Unleashing Hell-ary?

In the Chinese classic The Romance of the Three Kingdoms (part of which was recently adapted into a John Woo-Tony Leung extravaganza), the three warring kingdoms had to deal with a wildcard named Lu Bu, the most formidable warrior in the story. Decked out in pheasant-tailed headdress and perched atop of his powerful steed Red Hare, Lu Bu would take out all comers in battle. He's portrayed as a someone difficult to stir to fight for you, but insanely awesome if and when he fights. Trouble is, unbeatable as he is in battle, he's fatally flawed. At once treacherous and super-ambitious, Lu Bu repeatedly double-crosses his patrons but ends up being an utterly inept strategist when trying to lead his own troops.

Lu Bu came to mind as I read recent accounts of Democrats yearning for HRC to be unleashed against GOP's now not-so-secret weapon: Sarah "Spiro" Palin. I'm part of this crowd, too (and not just because I used to drop all my books and run over and anytime someone yelled "girlfight!" in the schoolyard). I kept thinking just wait, you fucktard, Obama will let his female surrogates fight the dirty fight. If Hillary can be stirred to battle, she'll go to town on this well-rehearsed naif. But you know, the warlords who sought Lu Bu's services all met unhappy ends. And with respect to Hillary, not only is she not the fearsome warrior of the liberal imagination, her strengths are almost completely opposite of Palin's. Palin's a force because she's a very good political performer who's culturally one of them, them being the white, Rust Belt working class vote that may decide the election. Like Bush in 2004, Palin's is a perfect GOP general election candidate -- clearly an inept, dangerous dimwit to anyone who's paying attention and isn't in the tank for the right-wing (those of whom are now tarred as "elites"), but a skilled performer who not only electrifies the fact-avoiding GOP base and can also prey on low-information whites by playing up cultural identification markers.

Hillary's a political force in this election not because she connects to working class voters on some root level, but because she has credibility on economic issues facing these people. So while we think Hillary will just go out there and eviscerate Palin, it's really up to her to do it. In fact, Hillary isn't some wildcard warrior, but someone whose skills fit well within Obama's strategy, which is now to re-run 1992, hammer away at economic issues no matter how loud the GOP beats their culture war drums. As much as I would like to see someone besides Andrew Sullivan and the liberal blogosphere unload on Palin, I do remember 1992 very well. Back then, the inexperienced hippie beat the respected war hero.

I'd still call McCain/Palin's plans not just "more of the same" but also "dangerous" or "extremist." And yes, Sarah Palin is new Bush, the bete noire for Democratic partisans. It would be wise to have surrogates define Palin as someone out-of-the-mainstream as early as possible, a book-banning, managerially inept radical rightist. Keep her lies, scandals and hypocrisy in the media, but as a secondary storyline. In general, it might be wise to keep the eye on the ball and not get drawn into the petty newscycle battles that the McCain team wants to play on. I hate this phrase, but yes, it's the economy, stupid.

The Kool-Aid Drinkers keep saying trust the plan. And I guess I should.

looney tunes

What was the saying about a little man in need of a balcony? Rudy Giuliani, a sniveling would-be generalissimo, brings to mind that quote. What a wretched little critter.

Prior to RNC, this election has been rather painful to sit through, for someone of my sensibilities anyway. Obama is a deft counterpuncher, but he doesn't have a zest for blood and guts, still a source of immense personal frustration. Likewise, it's a bit discomfiting watching John McCain prostrate himself before the wingnut base. McCain's the true Shakespearean (or Lucasian) character this election cycle, a formerly noble man who sold his soul to the miscreants and degenerates populating what's left of the GOP base, the same folks who tormented him and took away what was his. As hungry as I've been for a piece of McCain's flesh these days, it's a little sad to see a politician I once admired live out the Anakin Skywalker story in real time.

Seeing the likes of Mittens and Noun-Verb-9/11 on stage, it's easy to imagine a far more entertaining election cycle. More blood! More explosions! Suppose Hillary went up against Rudy. Wouldn't it be just delightful to see HRC shred that loathsome cretin into mincemeat while Clintonites feed the media wolves the latest oppo research. Or if gasbag Biden went nuclear against Mittens, phony blow-dried politician extraordinaire. Alas.

