McCain's Charming Gift Of Fear

In security expert Gavin de Becker's landmark book, The Gift of Fear: Survival Signals that Protect Us from Violence, he uses several illustrations to demonstrate how our survival instincts often try to protect us even as we try to over-rule them with logic and reasoning, and how we should learn to trust our instincts over what even other people may be trying to tell us otherwise.

One example he uses is of a woman about to enter an elevator. There is one man on that elevator, who is clean-cut and nicely dressed in a suit and tie, but for some reason, a great unease sets in and she decides to wait for the next elevator. That elevator contains three youths dressed like goths who look at her with a surly expression, but she gets on that elevator anyway and the ride is uneventful.

Her eyes and her logic told her that the first elevator would have been the safest, but her instincts were warning her that the man was not what he appeared. Her instincts also perceived no threat from the rowdy teens on the second elevator. Her instincts were right both times.

What de Becker wants his readers to understand is that not everyone who is charming is really all that charming. Many of them are using charm as a manipulative tactic. Their ultimate goal is not to be liked by you so much as to be able to use you for their own purposes.

This has, ironically, been a complaint lodged by the media against Barack Obama. From what I can tell from my reading of the matter, they base this accusation on three things: (a) the size and enthusiasm of his crowds (b) the fact that his opponents have accused them of being caught up in his "spell" and not being objective and (c) the fact that, on the campaign plane, he does not very often hang out with them, joking and chatting. Rather, he tends to use that time to withdraw into a quiet space of his own making, shielding himself from interruptions with his ipod and reading through a formidable stack of memos, newspapers, and books.

Not at all like, say, John McCain, who is notorious for all the freewheeling access he has given the media through the years, not just on his so-called "Straight-Talk Express" campaign bus but also at just about any venue the reporters choose to question him about anything.

And oh, the funny stories he tells!

And oh, the long-winded answers he gives to all their questions!

And oh, what a GREAT GUY he is, this John McCain!

Why, he's just charming, really.

So charming, in fact, that at a press dinner introducing the two nominees earlier this year, McCain was given a gift of his favorite coffee--which of course, the reporters well remembered, what with all that coffee they drank with him themselves--but when they introduced Obama, they "accidentally" referred to him as "Osama."

So...let me see if we can analyze this a bit...Obama is to be under suspicion because he is so well-liked on the campaign trail by potential voters but does not joke around and drink coffee with reporters and tell funny stories and give them complete and unabridged access. So they don't trust him, somehow.

But McCain, on the other hand, who had "used charm" endlessly with his "base"--the press--that...let me see here...Oh! We can let that gaffe go. We know McCain didn't really mean it. Old guy gets cranky at the end of the day. And oh! Let's not worry too much about THAT gaffe because, hey, everybody makes mistakes sometimes. And UH-OH--looks like he made a real boner on CBS news...could even cost him the election, and is that really fair? No, no. What we'll do is, we'll splice together an EARLIER response from a different question...like so...THERE. That's what he REALLY meant to say.

He's a charming guy! He goofs up sometimes but he's a good sport about it! Laughs about it with the press pool later! Not like that elite snob Obama who spends all his free time reading up on the latest economic and foreign crises to face this country.

Yeah...that guy's not really charming at all. We like the goof-off guy better!

Besides, he's a WAR HERO! And we all loooove John Wayne.

This is what I see happening...but all is not lost, dear Reader, because the truth is that, when someone USES charm as opposed to BEING CHARMING, then what happens is, over time...the mask slips.

Obama is pretty much Obama pretty much all the time. He gets irritable when he's tired, like the rest of us. But he doesn't "fly too high to the sun" on a good day and he doesn't despair on the bad days. This has been borne out now by many many people who have campaigned closely with him for months upon months now. Basically, his nature is calm and his temperament steady. He seldom even raises his voice.

Obama does all that reading on the plane because he has no other time to do it, and when he DOES take questions from reporters, he knows his information has to be accurate or they will pounce all over the slightest gaffe and pontificate on it endlessly for the next week or till the end of the campaign--whichever comes first.

But McCain is not charming all the time. McCain is only charming when it will get him something. He figured out long ago that if he used charm on reporters, he could fool them into letting him get away with the fact that he is pitifully uninformed on the most pressing events and issues of our day. He knew that by using charm on them, he could cast a spell of his own, that would give him tremendous leeway in a campaign.

