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STOPPING THE TROJAN HORSE BEFORE IT GETS TO THE GATES
This entry was posted on 2/15/2010 3:47 PM and is filed under uncategorized.
Usually, in a time of war, the troops on the ground can't really pinpoint when the tide begins to turn in their favor. They're still getting shot at and blown up. They're still far from home and it seems as if they're never going to get to see their loved ones again. Sometimes idiots tell them to do things they feel uncomfortable doing but they don't have a lot of choice in the matter; as long as it's not illegal or stupifyingly death-defying, they gotta do it.
But there is a difference, and they can feel it. Usually it has to do with a smarter strategy coming down from command structure. Whereas before, they were basically running around in a sort of clusterf**k, short on supplies and common sense, now they have clearly defined goals, good leaders in place to help them achieve those goals, and the weapons necessary to keep them alive. Maybe before, morons who didn't know what they were talking about barked blind orders at them from ivory towers, and now, their hard-earned combat experience is respected and listened to, and consequently, they're not losing as many good men and women in bad situations.
And there are fewer bad situations, all around. Civilians who once might have feared them, for instance, now come out into the marketplace again. Children play in their presence. Life flows around them. And soon, they realize that their work is done and they can go home.
Peace returns, not just to that country, but to their own.
Although the political battlefield is not life or death and lacks the intensity of war, the consequences can be every bit as serious, because, as we learned in 2000, elections do have consequences. Presidents may not have the constitutional power to declare war in this country, but they can certainly find ways to engineer them if they please, to the devastation not only of the countries they invade but of our own. War profiteering and private capitalist piracy can bankrupt nations and throw its citizenry into destitution if there are no checks and balances in place, no watchdogs or accountability or consequences for that wrongdoing.
The advent of modern technological advances have dramatically changed campaigning--instantizing and prolonging it. During the early years of President Clinton's presidency FOX news didn't even exist, and Internet use was far, far less than it is today. Social networking sites like FaceBook and MySpace didn't even exist. Google didn't exist. Political websites like Talking Points Memo and Red State didn't exist. YouTube didn't exist. God knows Twitter hadn't even been imagined at that point.
Many of these things didn't even exist during George W. Bush's first term. Some of them, in fact, were created in reaction TO him.
As we all know, President Obama was the first to take full advantage of the new media in his presidential campaign, and I think what happened during his first year was that, first of all, he got completely blindsided by the absolute depth and depravity of the problems left to him by Bush. The financial problems, alone, which soared into crises mode just before the election, were so much worse than anyone had imagined in part because they'd been so skillfully hidden for so long, and no one on Obama's team had really counted on having to dedicate so much time and energy right out of the starting gate dealing with, basically, the potential bankruptcy of the United States of America.
All the problems had been neglected so horrifically. As many of you know, I come from a military family and so I have spent the past decade, really, reading everything I can get my hands on about both wars that Bush and Co. plunged this nation into, and most people have no CLUE as to how badly neglected Afghanistan really was.
Our guys over there...many of them were plunked out on the edge of some godforsaken mountain someplace and abandoned. They didn't have equipment to build basic shelter. They didn't have enough WATER. They didn't have HELICOPTERS. They didn't have enough AMMO. And they were left there like that for MONTHS.
This had been going on for years, because Bush pulled everything out and shipped it off to Iraq.
Now, it's not my plan to get off into a debate about either of the two wars here, but what I'm trying to say is that the DEPTH of the problems facing Obama were SO MUCH WORSE than anyone could have POSSIBLY IMAGINED that he and his team were just DROWNING in them.
These problems extended, in other words, into every single aspect of our government. Natural disaster management. The Justice Department. The Veteran's Affairs Department. Education. Interior. The You Name It Department.
And President Obama and his team just bowed under and went to work. And they did take on their signature issue, which was health care reform, because they knew they were going to lose some seats in 2010; they knew congress would be running scared for re-election this year, so they knew they had only one year to really have a fair chance of getting it through. They also believed that the only way to fix the toweringly rotten economy was to fix health care. Plus, if they could do that, it would help the Dems GET re-elected.
And in all that staggering amount of WORK...they forgot about MESSAGE.
Which, as we all know, is what the Republicans can twist around best to their advantage.
In fact, they've literally, gotten a 17-page playbook, written by a guy named Frank Luntz, on how to distort, misdirect, misrepresent, and downright lie about important issues of the day, how to twist and tie up the Democratic message in such a way that voters are so confused, in the end, that they'll pretty much believe whatever the Republicans tell them.
Especially if it will fit nicely on a bumper sticker or a Sarah Palin-type soundbite.
Luntz's previous clients, before he went to work for the Republican party, includes such luminaries as Merrill Lynch, Bear Stearns, and Ameriquest Mortgages. So far, he's provided Republican talking points on stopping health care reform and financial regulation reform.
Not only did Republicans have a ready-made propaganda machine in place, but they used it readily to lie for them, something that the Democrats have shown repeated reluctance to do. (Not that I'm recommending it. I'm just saying.)
