Obama/McCain: Kennedy/Nixon or Eisenhower/Stevenson?

Perhaps because it is through telling stories that I pay my rent, but I think that humans reason via analogy and storytelling. We attempt to get a handle on the present and predict the future through comparisons to stories of the past. If someone is trying to sell us some new music they do so by analogy. Check out Amy Winehouse, they tell us. She sounds like the unisexual mating of Dinah Washington and Janis Joplin.

Presidential elections function the exact same way. With the two nominees all but certain we're now in a race to shape the story. The McCain side will draw him as the reincarnation of Ike, Montgomery and Julius Caesar, the noble philosopher/warrior who has put down his armor to come lead his people. They are already busily trying to paint Obama as Adlai Stevenson, an out-of-touch egghead, a well-intentioned but nutty professor.

The Obama side has explicitly been borrowing the JFK and RFK signifiers from the very beginning: the no tie, the youth, the embodiment of a new day.

What the Obama camp needs to do now is turn McCain into JFK's Nixon, the personification of antired old order that has run its course.

The elements are all there and more to paint a compelling and devastating picture of the Senator from Arizona.

As Arianna and others have pointed out he was long-considered the most-likable and most-open-minded of Republicans, but to become the Republican nominee his compromises have been Shakespearean in their enormity. "Shakespearean," is the operating adjective here. The story of John McCain is a tragedy of compromise writ large. The maverick once embodied all that we had hoped for in a reformist politician and to see him now neutered by the extreme right with their death grip on the Republican political machinery is heartbreaking. It needs to be pointed out again and again and again that this once proud warrior is running on a platform that he himself doesn't agree with; many portions of which he himself has voted against. Twice.

Obama needs to get us to weep for McCain as a hero who wasn't felled by our enemies but by the grinding corruption of Washington insider politics. Senator Obama needs to hold him up as the prime example of why he is running for President. To fix a system that has turned one of our brightest hopes into a defeated shell of his former self.

Obama should tell the nation that the problem isn't that seventy-year-old John McCain has been around too long -- he's just been in Washington too long.

Trey Ellis is the author of "Bedtime Stories: Adventures in the Land of Single-Fatherhood."

Comments

[LewisR]

Clearly, this is not the new politics that Obama has held mantle upon. Why not tell any number of stories of regular people suffering today followed by some actual substance that Obama will push to help folks out? He can do that; it is in reach.

Just because it's not actually Obama doing this old-skool, weak-ass politics, doesn't mean it's the right thing to do. Surrogates actions do reflect on Obama and this is not a good one. And he can win without it. Well, if he can't, he doesn't deserve to win.

[jkpcguru]

Hey... That was my idea. I watched the JFK/Nixon debate on History Channel OnDemand yesterday and It was amazing to how similar in rehtorical abilities JFk & Obama have and Nixon & McCain has. I think this will be a perfect strategy.

For anyone who wants to see the debate
Comcast Digital Cable- On Demand- Under the Election 08 button.

[wmfor]

Excellent! "Obama lacks experience," they keep crying, "He hasn't been in the Senate long enought" Turn that right around to "he hasn't been in the Senate long enough to let the evils of Washington politics get a grip on his soul." Hell, even McCain called Washington "Sin City" (talking to Rev. Hagee's Rapture for Israel group, of course.)

[sf94127]

Clearly, you have consumed the Obama koolaid in mass quantities.
With Obama you either drink the koolaid and if you don't you don't like him at all.
He has a big cult following; large enough to get him to this point but not anywhere near large enough to take it home in November.

[oafishcad]

People constantly underestimate the GOP. They got GWBush elected!!!! Twice!!!!! Over much more qualified candidates. If the GOP and their Media cohorts control the dialogue of the election, Obama will lose. Senator Obama needs to take control and prove his worth. He doesn't need to be like JFK or RFK, He needs to convince the voters he has the answers to the problems we face today, an economy in the toilet, our reputation in the toilet, borrow and spend collapse of the national budget, no alternate energy programs, etc. all caused in large part by GOP policies that McCain still supports.

[MyNameIsJames]

Amen. I keep trying to warn arrogant Democrats that the American public is not as enlightened as they pretend to be.... Obama is going to have to engage in straight talk and deal head on with the issues of:

1) His patriotism
2) His racial affiliations

If he cannot do this he will not break through to a real conversation with the American people. Unlike other candidates, His mixed racial heritage- freaks out a lot of Americans. For many its like the sky is falling down. Obama has to look many of these people in the eye and convince them that he is not DANGEROUS.

[nycdave]

I like that line "McCain hasn't been around too long -- he's been IN WASHINGTON too long."

[burnt]

"What the Obama camp needs to do now is turn McCain into JFK's Nixon, the personification of an tired old order that has run its course."

I believe he's doing a great job of that himself. Like the Clintons' obsessive "need" to stomp on certain victory, McCain seems to have his personal failometer frozen solidly on *self-destruct*. The only real question is "How far will that certain failure carry into Republican base desertion and Congressional race losses?"

[SamanthaJaneSalem]

"Obama should tell the nation that the problem isn't that seventy-year-old John McCain has been around too long -- he's just been in Washington too long."

The problem is, McCain is perceived as a maverick rather than a Washington insider. And his record has backed that up from time to time.

I believe Obama should present himself as the candidate McCain could have been. The "Whatever Happened To The Real McCain?" candidate. In 2000 McCain offered straight talk and common sense solutions-- and that's what Americans want. Campaign finance reform and clean campaigning. Obama is what people had hoped McCain, Giuliani, Powell and Perot to be-- a post-partisan solutions-oriented leader.

The sad thing for McCain is he is running as the generic Republican candidate instead of the type of candidate who became so popular among independents in 2000. Otherwise, he would pose a (more) serious threat to Obama. As it is, Obama can ask why McCain now supports the tax cuts for the wealthy he once opposed and has changed his stances on torture and immigration.

McCain has become the flip-flopper, out of touch with America. And Obama is the straight talker with practical, centrist solutions.

[wmfor]

But the old McCain lost. And GWB won. And that widely distributed picture that is on the cover of Cliff Schechter's book is really heartbreaking in a way, with little McCain hugging GHWB's idiot son like he is the child and George is his Daddy.

Sold his soul. Sold his soul.

[ghop]

Great post. I have been saddened to see McCain cave into pressure from the most extreme elements of his party. The irony is that many of the right wing opinion shapers still hate him for his perceived weakness on immigration and global warming. They want him to be a carbon copy of W, and everything he does to appease them puts him at a disadvantage in the GE. But if he doesn't appease them, they might not show up in November. I think this is going to be a long, hard campaign for McCain.

[oafishcad]

I too admired McCain way back when. He himself convinced me I was wrong by kissing Bush and helping him grease America up for the royal screwing we've had for 7 years. He has earned my undying disrespect.