People who have known and worked with him for years describe quite a different John McCain than the affable guy drinking coffee with the press pool.

Even in HIGH SCHOOL, they called him John "McNasty."

This is because, underneath all the flag-waving rhetoric, he is not a very nice person. He is, in fact, mean-spirited, vengeful, and has a titanic temper that has become legendary on the Senate floor. Go through recorded comments from fellow Republicans when he was running for the nomination in 2000, and you will see many who dreaded the thought of a McCain Oval Office. They worried about what a man with a hair-trigger temper would do when he had his finger on a real trigger.

This nastiness came in handy during his time as a prisoner of war. It made him resist and spit back in their faces whatever his captors gave to him. I take nothing away from that courage.

But I think his nastiness hides an underlying rage he's had in him all his life; resentment, maybe, from being expected to go to the Naval Academy and be an admiral just like dear old dad and granddad. He graduated 894th out of a class of 899, and says himself most all he did was raise hell. That's fine, we were all hell-raisers in college. But what I'm saying is that the image and the mythology that has been constructed around McCain from his earliest days in politics, and the idea he's given the press of his personality from his strenuous use of charm, does not in any way present the real man behind the mask.

Ask Nancy Reagan. She has scarcely spoken to him since he dumped his wife, (a good friend of the Reagans) who'd been disfigured in a car wreck during his incarceration, and three kids, to chase after and marry a beautiful millionaire heiress half his age less than a month after the divorce became final. Within a few months of that, he was running for congress as a charming war hero, bankrolled by his gorgeous young trophy wife.

His own party bemoans what a bad candidate he is, because, unlike another politician who knew very well how to use charm to hide an underlying nastiness--George W. Bush--McCain doesn't know how to stick to the party line. When they try to make him do it, his mask begins to crumble. He grimaces. His smiles are thin-lipped and mean. And when he's set loose, he says all the nasty things that, traditionally, surrogates like Karl Rove have done in his place so that the rest of the world can go on thinking he's such a nice, charming man.

And as the mask begins to slip, what I think is beginning to happen now and what I believe will happen increasingly, is that the instincts of the American voter are going to warn them that this is a man who is using charm in order to manipulate them into giving him what he--and the Bush administration wants--a third Bush term.

The press is going to persist in saying that it is OBAMA who is "using charm" on the American people and that they should be suspicious of that, but as the campaign drags on and they see more and more of the two men reacting to daily stresses and campaign strains, I think the truth will begin to show itself to those who have learned to trust their instincts.

Their logic and reasoning--and press reports--may tell them, hey, this guy's a war hero and we're at war; he's all experienced and everything; and gee, he's such a NICE GUY.

But as the mask slips and they realize that experience does not equal wisdom and that no matter how charming a man may seem, if he can't stop making gaffe after gaffe after gaffe then it must mean that, really, he does not know what he is talking about, and that,
furthermore, if he SAYS one thing but DOES another...how trustworthy is that? I think their instincts will tell them that something does not add up.

It might take a debate or two to prove it. After all, Obama had to go up against the likes of Hillary Clinton and John Edwards on 22 separate occasions. Who did McCain debate? Mitt Romney? Ron Paul?

As stated recently on Talking Points Memo, a politician who does not make gaffes is one who knows the issues well--this is why Hillary was so good on the trail and why Obama sailed through Europe and the Middle East without giving the press something to trumpet ad nauseum. The one who constantly makes word mistakes is one who, frankly, really does not know the issues that well.

We've had quite enough of that over the past eight years, thank you.

McCain has made so many mistakes on the trail that he is even corrected for them on-camera by those traveling with him. So far, he's gotten away with it because of his skillful use of charm with the media.

Bill Clinton used to always say that the American people had a great deal of common sense, which was the reason his popularity remained high no matter how much he was slimed by Republicans. The voters were CONSTANTLY told not to trust him, and yet they did.

And they were rewarded for that trust with a balanced budget, a surplus, the end to genocide in Bosnia without the loss of a single American life, gas at a buck and a half a gallon, and eight years of peace and prosperity. This was the Clinton legacy.

The Bush legacy? A ten-trillion dollar debt ceiling, a half-trillion dollar national debt, four-dollar gasoline, two wars and thousands of Americans and innocents dead, a historic mortgage crises casting thousands out of their homes, a corrupt and politicized justice department, disfunctional government...I can't go on. I really can't.

