UniBrow

Somehow it slipped by me–though I live in
Illinois–that the egregious dairy magnate Jim Oberweis was in the hunt for elective office once again, this time for a seat in Congress from Illinois’ 14th Congressional District. I’m delighted to note that he lost. Let us consider this man:

Save your breath if you’re about to point out that he’s talking about illegal immigration, and we’re all against that, blah blah blah. This ad is designed to arouse primitive bigotries against non-whites, period, and Oberweis took some heat for it at the time of its airing. I can only hope that its crude and blatantly un-American nativism was the tipping point that permanently tarnished him as a political commodity. Evidently something has tarnished him if, armed with the Republican nomination in an overwhelmingly Republican congressional district, he has lost twice to a Democrat. At this point you have to wonder if it isn’t becoming clear even to Jim Oberweis that the voters of no electoral division in the Land of Lincoln, however small, want him to represent them for anything, anywhere, ever.   

Seen in Evanston, Illinois, Oct. 31: “The Scariest House on the Block”

Well then: at this time tomorrow we should know, not only whether John McCain has to worry about keeping Vice President-elect Palin away from his food preparation for the next four to eight years, but also whether Michele Bachmann–the pride of Oral Roberts Law–will squeak back into Congress against the gales of repugnance provoked by her failure on Hardball a few weeks ago to avoid saying exactly what she thinks about how to deal with heresy in Congress. (It is in the waxing potency of the name Elwyn Tinklenberg, her suddenly well-heeled nemesis, that the recoiling fury has concentrated itself.) Soon we’ll know also whether comedian Al Franken will be shaking his cap and bells in the Senate for the next six years.

Franken is in a close race with incumbent Republican Norm Coleman, and he’s drawing support from some unlikely quarters. I would have expected, for example, the usually sharp and cogent Jonathan Chait to be slightly more hard-nosed about the idea of Senator Al Franken. The chamber that was once home to the labors of Henry Clay and Daniel Webster and the Keating Five should now open its doors to a person whose highest achievement to date is … Stuart Smalley? It pains me to conclude that Chait thinks so, on the evidence of the weirdly sympathetic piece on Franken that he posted last week at Slate. At one point in its strange course–as Chait attempts to exonerate Franken from the charge that he’s no more than a Hannity or a Coulter of the left–we come in for a close look at two of Franken’s books on politics (if that’s what they really are)–a close look at their covers, to be exact. And in what could rival Sarah Palin’s recent First Amendment theorizing for a spot in the National Special Pleading Hall of Fame, Chait writes:

Franken’s critics are aware of his political satire, but that, too, has become another count in the indictment–Al Franken, trash talker. “He lampooned Rush Limbaugh as a ‘big fat idiot,’ and he dismissed Ann Coulter as a ‘nutcase,’ “ clucked U.S. News earlier this year. Critics who take note of Franken’s political books treat them as the left’s answer to Coulter or Bill O’Reilly. But this misses the satirical point. To get the joke of Rush Limbaugh Is a Big Fat Idiot, you need only to look at the cover, which features Franken posing in a tweed jacket in front of a wall of musty bound volumes, clutching a pipe, looking comically pompous. Lies and the Lying Liars Who Tell Them: A Fair and Balanced Look at the Right has the joke in the title itself. Coulter writes books with titles like Slander: Liberal Lies About the American Right, whose charge is meant to be taken at face value. Franken’s title mocks the accusation itself with over-the-top redundancy and subverts its own claim to truth by appropriating the corrupted slogan “Fair and Balanced.”

I should say first that I don’t care at all what Franken has said or done as he was about his comedic errands over the years. Unless it goes to really perverse extremes–say, Borat without the refinements of taste that he’s renowned for–it shouldn’t weigh seriously in the balance, it seems to me. Franken was a comedian, and comedians must comede. No. What should disqualify Franken from serious consideration for the office he seeks is simply that he is obviously and immaculately destitute of anything resembling a real credential for it. He has his points of view on the issues of the day–as do we all–and he has the hollow and synthetic viability conferred by celebrity.

