Democrats Do Poland
(Again)
By
David Michael Green
13/09/08 "ICH"
---
Historically, the country of Poland has always been assigned the
same role in the theater of international politics.
Its kinda like the unnamed actor in the red shirt who beams down
to the planet with Kirk and Scotty and the rest of the regular
gang. He’s only there for one (fleeting) reason. You know he’s
gonna get zapped by the local evil alien.
If you’re Poland, you’re expected to do two things. One is to
get smashed by one or perhaps even several of your vastly more
powerful neighbors. The other is to then be occupied, or perhaps
even simply swallowed up wholesale.
Over time, the Poles even got good at this themselves, sometimes
assisting in their own annihilation with techniques like the
liberum veto, an innovation which allowed any (and every) member
of parliament to unilaterally bring the legislative session to a
close and vacate all legislation already passed to that point.
Sort of like the veto-driven ineffectiveness of the UN Security
Council on steroids.
Except for one difference. When the UN gets it wrong, there’s
little chance that someone will sail up the East River, invade
mid-Manhattan, and occupy Turtle Bay. Poland, on the other
hand...
With a record like, what I’m wondering is, why does the
Democratic Party feel compelled to be Poland every four years
(and often in-between, as well)? What’s up with nominating one
wholly cerebral, completely unflappable, painfully careful,
mind-numbingly deliberative, thermostatically-controlled,
cool-customer candidate after another, eh? Yo! Hey! Memo to the
DNC: We’ve done the Mondale/Dukakis/Gore/Kerry thing, okay?
We’ve covered that particular motif. We’ve seen that movie and
all the cash cow sequels too. We know what it looks like, and we
know how it turns out. Enough with the stiffies, okay? Could you
possibly send something else out of central casting, just once
per half century? Even just for the novelty of it?
I tell ya, right now it’s a good goddam thing that I can’t reach
into my television set and throttle Barack Freakin’ Milquetoast
Obama. Sometimes I don’t know who sickens me more: Sarah Palin,
the smug lying hypocrite whom I’m afraid is going to occupy the
rest of my future on this planet (which may be very short, after
all, if that is indeed to be the case), or Barack Obama, who
can’t seem to get a single sentence past his lips without
fourteen caveats and thirty-seven um’s, ah’s and uh’s, and who
wouldn’t know a killer sound bite if it hit him upside-the-haid.
And, by the way, there are a whole bunch (more) of those nasty
things headed in exactly that direction as we speak.
What’s with this clown? And please don’t tell me any more about
the brilliance of the people running his campaign. The campaign
chooses when to make statements and field questions from
reporters. Has no one on the bus ever thought to arm him with a
killer line or two before exits to face the press gaggle? Has no
speech coach ever taught him how to make a definitive statement,
without hesitations or parentheticals, that drives home strength
and conviction in like about six to eight forceful words? Look,
I support the guy. I wanna see him win. But what does it mean
when a supporter like me is watching him supposedly parrying the
body blows and mocking taunts the GOP are sending his direction,
and falls asleep somewhere between the verb and the object in
any given sentence?
Could somebody please show him the gut-wrenching tape of Dukakis
responding to the horrifying rape question he was asked in one
of the 1988 debates?!?! Memo to Barack: robots don’t win! Even
in 2008. Nor should they. You know, if you can’t even muster a
little indignation when someone is out there lying about you and
kicking you around with condescending smugness, I wouldn’t even
want you for my dad, let alone my president. (And don’t ever
forget, by the way, it doesn’t take a PhD in political
psychology to know how much voters see presidents as daddy
figures.)
Here’s Obama the other day, um and ahs deleted, reacting in
deadpan monotone to the freak show of the GOP convention: “They
spent a lot of time trying to run me down and not necessarily
telling the truth, but what they didn’t talk about is you – what
you’re going through in your lives, what your friends and
neighbors are going through.”
Excuse me?? “Trying to run me down”?? “Trying to”?? “Not
necessarily telling the truth”?? “Not necessarily”?? Are you
freakin’ kidding me, Jack? What, are you trying to carefully
avoid a slander lawsuit here, or something? What would happen if
they called you a pedophile or a genocidal maniac? Would they
graduate to being “arguably conceivably disengenuous” in your
estimation? Or would that be a little too emotionally
uncontrolled?
