Cool Hand Hopester?

More on the Dutch Effect. Ariana Huff'n Puff viewed The Hopester's smiles at The Geezer as the non-verbal equivalent of Dutch's "There you go again" trope toward Mr. Peanut's assertions during the last debate of 1980. The Hopester smiled at The Geezer every time the old coot launched into one of his geriatric tirades. If this is (fair & balanced) political discourse, so be it.

[x Huffington Post]
McCain's Losing Strategy: Double Down On The Anger
By Ariana Huffington

John McCain scored the zinger of the night with, "I am not President Bush. If you wanted to run against President Bush, you should have run four years ago."

But his performance in the third debate was, in fact, incredibly Bush-like, mirroring Bush's signature stubbornness — especially on Iraq — by doubling down on a failed strategy.

McCain's reliance on angry, negative, personal attacks on Obama — including the pathetic Ayers smear and ACORN "destroying the fabric of democracy" — has been an unequivocal failure, with the poll numbers to prove it. But instead of course-correcting, McCain doubled down tonight — coming across as angrier and meaner than ever before.

This debate wasn't decided on the arguments being made. It was won on the reaction shots. Every time Obama spoke, McCain grimaced, sneered, rapidly blinked, or rolled his eyes. "He looked like Captain Ahab, again and again going after Moby Dick," John Cusack told me. "Or an animal caught in a bear trap. He even seemed pissed at Joe the Plumber."

McCain's contemptuous reactions were so intense and frequent, they've already been turned into a YouTube video. The disdain McCain feels for Obama was unmistakable. It's as if Obama is not just blocking his way to the White House, but robbing him of his destiny.

By contrast, every time McCain was on the attack, Obama was smiling. And the nastier McCain got, the brighter Obama's smile became. It was the non-verbal equivalent of Reagan's disarming "There you go again" — and it served to underline McCain's need for anger management. The angrier McCain got, the more unruffled Obama appeared.

It was like watching a split-screen double feature — Grumpy Old Men playing side by side with Cool Hand Luke.

McCain was frantic — as though he was running out of time, which he is — throwing everything he had at Obama, logical connection between thoughts be damned. In one memorable answer, he brought up Colombia, quickly jumping from free trade, to drugs killing young Americans, to hostages freed from Colombian rebels, to job creation.

Colombia also brought out one of McCain's most sneering reactions, chiding Obama for never having "traveled south of our border" — a jaw-dropping line of attack from the man who chose Sarah "Just Got My Passport" Palin as his No. 2.

Another head-scratcher: McCain's claim that "talking about a positive plan of action to restore this economy" is "what my campaign is all about." Really?

This is another way in which McCain's campaign mirrors Bush's handling of the Iraq war: not only doubling down on a failed strategy but also engaging in an endless search for an underlying rationale.

McCain's campaign was all about experience — until he picked Palin. It was all about putting country first — until he picked Palin. It was all about the success of the surge — until everyone from General Petraeus and the authors of the latest NIE made it clear that victory in Iraq exists only in McCain's and Palin's stump speeches. It was all about William Ayers — until voters rejected that line of attack. It was all about national security — until the economy collapsed.

Now it looks like it's going to be all about Joe the Plumber — and Sarah Palin's "expertise" on autism. Note to Sen. McCain, check out Palin's record as an advocate for special needs kids. She may understand their problems "better than almost any American that I know," but she sure isn't making their life easier in her state. (Is it any wonder McCain choked on the words as he referred to Palin as a "bresh of freth air"?)

Another note to McCain: If your mentioning Hillary Clinton three times in the debate was an attempt to win the hearts of women, putting women's "health" in air quotes and labeling it the concern only of "extreme" pro-abortionists was not a very good way to close the deal. He can kiss those women — and those pro-choice swing voters — good-bye.

McCain's spirit at the beginning of the debate quickly curdled into a desperate rage. And looking at the post-debate insta-polls, one thing became crystal: for voters, a lot of anger doesn't go a long way.

Obama closed by promising to "work every single day, tirelessly, on your behalf." McCain closed by just sounding tired — exhausted by all the unleashed fury.

[Arianna Huffington is the co-founder and editor-in-chief of The Huffington Post, a nationally syndicated columnist, and author of twelve books. She is also co-host of “Left, Right & Center,” public radio’s popular political roundtable program. In May 2005, she launched The Huffington Post, a news and blog site that has quickly become one of the most widely-read, linked to, and frequently-cited media brands on the Internet. In 2006, she was named to the Time 100, Time Magazine's list of the world’s 100 most influential people. Originally from Greece, she moved to England when she was 16 and graduated from Cambridge University with an M.A. in economics. At 21, she became president of the famed debating society, the Cambridge Union.]

Copyright © 2008 HuffingtonPost.com, Inc.

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Eags Reveals The Dutch Effect!

