Shorthand for Nothing

First and foremost I’m a writer, or at least someone who appreciates the English language. One of the reasons I like Barack Obama is because he is so good with words. He is a masterful rhetorician and I appreciate that. He can phrase things in a delicate and precise fashion. Contrast this with John McCain’s strategies. He appears to have found a few words and phrases that draw a positive reaction, and he is going to keep using them well after the point the American people are tired of them.

As you probably assumed, I am talking about the word ‘maverick.’ It is a word sort of like rogue or scoundrel–it has powerful connotations that have very little to do with the actual definition of the word. It means ‘an unorthodox or independent-minded person.’ On the lips of John McCain and his surrogates, it means he is the political equivalent of Tom Cruise in Top Gun. It means he’s taking the fight to all the corrupt politicians in Wall Street. He’s ‘taken on his own party leadership!’ He’s a maverick!

But it’s gone beyond that. Now Sarah Palin is a maverick, too! What makes her unorthodox or independent-minded, it’s hard to say, but they’re just a couple of mavericks, apparently, going in to shake up Washington. A vote for McCain/Palin is a vote for mavericks!

Ultimately I can’t help the feeling when watching McCain or Palin speak, or reading their press releases, that if politics was a video game, McCain/Palin are button mashing. They’ve found a move that worked pretty good the first time, and they are mashing that button as hard as they possibly can.

It was a hard fight going in. McCain has never been the obvious choice to win, and was only really ahead during the post-convention bounce. He has to follow eight years of an extremely unpopular president, and a failing economy. He had to convince the American people that what they really wanted was four more years of a Republican in the White House. The maverick thing might have worked early on, even. But he needed more of a flourish. Less repeating lines. Less off the wall attacks. He needed something masterful. Brilliant rhetoric, a strategic followup to all of his maverick lines that left his opponent open and reeling.

And he tried for it, but he came off as erratic, senile, lurching from one gimmick to the next, hoping it would work for him, discarding it when it wasn’t immediately successful. Soon they were dismissed as the gimmicks they were, so he is left mashing the two buttons he knew worked: ‘call yourself a maverick’ and ‘call the other guy a terrorist.’ But button-mashing is never an effective strategy, especially once everyone knows you’re doing it.

One Response »

It doesn’t take a lot of digging to find someone who wants to move to Canada if McCain/Palin achieve a victory. I think everyone knows someone who was going to move to Canada if Bush/Cheney won in 2004, and I don’t think it’s a stretch to say the same about Bush/Cheney in 2000. I don’t actually know anyone who moved to Canada. (Fortunately, this year, they will almost certainly not have to change their minds.) But I know lots of people who said it, and I think they were sincere at the time.

It’s also not difficult to find a Republican who thinks that Obama is a fraud, suspects he has terrorist leanings, believes he is a secret Muslim, or calls him a communist or a Marxist. I’ve known a few who believe he hates America, hates white people, and that he is a dangerous radical. Naturally, these people also believe that anyone voting Democrat is in some way inherently flawed. Either they are selfish and lazy, brainwashed by the liberal media, or actively opposed to America. They believe the Democratic supermajority of 60 seats in the Senate, combined with a Democrattic president, will bring our country to ruin. They use phrases like “America the foolish.” They say that “One man one vote was the stupidest thing we ever did.” (This guy I just quoted is something special. I can write pages upon pages about him.) They essentially believe that our democratic system is flawed when they are losing.

A lot of this could probably be said about the “I’m moving to Canada” liberals. But I have never once seen a Republican make the same threat. I think the reason is this: for the conservative base, it is “Ask not what your country can do for you; ask what you can do for your country.” Patriotism is required–anyone who is not a patriot is a freedom-hating terrorist. Patriotism is the greatest of virtues. “My country, right or wrong.” “You don’t appreciate the sacrifices that man has made for our country.” You can do nothing better than love your country as a conservative.

I think this creates cognitive dissonance for them. If Obama is elected, they will complain about everything he does and says. If the Democrats pull off their 60-seat supermajority, they will bemoan the atrocities being committed against the Founding Fathers’ ideas for this great nation. Their way is obviously the correct way. They are the only ones who put country first. They are the only ones who are bipartisan. Everyone else is an extremely partisan self-centered radical!

Unfortunately, “everyone else” these days apparently make up half the nation. According to Gallup, there are almost ten percent more of those selfish America-hating radicals than good, hard-working conservatives. In a very real way, America is made up mostly of these people the conservative base couldn’t find a good word for if they were paid to.

They will hate the government soon, probably all three branches. They think the majority (or at least a plurality) of the population are mindless sheep at best and active opponents of America at worst. But they still love their country. They are patriots. So they have no recourse but to be angry. It must have been better back when we had our way, back when Mr. Reagan told Mr. Gorbachev to tear down the wall. It’s those liberals who’ve ruined everything for us–how dare they?

It isn’t that liberals are never angry, it’s that liberals have other options.

One Response »