Post-Hillary doldrums
July 7th, 2008We’re in the doldrums now. The excitement of the primaries is behind us and the conventions and Presidential debates are months away.
The cable networks are still trying to fill hours and hours of scheduled political coverage and there’s not much news to fill it with. What there is, is spin. Lots and lots of spin.
The pro-war McCain camp is trying desperately to paint Obama as John Kerry 2008. They’ve labeled him a “country club elitist”, a flip-flopper and worst of all, “a politician”. The Obama camp has – for the most part – kept their cool but I see them still playing the game the way the GOP wants them to. Since Obama locked the nomination (not back in March when it really happened but later when Clinton finally dropped out), McCain has set the agenda.
The most frustrating thing about the Democrats is that – almost always – their efforts at fairness dooms them. When the Republicans hit them with a lie, they seem to take it at face value. They dissect the lie, examine the lie’s parts and then prove – empirically and in the most boring way possible – that it’s untrue. By the time they’re done, the lie has stuck to them.
The public persona of John Kerry in 2008 was not one of Kerry’s own conscious creation. It was crafted by Rove, Swift Boat Veterans for Truth and Kerry’s own blunders which provided dazzlingly bad video which only seemed to illustrate the caricature the GOP and a lazy media had created.
The McCain campaign is using these doldrums – now that most of America isn’t paying attention – to work the refs and build the false narratives within the media that set the stage for the coverage that will come when America tunes back in.
Hillary Clinton’s (and Bill’s for that matter) greatest positive quality as a politician was her unwillingness to accept a question’s false premise.
If Obama doesn’t integrate this quality, he may be turned into Kerry 2008 after all.
– Steve
Stumble it!
