The Final Distraction: McCain/Palin Worse Than Bush
We all know McCain has sold his soul to win. Big mistake: the Democrats are taking the GOP bait, especially on Palin. She is the ultimate distraction. If we're not careful she'll be the final distraction. The perfect new celebrity -- Sarah Barracuda -- to capture the message in the 24-hour spin orgy, all the while attacking Obama as an elite celebrity. Any narrative that focuses on her -- any -- is a win for Republicans, carrying an undercurrent of race wars, gender wars, class wars. All ending with a debate on God and a return visit to Rev. Wright.
Palin is a gateway drug to a back-alley brawl Obama can't win. A Joseph Conrad-produced reality show/sitcom with Palin replacing Roseanne Barr fighting for the little guy with sass and sex. Wonderful.
Watch McCain repeat "maverick" 300 times a day, like a mantra, 'til Election Day. Republicans and hockey moms against corruption and Lear jets. Orwell for second graders: distraction and chaos, phony scandals and bullshit patriotics from the crew that would install an inexperienced neophyte -- not even put through the crucible of the national stage -- a heartbeat away from the greatest nuclear arsenal the world has ever known, and not blink. Darkest reptilian politics that speak to the ultimate calcified cynicism of Republicans.
Democrats need to ignore her -- unless she speaks about policy -- maybe she can explain and solve the collapsing world markets -- and keep the focus relentlessly on the disastrous results of Bush/McCain/Republican rule. They need to remind voters of the disasters of the last seven-plus years. Specifically. And as people have been saying, we need to be mad as well as inspired.
John McCain is the Republican Party as much as Bush -- we need to be constantly reminded of the policies (and, yes, the crimes) that are threatening this country from within.
Obama must hit Republicans ten times harder. Let's hear about war profiteering, taxpayer-funded mercenary armies and privatizing core functions of state, habeas corpus and warrantless wiretapping and presidential signing statements, and Katrina and justice department politicization, and phony intel and Abu Ghraib, rendition and torture.
If the Democratic leadership wants to disregard its base and continue to disregard the rule of law, they deserve to lose...and will. Let's hope the Obama campaign doesn't come to this conclusion 10 days out. He needs to articulate his vision of the future, but he also needs to articulate a version of reality. The fiercest urgency is needed now.
But some other fundamentals seem to be lost in the frenzy. McCain is no maverick, but it is worth understanding why the rabid right wing is cheering his call for government "reform" and to change "how government works at every level."
McCain won't just be more of the same -- it will be worse than Bush-Cheney -- using the disasters of the past eight years and the actual crises we face to double down on the American Enterprise/Heritage Foundation vision of government that desires, as Grover Norquist said, to shrink government until "we can drown it in a bathtub."
I would recommend a return visit to the groundbreaking Shock Doctrine by Naomi Klein.
McCain, who said he knows nothing about economics, will surely hand over the reins to the Friedmanites and neoconservatives who have sent the country on a path to ruin. Anyone looking at his team could tell you that. Palin and the interests she represents are even further to the right.
Now, no one in their right mind -- including reasonable independents and Republicans -- wants to double down on neocon ideology, but here comes the "maverick" and his economic advisers to use the crises we face to implement more "change" and "reform" to the system by privatizing everything in sight. Is this what the American people want? When they are aware of it, the answer is always no. It's the same bullshit re-branded.
It may happen in a shock therapy in the first 100 days, or financial chaos may force them to wait until things stabilize, but sooner or later they will follow their fundamentalist creed. Ruin the government you are purporting to run and turn it over to privatization frenzy, creating a shadow government of private corporate rule. That's the whole idea.
So let's brand bust this maverick gibberish but understand the coded language that belies their true mission... we should take them at the true meaning of their words.
Not just more of the same -- worse than the same. Times of crisis are great opportunities to implement the radical agendas we usually reject.
That's also the idea.
McCain and the neocon ideologues won't "reform" government, they will gut government and privatize everything in sight in the name of responding to the crises they helped engineer through Bush and Cheney. Their view of government is the reverse of the Hippocratic Oath: do harm and then when the patient is sick, give the wrong medicine, watch him die, and sell off the body parts.
They will destroy the Department of Energy, HUD and anything else they can get their hands on. With this crew, all you need to do is destroy government, privatize it and get out of the way, and then a magic utopia appears. Well, actually it doesn't, but a lot of connected people get rich, and in the privatized war business, blood money flows and a fuck of a lot of innocent people die. The numbers and the misery are staggering. The legacy of Bush/McCain is a legacy of shame. Any man that stood with this criminal administration should be forced to answer for it.
