We thought to do one of those halftime recap shows. You know, sponsored by a former Dow Jones Industrial stalwart now selling around a buck ten. The circus atmosphere seems thicker than ever.
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Did we miss anything?
The Imperial City And The World
We thought to do one of those halftime recap shows. You know, sponsored by a former Dow Jones Industrial stalwart now selling around a buck ten. The circus atmosphere seems thicker than ever.
____________
Did we miss anything?
More to come apres l’accident de voiture . . . well, if Alessandra Stanley says it, it must be so. But Stanley is this once much more perceptive than the tiresome Joan Walsh. Walsh, Olbermann and the Maddows of the world don’t seem to realize that it is no longer 2003-4. Being an Oppositionist is no longer a furtive, brave thing. No one beyond the 30% dead enders doubts the essential critique. Especially today.
Perversely, the more shrill Olbermann, Walsh or in the tank Tweety, MSNBC et al. are for Obama, the more it actually galvanizes the (until St. Paul moribund) Republican base. And one does wonder what will become of all of the above under a Boy King reign. What will they really do? Their self identity the past eight years (understandably) is one of beleaguered outrage. (or in Tweety’s case, shamelessly tacking with the wind, so let’s drop him as an outlier). What new phantoms will they need to shadow box? To retain the cognitive focus and emotional engine that sustains them. Will they belatedly discover the Boy King campaigned as all things to all people?
In Japan, they defined Imperial Rule under different ages for a given Emperor since the Meiji Restoration. Hirohito’s tumultous reign is the Showa period. The new Heisei era began in 1989 when his son Akihito took the throne. We seemingly are on the edge of our own new era: nobika na funari (serene inexperience).
One good sign. The Godzilla and Gamera movies improved noticeably in the Heisei era. So there’s always some hope here.
Open thread . . .
Thoreau over at Unqualified Offerings muses that Glenn Greenwald (to use Jon Stewart voice) . . . “Nailed It !” Yorkshire Ranter sets forth a pithy analysis of the British nationalization of Bradford & Bingley — and why U.S. analogies do not hold.
All in all, we come out where Jim Hanley does at Positive Liberty. As he says, we’re kind of glad this happened — for all the reasons he lays out. (And thanks also to the folks there for the kind words about Speed Racer – isms). We also share the skepticism voiced in the comments about House Republicans. They indeed are incapable of anything but short term tactical political ploys, saying ‘no’ or regurgitating Rightist fantasies with ideological kool aid recipes. (As a VRWC veteran, believe it, we know the cant all by heart).
Spengler over at Asia Times argues persuasively that new measures that fail to address how important leverage is to the average American household, let alone industry, will be a misfire. He ends on a somewhat sanguine note:
Sadly, the Asian public and private sector will continue to pour money into the United States because their home markets are not deep or secure enough to provide an alternative. America will have an extended grace period to put its house in order before the rest of the world finds alternatives to its capital markets.
(Emphasis, er, emphatically ours).
At moments — that is how the talking head circles preface comments on Palin’s sit down with Gibson. At moments she was on her game, upbeat, on point. Even repeating her theme song on the ‘bridge to nowhere’.
Other moments? We are told she stumbled. Why, she could not even name the new President of Pakistan the so-called Bush Doctrine. Although, as our friend Anon noted under the earlier Brooks post, oddly most foreign policy professionals themselves all give different descriptions. (Even Krauthammer can be right by sheer accident).
One Palin interview does not a political phenomenon neutralize. Yet is it really about her? Or is Palin herself a surrogate for internal Democrat deflation. When they know this one should be an Adelman-esque ‘cake walk’. Even E.J. Dionne realizes that something else is at work:
Nonetheless, it’s clear that Obama has lost control of this campaign. And he will not seize back the initiative with the sometimes halting, conversational and sadly reluctant sound bites he has been producing. The excitement Obama created at the beginning of the year has vanished, perhaps because his campaign (and, yes, many columnists) bought into the McCain campaign’s demonization of the big rallies. Absurdly, McCain is now contesting the terrain of change — and doing so at celebrity rallies of his own.
