Rich's op ed today is entitled If Terrorists Rock the Vote in 2008 and focuses on how irrelevant the twin themes previously used by Karl Rove are now, the fear of terrorism and the fear of gays. Obviously his title refers to the former, relevant to discuss now because of Charles Black's comments in Fortune that another terrorist attack would be to McCain's benefit. But would it? Would not it undercut ideas like "fighting them over there means we don't have to fight them here", or "if we leave Iraq the terrorists will follow us home" or "the policies of Bush have kept us safe" or any of that rot? To me that has always been obvious, that another attack would equal failure of the Bush approach, and undercut support for Republicans. Let's look how Rich demolishes this Rovian argument, one of several services he does for us as he serves as the little boy in the fable of the Emperor's new suit of clothes.
Rich begins by noting that Black's remarks were not an idle comment, and speculates on how much further Black may have been "gaming out" the scenario: would an attack help more if it were in a red state or a blue one, or if the next foreign leader assassinated had higher name recognition the Benazir Bhutto? By comparing to unfortunate comments by HRC and Obama he makes clear the intentionality of Black's remarks:
He gave his quotes on the record to Fortune magazine. He did so without thinking twice because he was merely saying what much of Washington believes. Terrorism is the one major issue where Mr. McCain soundly vanquishes his Democratic opponent in the polls. Since 2002, it’s been a Beltway axiom akin to E=mc2 that Bomb in American City=G.O.P. Landslide.
He notes that this was one of the pillars of the Rove approach, along with whipping up fear of gays. And then he stick in his first dagger - on Rove:
But these pillars are disintegrating too. They’re propped up mainly by political operatives like Mr. Black and their journalistic camp followers — the last Washington insiders who are still in Mr. Rove’s sway and are still refighting the last political war.
That the old Rove mojo still commands any respect is rather amazing given how blindsided he was by 2006. Two weeks before that year’s midterms, he condescendingly lectured an NPR interviewer about how he devoured "68 polls a week" — not a mere 67, mind you — and predicted unequivocally that Election Day would yield "a Republican Senate and a Republican House." These nights you can still find Mr. Rove hawking his numbers as he peddles similar G.O.P. happy talk to credulous bloviators at Fox News.
One naked emperor down, more to go.
It is rather amazing given Rove's poor performance in 2006 how much credit he is still given by those thinking conventionally. Unfortunately, that not only includes the press, it seems to include Democrats as we can see by the fear driven response to the Bush demands on FISA, an issue that Rich does NOT address.
But Rich does a favor. He examines how false fear of an attack should be as benefiting McCain by reminding us the incumbent Secretary of Homeland Security is one Michael Chertoff, whom Bush did not replace
condemned his bungling of Katrina. The man didn’t know what was happening in the New Orleans Convention Center even when it was broadcast on national television.
Rich then goes on to ridicule the team McCain is using to advise him on national security. Let's examine how he addresses each of three men.
Randy Scheunemann - executive director of the "so-called Committee for the Liberation of Iraq" which advocated strongly for the attack, thereby diverting resources from our original actions against Al Qaeda and the Taliban. Another attack might well originate in Afghanistan or Pakistan, with Al Qaeda still operating in both, and the reconstituted Taliban gaining increasing control in the former.
James Woolsey - a strong supporter of the discredited Ahmed Chalabi, who has shopped the idea that the 1993 WTC bombing and the 1995 attack on the Murrah Building in Oklahoma City were somehow linked to Iraq. In the immediate aftermath of the 9-11 attacks he appeared on network tv to shop the idea that Iraq was somehow behind the attacks. Rich does not mention another thing that should discredit Woolsey, who in my opinion ranks with the appointment of Louis Freeh at the FBI as illustrations of the poor judgment of Bill Clinton in selecting top national security figures: that is his continuing to shop the crackpot theories of Laurie Mylroie.
Rudy Giuliani - this "worthy" has accused Obama of not learning the lessons of the f1993 WTC bombing. Let's see how Rich addresses that:
The lesson America’s Mayor took away from that 1993 attack was to insist that New York City’s emergency command center be located in the World Trade Center. No less an authority than John Lehman, a 9/11 commission member who also serves on the McCain team, has mocked New York’s pre-9/11 emergency plans as "not worthy of the Boy Scouts."
After noting that Americans are more afraid of losing their jobs and homes than they are of another terrorist attack, Rich attempts to put use of fear of terrorism in a broader political context:
But you can’t blame the McCain campaign for clinging to terrorism as a political crutch. The other Rove fear card is even more tattered. In the wake of Larry Craig and Mark Foley, it’s a double-edged sword for the G.O.P. to trot out gay blades cavorting in pride parades in homosexual-panic ads.
Unfortunately, as Rich notes, this works no better for McCain than does terrorism. He cites people like Arnold Schwarzenegger and Bill O'Reilly as opposing the tactics of trying to politicize the recent California Supreme Court decision approving gay marriage in that state. And as he already did with the reference to Craig and Foley, Rich get another dig in; note the phrasing here:
Mr. McCain is trying to swing both ways. While he no longer refers to the aging old-guard cranks of the religious right as "agents of intolerance," his actions, starting with his tardy disowning of the endorsement he sought from the intolerant Rev. John Hagee, sometimes speak as loudly as his past words.
Rich notes that McCain has gone on the show of Ellen DeGeneres and met with the Log Cabin Republicans, and - like Barack Obama - gained the antipathy of homophobe James Dobson.