After tonight, my blood is boiling again. Sarah Palin is obviously an engaging performer and cleared the 4-inch high bar the media set for her. It helps that, like all successful Republicans, she's a fabulously convincing liar. (When there's a photo of you holding up a "nowhere" t-shirt, I think it's time to cut your losses on the lies about opposing the "bridge to nowhere.") But the effusive praise is a bit daft. Is the media overcompensating? This is another instance of a tactically sound McCain move that will lead to no long-term gain. The big miscalculation is the biting, sarcastic tone. Rudy already delivered the red meat to the right-wing lunatics. What Palin needed to do was to cut an image of competence while telling her winning story. Instead, she came off as defensive and smug, throwing bon mots to the whiny ass titty babies in the audience (oh noes! another media hobgoblin will eat us! Oh noes!), and mocking "community organizers" in trying to rekindle the culture wars. This plays well with dittoheads, but with independents and suburban women (typically more focused on pocketbook issues than other voters)? (EDIT: early word is NO!)

Palin would have been a much more effective running mate had she presented a positive story initially. It would've been difficult for the Democrats to hit her hard, and she'd probably come off better to independents. She can clearly turn on the charm. Surely the base needs to get stoked, but Palin's gonna be an issue from now til November 4th. And the more hay the news media makes about Palin (and McCain's judgment and age), the less oxygen for negative Obama stories. Doubling down on the base-feeding is likely a mistake, even if McCain moves hard to the center tomorrow. (Nate Silver makes a very smart case about how an unknown like Palin has very little standing to attack a known quantity like Obama in the manner she did. I'd further add that Palin's attacks largely consisted of sneering allusions to campaign gaffes and memes that made sense mainly to those who've followed it closely, but probably lost on casual election-watchers.) Palin's swallowed the entire newsworld whole this week, and will likely to be a very visible story until election time, as the media hounds continue to sniff around Alaska, looking to break the big scandal. If the idea was to send Palin to the Dick Cheney circuit (interviews with media loyalists only, fundraisers, small rallies with true believers in deep red areas), that's not a reality now. Palin is as much a part of the GOP ticket as McCain -- and that bodes ill in the final calculus.

Truly, Palin reminds me no one so much as a female Dubya, a smug, dumb wingnut who is very adept at pushing Christianist identity buttons. A talent no doubt, but still an eminently definable enemy. And this culture war thing inflames both sides. You can bet Obama raised some serious dough tonight -- I chipped in another Benjy. All the money will be well worth it when they show shots of these fucks on the convention floor ("drill now! burn the Constitution! smart people suck!") weeping in their diapers on November 5th.

Can't say I'm terribly worried as of yet, though it wouldn't kill me if this National Enquirer story pans out.

Palin Rocks the Mad House

Whatever else you can say about McCain's vetting process, you have to figure that Sarah Palin was picked for her personal story and political skills. And surely, all the mini-scandals aside, Palin will knock this speech out of the park, no doubt drawing from the insane energy generated by a bunch of identity-obsessed "movement" wingers. I'll eat my $700 shoes if Palin isn't charming, personable, and confident in her acceptance speech.

The press has set her up to succeed wildly today. In the weeks hereafter? Not so much.

Note to Democrats: Use the word "extremist" frequently in describing Palin. This word is quite effective.

Palin and the Tire Gauge

At a townhall, a voter asked Obama what the average American can do personally to conserve energy. In response, Obama suggested that inflating your tires as a way improving gas efficiency. Seizing on this advice, the McCain campaign decided to create and pass out "Obama tire gauge" to reporters. Get it? Me neither. But you can just envision these Maxim-reading little cretins sitting in McCain headquarters giving each high fives as they come up with the latest taunt. This tire gauge prank is emblematic of a myopic campaign that is defined by its insistence on winning hourly news cycles by any means necessary. Many of these efforts, like this one or the mockery of yesterday's DNC backdrop, involve idiotic frat boy antics that elicit giggles from right-wing mouthbreathers but end up only as fodder for the Colbert Report. Others, like those Hillary Clinton attacking Barack ads, are tactically savvy for a day or two, but serve little more than to fill up cable news dead time.

This sort of Animal House as political campaign is probably the only aspect of McCain's operation that's close in spirit to McCain's appealing 2000 run (there's a wonderful essay by David Foster Wallace in Consider the Lobster that captures the freewheeling, insurgent vibe of the Straight Talk Express; read it and weep at what's become of Mr. Maverick). And this impulsiveness speaks to McCain himself, a man of many virtues but whose disqualifying personal flaw is that he makes decisions on the fly, often as a gut reaction to a provocation.

The choice of Sarah Palin, it seems, is another product of McCain's impulsive, reactive decision-making and the thinking of a campaign that's effective in staying afloat primarily by being good at feeding the news media. McCain surely punk'd Obama for a news cycle or two, and he'll succeed in generating some excitement leading up to next week. But for what?

