US Politics: the game has begun - with Islamofascism, netroots and ironic ads

1. Bush's Performance Has Been Poor, But His Packaging is Exemplary -- by Gary Younge

The appeal of any presidential candidate is based on a "gut reaction, unarticulated, non-analytical, a product of the particular chemistry between the voter and the image of the candidate", argued Richard Nixon's speechwriter Raymond Price. "[It's] not what's there that counts, it's what's projected." And that projection, he continued, "depends more on the medium and its use than it does on the candidate himself". In other words, the American presidency is not just a political role but a performative one.

Over the past six years, George Bush's performance, both in office and on the campaign trail, has often been less than stellar. But his packaging has, for the most part, been exemplary. He has been projected as a man of the people and a man of action. Never mind that he did precious little for the first 40 years of his life and that most of what he did achieve came courtesy of his father's connections. Image was everything. This was the MBA candidate who would take care of business - literally and metaphorically; the blue-blood whose folksy affectations turned blue states red; the affable jock who created a softball team called Nads in college just so that he could make banners saying "Go Nads".

Liberals ridiculed Bush for being ignorant about the rest of the world, but what many of them failed to grasp is that this is precisely what so many of their fellow countrymen liked about him. He didn't know the name of the president of Pakistan, and nor did they. The fact that he mangled his syntax was taken not as evidence that he had squandered an expensive education but as a sign of his unrehearsed folksiness. His supporters like the fact that he doesn't think too much. He's not a ditherer but, in his own words, "the decider".

Only twice did reality intrude on this meticulously constructed and carefully choreographed image: first after the terrorist attacks of September 11, and then almost exactly four years later, following Hurricane Katrina. Those two events represent the zenith and the nadir of Bush's presidency. In the wake of September 11, 69% of Americans believed he was a president who "cared about people like them", and 75% thought he was "a strong and decisive leader". After Katrina, those numbers were 42% and 49% respectively. Within a month of 9/11, Bush's approval ratings had hit a giddy 92%; within a month of Katrina, they were down to 40%.

Today he stands between the two anniversaries that have come to define his tenure. Last week marked a year since Katrina flooded New Orleans, exposing his administration as aloof and incompetent - an impression from which he has never recovered. Next week will revive memories of a commander in chief who was tough and resolute - an image he is desperate to resurrect.

On both anniversaries the dead will be commemorated. But the public discussion of why they died and what should be done to prevent more similar deaths reflects two very different notions of what kind of superpower America aspires to be. They are, if not contradictory, at the very least in conflict. A period of doleful introspection last week over how the world's wealthiest nation could treat its poor so shabbily will now be followed by a flag-waving orgy hailing patriotic resilience in the face of a vicious attack. If these anniversaries reveal a lot about Bush, they also tell us a great deal about America.

On both occasions Bush displayed not a commanding presence but a conspicuous absence. On hearing of the terrorist attacks he finished reading My Pet Goat to schoolchildren in Florida before zigzagging around the country for fear that he too would become a target. This did little to inspire confidence in the nation in its hour of need.

William Bennett, who was the drug tsar in Bush Sr's administration, said: "This is not 1812. It cannot look as if the president has run off, or it will look like we can't defend our most important institutions." The late Washington Post columnist Mary McGrory concluded: "Bush said the attack was a 'test' for the country. It was also one for him. He flunked." He did not arrive in New York for four days. In New York, Newsday's Ellis Henican pleaded: "I know we're all rallying round the president now, and here I've been, rallying like everybody else. But the hours are passing. The body count is rising. The question can't wait much longer. New York has a right to know. Where are you, Mr President?"

The fact that, after just five years, this is remembered as his finest hour is a triumph of image over reality. The nation felt the need for a strong leader. When he was found lacking, his consigliere, Karl Rove, projected one.

When Katrina came Bush was once again missing in action. While the Gulf coast lay in ruins, he remained in southern California trying to sell the Gulf war. Too scared to go to New Orleans, where the black and poor pleaded for help, he headed for Alabama and Mississippi. In Mississippi he threw his arm around the Republican senator Trent Lott, who had lost his job as Senate leader a few years earlier for publicly mourning the end of segregation, and said he "looked forward to sitting on the porch" with him.

When it came to contempt for a national crisis, his administration took its cue from the boss. Several days into the crisis, Dick Cheney remained fly-fishing in Wyoming. Meanwhile, Condoleezza Rice went shopping at Salvatore Ferragamo in New York and took in a show. When the lights came up the audience booed her.

