John McCain, nice guy
Bookworm on May 08 2008 at 9:56 am | Filed under: Barack Obama, John McCain
Despite stories of his explosive temper, there is absolutely no doubt that McCain has been playing it nice so far in this election season. It’s easy to do right now, of course, with Obama and Hillary acting as his surrogates against each other. They sling the mud so he doesn’t have to. Nevertheless, now that it looks as if Obama will be the last mud-soaked man standing, McCain’s nice policy is finally going to start paying off.
To appreciate how important that nice policy is going to be in this election, it’s useful to consider Jonah Goldberg’s analysis of how the race card has played out between Hillary and Obama:
Indeed, Obama’s spinners must be yoga masters considering how far they have to stretch to make their case [that the Clintons are racists]. Betsy Reed, of the left-wing magazine The Nation, cites the Clinton campaign’s reference to Obama’s past drug use (raised most prominently by black Clinton surrogate Bob Johnson) and Bill’s belittling of Obama’s claims of anti-war purity as a “fairy tale” as examples of invidious racial politics.
Huh? Bill Clinton’s marijuana use was an issue in 1992, and in 2000 the press went bonkers over allegations that George W. Bush had used drugs long ago. So why should it be racist to mention Obama’s even more significant drug use? Likewise, the use of the phrase “fairy tale” wasn’t racial. Even Hillary’s entirely valid, but now-infamous, observation that it was Lyndon Johnson, not Martin Luther King Jr., who secured passage of the Civil Rights Act can be described as racist only if the standard for racism is reduced to anything that hurts Obama. Dubbing inconvenient truths as “racist” is poisonous to U.S. politics. Which is why I have so little sympathy for the Clintons, because it was the Clintons themselves who mainstreamed crying racism (or sexism, or, in the case of Chinese fundraising scandals, anti-Chinese sentiment) in response to criticism.
For McCain to be Mr. Nice Guy will help defuse — or, indeed, expose the invidious game playing behind — any charges of racism that will be raised against McCain no matter what he says about Obama. Given the mindset on the Left, absent an abject declaration that Obama is God, everything McCain says will be viewed through racism colored glasses.
Others are thinking the same thoughts about the McCain approach. Lee Cary, writing at American Thinker, sees McCain positioning himself always to throw powerful counter-punches. He’s strong enough to take or deflect the first hit, but that leaves him an opening to come back with feigned ingenuousness to keep the American public focuses on Obama’s many, many faults. In other words, McCain, to defeat the dangers inherent in fighting a bad candidate who just happens to be black will have to employ an iron hand/velvet glove approach to this election cycle. Let’s hope that McCain’s years of military disciplinary stand him in good stead, in case his first instinct is to come out swinging.
Related posts:
- John McCain — damn good war senator
- Idle thought about a McCain v. Obama race
- Will the Right Support McCain?
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3 Responses to “John McCain, nice guy”
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It’s also very much in McCain’s interest to keep emotion and demagoguery out of the campaign. The Obama campaign is all about feeling and emotion…
Inexperience: counter with Change and hope… to be against Obama is to have no hope
No Record of reaching out to Republicans in the Senate: redefine unity as liking Obama… not liking Obama is divisive.
Can a Black man win: charge racism at each opportunity
No Specifics: asking for specifics is “same old washington politics…
By keeping the campaign “nice” and on the very real differences between the candidates McCain counters Obama’s campaign of deception and deflection.
Hello Bookworm,
When I heard that McCain is going to run a “nice” campaign, I wanted to bury my face in my hands. It’s like fighting the war against the Islamic Radicals and the war in Iraq. You can’t name the enemy or what he’s doing. You’ve got to twist yourself into prezetels and employ bizarre circumlocutions that renders meaningful discussions on the subject nonexistent.
Again here with this election, Obama’s camp and his supporters and on a hair-trigger to call everyone and everything “racist”, that is, everything that disagrees with his stances. Even though Obama doesn’t say these things himself, he’s using the tried and true method perfected by the Clintons to get others to say it for him.
Let’s see here. We can’t talk about his record. He hasn’t got any.
We can’t talk about his policies. He hides much of it in a mesh of eloquent nothingness, even though it is there. If you do, you’re a part of the “old politics” and by the way, you’re racist for pointing it out.
We can’t talk about his friends; ie. Wright, Ayers, et all. If you do, you’re the racist.
We can’t talk about his past, ie. drug use. That’s racist.
We can’t talk about how he rarely attends his committees in the Senate. He’s got better things to do. Oh, that’s racist.
… my goodness. On so many threads, some many talking head discussions from the Left and on the blogosphere, if you oppose Obama in any way, others will call you a racist.
Then the question becomes, “What can you talk about? What can you criticize without that accusation being leveled at you?”
The only thing left would be Obama’s hope, change, hope, change mantra, and I don’t know about you, but it’s getting really, really old.
Hello Bookworm,
Argh, maybe I should give Obama more benefit of the doubt than I gave him in my last comment. It is true that Obama hasn’t shouted down people as racists for opposing him. Others are doing it in support of him, but he is not. I can’t say that he even deliberately encourages such things since I don’t know in fact.
I think Obama has telegenic features and he can give a darn good speech. I think he has shallow socialistic policy proposals, but I don’t know if he’s purposely cultivated this and told his supporters and surrogates to deride his opposition as racists.
Whereas his predecessor, the good senator for Massachusetts, John F. Kerry, and his supporters waffled and accused President Bush and his supporters the last election of being ignorant buffoons, and whereas they doctored official documents (a felony), smashed his election offices around the country in overt brownshirt tactics (an obvious crime) and other lowdown dirty tricks, Senator Obama has only belittled, condescended and smeared his opposition through sly implications. That’s well short of the toxicity of the 2004 election.
Although I wish we aren’t hampered by considerations of racial sensitivities during this election and instead get to the where the rubber meets the road politically, who knows? Maybe we’ll eventually get to see our politicians delve into concrete ideas and proposals later on.