This moment eerily resembles the situation in 1988 when George H.W. Bush used his convention to define the campaign and never again ceded the agenda to Democrat Michael Dukakis.
No argument here that the Boy King needs to get his smackdown going. We’ve said as much.
Doing it smart is another matter. The new McCain age commercials (although updated from the primaries) *at this time* exude more than a whiff of desperation and panic.
To create a new equilibrium, the Boy King needs fresh compelling visuals of his own to re-charge his narrative. We’re still with Mike Deaver when he was Reagan’s image czar.
He told an exasperated Leslie Stahl back in the day (paraphrasing) – “Leslie, no one is going to care about your vocal/reporting voiceovers [criticizing Reagan]. We want and you give us the visuals. That’s all that matters.” So, too, with Palin. Troops to Iraq to fight those who attacked us? Ultra Neocon on Georgia? Details lost in the white noise.
Her visual narrative (beyond the personal phenotype) are intimate, relatable and simply overwhelm the Boy King’s mass adulatory persona. It is the perfect corrisve acid — for the moment. Small town in Alaska? Her large family she raised from a young age? Hockey games? Putting things on eBay? Happily hunting? A childhood sweet heart husband who loves to snowmobile?
How many Americans have any idea what Harvard is like? Let alone being on a silly law review (we say that being ‘not unfamiliar’ with ‘helping to run’ a peer law review)? Forget the Rightist ‘Muslim’ and ‘Hussein’ innuendo. Or the Kenyan or Indonesia biographical details. Let’s assume Axelrod et a. did well countering with Kansas, etc.
Almost every Boy King visual and accompanying narrative since Iowa is a crescendo of mass. Mass crowds. Presumptuous foreign trips with network anchors in tow. Visuals of thousands of Germans, etc. (which if one thinks about can cut a couple of different ways in the subconscious). Mega rock star appearances in a 75,000 seat stadium with Flavian adornments, fireworks, etc. (Sadly, Pink Floyd’s laser show must have been on the road elsewhere).
How many Americans can relate to that? And isn’t that quasi imperial mass scale exactly what the Wardlord gave us for eight years? By contrast, storms in the Gulf aside, the Republican unwitting and improvised simplicity in St. Paul created intimacy. Antidote to the Boy King’s balloon.
Palin herself we think is just a stand in. We suspect there are those who disagree with Palin on this or that. Or are appalled she was chosen at all. We believe these same people ironically also feel good about her. Why? She smiles in the arena, happily sharing her new and fresh visuals like someone-they-know, cheerfully dissolving mass foundations of Boy King inevitability.
In the end, we do agree with Bubba. Dionne is wrong. It is 1980, not 1988. Americans are trying to make up their minds. Choose an unknown (and because of the mass visuals) with little feel? Or go with the familiar, likely disappointing, but predictable warhorse. Palin’s visual narrative will not determine this ultimate choice. But she has thrown the Boy King off his game. And erased ‘Dole’ from the ticket — as of now.
At least Fosse’s Cabaret had Joel Grey as MC. How very Splenda. For 2008 we must endure David Brooks’ faux earnestness to tell us:
. . . For candidates, the lesson is: Weirdness Wins . . .
Last winter, Barack Obama succeeded by running a weird campaign. He wasn’t just a normal politician aiming for office, he was going to cleanse the country of the baby-boom culture war mentality . . . But over the course of the spring, Obama’s campaign got less weird . . . [b]ut by campaigning in this traditional way, Obama ceded the weirdness edge to McCain.
The old warrior jumped right in. Think about how weird last week was. The Republican convention was one long protest against the way the Republicans themselves have run Washington. McCain’s convention speech barely mentioned his own party. His vice-presidential nominee came out of the blue and seems totally unlike the regular crowd of former eighth-grade class presidents who normally dominate public life. McCain’s campaign ideology, exemplified in a new ad released on Monday, is not familiar conservatism. It’s maverickism — against the entrenched powers and party orthodoxies.
If I were advising the candidates, I’d tell them to double down on weirdness . . .The candidates probably won’t take this kind of advice. But remember: Weirdness wins. Surprise me most.
That’s it. His finely honed analysis – ‘weird, man.’