With no foreign enemy to deflect attention from its deficiencies this time around, the spotlight remained not only on the administration's callous indifference but on the nation's entrenched fault lines of race and poverty.

September 11 highlighted America's vulnerability as a global superpower; Katrina highlighted how little that superpower status meant to many Americans. The fruits of freedom and opportunity that Bush sought to impose in the Middle East at the barrel of a gun had yet to reach middle America. Black infant mortality in Louisiana is on a par with Sri Lanka; the life expectancy of a black man in Louisiana is roughly the same as that of a man in Kyrgyzstan.

With Osama bin Laden still at large and much of New Orleans still looking like a bomb site, Bush twice failed to seize the moment to accomplish the immediate task at hand or comfort a traumatised nation. But both times he and his party moved quickly to exploit the chaos to advance their own agenda.

As early as November 21 2001 Bush asked Donald Rumsfeld: "What kind of war plan do you have for Iraq?" The president continues to link Iraq to the war on terror - he did so in his radio address two days ago - even though a majority of Americans now reject such a link.

Less than two weeks after Katrina, the Republican congressman Richard Baker reportedly said: "We finally cleaned up public housing in New Orleans. We couldn't do it, but God did."

The causes and the solutions for these two tragedies couldn't be more different. But they raise the same two central questions: how can America use its superpower status, at home and abroad, to make the world a safer, better place for ordinary working people; and what form of collective intuitive malaise convinced a majority of Americans - albeit a slender one - to check their guts and then choose this man?

(g.younge@guardian.co.uk)


2. Vote for me. I'm a really bad singer.
A new kind of political ad incorporates the ironic humour familiar to fans of Jon Stewart
By JAIME J. WEINMAN

When political neophyte Ned Lamont defeated incumbent U.S. Senator Joe Lieberman in a primary this month, commentators rushed to explain how he pulled it off. A turning point most of them didn't identify was the launch of one little ad: "Messy Desk," a parody of negative ads in which a deep-voiced announcer told the audience why Lamont was such an evil man ("He's a bad karaoke singer, and he has a messy desk!"). The snarky self-mockery of the ad, different from almost any other political ad, made a Connecticut businessman seem almost cool. There's a radical new idea: effective political advertising may be the kind that people actually enjoy watching.

The man behind Lamont's advertising was Bill Hillsman, a Minnesota-based political consultant who specializes in creating ads for long-shot candidates, like wrestler-turned-governor Jesse "The Body" Ventura and current Texas gubernatorial candidate Kinky Friedman. Hillsman has said that he creates ads that have "resonance and traction with people who [are] interested in popular culture -- TV watchers." Accordingly, some of his ads for Lamont incorporated the kind of ironic humour familiar to fans of TV comedians like Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert. Apart from "Messy Desk," two other ads were comic takeoffs on man-in-the-street interviews.

Even the catchphrase from Lamont's ads, "And So Do We," was a sort of parody, a play on the conventions of political advertising. Instead of ending with the candidate saying "I approved this message" (which U.S. ads are required to contain), Hillsman's commercials ended with other people exclaiming that they, too, approved this message. In interviews, Hillsman has said that he wants to attract viewers who are normally turned off by political advertising, and that means doing what is known as the soft sell: "If you telegraph the fact that you're an ad to somebody, they'll know right away to ignore it."

Lieberman's own ads sometimes tried to be funny, but didn't quite work. The most infamous one from the campaign was an animated spot with cartoon bears, including a high-voiced "bear cub" who was supposed to represent Lamont. The ad was based on an animated ad Lieberman used in 1988, when he won his first Senate race. Eighteen years ago, its humour seemed charming; in 2006, it gave the impression that the incumbent hadn't learned anything new. Elly Alboim, a professor of journalism at Carleton University, says that "in an all-out attack ad, humour can often make a point in a very telling way," and that's the way established candidates, like Lieberman, tend to use humour: to attack the opponent. What's unusual is using humour in a seemingly good-natured way.

