Monday, September 15, 2008

A More Perfect Union


My father is more a fan of Keith Olbermann than I am; I prefer The Daily Show. But I do love some of what Olbermann does and I love how often Chris Hayes is a guest. And I love some of the issues that are brought up in segments such as this one.

This is the kind of attitude from Palin Obama and company have to attack. It isn't enough to keep chanting "4 more years" because although that is what we're going to be getting, the picture McCain and Palin are presenting is one of two genuinely likable people. And apparently Americans have forgotten that voting for the seemingly genuinely likable guy (with the surly VP choice) is what got us into much of the mess we face today both at home and abroad. Obama should be flooding the airwaves with the idea that not only is Palin mimicking a line from Bush, it is a line not even Bush publicly states any more. Any sort of connection between Iraq and 9/11 have long been disproved, and the fact that someone who is the potential #2 (wo)man in the White House (and could hold the #1 spot at some point in the next 4-8 years) either believes it or believes it still has enough political milage to parrot it more is more than scary. If she believes it, then we are in a terrifying situation. If she doesn't believe it but thinks it will help her side win, then - as Chris Hayes rightfully points out - it is morally repugnant.

We need to actually detail how the next four years will resemble the last eight if McCain and Palin are elected. We need to make it clear that we can't afford four more years of this. I hate the argument that we should vote for a president based on what will potentially happen on the Supreme Court. It didn't work in 2000, it didn't work in 2004, and it probably won't work in 2008. But I really think we need to emphasize the whole host of issues with a McCain and Palin picked Court, along with McCain and Palin foreign policy and McCain and Palin domestic policy.

We also need to seriously examine the fact that so much of our money goes toward military endeavors. The West Wing taught me why the military needed more expensive items when Jack Reese broke a $400 ash tray to demonstrate how the added cost created an extra safety measure. But I think Chris Hayes is right when he says, "what's really, really frustrating is the fact there is no other area of policy and political debate in which your prescription can be to just spend 12 billion dollars a month and keep a hundred and forty thousand Americans somewhere with no definitive strategic end point." We also need to firmly examine whether or not Chris Hayes' assessment regarding McCain's foreign policy as being even more extreme than Bush's current policy is correct. Because if it is, that is also something that needs to be stressed to the American public. Yes, this man is a POW. Yes, he is a respected and respectable man. Yes, he does genuinely want to do the best by his country and for his country. But that doesn't mean that some of his policies aren't just insane, and that his vision for our future may not, in point of fact, be the vision we require to carry us toward a better and more actualized version of this great American experiment.

2 comments:

John said...

Keith Olbermann is fairly excellent (but Rachel Maddow has him beat by a mile!) I don't think I had ever caught an interview with Chris Hayes before, but he has certainly piqued my interest now.

It really is amazing to hear the difference between what the Palin/McCain camp is saying and what is actually happening. Even more amazing, though, is how successful they've been at using repetition of their statements to convince the American people to ignore and mistrust any source of information that contradicts them.

They say the Obama/Biden camp isn't fighting hard enough, that they're not sinking to the Palin/McCain level of mudslinging. Truthfully, I'd be disgusted with them if they did, and I don't think either Obama or Biden are capable of the level of self-delusional doublethink needed to launch such attacks. That may prove to be their downfall, though, because they underestimate how willing to believe anything many of the American people seem to be.

petpluto said...

I don't think Obama or Biden should be mudslinging or making stuff up. But jeez, they've gotta do something! I want Obama being cool and tough and collected and responding to most of the accusations against him with style and charisma and wit. I want him to wipe the floor with McCain by being more presidential. I want him to actually embrace the fact that people think he's an arrogant upstart, because then he has the opportunity to BE arrogant. And damn if I'm not tired of Democrats losing elections. I want Obama to win. And at this point, I don't really care how he does it.

As for Chris Hayes, he's my intellectual love!