Game show politics

Columns

September 3, 2008

By Gene Lyons Picayune Item Wed Sep 03, 2008, 02:19 PM CDT

Something unusual happened during the run-up to the Democratic convention: A presidential candidate was subjected to a highly prejudicial, not particularly honest personal attack, and for once the victim was a Republican. Interestingly, the political press jumped on it, happily trashing John McCain for two clueless remarks he never actually made. Are Democrats finally learning to fight dirty? Should the rest of us feel good about it?

Meanwhile, the McCain campaign is running TV commercials mocking Barack Obama for not asking Hillary Clinton to be his running mate — a job she surely didn’t want. Because Republicans, of course, admire Hillary so. They’ve even found a Clinton delegate from Wisconsin to make a pro-McCain commercial, because ...

Well, because why? Anybody calling themselves a Democrat who doesn’t understand how important it is for BOTH parties, not to mention the nation, that Republicans pay the price for the catastrophic presidency of George W. Bush needs to turn in their party ID and Magic Decoder Ring and find another hobby. Something solitary and quiet, such as gardening or compiling a variorum edition of the “Pride and Prejudice” columns of Maureen Dowd.

See, because it’s not simply his trademark arrogance and incompetence that have earned Bush the lowest approval ratings of any president since political polling began. It’s not merely the interminable morass in Iraq, worsening conditions in Afghanistan, manufactured “intelligence,” a legacy of torture, of epic corruption and cronyism, of one massive financial scandal after another, of runaway budget deficits and economic stagnation.

Yes, it was foolish and self-deluded of Republicans to imagine somebody of Bush’s limited abilities capable of handling the presidency. But the failure’s more than personal. So-called “conservative” ideology has lost contact with reality. The GOP has become the party of illusion, incapable of seeing the world as it is, infuriated by anybody who does.

Contemporary Republicanism isn’t a governing philosophy so much as a rationalized series of “talking points” useful in winning elections since the Reagan presidency. Always of limited usefulness with respect to the visible world (as Reagan himself, who knew a script when he saw one, sometimes realized), GOP dogma has grown downright dangerous.

But back to Democratic dirty tricks. Everywhere you looked, from the Washington Post to Keith Olbermann’s MSNBC News program, you saw John McCain pilloried for two classic “gaffes.” As the Post put it, the GOP candidate’s “inability to recall” how many houses he and his wife own jeopardized his strategy of framing Obama as an “elitist.” Campaigning in Wisconsin, the Democratic nominee lampooned McCain’s forgetfulness, also mocking him for defining as “rich” only somebody with an income exceeding $5 million a year.

The point was clear: The famous “straight talking maverick” is basically a gigolo (to use a word Republicans used to describe John Kerry in 2004), whose much-younger second wife inherited more money than the Bush family and Scrooge McDuck combined. For Obama, it was a two-fer, also hinting that the 71-year-old McCain’s memory might be fading.

Alas, neither of these things ever happened. Asked by a reporter how many homes he owned, McCain simply advised the reporter to check with his staff. He wasn’t unable to recall, merely unwilling.

It’s much the same with the $5 million thing. Asked to define “rich” by Pastor Rick Warren, McCain jokingly ducked the question.

“If you’re just talking about income,” he said “how about $5 million?”

He laughed, Warren laughed, the audience laughed.

“But seriously,” McCain continued “... and I’m sure that comment will be distorted. But the point is that we want to keep people’s taxes low and increase revenues.”

Indeed, the comment WAS distorted, even in supposedly straightforward newspaper stories and TV broadcasts. As Bob Somerby, who’s long documented this kind of skullduggery against Democrats, writes, “If you want to know who the press corps is hunting, just see which candidate’s jokes they transform into straight assertions.”

Well, so what? Wasn’t McCain himself, with that gibberish about increasing revenues by lowering taxes, shamelessly citing delusional GOP propaganda? He was. Indeed, McCain voted against the Bush tax cuts for the wealthy, explaining that they’d do exactly as they’ve done: Blow a huge hole in the federal budget, endangering the nation’s financial security.

