The Lost McCain Campaign
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A lesson lost on many Americans is the idea that democracy is a practice rather than a culture. The greatest contributors to American thought, from Jefferson to Tocqueville, from Lincoln to John Dewey, all very well understood this obvious fact. And American exceptionalism, if it ever did exist, certainly today is not defined by our electoral institutions. Almost every nation in the world holds elections of some sort. Some of these are completely fraudulent, others somewhat questionable, but those considered most legitimate usually are found in nations with a long-standing culture of democratic values.
A central core component of a democratic culture is a deliberative process that allows citizens to gather and listen to many competing ideas. If the different sides do not respect the others, trust breaks down, and the entire process is washed away. No institutional arrangement could possibly mitigate this breakdown, although the founders strongly believed that their federal system would work best to mitigate the factious nature of the general public.
Ultimately though, it is our responsibility as citizens to maintain our value system and work with each other in a respectful way to further the interest of our nation. With great horror and serious concern we have witnessed the spiraling demise of the McCain campaign, which has not only lost its momentum, but seems unable to even control its own message at this point. How unfortunate is it for a leader who draws boos from his own supporters as he implores them to temper their hatred of the opposing candidate? How sad is it to hear, one after another, McCain supporters insist that Barack Obama is some sort of Manchurian candidate, a one man terror cell, an Arab, a commie, or anything else that might ring the alarm bells of an American public already in a panic about an uncertain economy, and an imperiled future (visit Youtube clip "McCain Palin Mob"). For the good of the country, such exploitation of our uncertain times must be stopped.
Both Obama and McCain are stand up characters. Obama is a self-made American success story. He grew up without any of the privileges of being middle-class. He worked his way through Harvard Law School, earned his way to the top of the class, and dedicated himself to extending the American dream to many others. Now, Obama stands able to bring into the mainstream the many who have felt alienated from politics as usual. Rather than pander to their fears and hatreds, Obama has brought people back into the culture of democracy, rather than a culture of hopelessness. Feel free to disagree with the policies he supports, but to judge whether his heart is in the right place is flat out wrong. It is certainly unpatriotic, if that word can even be employed anymore without the enormous baggage it now carries.
Great leaders bring people together. Never in recent memory have we needed leadership to bring us all within handshaking distance of each other. Yet with the barrage of insidious ads and the polarizing pick of Sarah Palin, John McCain appears to have failed this test. I'm surprised, because I always believed McCain had it in him to bring the Republican Party back into the mainstream. But unfortunately the opposite has occurred. Since declaring himself in the running for President, it is McCain who has changed, not his party. Unless Republicans reform themselves, they will face great difficulty winning elective offices in this country. The pro-growth, pro-middle class, pro-moderation faction has clearly been upended in favor of an angry mob mentality. And although I'm not a conservative, I know Sir Edmund Burke would turn in his grave if he heard anyone call these irrational rabble-rousers conservatives.
http://ivoryblogger.blogspot.com/
A central core component of a democratic culture is a deliberative process that allows citizens to gather and listen to many competing ideas. If the different sides do not respect the others, trust breaks down, and the entire process is washed away. No institutional arrangement could possibly mitigate this breakdown, although the founders strongly believed that their federal system would work best to mitigate the factious nature of the general public.
Ultimately though, it is our responsibility as citizens to maintain our value system and work with each other in a respectful way to further the interest of our nation. With great horror and serious concern we have witnessed the spiraling demise of the McCain campaign, which has not only lost its momentum, but seems unable to even control its own message at this point. How unfortunate is it for a leader who draws boos from his own supporters as he implores them to temper their hatred of the opposing candidate? How sad is it to hear, one after another, McCain supporters insist that Barack Obama is some sort of Manchurian candidate, a one man terror cell, an Arab, a commie, or anything else that might ring the alarm bells of an American public already in a panic about an uncertain economy, and an imperiled future (visit Youtube clip "McCain Palin Mob"). For the good of the country, such exploitation of our uncertain times must be stopped.
Both Obama and McCain are stand up characters. Obama is a self-made American success story. He grew up without any of the privileges of being middle-class. He worked his way through Harvard Law School, earned his way to the top of the class, and dedicated himself to extending the American dream to many others. Now, Obama stands able to bring into the mainstream the many who have felt alienated from politics as usual. Rather than pander to their fears and hatreds, Obama has brought people back into the culture of democracy, rather than a culture of hopelessness. Feel free to disagree with the policies he supports, but to judge whether his heart is in the right place is flat out wrong. It is certainly unpatriotic, if that word can even be employed anymore without the enormous baggage it now carries.