But to the extent that Franken’s political satire is believed to matter, let us by all means, if Chait insists, look at the covers of these two books for evidence that Franken is including himself in the lampooning. In the first place, regarding Franken’s Limbaugh opus, I would bet you a small fortune that the title of the book–Rush Limbaugh is a Big Fat Idiot–would dominate to the point of ovewhelming the accompanying image in the bookstore browser’s perception and memory. The title is strident and emphatic, not to mention gleefully insulting. To employ a handful of marketing terms I wish I didn’t know, the title stands a decent chance of “breaking through the clutter” and becoming the “consumer take-away”–because, you see, it has “stopping power.” The image, on the other hand, carries a modest comic charge but is otherwise unremarkable. But, okay, fine: to the extent that, upon more leisured inspection, we note how the two elements complement each other rather than compete for take-away honors, the joke is entirely on Limbaugh (not that there’s anything wrong with that). The gag is that the deepest truth about Rush Limbaugh, the definitive conclusion, the fruit of exhaustive and unhurried consideration by a sober scholar, is that he is a big fat idiot. I am looking at this thing with the best will in the world and see nothing at all that is complicating Franken’s verdict on the bigness, the fatness, the idiocy of Rush Limbaugh, nothing at all that subjects Franken himself to satirical treatment. The joke in the image lies in the entirely absurd juxtaposition of Limbaugh (not Franken) with learnedness or depth.

And Chait manages to find more to Franken’s credit by doggedly excavating the title of the other book, Lies and the Lying Liars Who Tell Them: A Fair and Balanced Look at the Right. Yes, there might be some very gentle self-deprecation in the idea of being reduced to helpless, spluttering tautology in the face of untiring and shameless dishonesty–but on the other hand, no, not really. Again, the joke is all on them and not at all on Franken. The falling-all-over-itself redundancy seems only to enact the decent person’s natural incredulity and unpreparedness for hard-core, unceasing, take-no-prisoners mendacity. At bottom it flatters the left, indicts (aptly) the right, and answers one form of excess with another. Fair and balanced.

But enough. Cess and doom upon Al Franken’s political career. May he take Michele Bachmann and Liddy Dole down with him. Hail Tinklenberg! And long may he reign!

One of the bright spots of the current election season–apart from the likely outcome, though in a way integral to it–is the ground it has cleared for agreement on many points between segments right and left of center. Keeping this happy fact in the foreground of my thoughts has really helped me cope with the extremities of ugliness, cynicism, and stupidity to which the McCain campaign has continually stooped. It helps me sustain my version of Obamanian hope: that the hard-right yahoos’ former electoral allies from the center-right are deserting them in decisive numbers, that some kind of majority sentiment is building towards the view that their influence over politics and all that it touches has been vicious and stultifying, and that the immediate future they can look forward to–certainly the one they’ve earned–is that of a dishonored and abandoned cult of mental darkness. I perhaps get ahead of myself.

If [the media] convince enough voters that that is negative campaigning, for me to call Barack Obama out on his associations, then I don’t know what the future of our country would be in terms of First Amendment rights and our ability to ask questions without fear of attacks by the mainstream media.

Of all the silly, incoherent, nasty-minded, and cynical garbage Sarah Palin has said these last couple of months, this is the one that just about flattened me. Maybe, coming at last to the end, I’m letting my guard down. What contemptible idiocy this is. Does she really see it this way, or is she just counting on you not to know any better? (Not that it makes any real difference.) Can we just ignore it, and trust that almost anyone can see this for what it is? No, unfortunately. Thanks to Daniel Larison, whose blog Eunomia is attached to The American Conservative, for giving it to her good: 

Having hidden behind every P.C. shield her defenders could think to set up around her (i.e., criticism of Palin is sexist, elitist, etc.), Palin has now adopted the most extreme victimization pose that equate criticism and news reporting with oppression and violations of her rights. This just seems silly at first and increasingly irrelevant as the election approaches, but since we are being informed on a regular basis that Palin is the future of the Republican Party it seems worthwhile to consider what this remark means. It seems to me that this dresses up contempt for accountability as zeal for free speech, and it remarkably makes the press the enemy of freedom of the press when the press has the gall to report accurately that a candidate is engaging in negative campaigning. There is an old tradition of “working the refs” in political campaigning, and it is actually a bipartisan practice, but here Palin is implying that accurate reporting of a candidate’s activities should be considered illegal.  This is an elected public official saying that the press violates politicians’ rights by characterizing negative attacks as negative attacks–just imagine how oppressive it must be when journalists point out that you lie about or distort your record!