Thinking about it some more, this pick will almost certainly be a bad one. On August 25, 2008, when Wolf Blitzer went PUMA-hunting and the Democrats took turns mocking McCain's seven houses, this pick would win you a few newscycles. You can see McCain gather up his little advisors that day, wondering how he can poach the Hillaristas and get him some regular guy cred. Hey, how about that Palin? Regular gal. And the wingers like her. How about it?

But have they given thought to this? What's Palin's attack line on the campaign trail? What's McCain gonna say about Obama's readiness, when he can now respond, "you picked a woman a heartbeat away from the presidency, who's never visited Iraq, whose web page on foreign policy was blank space." It gives Obama an easy defense while highlighting Obama's seriousness of purpose in tapping Biden. Then there's the problem of making McCain's age fair game: "On his 72nd birthday, McCain decided that someone two years removed from being a small town mayor will be a heartbeat away from the presidency." What's more, don't they see the huge risk in trotting this neophyte out on the campaign trail in perhaps the most intensely watched and scrutinized campaign ever? And the whole thing looks desperate, especially to Hillaristas fixated on "qualifications." I've seen Hillary dead-enders, and ovaries aside, I just don't see them getting psyched about a beauty pageant winner.

There are the long-term benefits of grooming a GOP future star as McCain's not likely to win. But I'm not sure that's what McCain's really thinking about.

A Cornered Animal

McCain's VP choice is who? Democratic political obsessives have always feared a female "gamechanging" pick, and Palin always seemed one of the more logical choices. She's a pro-life governor who talks energy policy. But she was a mayor of a small town just two years ago. She doesn't even have much in the way of surrogate experience, unlike a guy like Tim Pawlenty, who at least can be counted on to spew some right-wing talking points in an amiable manner. Palin may pay off big -- peeling off disgruntled HRC supporters -- but she's a big gamble.

When Obama tapped Joe Biden, it indicated that the campaign knows he has some weaknesses that needed to be shorn up, but fundamentally he likes where he's at. If Obama were running scared he would've picked HRC, whom he didn't want, but whose addition would almost guarantee a win.

By contrast, the Palin pick indicates that McCain's campaign believes they're down by a couple of touchdowns, and has figured that their tactical games aren't going to do it for him. With Obama showing last night that he's gonna blitz'em good, McCain's forced to go for a flea-flicker, a big, gimmicky play with high risk and high reward. I think it's a smart move, even if it takes the experience argument completely off the table. The experience angle wasn't going to fly once people see, at the debates, that Obama knows his shit.

Though Palin has winger credentials, she may bolster McCain's tattered maverick image. She's also a pick who will leave no opening for a Bush association. If the key demographic battleground is white middle-income women, McCain's just made a daring play for them.

Pretty savvy, but R.I.P. "Ready to Lead on Day One."

Addendum: After more research, I see the angle. The story that she didn't abort her Down's Syndrome baby will energize Pro-Lifers. That's key. And her presence will soften McCain's "get off my lawn!" image. It also indicates that McCain's entire platform will be Drill, Drill, Drill.

It seems to me the move is smart in the extreme long-term in that, like a Bobby Jindal pick, Palin's new visibility may be the first step in reinventing the GOP not as the party of Angry Old White Guys, but as the party of socially conservative yet competent managers from all backgrounds, the sort of party envisioned by Ross Douthat and Reihan Salam in Grand New Party. McCain and Palin need to distance themselves from the Club for Growth crowd to really start moving their fossilized party in a new direction, but image-wise, this is a good start.

In the extreme short term, this is also smart. Obviously, this "shocking pick" has undercut the Obama DNC speech hype. But McCain also changes the RNC narrative. If it were a more conventional pick like Pawlenty, the story will be "how can McCain distance himself from the unpopular Republican Party?* Now in the days leading up to the convention, the media narrative will be: "who is Sarah Palin, and will she be able to step up and deliver?" The media will set the bar very low for her. All she has to do is not flub a pedestrian, unoffensive speech, and the media will give her a pass.

But what about the medium-term? Here, I think the McCain team is tactically smart, but strategically questionable. You have a Veep whose notable inexperience will call attention not only to the hypocrisy of McCain's "Ready to Lead" argument, but also to his age and health. Second, the more I read about Palin, the more I see the dangers of likely Quayle moments. In this gaffe-attentive environment, a few slip ups will look extremely damaging. In terms of helping McCain win the election, it's hard to see Palin really end up doing much to help. But then, it's hard to see anyone else really helping that ticket short of Colin Powell.

* Speaking of the RNC, I hope the Obama team spins the media to get them to try to hunt down GOP extremists on the convention floor as diligently as they tried to hunt down HRC dead-enders. There are bound to be some serious haters there; they just need a little nudge.