I'm not going to try to convince you of the importance of the unconscious in our party identification and electoral choices. Ignore our deep biases and the subterranean "logic" that provides the foundation for our rational, nicely-arranged political opinions, and I don't see how anyone could possibly make sense of the last few presidential election cycles.
Intelligent, well-spoken, deeply-prepared candidates were tarred as fumbling elitists or phonies while an incompetent, spoiled child of privilege with a fake Texas accent was accepted as a regular fella, and was chosen by millions of people for the most powerful elected office in the world because he was the guy they'd prefer to have a beer with. For my entire voting life, the most frustrating thing about supporting Democratic candidates in presidential elections is how often they got the "words" right while getting the "music" so exquisitely and terribly wrong.
This year, it looks like things might be different, but I don't want to wait to find out. It's time to go subliminal, and I'm ready to do my part.
A helpful digression: There's no fun in being a political or social commentator if you don't have at least one goofy outlier opinion, one that you think is at least arguable and worth consideration, that absolutely nobody else is even willing to consider. I'll confess mine -- one of mine, anyway -- right here. I think that Gerald Ford's reputation as a clumsy boob, before and during the 1976 election was due less to his well-publicized skiing accident than to his more-more-than-passing resemblance to McLean Stevenson's portrayal of Lt. Col. Henry Blake in the tv show M*A*S*H from 1972-1975. Week after week, President Ford came on the tube right after MASH, to try to reassure us that things weren't as bad as we feared, and that we could indeed Whip Inflation Now. But week after week, he was just one commercial break after poor confused Col. Blake. "Hey, isn't that the guy who just got fooled out of his socks by his little company clerk?" Sure, you can blame the Chevy Chase pratfalls on Saturday Night Live, but Ford was a skilled athlete and no dummy could have remained House Minority Leader for four terms, so why did the stumblebum image stick? My answer, unshared with any other thinker around the globe: the Col. Blake thing.
If your opponent, or even just dumb happenstance, manages to tar you before you've established yourself in the public mind, then barrels-ful of careful explanation and factual rebuttal won't wash you clean again. Once the unconscious identification sticks, that's it. Any facts I might accumulate are used, like mosaic tiles, to fill in and further define the image I already have. The ones that just don't fit are set aside, and it's the rare person who keeps those inconvenient ones and occasionally revises his opinion. As Reagan himself pointed out, "facts are stupid things" -- and for most of us they only mean what we want them to.
The Republican operation and their media pals have made plenty of hay with this over the years. In that spirit, I'm proposing to strike now, with an image that tells the story the way I prefer it:
Spread it around. Do something similar yourself. It wouldn't be hard to beat my half-assed Photoshop skills. But get them out there. The world isn't all position papers and well-phrased rebuttals. The words need some music. Give the people some images to hang their facts on.
Come Election Night, which would you rather hear: sweet passionate whispers of "Oh, it's twue! It's twue!" or another four-year chorus of "Doin' the French Mistake"?
Oh, and as regards Gabby McCain...
Let's hope that same election night is the last we'll ever hear of him and his authentic frontier gibberish.