Archive for June 3, 2008

Can We Steal Obama’s Slogan?

Yes we can. Check out, below, John McCain’s newest banner on his website. Seriously, is this the best the Republicans can do? A sly and ironic take on an inspirational slogan?  And it’s not even done well!  The selective capitalizing and haphazard font shifts make my head hurt.

Best. Speech. Ever.

A few live-blogging comments on Barack Obama’s speech tonight.

10:20 – Is anyone else watching Barack Obama’s speech right now, and comparing it mentally against Hillary’s? Barack just spent about five minutes in the middle of an extremely important, highly-watched speech, to praise Hillary Clinton. I think the message is clear: Obama has just handed Clinton the (vice presidential?) olive branch.  “I Have Come Not to Bury Clinton, But to Praise Her.”

10:23 – Barack: “We honor the service of John McCain. I respect his many accomplishments, even if he chooses to deny mine.” Ouch. If, like me, you hadn’t caught on yet, we see now why Barack is giving his speech in St. Paul, Minnesota: the Republicans are having their convention there a few months from now. Barack claims his victory on enemy soil, and quickly segues into general election mode, mocking McCain’s claim to the “moderate” label. In rhetoric and in geographic location, he’s hitting the enemy where they’re strongest. Good for him. Like the Roman fetial priest, he’s flung the spear into the enemy’s own soil. Let’s see how he responds.

10:29 – …aaaaaand speeches like that are why Barack Obama won, and will win. (Ooops, it’s not over).

10:34 – Barack’s hitting valence issues, and taking on Rovian tactics. “What you won’t hear from this campaign, or this party, is the kind of politics that uses religion as a wedge, and patriotism as a bludgeon…. We are always Americans first.” Followed by an immediate segue into commenting on McCain, neatly rhetorically linking the two.

10:39 – Can anyone see McCain doing a speech like that? With the rousing “this was the moment” chorus at the end? Obama was the right pick. I think the next right pick, though, may be Hillary for VP.

Republican Elitists!

Words, words, words… You can always tell a campaign season, because everyone’s walking on tenterhooks. The slightest look, word, or gesture (even face-scratching!), no matter how innocent, is viewed in the worst light possible, and gone over in excruciating detail. This is the villainy of the 24-hour news network. Fill the hours with drivel, until there’s no room for substance anymore. If you’re a politician these days, you had better watch out.

Unless, of course, you’re the outgoing Vice President, in which case you can call West Virginians inbred hicks publicly, without fear of reproach beyond Capitol Hill.

And they call the Democrats elitist?!? Not that it’s a shock, or the first time this administration has been given a free pass by the media.

Where Was Our Whistleblower?

Scott McClellan will shortly publish a new book – What Happened – detailing what he identifies as lies, inconsistencies, backroom dealings, and outright attempts to mislead the American people, practiced inside the Bush White House, in no small part by him.  Although the book has yet to come out, McClellan is getting plenty of play on the 24-hour news networks, and an interesting interview with him on NPR’s “Fresh Air” is already out.  The sad thing about McClellan’s book, though, is that it won’t get much play, and in a way, it probably shouldn’t.  The book would be the brave story of an insider speaking out against his master, but McClellan waited until it was safe to do so, until the public already knew much of what he has to tell us, and until the damage from the lies was already done.  In short, McClellan waited to publish until it was too late to make much of a difference.  Of course delayed publishing has its place, for example when the harm can’t be undone: for those of you who’ve read Atonement, think Briony Tallis.  But here we are, years later, suffering from mistakes that McClellan knew at the time were mistakes.  Thanks.  When America needed a whistleblower, one of our men was penning his memoirs, instead.  While McClellan was “just following orders,” the excuse only goes so far.  And how odd to get a lecture on thow the “media let America down” when we needed them most, from the man who forced them to do just that.

Of course, I still intend to buy the book.  But the other sad point is that we’ve all come to expect stories like this from the Bush administration.  It’s no surprise.  Think back to April, when the New York Times broke the story that the Bush administration had employed retired Pentagon generals, to get them to paint a rosy picture of Iraq for the American populace.  While at first the harm seems abstracted, the breach of ethics runs deep: generals serve the people in a democracy, and are honor-bound to tell us the truth.  Instead, Bush paid a few of them to knowingly do the exact opposite.  But when this story broke, it was never picked up by the 24-hour news channels.  Although NPR’s Bryant Park Project detailed a spate of smaller reasons why the story might not have been a “big deal” at the time – it was mixed in with the Pope’s American visit, a real headline stealer, for example – I think the real problem is that we’re tired of these stories.  Lies and mendacity are so commonplace as to be boring.  How sad is that?

Another note: when I think of “misleading the American people,” the name “Alberto Gonzales” always comes to the forefront.  So let’s check in on our friend.  After being rebuffed by his old firm – the arch-conservative Houston office of the firm Vinson & Elkins - Gonzales has gone on to… speak at high school graduations.  Let this be a lesson: crime (against the American people) doesn’t pay.

Unless you turn the crime into a memoir.

Welcome to new visitors!

Thanks to Dana Hunter’s Carnival of the Elitist Bastards, and our prominent place on the mizzenmast of her ship of metaphors, we’ve been seeing a lot of increased traffic lately. Even a constitutional law professor (which I’m still pretty excited about). Those of you who’ve come for the science discussion, please stay for the politics. I’m sure you’ll find it to your liking. I’m a firm believer that the quest for reason in scientific debates is one and the same with the quest for reason in politics, and that both quests point left. In any event, I and the other writers are delighted to have you.

And to Dana and other carnival fans, I hope this past carnival is the first of many!