The Republicans have been ruinous and most of it stems from an ideology that leaves the government in ruins. McCain has been on board hook, line and sinker. He voted with Bush over 90% of the time. End of story.
It is fundamentally corrupt and dishonest to call it reform when leaders want to cripple government, then hand it over to private industry, usually subsidized by taxpayers, but for other people's profits. More like contempt for government.
Red meat for dummies... a horror show for the rest of us.
Obama needs to explain to the country what this will cost us in real terms -- however many billions a day in Iraq and what that could buy, repair, fix, and allow in human terms -- ask us if can we afford it, and Obama must -- to use imagery the neocons can understand -- knock them down, put his boots on their throats, and never let up.
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Well since we need the FED to come in and bail out these failed financial institutions,
isn't it a GOOD THING government WASN'T drowned in that bathtub...
A great critique of McCain. However I do disagree with you about Obama: that is somehow antithetical to that of McCain/Palin. What Obama is offering us is not an end to war profiteering, but a continuation thereof, in Afghanistan, in Pakistan, and given Obama's constant drift towards the right, I simply don't trust him to know where to stop. Obama speaks a good game about change, but I honestly don't see Obama offering Americans (or the world for that matter) a safer place. Creating a new war in Afghanistan does not bode well for those seeking real change, nor does his scolding of African American men for being bad fathers, nor his embrace of the American-Israeli lobby. I think while it is completely logical to be outraged by most of what McCain/Palin represent, we must be honest in investigating and supporting candidates who likewise offer a slightly better option, whose ethos of corporte love must also be put under scrutiny (Obama has accepted millions from corporation such as UBS, Exelon, Goldman Sachs, Citigroup, Morgan Stanley, and even Kirkland & Ellis, a very conservative law firm helped Democrats to limit ballot access of Nader’s campaign in 2004, just to name a few)! Obama and McCain both represent the worse of what our system produces and I think that voting for either is a not going to produce "change"; it will just placate the many who are not reading carefully what Obama is saying and doing
I agree with your calculated and just cyncism, but I believe your remarks are a bit generalized and lacks the conscientious objector / open-mindedness candor you're actually trying to convey. The war in Afghanistan is going on right now, it's not as if Obama is going to go there on a whim if he wins the election. Secondly, you may call it a scolding, but some may call it a justified argument in response to the reality of the problem of parental values in America. Lastly, it is a difficult task to actually separate corporate donations, from those who are employed directly by those institutions. For instance -- a customer service rep who works in a call center for citigroup for 32k / year that donates 50 dollars to a campaign is registering their donation under their occupation and employer, usually ... and that counts as a corporate donation? I'm not a political savant, but I am a logical and rational person -- so i decide to look at the issues the candidate can help me or my community or my country with, not those they cannot.
You want too much. Obama is a sane and reasonable man, who knows a lot of smart people. He will stop all the wars before we go broke.
Watching Obama on his famous trip this spring, I looked for any insinuation of aggression and found none. This man may just be the diplomat that garners our country a return to the respect we miss. A war mongerer he is not, but perhaps he believes in finishing one that we are already in.
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I have one lasting image of Bush's stewardship of the ecomony and the way the Republicans took glee in dismantling the last vestiges of the New Deal. It serves as some irony that McCain's economic advisor, Phil Gramm, (is that former advisor, or is he still working in the wings) was the main author of one of those bills designed to gut the depression-era Glass-Steagall Act which provided some oversight by seperating commercial and investment banking. Gramm must have thought that govenment regulation was too cumbersome and gladly opened the door, allowing banks to merge and own other financial institutions. Well, that door has swung back and hit us all in the ass. My IRA has taken so many hits to its bottom line, it's as if my broker is a some lipstick-wearing dominatrix.
That lasting image was courtesy of the great documentary about Enron: "The Smartest Guys In The Room." After holding California hostage through their predatory energy practices, resulting in rolling blackouts and the eventual recall of Gov. Gray Davis, an Enron emplyoee joyously cheers "BURN BABY BURN" during one of their notorious wildfires. I'll remember that forever. Personal financial gain trumps personal tragedy.
Good column, John. Unfettered capitalism will breed more Tom Joads.
McCain/Pailin '08
Joshua: Shall we play a game?
David Lightman: Oh!
Jennifer: I think it missed him.
David Lightman: Yeah. Weird isn't it? Love to. How about Global Thermonuclear War.
Joshua: Wouldn't you prefer a nice game of chess?
David Lightman: Later. Right now lets play Global Thermonuclear War.
