Legal Commentary

Politics As Usual

By Big Tent Democrat

Tim Russert's passing reminds me that this Obama-McCain matchup was the election the Media dreamed of. This was the one that was going to change politics.

Well, anyone watching the first week of the campaign since the departure of Hillary Clinton must have noticed that in fact what we have gotten is more of the same. John Mercurio writes:

[L]isten closely to the debate this week over the campaign's No. 1 issue, and you'll hear how comfortably Obama and McCain conform to their parties' tried-and-true orthodoxies, the ones that repeatedly set the stage for a sharply divided -- and static -- electoral map.

As a Democrat, I am glad to see the Obama team understands that Obama can not change politics, that he must engage in it. A sharply partisan campaign is very much to Obama's favor and the first rule in politics is you win before you can transform. Others have noticed the pedestrian nature of the campaign:

David Brooks: Dear Dr. Collins, can you explain this strange feeling of ennui? Why is there no zip in my zest, no snap in my vigor? Why does my mood stretch out blue and lifeless, like a patient etherized upon a table?

Here we have two outstanding presidential candidates. The Economist magazine, which is so much cleverer than the rest of us, lauds them as the best of America. And yet somehow the campaign is not exactly Lincoln v. Douglas or Plato v. Aristotle. Every day’s issue blip is more trivial than the last. McCain used some unfortunate phrase about American troops staying in Iraq and the Obama henchmen launched a thousand conference calls twisting the phrase entirely out of context and claiming that McCain doesn’t care about the fate of the troops. James Johnson, Obama’s V.P. vetter and a highly respected political practitioner, takes an insider loan or two and the entire McCain apparatus erupts as if this transgression reflects directly on Obama’s fitness for office. . . .

(Emphasis supplied.) Actually, Lincoln/Douglas was not what the mythmakers make of it now. I suggest folks read the actual debates. Demagoguery and false outrage were the order of the day then too. The more things change, the more they stay the same.

The funny thing is unlike the Media, as a Democrat, I think this is a POSITIVE development, not a negative one. I was worried that our candidate might have believed his press clippings. I am much more at ease now that I see Obama is capable of the partisan slant, the persistent characterization of McCain as "running for Bush's third term," and a full throated politics of contrast/Fighting Dems campaign.

The Media mourns. I am pleased.

By Big Tent Democrat, speaking for me only

Full post as published by TalkLeft on June 14, 2008 (boomark / email).