Defending Presidential Elitism October 9, 2008
Posted by Jamie Friedland in Election.Tags: America, Bush, Candidates, Debate, Education, Election 2008, Elections, Elite, Elitism, Joe Six-Pack, McCain, Obama, Palin, Politics, President, Secretary of the Treasury, Vice President
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It’s debate season, folks, and my oh my has it been underwhelming. Many have complained that the debates have lacked substance; the candidates aren’t answering the questions. Personally, I am disappointed that the debates have lacked entertainment. No gaffes, no real arguments, few jokes or memorable lines…do they really expect us to stay focused through two hours of interlocking stump speeches? But every once in a while, the moderator asks a question for which a canned response is not prepared. The candidates deftly pivot away from most of these situations (some more overtly than others), but you can still learn from their answers if you’re paying attention.
On Tuesday night, Tom Brokaw asked the presidential hopefuls (makes the race seem predestined, doesn’t it?) whom they would pick to be Secretary of the Treasury. Senator John McCain seemed annoyed to be knocked off script, retorting with a grumpy “Not you, Tom” while he scrambled for an answer. Still fumbling, McCain stalled by laying out his qualifications for a good treasury secretary: “I think the first criteria, Tom, would have to be somebody who immediately Americans identify with (video).” Really? That’s your first priority in selecting the person to navigate our country through an economic crisis of this (or any) magnitude? John – can I call you John? – I don’t want to be able to identify with the Secretary of the Treasury. On any level. This person should be so far out of my league I can’t even hold an intelligible conversation with him. I don’t understand the economy. Sure, I took my macro- and microeconomics. I even turned some decent grades. But does my winning personality qualify me to rescue our financial systems? Hell no. Pick someone who has the skill set and experience to get us out of this mess!

You shouldn't look at the Secretary of the Treasury (or the President) and think "man, I want to have a beer with that guy." The Secretary of the Treasury should look more like this...but, you know, be good at his job.
My friends, that Senator McCain would fall back on this line (and put it in practice with his vice presidential nomination) is symptomatic of a real problem in our country today. Why do we so desperately want to elect leaders with whom we can identify? The fact that I didn’t end the previous sentence with the preposition basically disqualifies me from running for office. Senator Barack Obama is an academically accomplished man. After graduating from Columbia University he went on to earn a law degree from Harvard. He was even the president of the Harvard Law Review – I don’t know how to put this, but that’s kind of a big deal. After that he became a law professor at the University of Chicago. You may have known this, but you certainly didn’t hear it from Barack.
Today’s candidates have to hide their education. For those who finished in the bottom 5 of their class, that’s convenient (or would be if underachievement wasn’t so mavericky). Yet McCain and his voluptuous veep didn’t start this trend – there’s no way you can have this discussion and not arrive at our current president. Even George W. Bush, who actually looks good on paper with his degrees from Yale and Harvard, didn’t point to his past to placate concerns about…“mental preparedness.” Why? Because his average guy persona appealed to voters (and he only got C’s). If a candidate flaunts his education today, he is labeled “elitist.”
Elitism is a strange charge to level against presidential candidates. At the risk of quoting Jon Stewart too much: “Doesn’t ‘elite’ mean good?…I want someone who’s embarrassingly superior to me.” (Video– the entire segment is great, but the elitism bit starts at 6:50). On a tangentially related but similarly awesome note, I present the following question courtesy of Kathleen Reardon at the Huffington Post: “Is it sexist to want the person flying the plane to be a pilot?” Back on track, though, presidential candidates are running to be the most powerful person in the world. Being President of the United States is like being the CEO of a global superpower (this may not be true by the time you read this, but that’s another story). Can you imagine someone hiding her educational credentials while applying to lead a Fortune-500 company? No. And she wouldn’t even get a moment’s consideration without them, even if you’d want to have a beer with her. So why are we so comfortable electing “normal” people president?
The average American is not qualified to lead the country. This should not be debatable (although with enough preparation, one could childishly pivot to talk about job creation instead). Nor is it contrary to the American Dream. There are plenty of successful people who don’t live in the White House and unsuccessful ones who do. Being able to pull yourself up by your bootstraps does not mean that anyone can be president, regardless of what your mother may have told you. I wanted to be a lion. Life’s not fair.