Joshua: Fine.
John Cusack had alot of good points. here is what i think. Sen. Hillary Clinton and Gov. Sarha Paylin should have a debate. Why you may ask? Becouse No one should or could shout FOWL, becouse Sen. Hillary Clinton can do a BANG UP JOB in a debate she has been backing Oboma anyways. And lets face it Gov. Sarha Palin should know the facts, and the AMERICAN people NEED too know if SHE is a deer in the bright lite. Two women face to face let the cards fall where will. SIMPLE-- OR is it??Good way to find out. She wants to be second in comand. Lets see what she has!! We all know what the last 8 years been like. Like I read They called bush a lame duck of a president. we don't need any more of that dumb s#@* !!
Hillary has to much dignity and political smarts to allow herself to debate with or even acknowledge a ridiculous Republican vice president nominee. I wish I could say the same for Obama who allowed himself to respond to the trap of lowering himself to deal with the bottom of an opponent's ticket. Unheard of in big time politics.
John, that's a great article.
BTW, I watched "High Fidelity" again the other night (I love that movie, partly because I have fond memories of Lounge Ax and know the NDI /Pravda Records guys) and I had an Ah-Ha moment right along with your character when he finally realized that 'Charlie' talked all of the time but never really said anything.
Before there was Sarah Palin, there was 'Charlie!' If you had a hand in creating that character for Catherine Zeta Jones, that was downright prescient of you!
If Molly Ivins were here (and I miss her much), she would probably be saying 'Don't say I didn't tell you.' Her book Shrub told the story of Bush's governorship of Texas, and what to expect with a Bush presidency. So those of us that read her book, and more, and waited eight years until this dangerous joke of a man stepped down, are not surprised at this shameful ending of a presidency that should never have been. Now, you can see in person the lies, deception and dishonor of John McCain and the Republican National Cult . America cannot and will not take eight more year of Bush and that's what you would be getting or worse with a McCain/Palin ticket. These people do not even look presidential, which is besides the point. Democrats must get out and vote on November 4th. Encourage your family, neighbors, friends and co-workers to do so. Check your ballot before leaving the poilling place to ensure it is marked correctly; report immediately any harassment, intimidation or obstruction by neocon thugs.
I miss Molly Ivins, too. She was dead-on about the Bush Presidency in her book "Shrub."
Yup, I'd like a commercial showing John McCain eating birthday cake with GWB while people starved and pleaded for help in NOLA
and YES the Shock Doctrine is a MUST read.
John you are very articulate. How refreshing. I really hope America does see through the same bullshit of the conservative and McCain and votes for change.
I wish I could say the same about my own country Canada..
er excuse me - who has been in charge of congress for the past 4 years.
Why does everyone assume the president has all the power?
Where is Nancy and what has she been doing about all your concerns for the past two years?
2 years not 4...".Obam
Can you say gridlock. You act as though the Republicans in Congress has acted responsibly.
They have not. They have offered up Bills in Congress that contained hidden dangers for the economy, the planet, health care to name a few which left the Democrats with the delema to vote against that particular bill and author a compromise bill to protect the American people.
I'm not saying they have not voted some things that make us cringe, but for the most part they have acted in our best intrest.
The Republicans do not have clean hands, thats why they are not even saying that they are Republicans anymore. Now that is Deep.
Actually, the Republicans have controlled congress 6 of the last 8 years. Only, in the last 2 years have the Democrats had a slim lead of one which included the faux-Democrat Joe Leiberman. In those 2 years the republicans have done everything possible to thwart Democrat legislative efforts because they were afraid that it would make them look bad politically. In the first 6 years the Republicans were able to pass every major piece of legislation that they penned, much to the dismay of the Democratic base. Why don't you try to get your facts straight? Oh, I forgot, your whole purpose in life is to promote chaos.
An excellent editorial!
Bravo, John!
Very well said. My high school crush on John has now spiraled out of control.
Thank you John! Can you please get out there and spread this to everyone.
Yes, thank you, thank you!
Now, wold be amazing if you and some of your Hollywood buddies put together some ads with a shortened all of you saying parts of this editorial or similar -- play over and over in swing states.
Would work really cool against a black background with the occasional picture of some kind of travesty caused by Bush/Cheney for emphasis. End with something patriotic and upbeat -- a flag, the song I'm proud to be an American, the national Anthem, a picture of Obama or a combo of some or all layered over one another.
No, we'll leave that kind of dispicable campaigning to the McSame / Palin people. Maybe you should send them your ideas, even though they seem to be doing fine without you.
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