Of course, there is nothing necessarily wrong with negative campaigning, which is not the same as making false and dishonest claims about one’s opponent. Palin wants us to identify the two and then wants to claim that she is not engaging in negative campaigning, by which she means to sat that she believes she is not launching scurrilous or misleading attacks. Even this latter point is debatable, but it is instructive that Palin’s instinct when confronted with media scrutiny and bad coverage is to wrap herself, the public official, in the First Amendment that is supposed to protect a free press from intimidation by and interference from the government. If that does not worry her admirers, particularly those who are journalists, it should.

A welcome whiff of smelling salts from Ta-Nehesi Coates. Well worth reading.

“My center is giving way. My right is in retreat. Situation excellent. I attack!”

That’s the message supposedly sent by General Ferdinand Foch of France to his commanding general, Joseph Joffre, during the crucial First Battle of the Marne in September 1914. The French and British counterattacks succeeded. The German Army, after advancing for a month, was forced back.

Here in the U.S., after more than a month of Democratic advances, it’s the Republican center that’s giving way, and some on the political right who are in retreat. The Obama campaign is marching toward the biggest nonincumbent Democratic presidential victory since 1932, and the Democratic Party is fighting its way toward its best overall presidential and Congressional year since 1964.

Situation not-so-excellent. It’s probably Time for McCain to attack–or, rather, finally to make his case.

Sounds good. The only problem is that, notably unlike the poilus and the Tommies during World War I, the McCain campaign does not seem to be blessed with a superabundance of individuals capable of walking three feet without tripping over their own ba-donk-a-donks.

The heart of that case has to be this: reminding voters that when they elect a president, they’re not just electing a super-Treasury secretary or a higher-level head of Health and Human Services. They’re electing a commander in chief in time of war.

War? You mean that incompetently waged, $3 trillion war in Iraq that has killed thousands with no end in sight, distracted us from capturing bin Laden, reinvigorated al-Qaeda, and diminished America’s standing in the world to its lowest point in … forever? The war that the Bush administration lied us into? The war everybody but McCain and Bush now recognizes was a calamitous blunder? The one Obama got right and McCain got wrong? That war?

The McCain campaign intends, I gather, to return to the commander in chief theme with an event in Florida Wednesday showcasing former secretaries of state and retired senior military officers. But why not showcase young Iraq vets instead? These young soldiers and marines can testify eloquently to the success of the surge that John McCain championed, and to the disaster and dishonor that would have followed Barack Obama’s preferred path of withdrawal.

As for the future in Iraq, the respected foreign policy analyst Michael O’Hanlon, a Democrat, endorsed Obama this past weekend. But O’Hanlon also wrote on Politico that Obama’s Iraq position is “extremely risky,” and that “getting all American combat forces out of Iraq by April 2010, a position he has held while we were losing the war, during the comeback phase, and now while we are winning, is very imprudent and I continue to hope and pray that he rethinks it.”

Got that? Respected foreign-policy analyst Michael O’Hanlon has serious reservations about Obama’s Iraq policy. They’re not serious enough to keep him from voting for Obama, mind you, and in saying he hopes Obama will rethink his position he pays the Democrat a compliment–i.e., that he’s rational and intellectually honest–to which McCain has no longer any clear title after the campaign he has run. But go ahead and vote for McCain on the strength of O’Hanlon’s analysis even though O’Hanlon himself won’t be. 

McCain could point out that hope is nice and prayer is good. But, he could ask: With respect to our national security, do we really want to elect a president on a hope and a prayer?

The candidates’ easily distinguishable records on the Iraq war to one side, in the case of McCain we would be electing the oldest first-term president in American history, a 72-year-old veteran of four bouts with melanoma–of which the senator’s bulging left mandible is a perpetual reminder. And this walking memento mori would be our sole bulwark against the advent of President Sarah Palin. Speak you of hopes? Of prayers?

That has to be the substantive core of his closing argument. But style and tone matter, too. Last week’s New York Times/CBS News poll showed 64 percent of voters saying McCain is spending more time attacking the other candidate than explaining what he would do as president. Just 22 percent say the same of Obama.

Yes. I like where this seems to be going.

When you’re in a hole, stop digging. McCain could order his campaign to pull all negative ads, mailers and robocalls.

