Here's Mud in Your Eye

I'm glad this election is going to be over in slightly less than a month now because at the rate we're going, if it lasted much longer the Republican candidates would really start slinging mud. I mean that literally. I'm picturing a debate where John McCain takes a handful of mud and throws it at Barack Obama. That seems to be the next logical step in the ever-increasing virulence of attacks directly on Obama.

The latest round comes as polls show McCain is getting clobbered in the election. So what's a maverick who pledged to run an honest, positive campaign to do? Well, it must have seemed pretty obvious to the team of mavericks, because they're going for the low blows.

Over the weekend, Palin said, "We see America as the greatest force for good in this world. Our opponent though, is someone who sees America, it seems, as being so imperfect that he's palling around with terrorists who would target their own country."

This is from the campaign headed by a guy who said he would never question his opponent's patriotism. Isn't that what just happened? Isn't she saying that Obama not only hates America but that he's friends with terrorists who target America?

Of course, the McCain campaign sticks by the comments saying that it's a matter of fact. Never mind that the CNN fact check said this claim was false (as does everyone else who's seriously and honestly looked at the issue). What's important here is that people are hearing the words Obama and terrorist in the same sentence. That's not calling into account his judgement, that's just an outright smear. I really hope that people see this for what it is.

Calm Down Everyone

Proving once again that there's no place for humor in modern politics, the New Yorker is taking a lot of flak for it's most recent cover. The cartoon, entitled "The Politics of Fear", depicts Obama in Muslim clothing fist bumping his wife who's carrying a rifle under a picture of Osama bin Laden while the American flag burns in the fire place. My first thought on seeing the cover was: That's pretty funny.

However, not everyone was amused. Almost immediately, the campaign called the cover "totally inappropriate." And that was the McCain campaign. An Obama spokesman called the cover "tasteless and offensive."

Let's stop here for a moment and just calm down.

First of all, the cover is kind of funny. Is this really what people are worried an Obama presidency will look like? Really? By showing is so bluntly it kind of puts the lie to all the black radical, secret Muslim stuff that just keeps on floating around.

Second, the cover of the New Yorker is hardly a deciding influence in the political realm. Often the covers feature what I take to be a very dry humor or have some sort of very New York-centric humor. The point is that this is not that big a deal, even if it were bad.

And for those of you out there worried about the picture being taken out of context and being portrayed as fact or something, think about it for a second. Obviously the thing is a cartoon, not reality. Let's also not forget that there are actual pictures available online of Obama wearing a turban. If I were looking for Obama images to take out of context, I'd start there.

So let's turn down the swift boating radar for a moment and just enjoy the joke. If we can't do that, the last laugh will be on us.

The General and Mr. McCain

One interesting thing about this election that I don't remember from past elections is how quickly and forcefully the candidates respond to any sort of aspersion and how hard each candidate tries not to appear to be casting any aspersions in the first place. Even as they attach each other, neither candidate wants to allow himself to be swift-boated and neither wants to appear to be doing the swift-boating. The radars on both sides have gotten so sensitive that it's starting to become a detriment to actually having a debate.

Consider the recent dust up over Gen. Wesley Clark's comments that getting shot down over Vietnam wasn't a qualification for being president. McCain immediately responded by saying that Obama should "cut [Clark] out" and Obama himself quickly distanced himself from the comments. Republicans are worked up over Democrats questioning McCain's war record. Democrats are worried about being the perpetrators of swift-boating.

Into this void has apparently gone common sense. For instance, it's not really questioning someone's war record to say that the record doesn't qualify them to be president. That does nothing to take away from the bravery that McCain exhibited or the honor with which he unquestionably served. McCain can be a hero and still not deserve to be president.

Also missing is any acknowledgment that Clark's comments are simply correct. Being a prisoner of war - however patriotically it might have happened - is not in itself a qualification to be president. Yes, McCain has a heroic war record, but that is not grounds to vote for him for president. It's a non sequiter to say otherwise. That doesn't take anything away from McCain's own record of service. It just says that we're looking for more in our leader.

Swift Turbans for Truth

Well, the more things change, the more they stay the same. Even as new polls show Obama taking a pretty good lead nationwide (presumably as Democrats unite around their soon-to-be nominee) another tempest-in-a-teapot-here-today-gone-tomorrow controvery kicks up. This time, it's over a photo published on the Drudge website showing Obama wearing a turban. The photo was apparently taken on a trip to Kenya and it's also apparently common practice for visiting senators to try on the traditional clothing of the countries they visit. The Obama campaign claims (probably correctly) that this is an effort to stoke the fires that Obama is a foreign born radical Muslim (and probably a terrorist too) that flame up from time to time. He took the offensive immediately and shot back at the underhanded tactics that would lead to that photo being released.

Let's set aside for a moment the fact that it's custom for our senators - our duly elected representatives - to go to other countries and play dress up. I'm more interested in looking at the wisdom of the response from the Obama campaign.

Now, we're told over and over again that if we learned nothing else from the Kerry debacle - I mean, campaign - it's that no charge can remain unanswered. The fact that swift boating has entered the lexicon as a verb speaks to the wisdom of the strategy. However, I can't help but feel that the strength and vehemence of Obama's reaction was a mistake.

Whereas the damage from the original swift boat ads came from the words in the ads, the damage from the turban picture comes from the connotations that the picture will raise for people. Words are easy (at least relatively) to combat with words. Pictures are something else entirely. They say a picture is worth a thousand words. I'd say it might even take more than that.

I'm reminded of the famous story of Leslie Stahl, then a CBS news reporter, trying to run a critical piece on the Reagan administration. The thrust of the piece was the difference between the president's photo-ops and his actual policies. Stahl ran images of Reagan surrounded by smiling senior citizens while she intoned about his cuts to programs for the elderly. After the piece ran on the news Stahl expected retrubution in some form from the administration. Instead she was thanked. They knew that the power of the images was going to be greater than the power of her words. She's basically just run an extended campaign ad for the president.

In a more contemporary example, think of all the drug commerical ads where soothing images run while a dry voice explains the variety of unpleasant things that may happen to you if you take the drug. You'll remember the image long after you stop being able to recite the complete list of side effects.

Where I'm going with this is that through his campaign's reaction, Obama gave license for every paper in the country to publish that photo. In New York alone I saw it on the cover of multiple newspapers yesterday. Yes, each photo will be accompanied by an article explaining the broader context. But the campaign is putting a lot of faith in people's willingness to read the article and in the power of words to overpower images. While I'm hardly one to dismiss "just words" I think that's hoping for an awful lot.