Well, we've already made it to the entrée of our quadrennial feast, which is always previewed on the democratic bill of fare in the spring as an autumnal exchange of ideas on fiscal and foreign policy, energy independence and the like; you know, the stuff that actually matters to 299,999,998 Americans.
But, of course, the menu always gets changed, because the sizzle is truly more marketable than the substantive steak. So here it is, still only July, and we're already feeding exclusively on what the media thinks of what one candidate thinks of what the media thinks of the other candidate, or some such thing in some such order. Welcome to Chez Democracy, American style.
It was all rather sudden and rapidly mutative, beginning last week with Barack Obama's overseas trip and John McCain's impeccably adolescent reaction to it. They, the media mothers, cried John in protest, like Obama best, so he staged the most remarkably insipid photo ops to garner attention. And attention they got, such as this:
What to make of the sight, last week, of former Republican Representative Joe Scarborough, now host of Morning Joe on MSNBC, guffawing with his panelists at the sight of the Republican stalwart?
"You know what that looks like?" Mr. Scarborough asked his panel as b-roll took over the screen showing Senator McCain in the dairy aisle of a supermarket in Bethlehem, Pa. "'No, Granddad—no, no, not down here. Talk to the grandkids. Show ’em the penny trick!'"
That flashback is from Tuesday's New York Observer [1] in a piece that had more to do with the media's seeming overabundance of pro-Obama coverage, especially last week, versus the media's starvation of McCain, or, worse, "coverage in a press cycle defined by endlessly replayed images of Mr. McCain riding in a golf cart with George H. W. Bush at Kennebunkport and browsing a supermarket aisle as a member of his entourage topples a pyramid of applesauce jars."
Even though McCain had brought the ridicule upon himself, this manner of coverage or utter lack of it was understandably unsettling to the McCain camp, so within hours, literally, the senator went aggressively negative as a full-time venture. And that, by yesterday morning, produced a fresh spate of critical scrutiny, such as this from the New York Times' editorial [2] section:
On July 3, news reports said Senator John McCain, worried that he might lose the election before it truly started, opened his doors to disciples of Karl Rove from the 2004 campaign and the Bush White House. Less than a month later, the results are on full display. The candidate who started out talking about high-minded, civil debate has wholeheartedly adopted Mr. Rove’s low-minded and uncivil playbook.
But, alas, in the same week it seems we have entered yet a third stage of McCain's strategic mutability, this one less directly confrontational and aggressively hostile than simply "absurd and juvenile," as one Republican strategist (yes, Republican strategist) has characterized it [3].
And this stage, as you well know, is the incomprehensible Britney Spears-Paris Hilton-Obama as celebrity ménage à trois stage, the "He's too arrogant" stage, the candidate-cum-exceedingly-presumptuous-empty-suit stage -- in toto, what one could call the Swift Goading of Barack Obama.
It's all intended to get in your brain and under Obama's skin, and although laughably primitive in message content, it could work, I suppose. After all, more than a few laughed at George Bush's 2004 portrayal of John Kerry as a latte-sipping wind surfer, just as Mr. Bush was proving beyond all reasonable doubt that he hadn't a clue as to how to run a country or two wars. They didn't laugh for long.
Have four more years of steady national decline and global isolation made a difference with voters? Again, who knows. What we do know is that the average American voter is afflicted not so much with A.D.D. as E.G.A.D. -- electoral gullibility attention disorder -- and a steadfast drumbeat of the most degenerate political bamboozling is always, or at least usually, an advisable course for the underdog.
As for Obama's recourse? All I can say is what I'd like to see, which is this: for Obama to call McCain out. It's time to have that bring-it-on duel he tauntingly mentioned yesterday. Well, do it. Just do it, perhaps in the Arizona senator's backyard of Tombstone. Or in Wild Bill's town-square haunts of Springfield, Mo. I don't care where, just when -- which is now.
Call him out, Barack, and let the pistols blaze. Or before long, you'll find yourself batting only at all those gnats of Republican distraction. Call him out instead, directly, one-on-one, eye-to-eye, debarred of his Bushian gunslingers, and nail him. Now.
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