Lack Of Awareness Watch
I don’t think in my lifetime I have ever witnessed quite a campaign in which the wife of the Presidential candidate has been sequestered lest she voice yet another sweeping generalization that can be rightfully interpreted as denigrating both the American system at large or the values of other Americans; or in which the Vice Presidential candidate has been sequestered from press questioning lest…once again in an interview or an impromptu says something that either is so bizarre that it makes no sense at all or serves as a good argument not to vote for [the] running mate [bold mine-DL]; or in which the Presidential nominee himself knows that if he stays on the teleprompter he has a good chance of winning, but if he wades in to banter wtih the crowd there is equally a good chance that he may say something so disturbing that the entire facade that he has so carefully constructed simply collapses. ~Victor Davis Hanson
Guess which campaign Hanson is talking about. Except for the line about “the American system,” almost this exact thing could be and has been said as a criticism of the McCain campaign over the past two months. Are McCain supporters seriously going to start complaining about the other party’s seclusion of a VP candidate or the inaccessibility of the candidate’s wife? Of course, with McCain the problem is a little different: he says disturbing things when he sticks to the script, and when speaking from a teleprompter keeps smiling in that creepy way we have all come to fear.
Since when has the GOP been the party of victimology…..? The new ‘last refuge of the scoundrel’
http://blogs.abcnews.com/politicalradar/2008/10/palin-fears-med.html
Actually, they normally leave it to Palin to excoriate “the American system”.
VDH is something of a bugbear for me. I would have thought that a man who had studied, say the Peloponessian war or the career of Crassus would have understood a bit more about Imperial overreach than he has demonstrated in re the Iraq war. Is his scholarship as weak as his polemic?
This latest comment strikes me as merely another example of the strange hysterical denial as to the electoral situation. It is all over NRO today. It would be so satisfying to see them acknowledge that their current condition stems directly from the policies they have advocated, i.e., the dogs won’t eat the dog food.
I can handle McCain’s creepy smile even though it does remind me of Richard Widmark in Kiss Of Death. What drives me mad is his manner of delivery. He sounds like he is addressing a kindergarten class.
Yeah, totally could be either side.
After a campaign that’s been said to “redefine” so much (the list would, I’m sure, include the term “my friends”), I wonder if the role of surrogates in campaigning might be one of the things that has actually changed for good.
VDH is a spectacular hack. I can only think that he must have a certain degree of blunder, grounded in his classical studies background, that intimidates people not well-versed in the classics. His analysis is so lacking that I can’t understand why he remains in syndication.
“He sounds like he is addressing a kindergarten class.”
The constant references to Joe the Plumber probably contribute to that.