A riddle: What piece of political wisdom is always wrong -- but its opposite is also always wrong?
Okay, here's a hint: Willie Horton. Swift Boat Veterans for Truth. John Boehner.
The Boehner illustration was on full display last week. Ever since President Obama's first 100 days in office, when House minority leader John Boehner (R-Ohio) said his bills "make me want to throw up," Boehner has been attacking the president on every front from terrorism ("no plan to keep America safe") to health care ("Hell no, you can't!"). And for nearly two years, Obama has refused to dignify Boehner's charges with a response, instead using surrogates like Joe Biden to counter-punch.
A few weeks ago, Boehner gave a speech in Ohio demanding an extension of the Bush tax cuts for millionaires, calling on Obama to fire his entire economic team (not, by the way, a terrible idea), and asking Americans to elect a Republican Congress because "it's time to put grown-ups in charge." Someone in the White House must have finally decided that if Boehner's charges went unanswered, they would stick -- just as Lee Atwater's smear of Michael Dukakis (he'll pardon black men so they can rape and kill white women) stuck, and just as the Swift Boaters' smear of John Kerry (the guy with a Purple Heart was actually a coward in Vietnam) stuck, when the objects of their slanders didn't deign to fight back.
That's why Obama went to Cleveland last week, where he nailed Boehner in a speech of his own, hanging around Boehner's neck the cynicism of the Republican strategy: rooting for Americans' pain. The GOP economic plan, Obama said, is nothing more than this: "If I fail, they win."
The response of the political class to Obama's speech was as predictable as the sunrise. Mark McKinnon, an advisor to George W. Bush, channeled conventional wisdom, saying, "I don't think most Americans have a clue who John Boehner is and wonder why the president is lowering himself to attacking a congressman."
The media response was also a jerked knee. As an NPR correspondent explained, "Many Americans may not have heard of Congressman John Boehner, but President Obama wants you to think of the House minority leader as the Democrats' arch nemesis... Mr. Obama mentioned Boehner by name eight times today, framing him as a sort of Republican boogeyman."
So the lesson here, for budding Washington sages, is that when you're attacked, you must not respond, because you'll only be elevating your opponent, giving him a platform and publicity. Except that when you're attacked, you really must respond, because otherwise the charges will stick. Except that when you respond, the story won't be about the substance; it'll be about your strategy of demonizing your opponent, an interpretation that somehow wasn't part of the storyline when your attacker went after you in the first place. And for good measure, when you do fight back, the narrative will be that you're "on the defensive," so your show of strength will be decoded as a sign of desperation.
Two winners emerge from this capital Catch-22.
One is the political-media class, which can never get it wrong. You will always be able to muse both that there is grave danger in not responding to an attack, and also that there is grave danger in responding to an attack. Whatever the mugged guy does, you've got a way to trash him.
The other winners are the attackers. A first strike is always a good move. The more negative your attack, the more incentive you'll give the media to amplify it, because producers know that there's nothing that grabs audiences like ugly. Plus the counter-attack, if it comes, will be framed as weakness; the one who punches second will be described as on the ropes.
The loser in all this is any political figure who believes that Americans truly are sick and tired of negative campaigning and bitter partisanship, which is what Americans always say, but which usually results in winning elections. Despite the Obama team's 2008 insistence that it had learned the lessons of the Swift Boating of John Kerry (remember fightthesmears.com?), polling suggests that the dismissive way they've handled the attacks of 2009 and 2010 - he's a, you know, terrorist-loving, granny-euthanizing, Kenyan-born Muslim Marxist - hasn't been particularly effective. The bipartisan kumbaya stuff hasn't worked, either, neither in Congress nor in the country. People may say they want Gandhi, but really they want Rocky.
Now, with a stalled recovery, high unemployment, and a train wreck of an election looming, the ol' fired-up-and-ready-to-go Obama is out on the partisan hustings. It'll be something of a miracle if the president's hammering will persuade enough Americans to prevent Boehner from becoming Speaker. Maybe Sunday's New York Times story, prompted by Obama's Ohio speech and laying bare Boehner's lobbyist ties, is the first dribble of a journalistic gusher; if Americans hear how Boehner was "caught handing out checks from tobacco lobbyists to fellow Republicans on the House floor" enough times, perhaps it'll sink in.
But it's not only a lousy economy that's muting Obama's message. He's also fighting the patented no-win double-bind narrative about negativity that passes for wisdom in Washington.
This is my column from The Jewish Journal of Greater Los Angeles. You can read more of my columns here, and e-mail me there if you'd like.
Follow Marty Kaplan on Twitter: www.twitter.com/martykaplan
Christopher Neff: Why Is John McCain Blocking Military Input on Repeal of Don't Ask, Don't Tell?
Etan Thomas: Stop Using Our Soldiers As Political Propaganda
Jonathan Weiler: Newt Gingrich: Affirmative Action Baby
Boehner May Vote for Some Tax Hikes, but Senate Not Willing to Limit Cuts
Of course the teabaggers are funded by the right-wing. We've always had a right-wing in this country, and they're often very rich. What's different is the breeding ground of today's economic devastation.
Our history books have been written to misinform the public that World War II was caused by the harsh conditions imposed on Germany in 1917, at the end of World War I. But the truth is that World War II was caused by Wall Street stealing from everyone and crashing the world's economy, which created such panic, hysteria, rage, and devastation across the world that everyone wanted to pick up a gun and blow somebody away.
This isn't just another propaganda debate between left and right. We are seeing fascism take hold in the midst of a hysterical and panicked population. So when do the Democrats step up and give us a New Deal, with a serious jobs program? They won't, that's the fact. Which means that we're headed into a dark time in the world.
I'm not going to vote for a DNC party hack over a RINO just because I'm supposed to be afraid of a Tea Partier in another state. Both choices on MY ballot are corrupt tools of the status quo. I'm not going to lend legitimacy to either. I'm voting Green because that's the only way to demonstrate to the Democratic Party that they've moved too far to the (corporate) right.
Blind support doesn't change things. Only consequences do. Till the Democrats lose more votes on the left than they gain on the right and know that fact, they will only sellout harder. I'm only voting for the Democratic wing of the Democratic Party. And you can't scare me with celebrities who aren't on my ballot.
They got the big L written all over them.
Senate Democrats go negative early (and often)
http://voices.washingtonpost.com/thefix/senate/senate-democrats-skip-the-pret.html
The earliness or oftenness of it doesn't matter, it's the content.
Pay NO attention to what people SAY
Pay attention to what they DO.
When...did it ever become popular NOT to legislate? When did it become popular NOT to be smart, and be ridiculed for it? And this Election will prove my point. Where are all the smart people who like to pass laws to help this country going to?
http://www.veoh.com/browse/videos/category/comedy/watch/v20435098G6pGP3KP
So long as the media persist in their current pattern, the Republicans have absolutely no incentive to change their ways. Unless the media is willing to "allow" the bullied to take down the bully, the bullying will continue.
People will say they are tired of the negativity, and they will continue to vote for those who perpetrate the pattern.
And of course, both parties will point the finger at the other and say, "yeah, but THOSE guys, THEY'RE even WORSE."
How proud both parties must be.
.
The dems and WH did not use the bully pulpit ever at all or well.
That is the tragedy of voting for them: we voted, delegated to them our rage anger toward a movement of neocons that have destroyed the country and what do they do? Certainly little they were late (or we are still waiting) and bad at giving us a voice.
The media? LOL, A chicken coop would have better reporting.