In The American President, the film precursor to Aaron Sorkin's television masterpiece The West Wing, Senator Bob Rumson (Richard Dreyfus) runs against incumbent president Andrew Shepherd (Michael Douglas). It's not a very good campaign. All we see are negative attack ads and rabid speeches involving President Shepherd's membership in the ACLU, a photo of the President's love interest burning a flag in protest of apartheid, and of course on the relationship the President is having with said love interest.
While the campaign sets up one of the finest fictional speeches by an American President on the silver screen, the entire election subplot is rather weak. The attacks are standard Republican talking points, easily dismissed by anyone paying attention. Rumson is an unlikable curmudgeon who appears to be an intentional conflation of Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld. It's hard to suspend disbelief in such a ridiculous caricature of all that is wrong with politics in general, and the Republican Party in particular, playing the villain. You might as well put him in a top hat, cape and monocle, and stick a dark waxed moustache on him.
As awful as the Rumson campaign was, it's a stellar performance compared to the farce known as the McCain campaign. Membership in the ACLU, an out-of-wedlock affair and a flag burning (issues which matter at least to SOME people) has been replaced in the McCain campaign with "celebrity," base fear mongering, and criticisms that apply better to the accuser than the accused.
"Obama's a celebrity!" decries the McCain campaign. From a fear-of-change standpoint, I suppose I can understand how some in the McCain campaign see this is a bad thing. After all, our current President would never gather 200,000 people cheering and waving flags to come hear him speak, either within the United States or without; ditto for McCain. But for those of us who travel outside the United States, it would be nice to proudly state that we are Americans, without being glared at or attacked for my country's idiot administration.
"Obama's an elitist!" decries the McCain campaign. I seriously wonder if there are Democratic operatives working within the campaign in an attempt to sabotage it from within. This attack pulls into sharp focus McCain's immense wealth, his several residences around the country, and his $520 Italian shoes, while never really coming up with anything beyond a sound bite to support their claim.
It's the same with other attacks from the campaign and its supporters. The claim that Obama is "ineligible" for the job because he's "not a natural-born citizen" by some twisted logic or another are not only racist, but also bring in McCain's more problematic "ineligibility" having been born on leased Panama soil. The once-popular "Obama is a Manchurian Candidate" is laughable to anyone who's seen the film, and recognizes that the hapless killer in the film was, like McCain, captured by Asian communists, held as a POW and tortured, and is now working his combat veteran/war hero status in the political sphere. I wonder why someone hasn't made a giant Queen of Hearts playing card and held it up at McCain rallies (yes, it's tasteless, but his campaign did make the initial reference).
The most frustrating part of this train wreck of a campaign is that people are still buying it. The percentage of people who believe that Obama is a Muslim is increasing, even after the Rev. Wright media storm. And in a very real sense, McCain's campaign is setting up an even more effective satire of politics than Bob Rumson ever could, with the American people as the punch line.
I'll end with a snippet of the great speech I alluded to before:
I've been operating under the assumption that the reason Bob devotes so much time and energy to shouting at the rain was that he simply didn't get it. Well, I was wrong. Bob's problem isn't that he doesn't get it. Bob's problem is that he can't sell it!
We have serious problems to solve, and we need serious people to solve them. And whatever your particular problem is, I promise you Bob Rumson is not the least bit interested in solving it. He is interested in two things, and two things only: making you afraid of it, and telling you who's to blame for it.
...
We've got serious problems, and we need serious people. And if you want to talk about character, Bob, you'd better come at me with more than a burning flag and a membership card. If you want to talk about character and American values, fine. Just tell me where and when, and I'll show up. This a time for serious people, Bob, and your fifteen minutes are up.