The Palin/McCain Ticket

I picked up this screen shot from Gil Smart's blog. It's funny to me that a McCain campaign ad is just a big picture of Sarah Palin.
Who is the Republican presidential nominee again? I guess it's a good idea to give your nominee as little media exposure as possible. Especially in your paid media.

It's even more telling that Palin has already been asked about her career plans for after this election. The implication there being that once McCain is defeated Palin is the natural choice for the GOP four years from now. A prospect I find puzzling considering the disaster she has been in this election. She has fired up the base a little more, but lost the conservative intelligentsia. From David Brooks to Kathleen Parker to Peggy Noonan, the elite of the conservative coalition are not going to be happy with her four years from now. I don't understand how she has not been officially dubbed "damaged goods."

I have occassionally found myself wondering how different this campaign would be if McCain had chosen Tim Pawlenty or Charlie Crist or even Joe Lieberman for VP. I don't think it's going too far to say that with Lieberman McCain would have lost the base but maybe won the election. A McCain/Lieberman ticket may have even created a braoder shift in the electorate, puching some out of the Republican tent, bringing others in and creating an entire new right wing movement outside of the GOP. It's fun to speculate.

Peggy Noonan's Clintonian linguistics

So Peggy Noonan wants to have a discussion about Barack Obama's patriotism.

"Snooty lefties get angry when you ask them to talk about these things. They get resentful. Who are you to question my patriotism? But no one is questioning his patriotism, they're questioning its content, its fullness."

One can't help but get the sense that Noonan wants to debate the meaning of the word "is" here. The right wing's "patriotism dialogue" has become trite and sometimes dangerous. It oftentimes bores me. It's coarse and accusatory from Rush Limbaugh. It's lowbrow and free of thought from Bill O'Reilly.

But no one fills it with pretense quite like Peggy Noonan. Then again Peggy Noonan could probably find a way to make Pabst Blue Ribbon, a hoagie and NASCAR sound pretentious. And I just got done reading an essay critiquing deconstructionist architecture. So you would think that my tolerance for pretense would be on high right now. Nevertheless…

When this talk of Obama’s supposed elitism started I had an interesting discussion with my speech class about it. One of the things that came up was the contradiction of one politician accusing another of being elitist. “Aren’t they all kind of elitist? If you’re a Senator you’re not exactly an ‘Average Joe.’” Coincidentally we had been discussing red herrings and rhetoric the week before. “Aren’t there more important things to debate than what Barack Obama wears on his lapel?”

What Noonan’s column and this on going discussion about lapel pins and hands on hearts really got me thinking about was how differently the two political polls express patriotism. Noonan seems to imply that liberals find patriotism to be distasteful somehow. Of course it’s politically convenient for her to imply such a thing even if she doesn’t believe it. And that’s the big difference in how patriotism is expressed by liberals and conservatives. You won’t see many liberals impugn the patriotism of conservatives for the sake of scoring political points.

I’m reminded of a visit to Abilene, Texas a couple years ago. I drove around the town with my friend who lived down there and everywhere I looked I saw the American flag. The problem is that it wasn’t just on flagpoles. It was on everything. Painted on walls, minivan decals, it was a tool of commerce. And this is what I find to be offensive about the cultural conservative patriotism. It’s not an emotion, or a loyalty to nation or an ideal.

Patriotism is a tool: a tool of politics, a tool of propaganda, and a tool of commerce.

Patriotism elects presidents; incompetent presidents. Patriotism sells cars. Patriotism publicizes cable news networks. Patriotism propagates wars.

I think the commerce is what is most offensive. My friend and I drove past car dealerships and mini marts all with the word “freedom” or “liberty” in the name and an American flag in the logo. Do you really need to tell me that you love America in order to sell me a car? Can you just tell me about the gas mileage?

Then again, this could be a cultural difference in how one addresses others and expresses his or her feelings to them. When I’m at a ballgame and I see two guys chatting the through the entire national anthem my desire is to walk over and at least give them a piece of my mind if not smack them upside the head. When I see someone flying an old and worn American flag my desire is to pull into their driveway and give them the rundown on proper care and disposal of the flag. However, doing so wouldn’t make me more patriotic, it would just make me a jerk. Questioning a candidate on why they don’t wear the flag on their lapel is the same. It makes you a jerk, not more patriotic.

The again, maybe I’m just a “snooty leftie.”