September 6, 2008


Which Cup Is the Old Bean Under?

Last night I heard a front man for McCain bring out a pitch that’s making the rounds: Sure, McCain has had to court the extreme right in order to firm up his base, but maybe when he gets in, the old moderate McCain will reappear. This having-it-both-ways argument suggests an amazing basis for deciding one’s vote: Let’s hope that a man will betray his supporters, once he gets what he wants, and will then turn out to be on our side–and presumably won’t betray us. This probably doesn’t seem odd to Republicans, because their “faith” (all of it) is generated and sustained by public relations concerns. Their goal makes hucksters of them, and they long ago lost the ability to feel shame or a sense of accountability. Hence the ease with which they can argue: “My party screwed everything up over the last eight years…and that’s why we are the ones who can and should be given the chance to make repairs” and “I’m a Washington outsider who has worked in Washington for twenty-six years–but I’m ready, now, to jump in there and pull the rug out from under all those people I have worked with.”

At every turn, McCain demonstrates the ways in which democracy may be destroyed from within. And once this process is set in motion, simple honesty, by itself, is at best an experimental chemotherapy.

posted by Daryl Scroggins in government, marketing, politics 

comments

2 Responses to “Which Cup Is the Old Bean Under?”

  1. Mike Dresser on September 6th, 2008 at 2:44 pm

    Interesting that you don’t hear much about the Dems pandering to their base. Seems the biggest qualification to get any Democrat’s vote is to not be a Republican. I’d personally love it if Obama were further left of center. A Prius in every garage! Higher taxes! A gay on the 5 dollar bill! Shoot, I’m still pissed off about his voting for wiretapping immunity. But he’s got my vote.

    End of the day, I think the GOP’s big tent is just too big, with the Christianists and pro-business types eying each other warily from either side. Poor John McCain in the middle, scurrying back and forth, whispering to one group while pointing across to the other.

  2. Michael Grant Smith on September 6th, 2008 at 5:51 pm

    Well put, Daryl. McCain is the ultimate inside outsider; the anti-lobbyist tool of lobbyists. The experienced foreign policy expert who can’t tell a Shiite from a Sunni. A flip-floppingly decisive man of action and intense but liquid conviction.

    “whispering to one group while pointing across to the other.” Mike D., thank you for that.

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