Put aside the types of tactics required to succeed in politics “the Chicago way”, a rather unsavory circle of past associates, a lack of executive experience and foreign policy expertise, a minimal record of legislative accomplishment, a voting record that is about as far left as it’s possible to be without spilling over into Gus Hall territory and the propensity to call unrelated professional females “sweetie” – put aside all that, I say – and the most unsavory aspect of Barack Obama’s candidacy may well be the mad, and frankly ugly passions swirling among his fringier supporters. It hardly seems fair – after all, to quote Joe Biden, the candidate is a “mainstream African-American who is articulate and bright and clean and a nice-looking guy.”
Why should such a man have to carry the burden of being supported by the Kossack kreeps, MoveOn goons, Code Pink loons, stilt puppeteers, mainstream media reporters and other assorted ragamuffins on the political fringe? It isn’t like he asked for their help, and in fact Obama today demonstrated a gentlemanly grace by insisting that certain things are and ought to be off limits – Bristol Palin’s pregnancy, for example. Good for him.
And yet, there they are, and the more daylight that gets shined on these pilgrims, the more they frighten the straights. They are a vulnerability. Political operatives earn their salt from exploiting such things. Sad but true.
Over in the New York Times, David Brooks opines that Sarah Palin won the veepstakes because she reminds John McCain so much of his favorite politician:
When McCain met Sarah Palin last February, he was meeting the rarest of creatures, an American politician who sees the world as he does. Like McCain, Palin does not seem to have an explicit governing philosophy. Her background is socially conservative, but she has not pushed that as governor of Alaska. She seems to find it easier to work with liberal Democrats than the mandarins in her own party.
Instead, she seems to get up in the morning to root out corruption. McCain was meeting a woman who risked her career taking on the corrupt Republican establishment in her own state, who twice defeated the oil companies, who made mortal enemies of the two people McCain has always held up as the carriers of the pork-barrel disease…
Many people are conditioned by their life experiences to see this choice of a running mate through the prism of identity politics, but that’s the wrong frame. Sarah Barracuda was picked because she lit up every pattern in McCain’s brain, because she seems so much like himself.
Taking that as read, and given that Bristol Palin’s delicate state was going to be pretty hard to ignore come November, would it not have been possible for someone, say, of Karl Rove’s supposed evil genius to plant a seed about the governor being the grandmother of her youngest child Trig in the fertile manure of the kookosphere in order to watch the netroots freaks do what they do best: Work themselves into an unsympathetic frenzy over the assumed hypocrisies of the political right? A right, by the way, that exists chiefly in their own fevered imaginations, and whose purported excesses they use among to whip themselves up to ever more repellent acts of self-destructive idiocy?
Because if so, yeah, well done: Mission accomplished.
Having thus set the hook, the fish are left to play themselves, and the kooks once again take their assigned positions on the circular firing squads and self-immolation practice league. All the while an unfortunate but very human tableau of violated family privacy is regretfully revealed to a sympathetic nation.
Cap’n,
I have a very difficult time believing Senator Obama has NOT crossed into Gus Hall territory. His background is replete with various Marxist sympathizers and (at least) two unrepentent Maoist terrorists. To be sure, his voting record is to the Left of admitted Socialist Bernie Sanders but the only thing he has not done is announce his membership in the Communist Internationale.
To your point about keeping personal family situations out of election chatter is valid. Heck, even the Mafia has a rule about keeping family out of bounds. However, while Senator Obama can ride the High Road, it relieves him from claiming influence over the rabid Leftists all hoping for a Marxist victory in November.
What really bothers me is why someone who reportedly is considered honorable agreed to be the Democrat Party’s Vice-Presidential candidate.
If they can drag her family into the mud, Michele Obama is fair game.
Furthermore, the Dems need to play this hand VERY carefully. What McCain has on his ticket is a woman with a real American family, troubles and all. None of us is the Cleavers and he has himself a woman who is managing things happening in her family that happen to many many Americans. Cheap shots are going to piss America off.
Very true, Bou. Make no doubt about it. The intelligent Dems are quaking in their boots over Palin. They can almost taste the familiar flavor of defeat.
Ok, explain it to me again-I don’t understand why Brooks’ column is unhinged.
His last line seems to be quite truthful: “She underlines McCain’s strength without compensating for his weaknesses.”
Em… No one ever actually suggested that Brooks’ column was unhinged.
Are there any other questions?
These attacks on Palin are classic Obama campaigning. The smears come out, he makes a pro-forma protest, and everyone goes on smearing. But he’s clean, don’t you see? He’s condemned it! It isn’t his fault!
Methinks he protests too little.
Then, I just did not get the connection between his column and the other point you were making about the baggage the Dems are carrying………
Guess I just missed the segue…..
Of interest to me is that the party that preaches the populist message, those who’ve done better than you must have cheated or had it all handed to them, are now quaking in their boots over Palin, a politician who shares the same family life, hobbies, and such as the folks we’ve been drawing upon for the victim vote.
Apparently hunting moose and riding a snowmobile resonate more strongly with a certain demographic than windsurfing and weekends at Martha’s Vineyard do.
Sort of makes you wonder, when Kerry exclaimed that he couldn’t believe he was losing to this idiot, was he underestimating the stupidity of the electorate or over-estimating his own?
Sow the wind, reap the whirlwind.
– Max
Oh, some thoughts on the “experience” issue:
Senator McCain is an experienced Naval Officer, and surely understands that it’s possible for the Captain of a ship to get killed in action, upon which event the Executive Officer immediately assumes command, (seamlessly, we would hope), she having been trained and informed and otherwise brought up to speed on what to do if the Captain suddenly, um, “falls out of ranks)
I think he might be trusted to train up Sarah Palin for that possibility. That is what I hope, at least
Gus Hall??
nah, i’m thinking more along the lines of Huntz Hall (http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0355653/)
with the Biden character played by Leo Gorcey.