The Politics of Stupid

The other night, presidential candidate Barack Obama said of John McCain and his campaign promises, "You can put lipstick on a pig . . . but it's still a pig." The Republicans wasted little time crying foul, claiming that Obama actually referenced Palin and her recent vice-presidential candidate acceptance speech.

Let's say for the sake of argument that Obama was covertly hearkening up the image of Palin as a dolled-up swine. Isn't demanding an apology for it playing the gender card too? Clinton took heat for that very issue during the beginning of the Democratic primary race. She (or her minions) hinted that the boys were playing too rough with Clinton, which brought up all sorts of strange emotions in Americans. Until then, Clinton got to portray herself as tough as nails at her leisure. But when things got rough, she tacked left and tried to momentarily play the part of the fair damsel. Dabbing those mascaraed eyes and crying out for some chivalry from all those good old boys out there.

Not just a load of crap, but more so wishful thinking. You want to hold the top office of the country? Or be a heartbeat away from the top office? Then your skin better be thick enough to withstand much, much more than being called a pig, or a ho, or a milf, or a vpilf, or a bitch. Playing the gender card (and make no mistake, it was the Republicans that played it this time) will only anger the more savvy of the electorate; I know that's a relatively tiny portion of the grand total, but nevertheless, it's a tangible, statically measurable group of people. The fact is getting elected president of the United States is an arduous task. Everyone knows that the woman that finally does it will plead no quarter, take no prisoners, and will beat her competition at their own game.

It does crack me up that McCain said, with a straight face, that he hated the recent negative campaign mud-slinging, mentioning specifically Obama's recent pig/lipstick reference. Maybe he forgot he used the very same phrase only a year ago about Clinton's health care plan? Whatever. A NBC analyst got it right when he said that McCain's plan from here to the election is to talk about anything BUT the issues at hand. To do otherwise would be to try and defend a mess of an economy and war front that George Bush has presided over for the last eight years. I doubt even one of our founding fathers could succcessfully run on that sorry platform. Yeah, not even our celebrated war hero, General George Washington. As a result, genuine discussion of the issues take a backseat to the politics of stupid: vicious platitudes, gender and race card games, and theatrical requests for apologies.

Which is great if you regularly tune in to the Jerry Springer show, not so great for the effective management of our country. If the United States eventually goes the way of Ancient Rome, we will have more than deserved it for not having been more cerebral in our political process.