when they start to see him every day on the campaign trail he will look different. How he looks is partly up to us.
aimai
Yes, that's it exactly.
Also: difficult or not, it has to be done. I've tried to brainstorm a few ways to frame the attempt; I'm sure others here can come up with ways that might well be better; but however we do it it has to be done. We can't afford to think it's impossible.
"Four More Years" works.
I like to refer to the crazy old coot as McQueeg. I'm thinking of sending him strawberries.
Teddysanfran,
this reminds me of a book of bumper stickers I had during the run up to the Iraq war. I was actually spending a few days with my sister-in-law's *bible study group* and their kids at a campsite in Wellfleet--I know, its worth a post all on its own! 15 bible thumpers, two jews with hairy armpits, a vegan, and my sister in law who kindly shared her tent with us so we wouldn't get pogrommed, and about forty of the best behaved but least interesting kids of all time. At any rate, the jews all took bumperstickers from me with titles like " four more wars" but the christians *couldn't figure out what was wrong with that* and thought I was pro-bush. Also, sister in law couldn't figure out how to read "sow justice/reap peace".
Which is by way of saying that some people won't see why four more years of bush is such a bad idea.
aimai
I like to refer to the crazy old coot as McQueeg.
Ooh, I like that. I first saw The Caine Mutine in the thick of Watergate, and the resemblance to Nixon was downright spooky.
A caller to the Stephanie Miller show this morning referred to "Insane McCain" and the Straitjacket Express. I liked the Straitjacket Express a lot!
Generik makes a great catch. "the straightjacket express" is really effective. I go back to the idea of earworms, and I want to point people somewhere else on the blogs because I can't remember where I read it this morning--Obama is doing what the republicans have done for years, take an emotion and sell it in such a way that when you think of the emotion/value you think of the person and vice versa. I don't know how long it will work for him or for the dems but one of the ways you do it is you take a common epithet and attach it to your brand. And you take another common epithet and attach it to your enemy's brand. This was rove's genius. By the time rove got through with kerry every time a voter thought "vietnam era navy vet with medals" they also thought "threw them away! lied out our soldiers! lied about his service." Every time some media person talks about the "straight talk express" an ear worm must transform that into the "straight jacket express."
aimai
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