House of Eratosthenes

They’re going to get their asses kicked elsewhere for using images of our war dead to make political attack ads. So I will leave that to others. I would just like to make mention of what impresses me, and why I think this is so incredibly misguided, as well as what I would change if I were a Democratic image consultant.

I do this because I know there aren’t that many Democrats who read my blog.

First up, we have the “mass murder and overtime parking” problem. You attack someone, and you indict them for a big transgression as well as a little one, you end up looking like exactly what you are: Some guy making a list, and laying his sense of perspective at the altar of making the list as long as possible. If President Bush is getting troops killed needlessly, I really don’t give a rat’s ass if plants are closing. And if he’s hurting the environment to the extent that our continuing existence is placed in jeopardy, I don’t give a rat’s ass if he’s getting troops killed. To include all this stuff, and to make a priority out of cramming it all in there, is to demonstrate that whoever has made a priority of including the lesser offenses, must have intellectual doubt about the validity of the greater ones.

Secondly, this country has a rich history of challengers attacking incumbents over the status quo, and ultimately winning the subsequent election. What do those episodes have in common? In January, I conducted a quick review of Bill Clinton’s State of the Union messages to capture his best public-relations ideas. Clinton has the distinguishing historical characteristic of having used his SOTU messages to campaign against himself during the entire eight years he was in office. The only speaking line in the commercial linked above, which goes to Clinton, nods toward his old SOTU habits but does not go far enough. What’s missing?

He always found two things about the status quo: One of which was good, and another of which showed room for improvement. Both of those things were vital. The second of the two, which shows the benefit of the action proposed, is universally indispensible and has been kept in the commercial that I’m bashing now. The first of the two, has been pitched overboard. There’s no sugar in the status quo. There can’t be. Thou Shalt Not Say Anything Good About President Bush.

Someone who makes commercials for Democrats, has determined this is a harmless concession to make to the Michael Moore and Move-On-Dot-Org crowd. They’re simply wrong.

You see, when you refuse to say anything good about your enemy, this does so much more than present your position as being irreconcilably opposed to him. It betrays a singlemindedness, a lack of perspective, a kind of two-dimensional thinking. As it happens, in 2006 the “mainstream” Americans who don’t give a crap about Democrats or Republicans, and actually decide our elections, are terrified of that. Of this concern, you might say the litmus-test question would be “If President Bush had a program that kept anyone from getting cancer anywhere and made everybody’s farts smell like chocolate and made hundred dollar bills fall out of the sky, and Democrats were elected to Congress, would they vote to end the program?” And from this commercial, it’s looking like the answer is yes. If Bush’s name is on it, it goes.

This is not a trivial concern. Our nation’s Treasury is bursting with unanticipated revenues, cutting this year’s deficit by $130 billion dollars and proving that tax cuts can generate more revenue. Proving it. Heads swivel toward the Democrats to explain how this can be so, and so far all they’ve come up with is “uh…well, $296 billion is still a lot of money.” So we put these yokels back in charge and then what? They roll back the tax cuts, and the revenues fall again, so that the yokels can put on some ads in time for ’08 that say we have to hike taxes even more?

How much more effective it would be to put on an ad saying “President Bush deserves credit for bringing down the deficit with his tax cuts but we’ll never see a surplus again unless we cut spending.” Democrats want to be the fiscal-responsibility party…why not go that route? Ah well, we know why, it’s because they’re beholden to the “Bush LIED!!!” crowd.

That’s the issue in the campaign this year. People are more worried about Democrats having sold out to the far-left, than about President Bush selling out to the far-right. A lot more. Democrats have so much to gain, if they could simply reassure the public that they are, truly, a party of loyal dissent. If the reassurance is factually there to be made, they will eventually provide it. But I don’t think it is. And I must say, in support of my own feeling on the subject, it’s intesting how much mileage they’ve chosen to gobble up while leaving this question in place.

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Why This Won’t WorkThursday, July 13th, 2006

Why This Won’t Work
Thursday, July 13th, 2006