I also think that, beneath it all, the American people never really trusted George W. Bush but voted him into office because of a case of collective post traumatic stress post 9-11 that was goaded and egged on by the fearmongers in his administration. (Plus, they stole Florida in 2000 and Ohio in 2004. But I digress.)

I don't think the voters will fall for Rovian tactics again. Shock therapy has snapped 'em out of their PTSD. And frankly, they're pissed.

I'm thinkin'...over time? In spite of being told over and over not to trust the black guy with the big smile but instead, the craggy-faced and charming old war hero...they'll go with their instincts.

As for the press? Well, I think coverage of the run-up to the Iraq war pretty well proved that the press, by and large, has long since lost touch with their own instincts.

Maybe it's time they learned something from the rest of us.

Comments

[Pdubya]

you still think that the debates offer debate?

lets get kucinich and paul to debate obama and mccain.

i'd call that a debate

[JennyJay]

I am putting all my stock in the televised debates that are coming up. THE CAMERA NEVER LIES.
With both guys on camera, side by side, the truth of their character should flow out to us like a freaking BROKEN DAM.

[phae100]

I appreciate your article but I am dubious about the idea that the media is simply blinded by McCain's "charm". What I believe is happening is that the corporate owners who are paying the journalists' salary are telling them to toe the line and say whatever it takes to keep perpetuating the corrupt system that's keeping money flowing their way, and the journalists are obeying in order to keep their jobs. They know they're replaceable in a nanosecond if they step out of line.

The fact that McCain woos them with barbecues and coffee and jokes helps them to see his "good side", but believe me, they were told by the big boys signing their checks that they had better see that good side, and Obama's flaws, and nothing else. Can't you just hear them in their daily strategy meetings, discussing how to keep pulling wool over the Jerry Springer watchers' (their base's) eyes?

what we're seeing in the media is about corporate America keeping things in check.

[DeanieMills]

I'm not quite that paranoid, phae100--not yet, anyway. I've been reading some op-eds from journalists that actually, I find amusing, in that they sound like jilted lovers, or people who realize that the man they married is not who they thought he was. They're saying things like, "I thought John McCain was an honorable man. I don't think that anymore."

They seem genuinely stumped, like they never would have believed this campaign would come out of him.

But they ARE saying so. Not on the three big networks--not yet--but in print and on cyberspace. So I have hope, yet.

[GiannaX]

Wow, Deanie, what an exquisite post! You hit the ball out of the park.
Thanks for a wonderfully insightful piece.

[bluevillage]

Excellent piece. It's time people started speaking out, and keep it up constantly, about the real John McCain.

[kristycu]

One thing I think Hillary Clinton did for Obama that many people may not know, it that she really taught him about debating, because even though i thought he did an good Job, She sure new how to take him to task, and she is really good at debating, i have to tip my hat to her. so if he can learn from that experience he will do fine. Damn, Hillary was good at that. She showed him really how debates work, and that is something you learn over time and Hillary became an expert at it In my mind, I have to give it to her

[Pupadup4oBama]

I think you are absolutely correct.
I might not have liked her tactics very much, (in fact not at all) but I think she tested and trained him in a way he could have never been tested without her. McCain is hitting Barack even harder - but he's looking more and more desperate so early on.
And to think he was sitting pretty just 2 months ago.

[DeanieMills]

I appreciate the intelligence of this discussion. Few comments:

Both beaupritchard and RI raise excellent points about the diabolical manipulation of people's fears by the Republicans in every election, certainly since 9/11, but before as well. This is a legitimate concern--RI, I will visit that site you mentioned.

I've worried about this since I saw the Bush admin begin to manipulate fear to justify an illegal and immoral war, followed by an unbelievable willingness even to raise threat assessment levels--at great cost to local police depts--just to help along their candidate in a tight election, among other tricks that have stunned any sense of human decency.

I do think that Obama has to answer these attacks immediately and aggressively, and I do think that Americans are more willing to listen to those counterarguments than they were Kerry's. This was Hillary's worry about the general election--that she had been more "vetted"--but I'm not sure she'd've had that much of an advantage. I shudder to think what they'd be throwing at her now and whether the American people would reflexively vote McCain just because we'd already had a Clinton.