Meanwhile, FOX News has provided a whole platform for the Republican message, weighted heavily toward conservative and tea-party madness. FOX News commentators, for one thing, are so quick to jump on the president's every word that, recently, after his first State of the Union address, the same commentators who called out liberals as "unpatriotic" and "America-haters" for daring to criticize--even mildly--President Bush over the Iraq war, now referred to the Democratic president of the United States as a "jerk," a "fake," and "arrogant."
At other times, their rhetoric has even veered toward the violent, and I'm not just talking about the certifiable Glenn Beck. I'm talking across the board.
And now, it seems that FOX has just stopped pretending that it's anything but a springboard for Republican politicians, as so many of its commentators are now blatantly using it to fundraise and/or to launch their own campaigns. The fact that the Federal Election Commission turns its face away from such blatant politicking is bad enough, but when the network hires politicians as commentators and then gives them carte blanche to use its airtime to set up their next campaign with no accountability for any of their claims and no consequences for the network...this gives the First Amendment a whole new, capitalist spin, with an assist, apparently, from Bush's favorite Supreme Court.
So while the president was working himself and his team half to death trying to clean up the toxic spill that was the legacy of the Bush administration, not only was he having to deal with the constant constant constant onslaught of the right-wing noise machine, but he was also getting attacked from the left, as well.
Some socialist, that.
Liberals assailed him for escalating the war in Afghanistan. They assailed him for not ending the war in Iraq fast enough. They assailed him for not making health care reform about single-payer, period, or at least, expanding the public option to include the whole country. They assailed him for "selling out" to financial interests.
I even read one blogpost headline who claimed Obama was actually a "moderate Republican."
Oh, for God's sake.
There were calls to start a third party--wow, those are soooo successful.
No matter what he did, no matter what he said, he was attacked, and the more vicious the attacks from the LEFT, the more emboldened and nasty the attacks from the RIGHT.
So...guess where the people in the MIDDLE went?
Yeah, why stay with the man?
It was at this point that I began to despair, truly despair. I could see us, as progressives, losing everything we'd worked for because of intransigence not just on the right, but on the left as well, and as for Obama, he was losing the message war. It seemed to be going on outside the windows where he and his team were working their asses off, trying to unravel the Gordian knots of fucked-up Bushian governance.
Then we lost Ted Kennedy's seat, and I swear to God I took it as hard as I did 2004. My kids knew it too because they both called home to make sure I was all right.
But my husband, the moderate Republican/Obama supporter who keeps being maddeningly right all the time, said, "This will turn out to be the best thing that could have happened. It will be a wake-up call to the president and his people. You'll see."
When you're hunkered down in the thick of battle, it's hard to tell that the tide has changed. It's just something you sense over time. It doesn't happen right away. Things accumulate.
First, I read this piece by Nate Silver over at fivethirtyeight.com, one of the best political sites there is. And this stood out:
And all Democrats need to realize, meanwhile, that
sometimes the message isn't going to sink in until the sixth or seventh
time that you repeat it. Before Tuesday's State of the Union, for
instance, the White House had almost literally never mentioned that the
stimulus contained a huge tax cut -- they shouldn't expect the public
to believe it any more than Warner Brothers should expect a ton of
people to go out and see their new movie if they only begin advertising
it 48 hours beforehand.
Rather, the Democrats need to figure out what their November messages are now and begin planting seeds for them now.
You want to run on Republican obstructionism? Well then, don't neglect
the golden opportunities that the Republicans are providing you with today, such as when they voted unanimously in the Senate against re-imposing pay-go rules or unanimously in the House against a very centrist financial regulation package. How many people know that House Republicans voted 174-0
against a jobs bill? It's probably not even 20 percent or 30 percent --
more like 2 or 3 percent, at best. The DNC, DCCC, DSCC, and sympathetic
groups like unions should be blasting out advertisements whenever the
Republicans cast a vote like this.
He went on to say that Democrats need to trumpet good news, no matter how modest, so that when elections roll around, they can take advantage of the fact that economic indicators are indeed improving significantly in terms of the recession and that Democrats and their policies can take credit for that. He said that, often, Democrats are too timid, too fearful that those indicators will not be there, but he says that, like Scarlett O'Hara, we shouldn't worry about that until the time comes. There's just as much a chance that they will as that they won't, and that the Republicans always assume--and brag on--the best in their own case.
And it seemed to me that it wasn't just me who'd read that piece, because I started hearing it from House and Senate Dems, and on political talk shows and on news programs and reading it in the papers.
This made me happy.
The next thing I noticed was the resurgence of David Plouffe, the wonderkind who helped propel Obama to the White House and then bowed out to write a book about the experience and to, literally, spend more time with his family because he'd seen so little of them during the campaign.
And baby, he's b-a-a-a-a-a-ack.
And I loved the first thing he said:
"Republicans right now are just sitting back and slinging arrows,"
Plouffe said. "We need to infiltrate their camp and shine some light
over their side of the fence."
How does Plouffe frame the argument to voters? He says that
Democrats have spent the past two years trying to fix problems while
Republicans are asking voters for the chance to wheel a "Trojan horse"
into Washington -- out of which will spill bankers and health insurance
executives.
