VDH's Private Papers::Campaign Obama Frayed

September 18, 2008
Campaign Obama Frayed
by Victor Davis Hanson
NRO’s The Corner

Reaching Critical Mass

The sudden change in the polls the last 10 days, even though it may be temporary, has prompted a furor in the media that has no parallel in modern election history. Vicious words like "treason", "abasement", "liar", and "lying" are in the air now in an unheralded attack on McCain, often in association with the sex education ad, and the lipstick identification with Palin as a pig. (cf. e.g., Washington Post columnist Richard Cohen today). But as Byron York has shown, that ad alleging that Obama supported detailed information about matters of sex to be disseminated to younger children (for a variety of educational reasons), while tough and unnecessary, was nevertheless not a lie.

And as far as the silly lipstick moment, if one studies the tape carefully as Obama lets go with his similes, it is clear that the hooting audience at least seemed to make the association with Palin, and the further elaboration on a stinky old fish seemed to cement the allusion to McCain.

What otherwise are we to think of this silly controversy?— (a) a candidate is complaining about McCain and Palin; (b) in his exasperation the candidate next uses two metaphors (not 1, not 3) — (c) one to a pig with lipstick (after Palin had famously just used a lipstick/animal metaphor in her speech), and (d) a second one to an old fish — a theme of the Obama campaigning has been to suggest McCain is "losing his bearings", "confused", has "lost track", and "couldn't remember."

But from anger at those two inconsequential ads, and the selection of Palin, Washington Post columnist Richard Cohen, for example, makes a rather large leap to this conclusion:

... the lies of Vietnam and Watergate and Iraq. So many lies. Who believes that in Afghanistan last month only five civilians were killed by the American military, instead of the approximately 90 claimed by the Afghan government? Not me. I first gave up on the military during Vietnam and then again when it covered up the death of Pat Tillman, the Army Ranger and former NFL player who was killed in 2004 by friendly fire.

What does "give up on the military" mean, and what does it have to do with a McCain ad reminding voters of the difference between Obama and himself on the appropriate age to introduce children to sex education learning materials?

What we are seeing is a sort of meltdown in which the selection of Palin is associated with the first real possibility all summer that the messianic Obama may not necessarily ascend; that triggers a certain repulsion toward her in particular, and a general furor at the once likeable McCain (once likeable to present-day Obama's supporters who in 2000 sensed that he was going to lose, perhaps divide Republicans, and was not George Bush), which, in turn, can conjure up all sorts of no longer latent demons, going back to Vietnam onto to Iraq and the ongoing war in Afghanistan.

The problem (inter alia) with this vicious, loose use of "traitor" and "lie/liar/lying" and blanket condemnations of the U.S. military is that it achieves the opposite of what the authors intend — and repelling most readers to such a degree that they are scared off from anything the writer seems to be advocating.

We've seen that with the Atlantic Monthly pictures and blog rumors about Palin's recent Down Syndrome pregnancy, the unhinged hatred columns of the sort of a Salon's Cintra Wilson or those suggesting riots or global hatred of the U.S. if Obama loses, the Matthews/Olbermann rants, the daily salvos from the New York Times columnists, and the hourly Palin rage from spoiled Hollywood prima donnas.

Do they have any idea of how they sound or where this leads? Despite an unpopular incumbent, economic upheaval, unpopular wars, and a charismatic Democratic candidate, the media, hand in glove with Obama's messianic sense of self, are doing all they can to lose a once sure election by the sheer repugnance of the way in which their anger is expressed and expressed and expressed . . .

And again, it seems uncontrollable. Didn't anyone learn from the General Betray-Us ads?

Back to the Sixties

Two strange, or not so strange things, are beginning to happen with increasing frequency:

One, Obama and his legions in the media are using the words "lying," "liar," "treason," etc. to charge McCain with running an historically dirty campaign (this coming after appeals from worried "progressives" for Obama to get "tough" and make up a sudden and unexpected 1-2 point deficit in the polls). Few take this charge seriously, given that Obama has run far greater a percentage of attack ads than has McCain, and Obama, as the Limbaugh ad attests, can get far lower; but it is an effective backdrop nonetheless to frame Obama's "defensive" and "reactive" negativity.

And, two, meanwhile in the proverbial street the unhinged, fringe Left is really waging an historically dirty campaign against McCain with things like swarming radio shows with calls to intimidate guests like Kurtz and Freddoso, hacking into Palin's e-mails, doctoring photos of McCain, bragging postfacto at efforts to tarnish his Atlantic portrait, peddling on the Atlantic website false rumors about Palin's pregnancy, and the assorted street theater reminiscent of the 60s.

Remember in that age, the respectable Left on the campuses, Congress, and the media sought victimhood as they pontificated about principles and visions, while the not-so-respectable counterpart took to the streets and worse.