Having proven the illusory nature of two of the Rove approaches - fear of terrorism and fear of gays - Rich warns us about what may be the only remaining Rovian approach, what he calls "fear of the Obamas." Let me quote the ending of the piece by Rich before offering a few remarks of my own. Rich is talking about this use of fear of the Obamas:
Its racial undertones are naked enough. Earlier this year, Mr. Rove wrote that Mr. Obama was "often lazy," and that his "trash talking" during a debate was "an unattractive carry-over from his days playing pickup basketball at Harvard." Last week Mr. Rove caricatured him as the elitist "guy at the country club with the beautiful date." Provocative as it is to inject Mr. Obama into a setting historically associated with white Republicans, the invocation of that "beautiful date" is even more so. Where’s his beautiful wife? Mr. Rove’s suggestion that Mr. Obama might be a sexual freelancer, as an astute post at the Web site Talking Points Memo noted, could conjure up for a certain audience the image of "a white woman on his arm."
But here, too, Mr. Rove reeks of the past. Should Mr. Black and Mr. McCain follow this ugly lead, I bet it will help them even less than the assassination of Benazir Bhutto.
Terrorism is the only issue on which, at this point, McCain has a clear advantage over Obama in the minds of the American people. That advantage is not warranted. It exists only because most Americans are NOT consumed with fear of terrorism, which is the top issue for perhaps 4% of the electorate. While it may seem logical for the McCain camp to flog that issue, I think Rich is correct to note the vulnerability of Republicans on it, and given some of the incompetents advising McCain it could, if subject to greater scrutiny, prove to be as embarrassing as his seeking and accepting endorsements from the likes of Hagee and Parsley. And since these are major advisors, it becomes much harder for him to distance himself, claiming improper vetting. Further, even if we allow improper vetting as an excuse in those cases, what does it say about his ability to be aware of things necessary to keep America safe when he and those advising him seem oblivious to information readily in the public domain, accessible by a quick use of Google? Might not we be reminded of Giuliani's idiocy in siting his emergency response system, and worse, his promoting of Bernie Kerik, including pushing him for the position now held by Chertoff?
This cycle is different. Part of the reason Rove was so wrong about 2006 is that the electorate was already changing. We may not yet fully understand how much it has changed, although the failure of the media to understand the differences of this cycle has been pretty persistent, despite evidence such as the failure of Rudy "a noun, a verb, and 9-11" Giuliani to get any traction as "America's Mayor" as a supposed hero of 9-11 or of how the original approach of the Clinton campaign failed so miserably.
Americans apparently want to be inspired, to be encouraged to hope, to believe better days are possible. IT seems contradictory to me for McCain to try to address that by focusing on how scary his opponent is. The use of fear as a political tactic may have worked in the past. And certainly in days as far back as the duck and cover drills of my childhood, it was possible to invoke fear as a means of gaining political advantage: for those too young to remember, one key element of Kennedy's successful campaign against Nixon involved precisely the use of such fear, in that case of a missile gap which JFK knew did not exist, but which served to plant the seed that Nixon had been part of an administration which had exposed us to possible Soviet nuclear attack.
Americans are afraid. As noted, Rich remarks that the real fear is of losing jobs, homes, savings. We can expand this to the idea of not being able to provide for one's future, to care for one's family. In a sense, Obama invokes some of that fear: the image of not being able to afford the gasoline to drive to look for a job is one example of how he does it. But the difference between the approach of Obama and that of McCain is that his main focus is on how we can come together to make a difference, to make things better. That draws people out.
Yesterday I glanced at a diary on a local blog which listed all of the events in the DC Metro area in conjunction with the Unite for Change campaign. In many of them a part of what would occur is people each explaining why they were supporting Obama. We know this has been a significant way the campaign has gotten people committed - perhaps you remember the story of the older man who simply said "I'm here because of Ashley." We can overcome fear and despair only in concert with others. This is a very old idea in America, and is as basic to our mentality as "United we stand, divided we fall." An approach that seek primarily to scare us disempowers us: it seeks to have us cower, and therefore be willing to trust someone else to make us safe. Might I note that such an approach also at least implies a surrender of our rights, as the current administration has repeatedly demonstrated? By contrast, when our hopes are addressed, we are invited to take ownership of the process of change. It is why when Obama offers money for college he links it to a commitment to service to the community, something that rather than dissuading people makes them more committed to his vision: people WANT to participate in making better their own lives, those of their children, and even of the larger community. That is to be empowered by hope rather than disempowered by fear.
Those who seek to gain political power through fear are naked - their "new approach" is the same old same old, and offers us little for ourselves.
Bush wants to rule as if he is the emperor. McCain seeks to follow Bush, distancing himself only on the margins from the man who defeated him for the nomination 8 years ago, a time when to call McCain a maverick was not as totally dishonest as it is now. One reason he can so easily change positions on issues is because the only thing that matters to him is winning, and he is apparently to pay any price including his semblance of integrity to achieve that power.
Karl Rove foresaw, even predicted, a permanent Republican majority. The American people saw the illusory nature of that dressing two years ago, when they overwhelming elected Democrats to Congress remember, the Democrats did not lose a single House, Senate or Governor's position they had held before the election.
Rich is right. The campaign of the putative emperor, as I have described McCain, is clothed in the political rhetoric of Karl Rove and George Bush. It may have taken the American people six years to accept what some little voices were saying in 2000, that there was, in the words of Gertrude Stein describing Oakland California, no there there. That emperor was naked, and to cover that nakedness he has wrought great damage on our economy, our prestige, our constitution, our image in the world. Putting another putative emperor in the same suit of clothes will only offer us more nakedness - naked aggression, naked intolerance, naked invocation of fear because it has nothing to offer us of value.
Hope can conquer fear. All we need to do to overcome irrational fear is to see it for what it is.
Peace.