The old joke has old Mrs. Jones being beaten up by four muggers.
A neighbor looks out her window and sees the scene. Before running
to call the cops, she yells to a bystander, “Hey, why don’t you go
and help out?”
When he turns and looks up, she recognizes Mrs. Jones’
son-in-law.
“Oh, no,” he responds. “Four is enough.”
The classier politicians try to abide by this convention. Their
surrogates, proxies, representatives, go-betweens, bagmen, cronies,
cohorts, fellow travelers, mouthpieces, hatchet men, henchmen,
running dogs, gophers, spinners and handlers all trash the
opposition. These middlemen are there specifically to cut out the
beginning-man. In fact, they will tell you that their principal
would never say the things they are saying because he is such a
downright gentleman. He likes to look only at the positive side of
things. He believes that his positions stand for themselves. He
regrets that other campaigns have waded into the gutter. He
believes that America needs a new kind of politics, a politics of
affirmation, a politics of vision, a politics of idealism. None of
that slime for a man of his supreme gentility.
Barack Obama initiated his campaign advancing this premise. Let
Axelrod wave the axe and Brazile shoot the bazooka. His hands were
too full carrying the hope to be swinging the punches. His feet
were too busy marching toward change to kick his opponents. That
seemed to be working out pretty well for a while, when the tea
leaves were signaling an herbal sort of bloodless victory. He took
his victory lap around the Autobahn and returned from his conquest
of Europe with nary a wilt in his laurels.
But a funny thing happened to him on his way from the Forum.
McCain took an exciting running mate and the polls were dead even.
And then… and then…
…the true face of Obama emerged. If Palin has accomplished
nothing else, she has certainly done one thing. She has unmasked
Obama as an angry man. Suddenly he is spewing bitterness
everywhere. He runs ads mocking McCain for not using a computer. He
blames McCain for economic conditions. He savages McCain for
suggesting a commission to analyze the regulatory situation. He
runs scurrilous advertisements in Spanish that distort Rush
Limbaugh’s words about immigration and then blames McCain for
Limbaugh. (Kudos to Jake Tapper at ABC News for thoroughly
debunking this two-tier fraud.)
No more Mister Nice Guy for Obama, and the difference is
telling. His voice has a new snarl. Suddenly he is the commissar,
the Kommandant, the drill sergeant: “Get in their faces,” he
exhorts his acolytes. The battle now takes to the streets,
hand-to-hand, house-to-house combat. The Democrats are shouting
that McCain has no honor, they are going after Palin’s husband and
daughter. This is what they used to call in wrestling a Texas Death
Match with no holds barred. Or we might say, no bars held. The
phony bar they set for the “new politics” was breached by
themselves first.
Now we get to see how a community organizer organizes the
community. Can Obama win as yet another angry Democrat, spitting
against Karl Rove and Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity and Swift-boat
politics and the ghost of Lee Atwater? I would like to believe that
the answer is no, that voters will recoil from the sight of the
animus and the venomous, the odium and opprobrium. The burnished
Obama has been tarnished, while Sarah Palin has furnished the
varnish for McCain.
Going by the book, this last paragraph should express my regret
at this regression. I should affect a pious hope for a finer
campaign. But I have grown cynical, watching these pretensions
dissipate so many times before. Elections are a vicious clawing for
advantage, and it is time to stop imagining otherwise. Where some
hope can still obtain is in the realm of governance, that perhaps
whoever scathes his way to the top will be gracious upon arrival.
This leaves me with only one option, to end with the companion to
that joke. A man sees that Mrs. Jones is drowning while her
son-in-law stands calmly on the beach watching. “Aren’t you going
to help?” “Just watch,” the son-in-law replies. Sure enough, a team
of sharks rescues the old woman and tows her to shore. Professional
courtesy.