Great leaders bring people together. Never in recent memory have we needed leadership to bring us all within handshaking distance of each other. Yet with the barrage of insidious ads and the polarizing pick of Sarah Palin, John McCain appears to have failed this test. I'm surprised, because I always believed McCain had it in him to bring the Republican Party back into the mainstream. But unfortunately the opposite has occurred. Since declaring himself in the running for President, it is McCain who has changed, not his party. Unless Republicans reform themselves, they will face great difficulty winning elective offices in this country. The pro-growth, pro-middle class, pro-moderation faction has clearly been upended in favor of an angry mob mentality. And although I'm not a conservative, I know Sir Edmund Burke would turn in his grave if he heard anyone call these irrational rabble-rousers conservatives.
http://ivoryblogger.blogspot.com/
We should be leary of lumping the kinds of folks who show up to Palin and McCain rallies these days as part of one coherant homogeneous group we label as republicans.
Many commentators assert we are observing the self destruction of the republican party as we have known it. The so called fundamentalist base, the populist joe sixpack "Teddy Roosevelts", NeoCons with smart bomb hammers looking for nails to hit, the beer averse "national review" intellectuals, the libertarian small gubmint ideologues.
Watching the Limbaughs, George Wills, Palin, Bill Kristol, National Review, Comrade Paulsen, and Fox News engage in a circular firing squad is something not seen since the aftermath of Goldwater's disasterous run at the white house in 1964.
The recriminations have only begun. Even if these fissures can somehow be healed, the demographics are forcing change. As early as 2020 or as late as 2042, whites will be in the minority in the US and if the republican party is to win elections it must not only become more ideogically but racially polyglot.
At long last, the republican party will enter the 20th century and confront the complexities of pluralism within a party and governing with increasingly unruly and divided group of elected republican leaders.
Perhaps with the Obama presidency, Democrats will be entering the 21st century of a new kind of politics, which in the end may be the oldest form of politics- where we have faith in one another and work together on common goals regardless of our diffences on other issues.
She even associated with them as late as 2008. Her husband just recently dropped out of that party. What a disgrace for McCain to have picked such a person.
And then there is Troopergate. Palin may very be impeached as Alaskan governor. That's how awful she is.
She has no future unless she is able to demonstrate greater skills than parotting talking points.
My point about divisive tactics is that it seeks to divide the electorate into US vs. Them. That may work when there are a small number of issues and there are clearly defined lines between US and Them. But look what happens when your supporters are no longer monochromatic.
As Palin works up the joe six pack crowd that will quickly accept feeble propositions based on guilt by association and innuendo, she just as quickly alienates the Bill Buckley intellectuals that read the National Review.
Palin at some level understands this. The religious right would go nuts on the economy issue if Palin went after Barney Frank, democratic leader on economic issues in the House. He is openly gay, and she could tie together a neat little package of hate and association with Nancy Pelosi (because she is from San Francisco- wink wink).
From a governance perspective, you shoot yourself in the foot because it makes it harder to achieve concensus on a crisis that everyone agrees hurts all Americans. From a political perspective you loose more voters than you gain because if you tie gay to democrat then what happens is that you are ejecting not just those republicans that are gay, but also alienate those that have gays in their family (eg. Cheney).
So my point is not just that Rove tactics are not just immoral (your point), they become more and more difficult to pull off as your party is forced by demographics to extend its traditional borders.
Rove recognized this technical problem and his response was that all you needed to do in an election was win by one more than half of the electorate. But you can't ask for party unity with the religious right when you run a centrist candidate. While the intellectuals and the centrists can be persuaded to hold their nose and fall in line behind a representative of the fundamentalist wacko faction of the party, the fundamentalist faction is clearly averse to holding their nose. Putting a Jewish centrist on the ticket as McCain wanted was a plausible strategy for evolving republicans beyond the demographic quagmire they are in. But the leadership knew that the whacko "base" would regard the Jewish VP with suspicion, and there would be open muntiny.
The solution was to throw the hate radio/ fundamentalist wackos a bone in the form of Palin- To give her a long leash to rant, then have McCain dissassociate himself when polling showed that independents were being alienated by one of her more excessive tirades.
It worked when Spiro Agnew was talking to a more monochromatic republican party. It will be increasingly difficult to get to 50% as time goes on.