Another new tool that established candidates have been slow to pick up on -- while newer candidates are embracing it -- is the explosion of online video. Lamont's Internet director, Tim Tagaris, set up an account at the leading video-sharing site, youtube.com , and posted many of the campaign's ads on it. With the help of links from various websites and blogs, the "Messy Desk" ad was viewed more than 100,000 times on YouTube, the same number of viewings it might get in a local advertising buy -- for free. Lieberman's campaign, by contrast, didn't set up an official YouTube account until after the primary (the senator is now running as an independent). The candidate who seemed more in touch with popular culture was also the one whose staff knew how popular culture is distributed these days.

Still, there are potential disadvantages to the soft-sell, consciously contemporary approach. The kind of humour used in "Messy Desk" or on The Daily Show is mostly popular among young people, who don't vote in large numbers; it can turn off older voters. Lamont is currently polling behind Lieberman, suggesting that what brought college-age voters to the polls for a primary might not help win the big prize. Says Alboim: "Self-deprecating humour usually works in a political context in speeches and roasts, and that kind of thing, but it would be a strange proposition to use that kind of humour to promote yourself in a political campaign."

Still, enough politicians have won with this approach that it raises the question of why more people don't try it. Part of the answer is that established politicians don't like to make themselves look undignified. For now, only a novice like Lamont would be willing to put himself in a commercial trying to sing Wang Chung's Everybody Have Fun Tonight .

(To comment, email letters@macleans.ca)


3. Friday's column: Politicians find novel way to bond with nerds -- Posted by Debra Pickett (from Chicago Sun-Times)

Mayor Daley, in a moment of uncharacteristic candor, was bold enough to admit this week that he had "not yet" had a chance to read the latest "One Book, One Chicago" selection: Jhumpa Lahiri's Interpreter of Maladies. With the holiday weekend coming up, plus the very long flight on his planned I'm-cool-like-Obama trip to Ghana, I'm sure he'll have a chance to get to it soon. After all, the pressure's on.

President Bush upped the summer reading ante this year, when, in early August, he announced that he'd read Albert Camus' The Stranger. Since then, public figures everywhere have been scrambling to find "smart" books to tuck under their arms and tote around.

This weekend, as summer winds down, it might even be time for a few of the more conscientious among them to crack open a cover or two.

The very idea of our political leaders embracing serious literature -- despite its dangerous association with all things Eastern and elitist -- is enough to thrill nerdy English majors like me. Because just as I am obligated to keep telling my parents that the master's degree in literature they paid for really has been super-useful in my career, I am also forever attached to the idea that reading is an exercise in self-improvement.

And, anyway, I've always been a sucker for the kind of guy who, when he is not sitting in a smoky coffee shop filling his Moleskine notebook with existentialist doodles, can drop names like Camus and Kafka into conversation with casual ease. Admittedly, I am also the kind of person who liked having a Rhodes scholar as president and daydreams about our country being represented, on the world stage, by someone who doesn't talk with food in his mouth.

But I digress.

Following the syllabus

There are any number of overly simple ways to separate people into opposite types -- those who have waited tables and those who haven't, for example -- but, for sheer predictive ability, one of the most useful dividing lines is the one between the kids who, back in school, did all the reading and those who did not.

Those of us who kept to the syllabus tended to be rule-followers in all areas of life. Punctual and law-abiding, we have grown up to be the people who wait for that little on-ramp traffic light to tell us when we can merge onto the expressway. We wear our seat-belts and eat our vegetables.

We might have mid-life crises, but only in socially acceptable forms. Years after our last appearance on an honor roll, we are still remarkably easy to spot. Especially today. Because it's the day before Labor Day weekend and we're in the office, wondering if the boss will let us out early.

The other kids, though -- the ones who prided themselves on their ability to answer essay questions and give oral reports without ever having read more than the back cover of a book -- are harder to pin down.

Some have dropped out. Or flamed out. But others have succeeded brilliantly in all sorts of ventures where rule-following is a handicap rather than a virtue.

Taking their word for it

Being a geek at heart, I am overly fastidious about what I claim to have read.

I've made it better than halfway through Moby Dick, but never all the way, and, in my guilt, I have a tendency to confess this failing at completely inopportune moments, like whenever someone mentions Nantucket.

Similarly, I have listened to Foucault's Pendulum on tape -- an extremely bad idea if you are trying to pay attention to road signs at the same time -- but have never actually read the book. And this bothers me. A lot.

So I have to assume that if the president says he read The Stranger -- plus, he says, "three Shakespeares" -- he really has read it. And if Mayor Daley says he's going to read The Interpreter of Maladies, he means it.

The question for me, then, is what these busy, important men will do with what they find in these great books.

