Quick, what’s the first line that comes to mind when you think
of last Tuesday’s presidential debate?
If you’ve been slinking under the sodium street lamps of the
leftist blogosphere for the past few days, your answer is probably
this riposte by President Obama: “Governor Romney doesn’t have a
five-point plan; he has a one-point plan. And that plan is to make
sure that folks at the top play by a different set of rules. That’s
been his philosophy in the private sector. That’s been his
philosophy as governor. That’s been his philosophy as a
presidential candidate.”
Politico listed that as President
Obama’s best debate line.
Salon.com and
Talking Points Memo cheered.
Greg Sargent said the quip “went some way” to “aggressively
unmask Romney’s five point plan as a sham.”
It was also devoid of substance and wholly separated from
reality. Even if you disagree with Romney’s tax plan, anything that
closes (however vaguely) deductions predominantly on the wealthy
isn’t some gilded heist. And Romney, who donated more than a
quarter of his income to charity last year and decided to reform
health care in Massachusetts after the CEO of Staples convinced him
it was the humane thing to do, isn’t exactly a cackling
plutocrat.
The line rang from liberal steeples not because it was true, but
because it reinforced a cartoon version of Romney that the left has
been drawing. Through their eyes, Romney is a lying robber baron
hell-bent on bankrupting the treasury to benefit his rich buddies.
They’ve become so contemptuous of this false image that they want
it reinforced over and over again. And that’s what Obama did during
the debate.
Joe Scarborough writes that “turning political opponents into
cartoon characters is the work of fools.” That may be, but it’s
also a proud tradition that dates back to the American founding.
Thomas Jefferson was portrayed as an atheist Jacobin; John Adams as
a raging Anglophile. Even George Washington took his lumps from the
press as an American monarch in the pursuit of absolute power.
The modern right does this too. President Obama has been tarred
with plenty of stereotypes and we’ve all laughed at Onion
articles featuring Joe Biden as a cad.
But such attacks have become the all-consuming strategy of the
Obama campaign. Team Obama’s primary objective is to paint Romney
as something he’s not; to turn every one of his policies into a
corporate misogynist plunder and every one of his statements into a
blackhearted mendacity. Seeing Romney as a heel, the left then
wants Obama to debate the heel, not the real Romney.
This mentality was at work during the vice-presidential debate
too. Biden’s most praised lines weren’t rousing defenses of
liberalism. They were ripostes about Paul Ryan’s hypocrisy on
stimulus money or the 47% comment that Romney disavowed. And they
were backed up by the smuggest display of smirks, sneers, leers,
laughs, and quips that we’ve ever seen from a modern vice
presidential candidate.
The most celebrated line was an interruption from Biden: “Oh,
now you’re Jack Kennedy. This is amazing.” It was a meaningless
comment and came while Ryan was making a serious point about tax
policy’s history of success, including under JFK. But it confirmed
the stereotype of Ryan as a greasy liar. So Ryan never got to
finish and the Twittersphere reacted as if the vice president had
just won the Battle of Midway.
This isn’t the stuff of visionary politicians; it’s the stuff of
insult comedians. At a recent debate with Bill O’Reilly, Jon
Stewart got adoring applause when he said conservatives live on
“Bulls—t Mountain,” an insulated peak of untruth. Is there really
much difference between that comedic stereotype and what the Obama
campaign is doing to Romney? After Biden’s vacuous line, you could
almost hear an audience of college students cheering in the
background.
The Obama campaign is like a smarmy stand-up act. It tosses out
barbs left and right. It derives humor by painting its political
opponents as cartoonish fools. But it never assembles a cohesive
plan or vision. It makes dents in Romney’s tax plan or political
record (some of which are fair game) but it never does the mature
work of creating anything itself. Where is the Obama-Biden debt
plan? No one knows. But gosh darn, how about that Mitt Romney guy,
huh? He says he’s worried about China so he’d better send Ann to
the dining room to clean it! Boom! Folks, my name’s Jim Messina and
I’m here all week.
And man, how about those evil oil companies, huh? And corporate
jets? And Big Bird? Actually that might have been the moment when
the strategy went off the rails. After the president got roundly
thumped on policy during the first debate, his campaign decided to
smirk away the entire thing by running an ad showing a silhouette
of Big Bird in a corporate building. Having cast others as
fictional characters, the Obama campaign now starred an actual
fictional character.
They probably imagined people smirking at how clever they were
while the narrative shifted with their joke. Instead the entire
political world took a step back and said, “What the hell are you
doing?” Having run into a wall of actual substance, the cartoon
shadowboxing strategy disintegrated.
They’re still using it, of course. (Say, did you hear the one
about binders of women?) And it has a certain appeal for
progressives who buy into the portrayal of Romney-Ryan as vicious
tycoons. Both Republicans are on Bulls—t Mountain, after all.
But for everyone else, the act is tired. The American people
want a better economy, less government, and confidence in the
future, not an animated comedy. The debates were instructive
because they showed the world that Romney wasn’t the cartoon he’d
been made out to be. For many swing voters seeking an alternative,
that was all they needed to see.
