Kids (and Old Men) Say the Darndest Things

In 2004, Bush was able to find a few winning lines that pushed him past the finish line, phrases that were so ubiquitous as to be nauseating. These phrases flare up like a herpes outbreak in our political culture, and then fade away, never to be heard from again. It amazes me that the media – and here I mean mostly the cable news networks and their pathetic, sycophantic lap dogs, the national networks – every year takes a handful of signifiers and stock phrases, drives them straight into the ground and then beats them to pieces. But when the next election cycle comes around, we’ve already forgotten them, we’ve moved on to the next handful of phrases and ideas that stand where thinking should be. For John Kerry, the ideas that road him to a lost election, were the ginned up image of him as being “too French,” that his military service was under some sort of question, and of course, his much reviled status as a “flip flopper.”

Four years later, we don’t hear much about flipping or flopping, despite the fact that McCain has done plenty of both. And we certainly don’t hear much about McCain’s military service – only once or twice a minute, from his supporters or himself. And, of course, despite his claims to be Georgian, we haven’t heard much about McCain’s Frenchness.

The McCain campaign is having a hard time finding a winning line of attack for Barack Obama. They’ve tried out a couple, but none of which have had quite the staying power of the classic “flip flopper.” McCain’s celebrity ads are a weird example. He’s running two ads discussing how popular Obama is among all sorts of people. If someone can explain to me how this is an attack, I’d be very grateful. As far as I can see, isn’t this what we want in a presidential candidate?

Still, the Obama campaign seems to have found it worrisome enough to produce a video of their own, claiming that McCain is the real celebrity. I think this claim has a bit more credibility, since McCain has, I dunno, hosted Saturday Night Live. McCain has also tried with tire pressure gauges, apparently implying that Obama doesn’t have a fully thought out energy plan. But the latest line of attack may just be a winner: McCain puts America first, and Obama does not.

Delivered by Joseph Lieberman, everyone’s favorite ex-vice presidential candidate, it’s a pretty disgraceful little line. The reasons why need hardly be enumerated, but my question is: is this going to be a winning strategy for McCain? Or is this the beginning of the end? It seems absurd to me that McCain is trotting out this kind of nonsense in the middle of August, when we still have a little less than three months to go. And, is there any way to counter this kind of attack with out being dragged down into a cesspool of jingoism? Is there anything to be said to someone who believes that someone running for president doesn’t love their country?