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The week before the election, the Obama campaign ran a television commercial attacking the Republican candidate for vice president. To my knowledge, this had never been done before. ~Jack Kelly
It’s probably not a good way to start a column endorsing Palin as a future presidential candidate by making a claim that shows that you don’t know something that is central to your first claim.
In fact, since the dawn of televised campaign commercials, at least two campaigns have directly attacked the VP nominee or sought to use the VP candidate against the top of the ticket. Stevenson’s ‘56 campaign ran a spot that asked whether you were “nervous about President Nixon” and put up a single word across the screen: “Nixon?” Scary stuff. Presumably, the audience was supposed to be very afraid of the possibility that Nixon might have to succeed Eisenhower (whose health was a minor issue in ‘56). Like all of Stevenson’s other abysmal ads in both of his campaigns, this was a failure. As you would expect, there was also an anti-Quayle ad that laid it on thick. There may have been others, but they don’t leap to mind.
The key difference between this year’s ad criticizing the Palin choice and the others was that the Obama ad avoided the question of whether she was ready to be President. The Stevenson and Dukakis ads were intended to stoke fear and anxiety, and they were the products of losing, trailing campaigns. The Obama ad on Palin was much milder and came out very late in the campaign when Obama’s victory seemed assured. The Obama campaign set the bar much lower, and so delivered a more effective blow, by simply mocking McCain for having said that he needed someone with expertise in economic policy and then having chosen Palin. Perhaps because McCain’s age was already part of the debate, they did not need to remind anyone that there was an unusually good chance that McCain’s VP might have to serve as President. The campaign did not need to drive home the obvious that Palin was not exactly bursting with economic policy understanding, because anyone who had been following the election for the two months before that already knew this.
What Kelly missed, among other things, was that the Obama ad against Palin was aimed mainly at McCain’s judgement. Most Palin critics, myself included, started from the assumption that the Palin selection mattered because of what it told us about McCain, and what it told us was not flattering. The criticism of her misrepresentations of her record and her flubs on policy was as severe or pointed because there was an unusually good chance that she might have to become President if McCain were elected. Another round of criticism was directed against the slightly obsessive, blind devotion of an unqualified candidate for high office, because it seemed as if most conservatives had learned nothing from the Bush experience and were not interested in learning in more ways than one. Under normal circumstances, the VP selection might not have mattered at all, but it was because of what McCain purported to represent and because of his age and health that it took on more significance than most of these selections ever do.
Filed under: politics
I’m pretty sure the Humphrey campaign released an ad that was something like the phrase “Vice President Spiro Agnew” in bold letters on the screen and somebody beginning to laugh, laughing harder, and eventually breaking down and laughing hysterically.
Can’t recall which stage of the campaign it was released in, but if it was during that last week when Humphrey closed a big gap and nearly overtook Nixon, it would be thematically and tactically similar to Obama’s anti-Palin ad.
Dan, here it is:
http://www.livingroomcandidate.org/commercials/1968/Laughter
The guy laughs and laughs before breaking down into a nasty cough.
That’s right. I remember seeing that now. Thanks for tracking it down.
Not that the suspense was killing anyone, but David Frum apparently has joined the Exodus from National Review.I guess the flack he caught for questioning the Palin thing was just too much. At this rate the Corner is going to start resembling a couple of crazy drunks huddled at the end of the bar mumbling about mind control and floridized water.
Has he? Not that it matters, but I haven’t seen any mention of this.
“At National Review, a Threat to Its Reputation for Erudition ”
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/17/business/media/17review.html?partner=permalink&exprod=permalink
Politics aside, this attitude might have something to do with National Review’s decline:
“We’ve always had rigorous internal debates,†[Rich Lowry] said. “But the advent of the blogosphere and e-mail and the rest of it have made it easier to blast out their impassioned instant reactions.
“It’s discomfiting, but it’s the world we live in, unless someone — Al Gore? — can uninvent the Internet.â€
I agree completely that email and blogs have made it more difficult to participate in political debate while remaining civil and thoughtful. But Rich Lowry’s job isn’t to police the internet and global email traffic, or to referee the entirety of America’s public discourse. He’s the editor of a magazine–it’s part of his job to control his employees and prevent them from tarnishing the publication’s image.
There are plenty of things he could do to make National Review’s web presence less of a joke, if he felt like taking any responsibility. But I suppose it’s easier to take a Rumsfeldian approach and just throw out platitudes about the vagaries of human existence and the impossibility of controlling anything. Stuff happens, and editing a magazine is untidy.
Presumably he could counter that policing The Corner and the rest of NR’s web presence would stifle the kind of vigorous public debate that makes for a healthy democracy and an interesting publication. But less structure and lower standards are bad, not good, for public debate. Anyone looking for evidence of that proposition can just surf over to corner.nationalreview.com.
What was it Leo Strauss said; empirical truth interferes with maintaining order, I think. Basically we can’t fool them into following us if they have access to the truth. Uninventing the internet would help the rights cause I would think.
It has become Redstate with better pedigree.
“At National Review, a Threat to Its Reputation for Erudition â€
A threat to the reputation, but only in the minds of those who are still crazy enough to believe in it.
@jetan -
Fluoridated water. “Floridized” water would, I guess, be water that in some fashion resembles Florida (warm and balmy but laden with sediment?).
Is fluoridation still a live issue in the wider far right? When I was a kid (late Sixties), my best friend’s father (who would be in his eighties now) was a Bircher and once did go off on a fluoridation rant, but other than that I only hear of it in my biannual Dr. Strangelove watching.
Quick check of La Wik shows people still arguing about it – I guess I’m out of touch on that topic too.
bayesian
Yeah, sorry for the spelling, I was channeling General Ripper from Dr. Strangelove instead of checking my toothpaste tube. Like you, I assumed that it was an issue from the ancient days, like when Elvis was supposed to be a communist tool (somewhere I have a copy of “Rhythm, Riots And Revolution”).
What was it Leo Strauss said; empirical truth interferes with maintaining order, I think. Basically we can’t fool them into following us if they have access to the truth. Uninventing the internet would help the rights cause I would think.
It makes sense that the internet would allow for facts and dissenting opinions to be distributed more widely and to some extent that’s been the case. But even in the internet age dissenting views and inconvenient facts are marginalized. If they were suppressed or ignored before now they’re exposed to such ferocious ridicule that people assume they must be ridiculous.
If you look at the major political decisions made in the age of the internet (going to war in Iraq, this fall’s bailout, etc.) it’s hard to argue that it’s now harder to justify bad policy with lies and distortions. I suppose one could argue that the decline of National Review’s reputation, and the resulting (one hopes) decline of its ability to excommunicate “heretical” conservatives, is a consequence of the internet age. But I’d blame Lowry’s unwillingness or inability to manage the magazine, rather than the internet per se, for the embarrassing garbage that routinely clogs up that website.
‘If they were suppressed or ignored before now they’re exposed to such ferocious ridicule that people assume they must be ridiculous.’
Then you use the internet combat bad assumptions.
Then you use the internet combat bad assumptions.
I agree that that’s what one should try to do, and it’s certainly possible to do it successfully, I just don’t agree that it’s easier to “combat bad assumptions” in the age of the internet than it was before the late 1990s. I hope I’m wrong, though.