Timothy Egan has become a favorite NY Fishwrap columnist in this blog. Eags knows history and makes a great point. He points to the Reagan Effect as a counterpoise to the Bradley Effect. Rather than focus on race, Eags looks at politics. In the Bradley Effect, white voters — once in the voting booth — supposedly will vote for anyone other than a candidate of color. In the Reagan Effect, the voters looked at Dutch and Mr. Peanut in 1980 and cast their vote for the candidate who looked like a president. Result: landslide vote for Dutch. The Geezer looks like a confused old man who needs to be painting in the numbers during the Crafts Period in the Sunset Home for Seniors. The Hopester looks, acts, and talks like a POTUS. (And he can shoot the trey.) The Dutch Effect will determine the election of '08. If this is (fair & balanced) political analysis, so be it.

[x NY fishwrap]
The Deal, Sealed?
By Timothy Egan

This was the one where Bill Ayers finally came up. The “old, washed up terrorist” in John McCain’s words, who went from entitled brat with bomb fantasies to Chicagoan of the year to Willie Horton with an earring and a PhD.

The braying kooks on the far right demanded it. Sarah Palin threw slabs of Ayers’ sirloin to angry crowds, delivered in that crinkly-nosed, oh-honey-I-shrunk-the-kids style. And even Senator Obama said as much, with his say-it-to-my-face taunt of last week.

And when, a half hour or so into the third and most riveting of the three presidential debates, it finally came up — relieving us for a moment from a fast-escalating panderfest to Joe the Plumber — it fell flat.

At a time when a vanquished conservative president is nationalizing the banking system as his closing act, when millions of American lives are going off financial cliffs, when two wars strain the very thought of Pax Americana, we got this media-fed moment on Bill Ayers.

“We need to know the full extent of that relationship,” said McCain. Oooooh! That’ll change the election.

“It says more about your campaign than it does about me,” Obama replied, professorial as ever.

And that was it. Little wonder that independent voters in CNN’s flash poll favored Obama 57 percent to 31.

McCain, though much better on Wednesday night than he was in the first two debates, looked pained, pickled along with his honor. Some of the reaction shots made Bob Dole at his grumpiest look botoxed into serenity by comparison.

McCain hasn’t been “McNasty” since he was a cadet with that nickname, and it doesn’t suit him in old age. He tried Ayers. He tried ACORN. He even tried infanticide.

But you can tell McCain wants his reputation back; he wants out of this angry old man role. Being the designated white guy for Fox News does not suit him.

His best indignant moment — a line that may follow him to his grave, with many permutations of irony inherent in the words — was his retort: “I am not President Bush.”

But with that cleared up, McCain went back to some of his obscure obsessions, including yet another mention of that overhead projector that Obama helped to get some museum in Chicago. Imagine if Herbert Hoover, debating Franklin Roosevelt in 1932 at the depth of the Great Depression, kept dwelling on the problem with university chalkboards, and some old sympathizer with Sacco and Vanzetti.

In the first debate, John McCain wouldn’t look his rival in the face. In the second debate, he wouldn’t address him by his name — “that one,” as the t-shirts now proclaim.

And in the third debate, he scuffed and huffed, but ended up with a somewhat muddled conversation with a plumber. Little wonder, in the ideological wilderness of 2008, a time when McCain’s dark-side supporters want him to stay dirty, that McCain chose to dwell on a guy who spends a lot of time with his head in the toilet.

Near the end of the debate, McCain was calling him “my good friend, Joe.” And then, in sarcasm, he said, “Hey, Joe, congratulations! You’re rich!” Huh?

But absent was a central, overarching reason for electing the old guy. And as harsh as that sounds, Americans will usually choose young over old, unless young looks callow and empty.

Sometime in the next month or so the real John McCain will reappear. We’ll all welcome back a man of self-deprecating dignity. And we’ll say good riddance to the man who gave us an unqualified running mate with a witch doctor and a pathological inability to tell the truth about herself.

So, forget about radical chic or any other nonsense defining this election. The fantasy of the right has been put to rest. In this year of living dangerously — 20 days that are shaking the world — personal attacks don’t work, as innumerable polls showed in the last week.

And forget about the Bradley Effect, lying about race. We should be looking at the Reagan Effect: did Obama look like a president, as Ronald Reagan had to in the last week of the campaign to unseat Jimmy Carter?

History showed one thing in 1980. It’ll show the same in 2008.

[Timothy Egan, a contributing columnist for The Times, writes the weekly "Outposts" column on the American West. Egan — winner of both a Pulitzer Prize in 2001 as a member of a team of reporters who wrote the series "How Race Is Lived in America" and a National Book Award (The Worst Hard Time in 2006) — graduated from the University of Washington with a degree in journalism, and was awarded an honorary doctorate of humane letters by Whitman College in 2000 for his environmental writings. Egan is the author of four other books, in addition to The Worst Hard Time — The Good Rain: Across Time and Terrain in the Pacific Northwest, Lasso the Wind: Away to the New West, Breaking Blue, and The Winemaker's Daughter.]

Copyright © 2008 The New York Times Company

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