FireWater
The later stages of this campaign it needs to be recognized consisted of a overpowering measure of whiskey rhetoric. Ill-reasoned and inflammatory
McCain calls liberals a threat to economy - The Boston Globe. It was shameful and ugly, and the hang-over from it will be uglier still. It will be a long walk back for many. Rep. John "Chicken-Shit" Boehner among them
Rep. Boehner Calls Obama a Chicken... What? - The Sleuth. This will be the legacy of the McCain-Palin Tradition.
I recognize that basic existing situations will determine the type of campaign a candidate will use. Whether an incumbent or a picked successor is running, or whether both seek the office for the first time. The differentials in age and experience between candidates. The state of the economy. Whether a bull or bear market prevails. If the economy is in a down turn then the particular type of ailment seen: recession, inflation, or unemployment. Each of these equals a different campaign. For McCain the necessary job was to highlight Obama's lack of experience, the inside draw was to bring his character into question. To a large degree winning lies in charging hard down your given line once the choice is made. That's politics.
None of this mitigates in the least the damage a deliberately divisive campaign can do to the social fabric of the country. Whether that damage proves to be short term or longer term in its effects. By the last weeks of the campaign I felt fairly certain that I was seeing levels of racism and racist appeal in the campaign. Through what is often called Dog Whistle or what could be called Tax "Code" politics. These whistles, and hoots are not that select that they can't be heard, nor does the code require even as much as a Dick Tracy secret decoder ring to figure out. There was as well a strong strain of sour populist resentment in the campaign one ever increasing over the past few election cycles reminiscent of the Know Nothing movements of prior epochs
Know Nothing - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. For whatever party makes use of that, just know thats a hard spigot to turn off once turned on. For the readymade everyman out there and those primed to make use of him. There was once another Joe who steeped himself in the politics of resentment. Joe the Plumber meet Joe Steel, your brother from Georgia. The effective democratic in such a milieu will invariably be a flintier one. The democratic candidate you ask for is the one you get: a little meaner, a little looser with the facts. Make no mistake Barack Obama ran a tough campaign and pulled few punches. Hard campaigns create hardened opposition, artificially so, it leads people to look for reasons not to agree and abandon consensus and mutually held values. For every person who dismisses the "flyover" portion of the United States another will speak of contaminated coasts. I find it obnoxious to be told I am not part of a real America because I grew up in a state that had a seaport, an international airport, and a college. I'd rather all this stop before it goes too far.
In particular it bothers me the degree to which the labels radical and terrorist have been thrown around in this campaign. Easy use of Terrorism is a dangerous abuse of the meaning of the word. And one that will make critical distinctions in some future moment all that much harder. When I see someone try to pin down Michelle Obama as a radical I remember seeing mention in a Washington Post Magazine profile that she worked for the law firm of Sidely and Austin for a while. This triggered a deep memory where I recalled that my sister Ann worked for this firm for ten or so years after graduating from University of Chicago Law School. Sidley and Austin; not exactly a hotbed of Marxist radicalism. There was an opinion piece I saw in the Monitor that teased under the headline
Is Barack Obama really a socialist? | csmonitor.com , (
Is Barack Obama a socialist? | Salon). No it affirmed , but once into the article it became apparently the purpose was to damn with lukewarm defense. A milder socialism, more rather the author, Donald J. Boudreaux professor of economics at George Mason University, spoke of. I'm sure the author thinks this even more insidious I thought as I read the piece. Here I brought myself up - I'm being too harsh and judgmental again. As it happened though this is exactly what this author thought even to the use of that very phrase. This "socialism-lite," however, is as specious as is classic socialism. And its insidious nature makes it even more dangerous. Across Europe, this "mild" form of socialism acts as a parasitic ideology that has slowly drained entrepreneurial energy [^] and freedoms [^] from its free-market host..."The American people will never knowingly adopt socialism, but under the name of liberalism, they will adopt every fragment of the socialist program until one day America will be a socialist nation without ever knowing how it happened."
I should have expected as much as soon as I saw Fredrick Hayek being name checked by the third paragraph, though I suspect Hayek himself to be more solid than his circle of fan-boys. Frankly this sort of fear-drenched over-the-top ad-homin blather, and from a nominal academic, serves most of all to show the needle resting heavily on empty in the gas tank of conservative thought.
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