For that matter, he might as well muzzle the campaign. McCain campaign senior staff members now seem to be spending more time criticizing one another than Obama, and more time defending their own reputations than pursuing a McCain-Palin victory. McCain should simply say that for the last week of the campaign, no staff member is authorized to speak to the media about anything beyond logistical and scheduling matters.

Because surely none of them would think to speak anonymously to the media about everything that’s gone wrong and whose fault it is and what a disaster Sarah Palin has been. Those who have been compulsively doing exactly that must have thought, in default of a crisply worded interdiction from the nominee, that McCain wouldn’t mind.

Then McCain and Palin can spend the final week speaking for themselves. They should throw themselves open full time to the media. Could the press coverage get worse? Next Sunday, McCain and Palin could divide up the talk shows. Sarah Palin live! Lots of people would tune in.

Many would, indeed–just as they tuned in to her interviews with Charlie Gibson and Katie Couric. And those went well.

There could be one other big moment this week. Obama has bought a half-hour of television in prime time Wednesday. McCain and Palin could buy time Thursday night–giving voters some incentive to keep an open mind at least until McCain and Palin get to make their case.

Wait … Thursday night? I know McCain’s behind, but disrespecting My Name is Earl can’t be the answer. 

Palin could speak first, reprising her fine recent speeches on women’s issues and special needs kids–speeches that got almost no press coverage.

I don’t know about that. Last Saturday’s address on special-needs children, the one that culminated in a swinish condemnation of fruit-fly research, got some attention. Hitchens had some thoughts, and P.Z. Myers got very excited about “the wackaloon from Wasilla.” I step aside for a bracing excerpt: “This idiot woman, this blind, shortsighted ignoramus, this pretentious clod, mocks basic research and the international research community. You damn well better believe that there is research going on in animal models–what does she expect, that scientists should mutagenize human mothers and chop up baby brains for this work?”

She could then introduce her running mate, reminding people of his heroism, and pointing out, as she does on the stump, that he is the only candidate “who has truly fought for America.”

Apart from his maverick image, McCain’s service in Vietnam and the five years he spent as a prisoner of war are offered as his foremost qualifications for office. This is of course an admirable and honorable aspect of McCain’s personal history, but it is neither a qualification nor a disqualification for the office of president of the United States. However, since he’s the “the only candidate” in this race who has served his country in war, Obama’s lack of similar experience–so the thinking seems to run–must figure as something approaching a disqualification for office. A crucial, and obvious, point must be made–that the one absolute requirement of the American commander-in-chief, apart from the basic qualifications of age and so forth, is that he (one day she) must be a civilian. Past military service may be among the various kinds of experience that would be useful to a president, but the generals answer to civil authority. The implication that a lack of military service makes one less qualified for the top job than a veteran is simply ignorant.   

As for McCain, he needs to speak about America’s greatness and its future; about how the ingenuity and toughness of the American people will turn around this financial crisis just as the ingenuity of General Petraeus and the toughness of his fighting men and women turned around Iraq; about how America’s spirit was not undone by a terrorist attack, and will not be undone by a financial mess; about how the naysayers will once again be proved wrong; about how America will emerge from its troubles stronger than ever and will win its battles at home and abroad.

Now I like what Bill’s doing here, the way he’s anchoring everything McCain should say about the economy in a military/foreign policy analogy, as though McCain’s perceived expertise on the latter should give him credibility, via some kind of halo effect, on the former. Maybe, instead, it simply shows that Kristol, too, knows that McCain is out of his depth whenever he ventures into the roiling waters of domestic policy or contemplates the mysteries of the financial markets, and that all roads have to lead back to foreign policy in order to impart an illusion of gravity to his domestic/economic agenda. Since the public generally seems very well satisfied with the country’s fortunes in the Iraq war, the number-one foreign-policy issue of the day, this strategy impresses me as diabolically astute. Well played indeed.

McCain has a chance to close this election in a big and positive way. He has a chance to get voters to rise above the distractions and to set aside the petty aspects of the campaign. He has a chance to remind them why they have admired him, and perhaps to persuade them to vote for him on Nov. 4.

Right. Because Obama’s been responsible for the “distractions” and the “petty aspects of the campaign.”

Would this turn things around? Unlikely. But why not take a shot?

No reason I can think of.
 
Thus Kristol, fisked.