As far as the idea that somehow a Barr/Paul or Paul/Barr ticket would be BETTER than what's available now? Are you bleeping KIDDING??? Maybe to a Libertarian, but not to 97% of the rest of us.

[beaupritchard]

I started off reading this article with a bit of skepticism ... but as I read I discovered ... this is really a good well written article ... an excellent analysis of John McCain ... of how he evolved and how he can be counted on to act.

The quote :

"what I'm saying is that the image and the mythology that has been constructed around McCain from his earliest days in politics, and the idea he's given the press of his personality from his strenuous use of charm, does not in any way present the real man behind the mask"

is just one of many that puts McCain at just the right angle just the right distance to see through him ... McCain is a phony ... has been for a long time.

The problem with exposing him is that anytime he gets pressed for truth he hides behind the war hero story ... there has to be a way to strip him bare of this because I no more believe it to be true than I believe any of the other stories he tells about himself.

[RI]

I’m glad to see this great discussion, but I'm not so sure as you about the outcome of this election.

Even though many people will "vote with their heads," reasoning about positions and issues, many more will "vote with their guts," reacting with their emotions of hope or fear. And unfortunately, our fear instincts are too easily manipulated by the campaign psychologists, who know how to assault our nervous systems. In this election, our fear instincts will indeed be tested, but which candidate will scare the most people?

McCain = stimulated memory of past trauma
Obama = new, unknown = threat

There are still a lot of people in this country who will "cling" to what is most familiar (McCain) even though he reminds them of their current abusive administration (Bush) rather than trust someone who is so obviously different and promises change (Obama).

If you are interested, here is a link to an article on how the physiology of fear might play out during this election cycle. (You must remove the spaces necessitated by the HuffPost filter to see the post) http : // fearwars. blogspot. com)

[blaqntelligence]

Deanie Mills, what an awesome post.
I love how you tied this election, and a possible scary outcome, to a practice I've taught my daughters all their lives.
TRUST YOUR INSTINCTS!
They're called instincts for a reason. Gut feeling, women's intuition, the Voice of God, I don't care what you call it, it's real and it works.
I recall bush's campaign, with that silly face, goofy grin, and good-ole-boy demeanor......
But my skin crawled every time I saw him, my nerves reacted when he spoke. I literally cannot sit still while he's speaking.
I knew nothing of bush except he was the governor of Texas and the son of bush I.
But will instinct trump long held beliefs?

[Pupadup4oBama]

It's amazing what your instincts can "tell you". It's too bad more people don't listen to them - if they did we probably wouldn't be in this quagmire of a Bush admin.

[pastor123]

Yes I am tired of politicians trying to make us afraid, what ever happened to "nothing to fear but fear itself. Instead now politicians try to make us afraid constantly. The candidate that will win will be the candidate that comes up with real answers despite these attakc ads. . Until they come up with solutions to fix our economy. McCain and Obama need better plans to fix our economy, and this energy crisis. The economy and energy go hand and hand. I mean it makes me sick to see these candidates getting side tracked when there are real issues to deal with. Did you see this video of Obama appearing with Ludicris the rapper? I understand that he is just trying to get the youth vote, but we are in such bad shape that candidates really shouldnt take time to pander about. The video is at http://www.TheObamaPlan.com Or take McCain for example. He took time off to have a whos who cook out. Not to mention the infamous viagra video moment. LOL, You can see that video at http://www.McCanes.com I dont think McCain is sharp enough to hold the office. I dont think Obama is realistic enough to hold the office. I guess we are just screwed. Unless you like Bob Barr or Ron Paul, there is alot of online talk of these two teaming up, their is even a website called BarrPaul08 its at http://www.BarrPaul08.com..

[beaupritchard]

I call it "Id Politics" ... the id In Freudian theory is,

"The division of the psyche that is totally unconscious and serves as the source of instinctual impulses and demands for immediate satisfaction of primitive needs" ...

As long as republicans can make us afraid they can manipulate the outcome of elections ... there are subtle ways of doing this other than the overt call to arms ... "fight them over there so we don't have to fight them over here" ... "terrorist terrorist everywhere" crap.

There's the traditional fear of claiming Obama is going to somehow raise your taxes ... liberalise your children ... make this an ungodly nation.

There's the targeted fear of putting a picture of Obama in between two fair blond women that plays on the fears and prejudices of an aging generation.

All of these operate in that irrational part of the brain known as the "id".