McCain Finds Americans No Longer Buying Into the Spec Market on Dread
As expected, John McCain is trying to turn the stretch run of the campaign away from the economy and back to national security. He knows Americans are afraid of losing their jobs, their homes, their 401Ks, and their life's savings -- but he wants them to put all of that on the backburner and focus on the fear of losing their lives.
Accordingly, his latest Hail Mary bomb comes equipped with a nuclear warhead.
McCain barreled through the door Joe Biden opened with his ill-advised comments about Obama being tested within the first six months of his presidency, flashing back to the Cuban Missile crisis and painting Obama as "untried, untested" and a national security liability.
In contrast, McCain insisted, "I've been tested." Of course, the kind of test given a 26 year-old Navy pilot assigned to Cuban targets, as McCain was during October 1962, is very different from the test a president would face in that kind of crisis. But who needs to worry about details like that when you are playing the mushroom cloud card?
With time running short, Team McCain wants to cover as many fear bases as possible. So along with the Missiles of October, the McCain campaign also rolled out a new round of robocalls designed to convince voters that Obama has "a disturbing history of coddling criminals" and would be soft on "sex offenders, drug dealers, and murderers."
Beware, America: if the nukes don't get you, the sociopaths, the junkies, and the perverts will.
Unfortunately for McCain, playing the Be Afraid game has gotten a lot more complicated than it was back in the good old days when all you had to say was "Cipro" and "duct tape" and the electorate would reach for its GOP security blanket. Between 2001 and 2004, every time the government issued a terror alert, Bush's approval rating would go up. It was positively Pavlovian.
A new study pdf conducted by UC Berkeley sociologists Robb Willer and Nick Adams, and published this month in the journal Current Research in Social Psychology, suggests voter reactions to those kinds of threats may be changing -- and that terror warnings or the evocation of looming attacks may, in fact, have the opposite impact on McCain than they had on Bush (you see, McCain's right: they aren't the same!). Especially when it comes to swing voters. We may have finally reached the point when voters are thinking: "Fool us with the fear card once, shame on you. Fool us with the fear card 279 times, shame on us... We won't be fooled again."
John Kerry still believes Halloween 2004's bin Laden video was one of the main reasons he lost. But the confused -- and panicked -- reaction of the McCain camp to yesterday's pro-McCain posting on an al-Qaeda affiliated website, shows how the rules of the terror game have changed.
McCain's surrogates went to great lengths to pooh-pooh the notion that al-Qaeda would prefer McCain's hawkishness to Obama's more reasoned approach to foreign policy. Yet, in the same breath, senior McCain foreign-policy advisor Randy Scheunemann announced, "John McCain will spend what it takes to win" in Iraq. An approach that fits perfectly with bin Laden's "bleed to bankruptcy" strategy.
For his part, Obama is refusing to buy into McCain's divide-the-economy-from-national security-and-conquer strategy. "We often hear about two debates, one on national security and one on the economy," he said yesterday after meeting with his national security team, including Gary Hart, Madeleine Albright, and Richard Holbrooke. "But that's a false distinction. We can't afford another president who ignores the fundamentals of our economy while running up record deficits to fight a war without end in Iraq. We must be strong at home to be strong abroad. That's one of the lessons of our history."
Throughout his speech, he repeatedly hammered home the "foreign security implications of our economic crisis" and the impact of the Iraq war on our military readiness, our ability to deal with the "grave" situation in Afghanistan, and America's bottom line, saying: "For the sake of our economy, our military, and the long-term stability of Iraq," we need to bring "a responsible end to the war."
And he even challenged McCain's over-inflated national security credentials, pointing out the very different approach he would bring to taking on bin Laden, the growing threat from al-Qaeda along the Pakistan border, and making Afghanistan, not Iraq, the central front in the war on terror. "As president, [McCain] would continue the policies that have put our economy into crisis and, I believe, [are a] danger to our national security."
Obama's steady hand during the economic meltdown and his unflappable bearing during all three debates has clearly had an impact. Coming out of the conventions, McCain had a 14-point lead on who would be better able to handle international affairs; that has shrunk to a within-the-margin-of-error 3-point gap.
Given the wide lead Obama holds on dealing with the economy, "helping the middle class," and health care, and his advantage on handling taxes (sorry, Joe the Plumber), it's to be expected that McCain will keep trotting out the mushroom clouds, the murderers, and the sex offenders. Fear is all he has left to sell. It would be the best news to come out of the campaign so far if the American voter is no longer willing to buy into the spec market on dread.
For those of you in Minnesota, I will be speaking at St. Olaf College Monday, October 27th. The speech will begin at 7:00 PM in Boe Memorial Chapel.
Follow Arianna Huffington on Twitter: www.twitter.com/ariannahuff
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When anyone talks to me about their experience from 40+ years ago, I put things in perspective.
Gas was 18 cents a gallon. Western Union delivered messages, teletypes was the fast mode of communications, cell phones did not exist, nor did personal computers, satellite communications, and weeks could take place before facts were known or decisions made. The US was the worlds super power with the Soviets the only other country in possession of nuclear weapons. The US had 3 times the amount of people in the Armed Forces, China was Red and Germany divided.
