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Republican ventriloquists Saturday, Aug 2, 2008 By John Brummett Republicans, who gave us the swaggering, flight-jacketed, mission-accomplishing George W. Bush, cut into Barack Obama's poll lead last week by unveiling a campaign calling Obama arrogant. The party that gave us President Reagan and Governor Schwarzenegger dismissed Obama as a celebrity. The party that plucked George W. from partial ownership of a baseball team suggested Obama lacked essential experience. People are pliable. The day before this new message campaign was unveiled, Obama was up 48-to-41 in an average of leading national polls. The day after, he was up 46-to-42. A few more days and Obama will be swift-boated, or Britney-Speared. There is this senior woman who watches too much "Wolf," as in Blitzer. She was telling me late in the week that Obama was "acting like a rock star - it's ridiculous. What's he going to do about this economy? That's what I want to know." She's a fine woman, smart, dear to me. But it's the plain truth that she simply was regurgitating the new Republican message, as if a Stepford voter. A negative characterization of Obama had been implanted in her brain. Talking points had been affixed to the tip of her tongue. This nonsense gets dreamed up in the mind of some Republican consultant, and, abracadabra, two days later, it's already come right out the mouths of people all over the country. And Republicans send it through those mouths mostly for free, using cable television talking heads who need something, anything, to blabber about. This Republican consultant - whoever he is, Karl Rove maybe - is one seriously smart and sinister sonofagun. The genius is that the Republicans always go straight at Democratic strength and turn it on its head. Four years ago the Democrats ran a decorated Vietnam war hero for president. So the Republicans went directly at that and cast the Democrat as a weakling and phony. This time the Democrats are running a powerful orator who appeals to adoring masses. So the Republicans go straight at him and ridicule him as an empty-suit celebrity, as Paris Hilton in a suit and with a jump shot. Drawing adoring crowds across the country and in Berlin as well as the Mideast - those are bad things, you see. We need the old guy who draws dozens and can't negotiate a TelePrompTer. The further beauty is that Democrats can't easily fight back in kind. If they went straight at John McCain's strengths, they'd have to try to turn his experience into old-age dementia and his tortured war-prisoner record into a possible source of emotional instability. They'd have to say he's nuts, in other words. That wouldn't much work. For mere shreds of substance, Republicans are suggesting there was something wrong, something arrogant and presumptuous, in Obama's international tour. But he was simply doing what a prospective world leader ought to do, which is engage the world. He was simply doing what a candidate must do, which is put his skills on display. He was simply doing what any job applicant must do, which is gather and demonstrate relevant experience. If going abroad is a political strike against a presidential candidate, then McCain went down swinging long ago. But you're starting to hear people say that Obama shouldn't have taken this trip. They're starting to say he was trying to act like he already was president. Somewhere the great Republican mind-controller is chuckling. He, or she, is surely the world's greatest ventriloquist. He, or she, says it without moving his or her lips, and it comes out of people's mouths, and the polls tighten. Obama may have to bring Oprah out again. ------- John Brummett is a columnist for the Arkansas News Bureau in Little Rock. His e-mail address is jbrummett@arkansasnews.com; his telephone number is (501) 374-0699. |