A Trojan Horse. Oh yeah. He's back.
Plouffe, it seems will be advising and helping to coordinate campaigns all over the country so that we won't get any more nasty surprises like Massachusets. He says that, many times, candidates' advisors rely on in-house polling apparatuses that tend to stroke the egos of the candidates rather than show up serious problem areas; hence, nasty surprises.
Not that we'll win 'em all, by any means, and not that he's going to be some Super Overlord or anything, but it should be better than it has been, anyway. The Obama people know something about winning elections and they, and their local volunteers, can help.
They can help a lot.
But it wasn't just Plouffe that excited me.
It seemed the affable Joe Biden had finally hit his stride, too. Or, as my Republican husband put it, "I love it. They let out the attack dog. I watched Joe Biden go after Dick Cheney this morning and he did a real good job."
Or, as E.J. Dionne put it (link above):
Yet by the end of the interview, I realized he had bumped into the
hidden political issue of the 2010 elections. Beneath the predictable
back-and-forth between Obama and his Republican adversaries over
government spending lies a substantively important difference over how
the United States can maintain its global leadership.
For Republicans, American power is rooted largely in military might
and showing a tough and resolute face to the world. They would rely on
tax cuts as the one and only spur to economic growth.
Obama, Biden and the Democrats, on the other hand, believe that
American power depends ultimately on the American economy, and that
government has an essential role to play in fostering the next
generation of growth.
Notice that when Obama spoke about keeping America in first place,
he said not a word about the military. He referred instead to the
efforts of our competitors in the public sphere of the economy, and of our past complacency.
"Washington has been telling us to wait for decades, even as the
problems have grown worse," Obama said. "Meanwhile, China is not
waiting to revamp its economy. Germany is not waiting. India is not
waiting. These nations aren't standing still. These nations aren't
playing for second place. They're putting more emphasis on math and
science. They're rebuilding their infrastructure. They're making
serious investments in clean energy because they want those jobs."
Suddenly, Obama's approach is not about old-fashioned Democratic
spending. It's about patriotism, competing successfully, investing to
maintain American economic leadership. John F. Kennedy provided a
slogan for such an effort 50 years ago: "Let's get America moving
again."
And that brings me to my last point: The Man himself.
From the powerhouse State of the Union address, "We don't quit. I don't quit," to the rope-a-dopes session with the House GOP Caucus that left them bruised and bleary-eyed, to the fighting-spirit heartland speeches, his whole manner, his language, is reinvigorated, renewed, and re-energized.
He's taking control.
To House Dems, his message was equally stern: Quit whining.
And to the White House press corps, it's basically, hey, there's no new sheriff in town, here. I'M the sheriff.
In fact, they made it clear that the entire message has been revamped.
There will be four parts to this new message control.
One, there will be a more disciplined messaging, similar to the campaign days, which will focus more on the president's goals, which right now will be the economy and jobs.
Two, a quicker, more aggressive push-back against Republican attacks, as they have done against Republican accusations that they mishandled the Christmas Day almost -bomber. They're doing this with more direct responses from Robert Gibbs by e-mail to news outlets, (he also just opened a Twitter account), by using the vice president more aggressively, and so on.
Three, the president will be traveling outside of Washington, D.C., "the bubble" and into the country at least once a week, visiting with Americans and talking to them about their concerns.
And finally, he's going to try and get back to his original message of trying to be a change agent in Washington, from which he admits he strayed during his first year of such hard work.
Basically, the president will be front and center--not congressional Democrats. And people like what they see. Polls so far show that the president's popularity remain higher than that for just about anybody else in politics right now.
As my former Marine, Iraq vet son said, "He's the only man in Washington with a set of iron balls."
He hasn't given up on health care reform, either. In a recent call-out to the volunteers who helped propel him to the White House and who continue to remain engaged and active in the issues that matter to them, the White House has asked those volunteers if they would be willing to back up the candidates running for re-election who will be willing to stand firm for health care reform, and if so, would they be willing to volunteer time, either to make phone calls or write letters to the editor or just talk to neighbors and friends.
So far they've collected pledges of over four million hours of volunteer time from now to the election.
There are all kinds of ways to stop the Trojan Horse before it gets to the gates. You stop it with message control. You stop it with volunteering to back up Democratic candidates running for re-election or running to take over available seats in the House and Senate in 2010. You stop it by countering viral e-mails with bogus information that cross your desk at home.
No one man--on one president--is perfect. He's not going to be EveryMan or EveryWoman for EveryBody. But the one we have now is the best hope we've got to keep from opening up those gates and letting in that Trojan Horse.
Who might come spilling out of that horse? President Palin? A House and/or Senate so larded with Tea-Baggers and right-wingers that the gears of government grind completely to a halt and our own president is left completely unable to function, not to mention get re-elected--thus fulfilling John Boehner's and Mitch McConnell's dearest wet dreams?
What would be next? Impeachment over some bogus FOX-news trumped-up charges?
Is it really fair that every time a Democrat is elected to the White House, the Republicans are allowed to take that president completely down?
Are we going to stand for it again?
I don't think so.
And neither does Barack Obama.
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