But now McCain wants to be president, so he’s joined the Republican War on Arithmetic. And given that millions of low-information “undecided” voters don’t get it, shouldn’t Democrats act on what GOP strategists have long known — that a presidential election is basically a TV game show: “Battle of the Celebrity Politicians?”

Replace the “straight-talking maverick” with the “blustering old hypocrite” and you’ve won? Something like that, yes.

Not that I have to approve.

That said, if I were Obama, I’d put that famous photo of McCain giving President Bush a big, warm hug on television so often people would start thinking his name was George W. McCain..

Text Only

Columns

Numbers suggest priorities
By Sid Salter/Syndicated columnist
As the new Republican majority controlling state government claimed victory by passing the Children’s Protection Act with ease in the House, it’s clear that even more fundamental — and more politically difficult — challenges loom down the public policy road.

February 4, 2012
Romney has Massachusetts problem
By Byron York/Syndicated columnist
Mitt Romney was born and raised in Michigan and has ties to Utah. Yet he chose to make his career, both in business and politics, in Massachusetts. Nearly every political problem Romney has today, at least those involving his policy positions, stems from that one decision.

February 4, 2012
Woman escaped killing machine
By Nat Hentoff/Syndicated columnist
A survivor of Robert Mugabe’s relentlessly brutal dictatorship in Zimbabwe, Patience Mhlanga would like you to know what it was like to grow up in grinding fear there. She escaped, but her story tells what so many others are still undergoing in that hellhole that the rest of the world allows to continue:
“Growing up in Zimbabwe, I learned the meaning of persecution early. My father was a strong supporter of the Movement for Democratic Change (MDC), and the supporters of Robert Mugabe threatened to kill our family for my father’s views.

February 3, 2012
Restored restaurant signals renewal
By Bill Crawford/Meridian Star columnist
Choctaw tribal chief Phyliss Anderson restored and reopened Phillip M’s at the Pearl River Resort last week. She also signaled her intent to renew the economic policies so successfully implemented by the restaurant’s namesake.

February 3, 2012
Woman escaped killing machine
A survivor of Robert Mugabe’s relentlessly brutal dictatorship in Zimbabwe, Patience Mhlanga would like you to know what it was like to grow up in grinding fear there. She escaped, but her story tells what so many others are still undergoing in that hellhole that the rest of the world allows to continue:

February 3, 2012
Restored restaurant signals renewal
Choctaw tribal chief Phyliss Anderson restored and reopened Phillip M’s at the Pearl River Resort last week. She also signaled her intent to renew the economic policies so successfully implemented by the restaurant’s namesake.

February 3, 2012
There’s good Newt, bad Newt
By Cokie and Steven V. Roberts/Syndicated columnists
We’ve covered Newt Gingrich for 30 years, and there has always been two sides to the man. The Good Newt and the Bad Newt. Towering talent and awesome arrogance. Boundless energy and porous ethical boundaries. A firm belief in his own destiny, and a cynical conviction that distortion and deception are justified in the pursuit of that destiny.

February 2, 2012
I flee when fruitcakes fly
By Rhetta Grimsely Johnson/Syndicated columnist
You know you’re getting a little long in the tooth for column writing when you let a lack of parking keep you from a town’s Great Fruitcake Toss.
But I’ll confess. When I saw more cars at Manitou’s high-school track than you’d find at an Auburn-Alabama football game, I quickly lost enthusiasm for the charity event. I was still weary from a bad cold and not feeling my best, and the climb up from the only remaining parking would have required a rope and cleats.

February 2, 2012
Outside counsel fight continues
By Sid Salter/Syndicated columnist
The ongoing legislative battle over the so-called “outside counsel” or contingency fee law remains a political cold war between the state’s trial lawyers and the state’s business and medical interests — and it’s a story that has two sides.

February 1, 2012
Brownspur Viking memories
By Robert Hitt Neil/Syndicated columnist
I did a speaking and book-signing event last month is a community whose local newspaper has run my weekly syndicated column for most of these 25 years. A lady buying a book complimented as I was autographing it, “I think your best column was about your foreign exchange student’s comment about the bump in the road.” Gee whiz, that was maybe 20 years ago!

February 1, 2012
More Columns Headlines

Columns

Search Results

Game show politics

Site Map

Contact Us