I think almost everyone knew that should McCain surge a point or two hysteria would ensue, and the hope and change idealism would morph into the wounded fawn cries out against the "lying" and "lost his bearings" and "can't remember" enfeebled, aged McCain — while in the mind of his galvanized self-righteous and more extreme supporters everything else becomes fair game for the higher cause of defeating McCain.

Obama Compulsive Disorder

The hallowed NBC brand of old is now devolved into MSNBC's Matthews-Olbermann embarrassment. The once revered Atlantic Monthly now hosts blogger Andrew Sullivan trafficking in rumors that Gov. Palin's daughter really delivered her Down Syndrome child, and then hires an unhinged photographer (best known previously for making children cry to make political statements) who brags post facto that she tried to subvert her own cover photos of McCain, before posting creepy photo-shopped out-takes of him on her website. To read a New York Times columnist is to be told ad nauseam that Gov. Palin is a bumpkin hockey mom. Whether an US magazine cover picture of Palin, or the Washington Post's recycling old stories about Cindy McCain, the result is always the same: a concerted effort to ensure an Obama election.

The university crowd weighs in with op-eds warning us about white rural culture and the toxic landscapes that raised Sarah Palin, or why she is a counterfeit woman who piggybacked on the heroic work of pro-abortion pioneers. Every day another Hollywood dimwit — a Matt Damon, Lindsay Lohan, or Chevy Chase — attacks Palin or McCain in a fashion as crude as it is half-educated and incoherent.

Is it that hard to see, then, why McCain is dead-even or ahead — even when the incumbent Republican brand is suffering by association to war, economic uncertainty, and now financial meltdown?

There is a growing public anger at the petty amateurish biases of those who claim they are sophisticated and subtle; and it is not just that they sympathize with a smeared Palin, but are angry that the media thinks they are so stupid not to catch on. The odder thing still is that the media obsession has turned into some sort of compulsive disorder — they know that they are way out of bounds; know that they are hurting their own candidate Obama — and they know that they simply can't and won't quit now.

Karl Rove Everywhere?

Anyone who had read a Greek tragedy could have predicted what is now happening in this close race. For almost 3 months, the Obama campaign has been running victory laps, fueled by ever more hubris that led to really silly and unnecessary things like the Berlin extravaganza (how many vote in Germany?), and the faux Greek temple and outdoor rock concert, as well as an absolutely shamelessly biased media that did all but coronate Obama. (In Obama's defense, he cannot control the petty foolishness that despised Hollywood celebrities offer daily, that only ends up in raging Drudge headlines that even more so turn off moderate voters.)

Meanwhile amid the high-fives no one seemed to notice an existential problem in that Obama's actual positions — more taxes, more government, indecision on key foreign policy issues, cultural liberalism, big-city scratch-back machine politics — were not all that different from, or indeed more out-of-touch than, past liberal platforms that for a quarter-century had doomed all northern liberal presidential candidates who did not have a southern accent and a southern governorship to fall back on as moderate/conservative cover.

All it took, then — the more messianic Obama got with this stop-the-seas-from-rising and planet-from-heating nonsense, the more enthused the in-house media became — was a small needle to deflate the balloon, which would then loudly zoom all over the place as it lost air.

That jab partly came with Alaskan Governor, mom-of-five Sarah Palin, partly with the growing unease of the inexperienced and suddenly rather professorial and boring Obama in interviews, partly with his rather brazen (but politically necessary) back-peddling on campaign finance reform, FISA, NAFTA, abortion, capital punishment, guns, Iran, the surge, drilling, etc.

So hubris finally evoked nemesis.

What we are seeing now, unfortunately for Obama if it doesn't cease, is a weird sort of puerile panic and hysteria on the part of Democrats. They are losing it with wild and rather vicious talk about Palin's various supposed misdemeanors, Obama's campaign itself that is suddenly shrilly whining and screaming about lies and liars, when Obama himself is not gaffing Biden-like with silly lipstick riffs and arrogant dismissals of small town mayorships (and after his Pennsylvania clingers speech no less!) — all while liberal bloggers, the MSM columnists, the talking heads on CNN, MSNBC, etc are losing their sanity seeing Karl Roves everywhere stealing their hope-and-change dreams.

Watching some of this hysterical outpouring of anger is surreal, as grown-ups sound like children whose mothers did not buy them a snack or failed to take them to the zoo as promised.

Unless Obama's team can get a handle on this self-induced and paranoid madness, they risk turning a small, natural, and probably temporary 2-3 point bump — quite normal in such a tight see-saw race — into a permanent and insurmountable 5-6 point McCain lead, as the quiet swing voters shrug and say to themselves, "Hmmm, liked that Obama, but if he and his supporters panic and go wild and vicious like this, what in the world would they do when elected?"

Hate to be a broken record, but old pro Hil as VP at this fire would have had an extinguisher in hand (Bill manning the hose), not a Biden match and more Axelrod fuel.