Obama goes on to say “This is not about personalities”, that
it’s about issues. Oh boy. I wish he had just uttered drivel
like that in the primaries, so I could have stuffed my nose with
cotton and wrapped duct tape around my head forty or fifty
times, then voted for Hillary. Now he brings out the fool
routine? Can this guy who wowed everyone at Harvard Law really
be so incredibly naive? Does he really imagine that the McCain
camp is going to fight on his turf? That was a lot friendlier
ground for them four years ago and the same people running this
campaign didn’t do it then. Instead, they took a genuine war
hero and a guy whose daddy got him a free ride state-side (for
which he then didn’t even bother to show up), and managed to
switch the two in the public mind. By election day, people
thought Kerry’s war record was dubious and Bush – the guy on the
aircraft carrier wearing a flight suit – was a hero. Hey, Barack,
do you think magicians like this are going to take on an
inexperienced, sorta anti-war, supposedly liberal, flip-flopping
wimpy black Democrat with a Muslim name on the field of policy
issues, when they look idiotic on every single one? Dude,
they’re not Democrats, okay? They don’t give a shit about
anything but the money, and therefore, also about winning.
Here’s what Obama should have said, instead: “What we saw last
week is a Republican Party desperate to find any way possible to
regain your trust long enough to win the presidency for four
more years, even if they have to lie in order to do it. What we
saw, in speaker after speaker, were in fact lies which are an
insult to your intelligence. They hid Bush and Cheney in the
basement, hoping you wouldn’t realize that they are the ones
who, with the help of John McCain, have brought you the last
eight years of disaster. They skipped the traditional tribute
video, where their president would be adoringly lauded for
keeping us prosperous with lots of jobs and a strong economy,
for being a wise commander-in-chief, for fighting and winning
our wars quickly and skillfully, for careful diplomacy and
building America’s regard in the world, for protecting us during
national disaster and for balancing the budget.”
“I could go on and on, but you know better than I. They won’t
talk about their past because it’s precisely the same as the
future they’re offering, and they know you’d never buy it if
they told the truth. These are the very same people – Karl Rove
and his trainees – who ridiculed Al Gore and gave us George W.
Bush. Who smeared the service record of John Kerry, and saddled
us with another four years of Bush. Now they think they can fool
us again, which is why they spent so much of their convention
talking about me, and so much of that time lying.”
“If that’s what you want, you know where to go for four more
years of the same. I’m not sure most of us can afford it, but we
do have the option to continue on the path we’ve been on, with a
new version of the same old president, a guy who voted for just
about every bit of it. Or you can reject the fear, deceit and
pandering they’re peddling, and vote for a genuine improvement
in America, and a candidate who doesn’t laugh at you behind your
back while he’s playing you for a fool. If you’re ready to take
back this country from the liars and the thieves, I’m ready to
work with you.”
Or something to that effect.
The list of mealy-mouthed Obama comments, uttered stutteringly,
from which a punch line could only possibly be extracted with
the assistance of an electron microscope to parse the wheat from
the chaff, is legion. To which he is now adding stupid gaffes.
He recently said, despite Palin’s lipstick line from her speech,
“You can put lipstick on a pig, but it’s still a pig.” How
incredibly stupid was that? Look, the Rove playbook includes
hammering and distorting everything the opponent says,
constantly keeping them on the defensive, and his protégé, Steve
“Bullet Head” Schmidt, is now handling it perfectly within the
morality-free zone otherwise known as the McCain campaign. If
you attack Palin’s record in any way, you’re sexist! If you
point out she was mayor of a town of 8,000 people, you’re an
elitist snob who looks down at good, god-fearing, Americans with
small town values. And so on, and so on. Pretty soon you’re
afraid to say anything, and you start looking like Mike Dukakis,
so confused about what you stand for and who you are that you
have to whip out your driver’s license every once in a while to
remind yourself. “Oh yeah, it says here that my name is Barack
Obama, so I guess that must be who I am.”
