The West Wing was one of my favorite TV shows during its time. Maureen Dowd thinks so too 'cause she asked its creator, Aaron Sorkin, to imagine what President Jed Bartlet might say to Barack Obama if given the chance. Her op-ed piece was published in yesterday's New York Times [Seeking a President Who Gives Goose Bumps? So’s Obama].Here's the best bit of advice from Bartlet to Obama ...
OBAMA The problem is we can’t appear angry. Bush called us the angry left. Did you see anyone in Denver who was angry?Whoa! That doesn't sound like bipartisanship to me!
BARTLET Well ... let me think. ...We went to war against the wrong country, Osama bin Laden just celebrated his seventh anniversary of not being caught either dead or alive, my family’s less safe than it was eight years ago, we’ve lost trillions of dollars, millions of jobs, thousands of lives and we lost an entire city due to bad weather. So, you know ... I’m a little angry.
OBAMA What would you do?
BARTLET GET ANGRIER! Call them liars, because that’s what they are. Sarah Palin didn’t say “thanks but no thanks” to the Bridge to Nowhere. She just said “Thanks.” You were raised by a single mother on food stamps — where does a guy with eight houses who was legacied into Annapolis get off calling you an elitist? And by the way, if you do nothing else, take that word back. Elite is a good word, it means well above average. I’d ask them what their problem is with excellence. While you’re at it, I want the word “patriot” back. McCain can say that the transcendent issue of our time is the spread of Islamic fanaticism or he can choose a running mate who doesn’t know the Bush doctrine from the Monroe Doctrine, but he can’t do both at the same time and call it patriotic. They have to lie — the truth isn’t their friend right now. Get angry. Mock them mercilessly; they’ve earned it. McCain decried agents of intolerance, then chose a running mate who had to ask if she was allowed to ban books from a public library. It’s not bad enough she thinks the planet Earth was created in six days 6,000 years ago complete with a man, a woman and a talking snake, she wants schools to teach the rest of our kids to deny geology, anthropology, archaeology and common sense too? It’s not bad enough she’s forcing her own daughter into a loveless marriage to a teenage hood, she wants the rest of us to guide our daughters in that direction too? It’s not enough that a woman shouldn’t have the right to choose, it should be the law of the land that she has to carry and deliver her rapist’s baby too? I don’t know whether or not Governor Palin has the tenacity of a pit bull, but I know for sure she’s got the qualifications of one. And you’re worried about seeming angry? You could eat their lunch, make them cry and tell their mamas about it and God himself would call it restrained. There are times when you are simply required to be impolite. There are times when condescension is called for!
I agree with this approach but, from what I gather, there are millions of American who don't. They seem to think it's a sin to come right out and say what you really think. It's supposed to be much better to lie and pussyfoot around the issues and launch your attacks in a much more devious and underhanded manner. It's supposed to be better to pretend that you will change things in Washington by something called "bipartisanship" where you accommodate the wishes of kooks with crazy ideas about how to run a society. Play to the lowest common denominator—that's how to win an election.
This love for the lowest common denominator is the same attitude that leads to criticism of the vocal atheists (but interestingly enough, not the vocal Christian right wing). It would be nice if the "elite" were admired and respected in America, and in Canada, but is it going to happen in our lifetime? Are we ever going to see the day when people admit that Christopher Hitchens really is smarter than Rush Limbaugh and Bill Clinton really is smarter than George Bush? And so is Al Gore?1
Jed Bartlett is advocating a different strategy. He says you should pitch our ideas to the top half of the "denominators" and leave the lower half to the other side. Maybe it's not such a bad idea. Maybe Obama will never get the votes of the bottom feeders anyway and it's time to stop trying.
OBAMA Good to get that off your chest?Gee, I almost forgot about the lapel pins. It's how you demonstrate that you've sold out to the framers.
BARTLET Am I keeping you from something?
OBAMA Well, it’s not as if I didn’t know all of that and it took you like 20 minutes to say.
BARTLET I know, I have a problem, but admitting it is the first step.
OBAMA What’s the second step?
BARTLET I don’t care.
OBAMA So what about hope? Chuck it for outrage and put-downs?
BARTLET No. You’re elite, you can do both. Four weeks ago you had the best week of your campaign, followed — granted, inexplicably — by the worst week of your campaign. And you’re still in a statistical dead heat. You’re a 47-year-old black man with a foreign-sounding name who went to Harvard and thinks devotion to your country and lapel pins aren’t the same thing and you’re in a statistical tie with a war hero and a Cinemax heroine. To these aged eyes, Senator, that’s what progress looks like. You guys got four debates. Get out of my house and go back to work.
1. And, in Canada, Stéphane Dion really is a whole lot smarter than Stephan Harper or Jack Layton?
[Big Hat Tip to Chance and Necsssity]
4 comments :
I agree with this approach but, from what I gather, there are millions of American who don't.
I disagree... or, rather, I disagree if by "millions" you mean scores of millions, enough to actually sway an election. There are probably a couple of million people in this country who believe the sun orbits the earth, but no one is pandering to them.
The problem is that the Democrats — internal and elected officials — are ass-deep in all our problems: the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the mortgage crisis, FISA, etc... even Katrina. Key Democratic leaders and contributors have substantially benefited from the Republicans' egregious abuses.
If Democratic party officials "get mad" about this stuff, they'll be undermining themselves and the wealthy contributors and leaders they depend on.
The Democratic party has found a wonderful niche as the permanent marginalized opposition. They never have to actually achieve anything, but they can still count on millions of people willing — by virtue of lack of imagination — to choose the lesser of two evils.
It's not that the Democrats are the same as the Republicans; of course they're different. But, different as they are, both parties share responsibility for our current crises, and these crises will not stop unless the people themselves take actions to change things at a more fundamental level.
I wish that Americans would occasionally watch the English Commons questions to the Prime Minister on CSPAN, and then they can see how politics is done. The PM is expected to stand before the legislature and answer direct questions without prepped speeches or through commercials, nor through annual "State of the Union Messages." Of course, the PM is also an MP so has no way of hiding away in a separate house of government.
But then, we would see legislation hashed out between the executive and the legislative directly.
If we could see something like this our elections would be free of such phony outrage over "lipstick on a pig."
Barefoot Bum is right, the leadership of the Democrats as much as the Republicans belong to a club to which I will never be invited to join; that being said I can only work for Obama and remain a committed Democrat because of the realistic view that when there are only two choices then I pick the choice that most represents my position.
And Palin-McCain are so much farther from my positions than Obama-Biden that I choose to work against them. It ain't pretty, but it's politics. As I said to PZ at dinner the other night when he told us that he isn't excited about Obama and will vote but not work for him, "I just can't let the bad guys win." It doesn't make Obama-Biden necessarily the real good guys, it just means I would rather have them in office than a hockey mom and a fallen hero.
(Note the gratuitous name-dropping. I am not in PZ's inner circle, but we have a good mutual friend.)
Mike, I understand your position, and I can't condemn it. But I also don't share it. I've written on the topic earlier: The Lesser of Two Evils; I've also noted that the Democratic party does not want my vote.
I think when faced with two bad choices, the better move is to work to create better choices.
Stephen Harper is often described in the media as an economist. He doesn't have a phd in economics, but a masters degree, and has never worked, to my knowledge, as an economist.
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