A Pilgrim’s Digression

Yesterday, I had to see my family physician for a persistent head ache that has kept me eating Advil every few hours of the day for about two weeks. My doctor thought I might be grinding my teeth or clinching my jaw at night, since when I wake up in the morning, the whole right side of my face feels as if I have been lifting weights with my teeth. I said I would be surprised if this were the case, because I haven’t felt any particular stress in my life, of late.

Yet afterwards, when I started thinking about it, I realized there has been some stress in my life. This election is wearing me out, man. I find myself thinking about it and worrying about it throughout the day. In the most sado-masochistic gesture of all, I listen to Fox News on XM during my drive back to Washington, D.C., on Monday evenings.

I don’t know whether this is a direct contributor to my headaches and jaw pain–I don’t even know if I am actually clinching or grinding my teeth at night, yet, though the doctor seemed to believe this was probably the case. But I do know I am feeling quite a bit of stress and anxiety over the whole affair.

Last night, as I listened first to Brit Hume, then later, Bill O’Reilly, and then finally Sean Hannity and his weak foil, Alan Colmes, I felt myself overcome with this feeling of despair. The outlook for Barack Obama is bleak. I know, that’s what these commentators want me to think. But look at this realistically: here is a man running for President who, in unprecedented fashion, must simultaneously ward off attacks from both Republicans and Democrats.

In the meantime, his every word comes under the kind of scrutiny that Jesus Christ himself could not withstand. A generalization about people in small towns and their feelings of bitterness over job loss and economic hardship is extrapolated into a belief that the candidate is a certified Marxist. And this inference about the candidate’s Socialist views comes not only from morons like Hannity, or political rivals like Hillary Clinton, but from people within his own party! Joe Lieberman, apparently, thinks it’s important to ask whether Obama is a Marxist or not.

Tell the truth, and you will be labeled a Marxist.

On the one hand, Hillary Clinton’s hypocritical opportunism can be somewhat excused. She hopes to irreparably break Obama, in the eyes of voters, so that she can assume her rightful place as the party’s nominee. I guarantee you she holds the same “elitist” beliefs as Obama, in regards to trade, religion, guns, and economic issues.

What is most annoying is the dangerous vacuity of the media, which assumes good faith of everyone in the accusatory role and unforgivable error on the part of the candidate himself. On Hannity and Colmes last night, I was treated to Karl Rove pompously pontificating, not about whether Obama was correct or not in what he said, but how insulting his comments were to the voters about whom he was speaking.

In fact, Colmes even asked Rove whether or not there might be someone in these small towns who is, in fact, bitter about job loss and a government which seems unresponsive to local needs. Rove’s haughty response was that Obama was not speaking about “some” people in small town America; he was tarring everyone with the same brush. How dare he make a generalization!

So let’s dissect this a minute. In terms of making a generalization, which is Obama’s chief fault (as I see it) in what he said, it’s unforgivable to generalize that blue collar workers are bitter due to job loss, but it’s OK for Republicans to generalize that those same people are all salt-of-the-earth Americans who love the “tradition” of hunting and feel no animus whatsoever towards government for outsourcing their factory jobs to Canada or Mexico via NAFTA.

Both are generalizations, but one is honest (but in-artful) and one is boneheaded (but makes people feel good). The implication seems to be that in politics, you’d better not tell people how you really feel, you better not try to be honest with people about your beliefs in regards to their economic situation. Honesty doesn’t pay. Pander, pander, and pander some more.

It’s like how on the Sean Hannity show, everyone who calls in has to tell the host “you’re a great American” and he responds, “You’re a great American.” We’re all great Americans, and we all feel damned good about it. No bitterness here, except towards the Marxists like Obama who want to tax us more.

I am no longer sure that, even if he gets the nomination, Obama can win this election in November. It all depends on whether he can overcome the media and the Republican’s attempts to define him That’s really what an election comes down to anymore, sad to say: branding. Same as on Madison Avenue. If Republicans can brand a candidate as elitist, liberal, and condescending, he or she might as well hang it up.

It’s sad to say, but there is an element of school yard culture in our political system. In elementary school, early on kids are “branded” in certain ways that stick with them throughout their school career. And once branded, it can be difficult to change the image other people have of a child. One might be branded the teacher’s pet; another might be branded a nerd; another might be branded as popular and athletic; and still another might be branded as an outcast, ripe for bullying.

Politics is the same way, though as an adult, a candidate for office has the ability to fight against his branding. It’s a tough fight, though, when even one’s education–supposedly a net plus in American society–becomes subject to ridicule. Has anyone else noticed how often Obama’s “Harvard education” is mentioned by his Republican critics? Yet you will never hear them say that he only recently finished paying back his student loans! No, the point is that, unlike millions of Americans, Obama has an Ivy League education (probably obtained via Affirmative Action while some white kid from Kansas was forced to go to the State University).

What I find damning about our politics is that the branding really only goes from right to left. Republicans are like the popular clique in school, able to tag a person with a nickname and keep them ostracized from political power for life. Democrats don’t do very well when they attempt the same thing. Attempts to brand George Bush as a fool backfired and in fact, played into Republican hands because such attacks made his rivals look petty and elitist. However, that picture of Dukakis on a tank, or John Kerry windsurfing, to take a more recent example, was political death.

So far, Obama has had no moment as portentously calamitous as the photo of John Kerry in a bio-hazard suit, looking like a sperm as he crawled through a birth canal-like tube at NASA. You can bet Republicans are looking for that photo, though. The sad thing is, the Clintons might discover it first, and I have no doubt they would not hesitate to use such a tool to destroy Obama.

Interesting how in our modern culture, it is always the visual and/or aural artifact that brings down the candidate, reinforcing my point that winning an election is about branding and image, rather than substance. The one good thing about the whole “bitter” controversy is that there is no good quality recording of what Obama said, and without a recording to play over and over and over (”Let’s listen to his comments one more time,” Hannity says, as he rolls tape yet again), it’s more difficult to stoke the heat necessary for the branding iron to become red hot.

Thus, to the extent that Obama can control his image, he can succeed. I see the image campaign spinning beyond his control, though. What candidate can, quite literally in Obama’s case, keep all the “crazy uncles” in the basement, in an age where every cell phone with a recording device is a potential “key” to let him out?

However, Democrats should also be worrying that as they fight amongst themselves, McCain is free to create his own brand, as he did a couple weeks ago during his “biography tour” of all the military towns where he raised hell as a young military officer.

Republicans are good at this kind of relational politicking, in which the candidate makes himself seem right at home amongst ordinary working-class folks (never mind that John McCain is a multi-millionaire and reportedly owns eight homes). For some reason, Democrats still haven’t got the hang of avoiding the twin tiger traps of accusations of elitism and lack of sufficient patriotism.