The Insane Campaign of John McCain

So who's right, the progressive optimists who claim Barack Obama will win in a landslide?  Or those "realists" who contend the race will tighten over the next two weeks and produce a squeaker?

I don't really know, of course.  My own "cohort," American white males, are a profoundly conservative bunch who tend, more than any other group, to vote according to a knee-jerk conservatism. They're almost embarrassed to think too much.  This was George W. Bush's great source of support; that, and the corrupt "base" of the ultra-rich who simply liked his flat tax ideas and complete indifference to regulation.  American militarism sells because it harks back to the robust days when we solved all problems by sending in the Marines.  That's still what we do, it's just now a lot of us (the "Europeanized" among us) recognize it doesn't work.  The wars in Afghanistan and Iraq were both supremely misguided, knee-jerk reactions to the national paranoia concerning Muslim extremists.  Neither war will do anything, ever, to tamp down the problem of terrorism, and the CIA suggests the wars, in fact, have made things demonstrably worse. Those are what we quaintly call the facts. Yet the wars served their purpose, a great catharsis for a declining power.  Our military attacked vastly overmatched countries with large Muslim populations, killed a lot of people and installed governments which may or may not be to our liking in the long run.  It doesn't really matter that these "wars" bear no resemblance to the principles underlying the John Wayne movies about World War II, where we were legitimately using our military to defend the world from Fascist tyranny.  The "optics" are sort of the same, and in the TV age, and with a non-discerning, increasingly poorly-educated populace (33% of the kids no longer graduate from high school, Colin Powell told us today on "Meet the Press"), that's more than enough.

John McCain knows all this.  The one thing this mediocre guy has figured out is that American politics is, first and foremost, about imagery.  You don't win with "ideas."  If you did, George W. Bush would never have come within a thousand miles of the White House.  Half the people will vote for you in this country if you seem like a tough father figure who will beat up the bad guys. Then you need a few thousand more votes and you win.  The other half of the country (disproportionately represented by women, who are less swayed by the John Wayne and Chuck Norris stuff) are more divided among themselves, as one might expect among the "cerebral" part of the country.  In this demographic you find all the people who think the whole system is rotten, that one party is as bad as another, who have unique and idiosyncratic takes on American democracy, who belong to a very narrow group of special pleaders.  Organizing this part of the country, as Barack is trying to do, is like herding cats and shoveling smoke. 

The Daily Kos tracking poll paints the picture.  Among all males, McCain leads 48-44.  Among all white males, McCain leads 54-38.  Look at that second number: it's not even close.  It's a blowout.  When we picture America, we see a white male because the President is always, always a white male.  So when McCain, who's not a "maverick" but more a standard issue John Birch Society avatar, and as generally insincere and corrupt as most members of his profession at the national level, rails on about "William Ayers" and questions who Obama "really" is, he is, of course, playing to that jingoistic optic.  How can a President, a Commander-in-Chief, be John Wayne if we're not even sure he's on our side?

The pundits, citing dubious polls, argue that this approach "backfires."  Bullshit.  It works and always has worked.  Most of the American electorate do not compare and integrate the incoming media images with reference to a fixed inner position arrived at by a careful consideration of "issues" and America's economic and political situation.  There is no such locus of definite judgment for most people.  Don't pretend you don't know what I mean.  When you head down to Home Depot and watch all those elephantine Americans waddling down the aisles with blank faces, keep in mind that many of them will be voting in a couple of weeks, and consider how many of them understand the difference between Obama's medical insurance program and McCain's $5,000 tax credit idea.  

The country has been in economic decline since the early 1970s.  One way of reacting, what we snobby "elites" think of as "enlightened," is to think about ways to change things, to reconfigure the economy, to "redistribute" wealth by employing ourselves in money-making pursuits with a broader democratic base.  Another way to react is the one which Hitler galvanized into the basis of his short career.  When McCain & Palin barnstorm the country whipping the masses into a frenzy about "Country First" and being in places which are "more Pro-America," they are, of course, playing to this nationalistic angle. Ein Volk, ein Land, ein Reich!  A depressed and demoralized populace can turn to anger and resentment as one way out of the frustration.  We've still got the world's mightiest army, we can still blow the hell out of anyone who gets in our way with our nuclear arsenal.  Maybe we shouldn't be electing some epicene, slender black/white guy who seems sort of like an intellectual from French Equatorial Africa.  Maybe this other guy -- scarred, angry, broken, pasty all-white from his hair to his pallid skin -- one thing we know about McCain, if he gets to the Oval Office, he'll use all those bombs and weapons.  There'll be more war!  No one will push us around!

Alas, his campaign is not insane.  It's American, same as it ever was.  How tight will it be?  I don't even want to guess.