Compare Bush (or Sarah Palin) to the early presidents in our nation’s history. Picture them having a conversation. It hurts. I doubt Thomas Jefferson would think highly of our recent selections. Now I’m not saying that the founding fathers got everything right – for example, I imagine they might be surprised to learn that a black man is now running for more than 3/5 of the presidency. But they understood the value of a meritocracy. Or at least that it takes more than an ordinary person to succeed in a decidedly extraordinary position.
Let Average Joe enjoy his 6-pack. I’ll drink with him (although the case is my weapon of choice). Our president should wash down his arugula with a glass of fine wine.
If you can’t beat them, silence them September 10, 2008
Posted by Jamie Friedland in Election.Tags: Bias, Factchecking, McCain, Media, Obama, Palin, Politics
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Senator Obama warned us that this election wouldn’t be a landslide, but once the party primaries sifted out, I confess that I did not believe him. The Republican Party has been steeped in scandal, and it seemed like not a week passed without news stories on GOP corruption. How could our country objectively look at the positions, candidates, and last 8 years and not elect Barack? I realize this logic is naively flawed, but it has now been strangely validated – this week I discovered that the McCain campaign reached the same conclusion…and crafted a devious plan to compensate for it.
Anyone who tuned in the to Republican National Convention last week (or follows the news in any way) is aware of the recent escalation of “media bashing.” Traditionally, the media have served as objective watchdogs of governmental power, reporting abuses to the electorate as they are uncovered. With the consolidation of power under this administration and a GOP audaciously albeit creatively circumventing numerous laws, it is no surprise that Republicans have found themselves receiving increasing amounts of negative coverage. As more scandals were uncovered, the national tone of reporting became increasingly anti-Republican. This is not evidence of media bias, it is a result of unprecedented levels of illegality by GOP lawmakers and appointees. The media calls out democrats when they misbehave as well, but that has been rare under this administration because there is only so much mischief a weak, powerless party can achieve.
In researching and following developments in environmental policy, I have been appalled by the blatant lies told by industry front groups and even brazen GOP lawmakers in their fanatical quests to sacrifice our country on behalf of the energy lobbies that fund their campaigns. Of those politicians, my personal favorite is Sen. Jim Inhofe (R-OK), who served as the chairman of the Senate Environment and Public Works committee for 5 years (and still serves as minority leader today) despite being the most outspoken climate denier in our government’s history. This specimen deserves and shall receive his own post in the future.
But I digress. The point here is that when politicians lie, accurate reporting will necessitate the refutation of the lie in question. This is not partisan coverage, it’s the presentation of fact. Since in recent years the Republican Party has chosen to wage a PR campaign of self-preservation rather than tell the public inconvenient truths (sorry), it has found itself increasingly at odds with the media. Stephen Colbert summed up this mentality perfectly during his presentation at the White House Correspondents Dinner in 2006 (which also happens to the best (read: funniest) speech I have ever seen – watch the first half, you’ll thank me).
After mentioning Bush’s low poll numbers, Stephen complains: “reality has a well-known liberal bias.”
So what does this have to do with the campaign? Everything. As Republican lies have become more outrageous (keep looking for my post on offshore drilling, I will get to it soon), the media cannot help but favor Democrats even while bending backwards over themselves to be “fair and balanced.” And as investigative journalism increasingly gives way to the sensationalist coverage of ‘he-said, she-said’ campaign sound bites, it has become even easier to paint the media as biased. Add Sarah Palin to the mix and I once again find myself begrudgingly blogging about the brilliance of McCain’s strategists.
Palin has two major strengths in this assault on the media. First, because she was relatively unknown and so thoroughly unvetted, the media were completely scrambling to figure out who she was when her name was announced. Her virtual anonymity left them asking unusual questions and even chasing down rumors. This discredited and marginalized even the most trusted names in news. McCain spokespeople expertly spun the situation, grouping mainstream outlets with the tabloids in their outraged denunciations so that they could level disgraceful yet not technically untruthful charges against the media as a whole. Second, Palin is a woman. Although the Daily Show demonstrated the humor of juxtaposing the Republican denials of sexism while Hillary was running with those same peoples’ now furious denunciations of sexist media coverage on Palin, I fear this opportunistic hypocrisy will be lost on much of the public.
And this matters. The McCain campaign knows they could never win this election by the merits of their platform. That is why they insist this election is not about the issues. So in a deliberate stroke, they have masterfully silenced the media, effectively removing a crucial voice from the political debate. Campaigns will always point out the flaws of their opponents, but even truthful charges from an opposing campaign will rarely pierce the dogma of a loyal supporter; we rely on the media to research and report what is true and what is false, particularly regarding negative campaigning. Without the media to serve that crucial role of independent fact-checker, we are left simply with a shouting match in place of a debate.