If President Bush and Mayor Daley were in the same book group, what would they talk about over wine and cheese?

Power corrupts

Though they are, theoretically, political opposites, the president and the mayor would seem to have much in common.

There's the whole relentless consolidation of power thing. And the black-and-white, with-me-or-against-me worldview. And the sputtering. And the popular perception, however erroneous, that they're not exactly intellectual heavyweights.

Mostly, though, they have managed, despite their bloodlines, to be understood as "regular" guys who don't have a lot of need for fancy stuff. Real men.

And if it's suddenly OK for them to read the "hard" books and think big thoughts, maybe there's some hope that the nerdy kids among us will finally get a chance to feel cool.

Just imagine what the world would be like if our leaders bothered to do their homework.


4. Big Money vs. Grassroots: The Fight For the Heart of the Democratic Party -- by David Sirota

Every two years since 1992, the Democratic Party has trotted out Fleetwood Mac's classic "Don't Stop Thinking About Tomorrow" as the theme song of its campaign. Now, after the party's repeated election losses, polls suggest that the Democrats' "tomorrow" could finally be dawning. November 7 is the big day. Yet even if the Democrats do well on that day, it's not clear that things will change. In fact, there are ominous signs that a Democratic Congress would cause another song to start ringing in Americans' ears: The Who's "Won't Get Fooled Again," with its harrowing line: "Meet the new boss, same as the old boss."

To be sure, a change in congressional leadership would slow the advance of President George W. Bush's dangerous agenda. And as the Associated Press has reported, the specific Democratic lawmakers in line to take over key committees are among the administration's biggest critics, and among the most ideologically progressive in Congress.

But beyond this, there are troubling signs that the party isn't serious about reforming America's money-dominated politics. Many working-class swing voters are still suspicious of a Democratic Party that promised not to sell them out, and then supported President Clinton's alliance with big business to pass economically destabilizing "free trade" deals. But that doesn't seem to matter to the Beltway's Democratic elites. That voters would be supporting Democrats in 2006 with the specific expectation of reform hardly seems to register with many of the party's Washington insiders.

The arrogance is stunning. Here you have a national political party righteously hammering its opponents' "culture of corruption." Here you have a national party standing at the threshold of an Internet revolution that has shown itself more than capable of democratizing political fundraising by taking in huge sums of money, in small contributions, all without the usual expectation of cronyish legislative favors. And yet here is that same national party bragging to reporters that it is focused on doing everything it can to milk the corporate teat as effectively as Republicans.

FOLLOW THE MONEY— "Democrats' Stock Is Rising on K Street" blared a recent Washington Post story detailing moves by former Democratic lawmakers and staff to cash in as corporate lobbyists. "Corporate Contributions Shift to the Left," read an earlier Wall Street Journal story about how "big companies are boosting their share of campaign contributions to Democrats."

This trend is undoubtedly pleasing party leaders like House minority whip Steny Hoyer (D-MD). Until he was criticized for doing so, Hoyer proudly posted a Roll Call story on his official taxpayer-sponsored website, headlined "Hoyer's Own K Street Project," about how he was starting a fund-raising operation to shake down corporate lobbyists for cash. Those efforts likely benefited from the services of one Gina Mahoney, who according to the National Journal "does double duty" for Hoyer, serving both as his senior legislative adviser and as his political fund-raising entity's chief "liaison to K Street and the business community." Such "liaising" might explain why, following the indictment of lobbyist-manipulator Jack Abramoff last year, Hoyer made sure he was featured in The Hill newspaper reassuring the corporate community that he "has sought to make himself the first contact for K Street" and that he would continue holding regular meetings with their lobbyists.

(David Sirota is an occasional contributor to these pages and the author of a recent bestseller, Hostile Takeover, about the big money corruption that is perverting our democratic system of government. With the prospects good for the Democrats to regain control of at least one chamber of Congress, come November, Sirota says there is a tug-of-war under way for the soul of the party. On one side are Washington insiders, beholden to big money, who seek power for its own sake; on the other are some courageous legislators and the party rank and file, who want a government that serves the needs of average Americans.
Sirota has served as a spokesman for Democrats on the House Appropriations Committee and was a top strategist for Democrat Brian Schweitzer's successful 2004 gubernatorial run in Montana. He is the co-chair of the Progressive States Network, which provides research and advocacy tools to progressive state legislators.)