The so called experience of the past was honorable service to the country, sincerely appreciated but irrelevant to the 21st Century,
Those experiences of the past are about as relevant as Ozzie and Harriet and the Donna Reed Show representative of home life today.
Welcome to the real world.
Excellent point.......... now where did I put my hoola-hoop......I was an expert.
The American press has focused like a laser beam on our political landscape............popping republicans like ants.(and a few democrats).........WOW.....I give you guys an A+ on this years penetrating expose into American Politics.
McCain and his handlers know that the more people find out what he intends on DOing to them the less likely they will be to vote for him. So they must talk about anything else ANYTHING! Fear worked well for bush.They probably are thinking that if they can just put it out there in enough different forms. No mater
how silly or stupid it is, it should work if they can just do it enough. Tricks, lies, voter fraud, misdirection, voter disenfranchisement, bigotry, hate mongering, terrorizing, avoiding the issues, making wedge issues, creating fake issues. never answer a question, these are the tools of the republican party and the right wing neo-cons.
They need to just go away, Maybe they would fit in with the Chinese or Russian governments.
I am still perplexed as to why the USA citizen's believed Boo$h'$ BS at all.
Sure he's been tested - but he failed!
http://www.votesmarter2008.com
So McCain sat in his airplane on the deck of an aircraft carrier waiting for orders to take off and attack Cuba almost singlehandedly to save the world for democracy. I doubt that he made any of the command decisions to actually do this but somehow he was tested and the terrorists or won't dare try testing him if he's elected. ROTFLMAO
RANK P R O P A G A N D A
2008 THE EN D OF JOURNALISM
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q7R1N3Yr9-M
Change the World. Pass the video on.
Young JFK was tested during the Cuban Missile Crisis. I was 12 during that time and we practiced air raid drills in my 6th grade classroom in preparation for war. Nevertheless, Kennedy aquitted himself well. We can only wonder what a megalomaniac like Nixon would have done.
Why don't the Republicans shut up already about how qualified Sarah Palin is to become President of the United States!! They know it isn't true and when the question is asked they should just roll their eyes, shake their heads and say "yeah, you're right" but McCain has to finish the dance with her and let's see what happens." Nobody in their right mind (and I'm sure there are a few Republicans that are..none that I know but I'm sure a few) can believe that this beauty contest, ultra conservative hockey mom has the good sense and global perspective that a Joe The Biden (I have now deemed that anybody with the name Joe has to have "The" as their middle name) has. There is something to be said for electing the brightest guy (or gal) in the room not the dumbest. Please read the McCain article in Rolling Stone. John McCain makes Bush look like a choir boy. Anyway...I will miss Tina Fey after November 4.
The concept of someone requiring great qualifications to be president is a myth when you consider that a terminal dunce like Carter can do it, and a breathtakingly corrupt hillbilly mafioso like clinton can do it. And Carter finished higher in his class at the Naval Academy than McCain did in his class. Big deal.
Why, I'll bet even you could be president. On second thought...
The current president DEFINITELY illustrates your point!
Yeah he was tested.
I wonder if any one took physics where you learn melting point of steel?
Any one believe in the magic bullet that killed JFK one month after calling for the end to Vietnam?
Physics will say that it is impossible in the real world but are we so blinded by TV to stop believing reality and start to believe fiction like the official 911 story.
Please go to the sight of architects and engineers for truth. No conspiracies just fact after fact with science and reason mixed in.
http://www.ae911truth.org/
Maybe McCain will soon realize you can't fool all the public all the time. The Bush administration has cried wolf so many times with their lies and trickery that most of us have become desensitzed to their fearmongering. Just proves McCain is out of touch about that too.
Question: Does anyone know what McCain did during the Cuban missile crisis? He was on the aircraft carrier Enterprise but what did he do that shows he would be any better at handling such a situation? Did he handle any part of the situation other than the joy stick in his jet? Make any decisions? Do anything other than take orders? How does this make him more ready for the office than Obama? I don't get it. I just don't get any part of his argument.
Not so much but I think the chow on board was good!
Some Americans obviously are buying into the fear tactic; otherwise, this race wouldn't even be close. The good news seems to be that most Americans are rejecting it. Thus, hopefully, it will become less and less useful in the future. As long as a considerable proportion of our proletariat continues to be influenced by it in an advantageous way to them, politicians and their strategists will continue to resort to it. Few intelligent people would argue that the fear strategy has served our country well, however.
As to al-Qaeda's "bleed to bankruptcy" strategy, it worked very well against the Russians. They have proof that their strategy worked over the long term against them. There's no compelling reason to believe that it won't work against us. By taking a close look of our economy, I'm not convinced that their strategy is not working. One thing is for certain, though, their strategy should be clear to us by now and ending this war in a responsible way should be one of our top priorities. That's not going to stop al-Qaeda from claiming victory, nor should it stops us from claiming victory either.
Carlos Jean-Gilles
Saint Louis, MO
"""""As to al-Qaeda's "bleed to bankruptcy" strategy, it worked very well against the Russians. """""
....and the USA. You are BROKE. The Boo$h's over reaction was guaged perfectly. What a stooge you have in the white house.....actually, probably the 3 stooges with Boo$h, Rice and Cheney.
Tested! Oh yes John McCain has been tested, and you know what, he flunked.
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