That’s certainly part of the drill, and there are three things
you have to do to win in that environment. First, establish
message discipline. Know what you want to say, know why, per
your strategy, and say it, and only it, all day, perhaps all day
every day. This is where the lipstick comment and most
everything else that is coming out of Obama’s mouth these days
is astonishing. Did anyone not figure that maybe talking about
putting lipstick on a pig would be incredibly stupid, and be
used in television ads to alienate women voters?!?! The second
thing you do – and I can’t say that Democrats have ever tried
any of these three, let alone all of them – is never relent when
your carefully chosen message is attacked. Indeed, you should
have gamed this out in advance, so that when that predicted and
predictable attack comes, you’re prepared to double down, and
fire back. Hard. Each time you yield ground, especially on your
own turf, you yield credibility and you yield votes. Finally,
for crissakes, here’s a concept: Go on offense!! McCain and
Palin and Bush and the GOP are what the military would call
‘target-rich opportunities’. Go after these people and make them
play defense.
Speaking of which, whatever happened to Joe What’s-His-Name,
picked by Obama more than three weeks ago to be his running
mate? Can anyone think of a single memorable line he’s uttered
since then? Has anyone even seen this guy? Is he back in
Delaware shoring up the campaign for his
simultaneously-ballot-listed Senate seat, or what? Pretty much
the one thing I liked about the Biden pick was the promise that
Joe would go out there and take a few bites out of the GOP.
Excuse me, sir, but is it too late to get a refund?
Speaking of which, I’m one of many people right now who are
contemplating donating money and time to the Obama campaign.
Here’s where I stand. If this guy gets elected, I doubt he’ll do
much, and certainly little that he isn’t forced into by the
tides of history. Like Clinton, my guess is he’ll spend four or
eight years making nice speeches and ineffectively fighting the
vast right-wing conspiracy, which – as it did for Bill as well –
will begin harassing him from day one and never, ever, let up.
Additionally, whatever promise Obama once offered as a
progressive he has now pretty much eviscerated on the campaign
trail. So, let’s just say that enthusiasm isn’t much part of the
equation any more.
In the end, he gets my vote because he is not Bush and not
McCain, and because if historical circumstances are powerful
enough he probably has it within him to be bold, and therefore
great, and therefore also to smother the scourge of regressive
politics in its own stinking pool of pus for a generation or so.
That ain’t a ringing endorsement, let me tell you. And I, along
with many others of the same ilk I’m sure, have no intention of
once again (thank you Mr. Kerry, thank you Mr. Dukakis)
investing a single dollar or a single hour in a campaign when
the guy at the top won’t bark, won’t bite, and won’t fight.
Especially in 2008. Dukakis at least had the excuse of the true
patriot, believing that in the America he loved a good and
competent person like himself could never be defeated by a sick
bastard like Lee Atwater, let alone based on lies about the
pledge of allegiance and the ACLU, or by using overt symbols of
racism. But Mr. Obama – Senator Barackis Dukakis – that was FIVE
elections ago, okay?
I am despondent this week, I must say, as I survey the wreckage
of American democracy. It’s not that I care so much about Obama
winning. Whatever tenuous enthusiasm I once had for him has
waned to near nothing. It has much more to do with the fact that
a public that is demonstrably sick of the status quo could yet
once again be fooled by the same old practitioners of the dark
arts, employing the same old insulting techniques, into
willfully voting for another four years of precisely the same
folks who’ve made them miserable. It’s truly astonishing. Can
these people really not figure out the ruse being applied to
them? Are they, at long last, actually incapable of being
insulted?
I give in already, okay? Yes, yes, Santayana was right! Y’all no
longer need to prove to me that those who don’t learn from
history are condemned to repeat it. I accept the premise. Point
taken.
Couldn’t we move on to another lesson, by now? How about that
little ditty on Munich?
You know, the one were those who try to play nice with fascist
thugs become their breakfast just a few months later.
David Michael Green is a professor of political science at
Hofstra University in New York. He is delighted to receive
readers' reactions to his articles (
dmg@regressiveantidote.net ),
but regrets that time constraints do not always allow him to
respond. More of his work can be found at his website,
www.regressiveantidote.net .
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