The Obama campaign has been accurately (if quietly) pointing out McCain’s lies and contradictions, but the elitist charge seems to have stuck and people are suspicious of a campaign’s statements about a challenger. Now that the McCain-Palin campaign has successfully discredited the only other mouthpiece for their shortcomings, for many, the only remaining trusted narrative about that campaign will be its own – and they have nothing but nice things to say about themselves.
Play Action Fake September 1, 2008
Posted by Jamie Friedland in Election.Tags: DNC, McCain, Obama, Palin, Play Action Fake, Politics, Vice President, VP
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Nobody has ever accused the Republican Party of being bad at the political game, but the selection of Alaska Governor Sarah Palin as John McCain’s Vice Presidential nominee has a lot of people asking questions. After repeatedly questioning Barack Obama’s preparedness, how can you nominate a woman who was mayor of a town 1/20 the size of Obama’s state senate district just two years ago? After repeatedly questioning Obama’s foreign policy experience, how can you nominate a woman whose only foreign policy experience, according to campaign surrogates (including Tucker Bounds, whom I adore), derives solely from her state’s proximity to Russia? It seems a little hypocritical.
While her personal positions are well established and widely known (that was sarcasm), what you may not have known is that Sarah Palin is also a woman (that was too). Does the McCain campaign really think that women are that shallow, even stupid? No liberal woman I know is going to vote for a pro-life ultraconservative just because she and Hillary are the same gender. As the Daily Show, my own fair and balanced news outlet of choice, put it: Sarah Palin may be the ideological opposite of Hillary Clinton, but she’s her gynecological twin. Only women like Samantha Bee, whose “lady brain” cannot process Palin’s desire to overturn Roe v. Wade, will be swayed by this move.
There is also some confusion as to how thorough McCain was in selecting Palin, whom he is calling a “soulmate,” since he only met her twice before their joint rally in Dayton. The pregnancy situation we are now just learning about also seems like the kind of thing that the VP vetting process would unearth. The McCain campaign is insisting they knew about this private matter all along and that her daughter’s pregnancy does not make Palin less qualified to be Vice President (one could argue this is a moot point; few things would). If this is true, we may be witnessing the newest addition to the infamous GOP Electoral Playbook.
Imagine you are John McCain: the Democratic National Convention, for all its hiccups, is generating a lot of positive press for your celebrity opponent, and the coverage reaches fever pitch when Obama nails his acceptance speech. Yet you have on staff some of the greatest political gamesmen in the history of elections, so you are prepared for the situation. You reveal as your Vice Presidential nominee a young, conservative woman woefully unprepared for the job at hand. But she is a breath of fresh air, a glimmer of (dare I say it) hope, and let’s be honest, something to look at – check out the YouTube video of McCain inspecting the goods for his approval of this message. As warranted criticism descends upon the hapless Alaskan governor, you are able to spin the attacks as sexist to rein in disenchanted Hillary supporters and simultaneously energize the evangelical base with her extremism. And then the pregnancy hits the news.
Begin Phase II. The media smells blood in the water as a conservative candidate’s 17-year old daughter is revealed to be 5-months pregnant. Obviously she’s keeping it (anything else would be murder), and she and her own soulmate are getting married. Amid the media firestorm, Palin is able to take a principled stand on behalf of her child, appealing for privacy in this personal time. But even if the mainstream media were to back off, there are enough liberal bloggers and other sources out there to keep the story going. The GOP cries foul and slams the liberal left for diving to a new moral low. And finally the trap is sprung.
Just days after her nomination, Palin nobly steps down to protect her family. McCain selects his new, true VP pick and low and behold, he is very well qualified for the position and just the kind of man Republicans are ready to elect. As the dust settles, the McCain campaign looks back on its accomplishments: a remarkable $8 million jump in campaign contributions right before the public financing deadline takes effect, a revitalized political base with PUMAs furious on behalf of the sexist media’s latest victim, and the Democratic party backpedalling from a week of wasted attacks that have suddenly backfired.

Peyton Manning running the play
All this brilliant strategy needs is a name, and I’m on top of it. If I might borrow the term from football, we may be witnessing Palin’s flawless execution of the “Play Action Fake:” at first it looks like she’s going to run…but then she passes.
A version of this post ran in The Chronicle at Duke University.