The 2008 Presidential Campaign: What Happened and Why?

[Primula Baggins]

I don't think the Fairness Doctrine ever involved making people say things they didn't believe, yov. Instead you'd have to have a show of equal length hosted by someone who opposed Limbaugh, say. Limbaugh could go on saying what he liked.

The doctrine's main effect was to keep most opinion off the air, because station owners didn't want to program twice as much opinion. Talk radio did not take off until the Fairness Doctrine was gone.

[Cerin]

yov, I don't see how it would force people to say things they don't believe. What it would do is force corporate owners of radio stations to make time available for opposing views. As I said, the radio waves belong to the public, not to those corporations.

[yovargas]

Thanks for the clarification, Prim. I read it to mean that Rush had to play nice to the Dems for half his show and my head kind of asploded.

(Still wouldn't support such a thing, though.)

[Alatar]

<off-topic>
What's with the new spelling of exploded as "asploded" that keeps turning up? Is this a new internet joke thing like "teh" or a new American spelling like "color"?
</off-topic>

[ToshoftheWuffingas]

A while back I asked:

Given that the Republican campaign has clearly labelled Obama as a dangerous liberal who will introduce socialist policies; then what if the American public goes ahead and chooses him?
Does that mean the public have democratically and with forethought chosen to have gone in a socialist direction?

I think this is an important question though it could be framed in several different ways. In other words does a clear election victory legitimise a change in political values that many Americans hate the thought of? Does it also redefine where the American 'centre' is


Sorry - center.

[sauronsfinger]

Allow me to preface this by saying I do NOT think this is a major story. It is news about the election so I thought I would pass it on with a comment and a comparison from American history of a similar situation that garned tons of publicity in the waning weeks of a presidential race. It proved to be one of the defining moments of the 1950's and its effects were widely written about and studied.
From our friends at politico.com

The Republican National Committee has spent more than $150,000 to clothe and accessorize vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin and her family since her surprise pick by John McCain in late August.

According to financial disclosure records, the accessorizing began in early September and included bills from Saks Fifth Avenue in St. Louis and New York for a combined $49,425.74.

The records also document a couple of big-time shopping trips to Neiman Marcus in Minneapolis, including one $75,062.63 spree in early September.

The RNC also spent $4,716.49 on hair and makeup through September after reporting no such costs in August.

I think Sarah Palin has the right to shop at any store open to her. If the RNC wants to pay for her wardrobe as a campagin expense, that is fine with me. No problems there as long as no laws were violated.

In September of 1952, Richard Nixon was the Republican VP candidate on a ticket with former general Dwight Eisenhower. In the middle of the campaign, it came out that there was a hint of scandal surrounding a secret fund used to pay Nixon some $18,000.00 that he used for family living expenses. When it came out, many urged Eisenhower to dump Nixon from the ticket.

Nixon took to the airwaves and delivered one of the best speeches of his life - what came to be known as The Checkers Speech. And to deflect the charge that they used the money to buy fancy clothes, Nixon said this of his wife Pat

I should say this—that Pat doesn't have a mink coat. But she does have a respectable Republican cloth coat. And I always tell her that she'd look good in anything.

The speech was well recieved. Nixon was not dumped. The rest is history.

That was 56 years ago and we have come a long way since then.

I do wonder what this says about this "small town girl with small town values" who goes across the nation extolling the virtues of common folk in small towns while trying to divide the real Americans from the rest of us. This is not John Mellancamp singing about his life in small towns, making millions of dollars and perfectly able to move to any big city he wants to. Palin went the small town route not by rejecting the big city but by the simple way the cards were dealt to her. So now when the opportunity arises, she decides to get the finest big city duds at the finest big city department stores.

My question is this. Will any of her supporters who are so enthusiastic about this small town girl extolling small town virtues see this as any sort of hypocrisy? Is there something wrong with Maggies Dress Emporium in Ames, Iowa? Why can't Ms. Palin get her version of a respectable Republican cloth coat at the Wal Mart outside of Dayton?

Does this show that the extolling of small town virtues is mere pandering done to buy votes from people who are then cynically used and dismissed? Is this yet another example that the Sarah Palin of created Republican PR legend is not the same Sarah Palin in reality?

People wanted to dump Nixon from the ticket as VP because of $18,000.00. In fifty years that figure has now jumped to over $150,000.00.

Maybe John Mellancamp can pen a new verse to his "Small Town" anthem.

I was born in a small town.
Did not shop in a small town.
No designer fashions in a small town.
Nieman Marcus is where I want to be.

[vison]

Sarah Palin is like a movie star, in many ways. People like to see glamour and style and she delivers.

I don't think it reveals anything particularly bad or hypocritical, or if it does, it's not a lot. She's got the figure and sorta has the looks, so why not? If I was her, I'd take advantage of it!

Michelle Obama is always well dressed and could wear smashing clothes, too. As First Lady she will probably have to spend more on her clothes.

OTOH, Mrs. McCain is almost always badly overdressed, IMHO. While Mrs. Palin is beautifully dressed with a natural flair, Mrs. McCain dresses like every rich woman you can think of. It all screams "Money!!!". Mrs. Palin certainly has more style.

[Primula Baggins]

A while back I asked:

Given that the Republican campaign has clearly labelled Obama as a dangerous liberal who will introduce socialist policies; then what if the American public goes ahead and chooses him?
Does that mean the public have democratically and with forethought chosen to have gone in a socialist direction?

I think this is an important question though it could be framed in several different ways. In other words does a clear election victory legitimise a change in political values that many Americans hate the thought of? Does it also redefine where the American 'centre' is


Sorry - center.

Ahh, we can figure out what you meant—we're smart, we are!

I think that is a very interesting question. I'd take it in two parts. There's no question in my mind that if this election goes as it appears it will, voters will have legitimized a change in political values.

But I think very few of the people voting for Barack Obama are doing so because they think he or his policies are socialist. No one who really is far left sees Obama as socialist; they're furious about his politics. Those who aren't far left, the vast majority, are evidently not buying the Republican's attempt to label him that way. In polls Obama gets high scores in categories such as "Shares my values." That to me doesn't mean Americans are swinging far left; it means that they (correctly) perceive that Obama is a centrist.

The "change in political values" I see is a repudiation of neoconservatism, not an adoption of socialism.

sf, I agree: that is not a major news story.

[Holbytla]

A while back I asked:

Given that the Republican campaign has clearly labelled Obama as a dangerous liberal who will introduce socialist policies; then what if the American public goes ahead and chooses him?
Does that mean the public have democratically and with forethought chosen to have gone in a socialist direction?

I think this is an important question though it could be framed in several different ways. In other words does a clear election victory legitimise a change in political values that many Americans hate the thought of? Does it also redefine where the American 'centre' is


Sorry - center.

More than anything, this election is a reflection of how much people have disliked what has been going on for the last eight years.

I would categorize it as a shift rather than a change. Or as part of a cycle perhaps. If you look at the presidential results, the country is pretty close to 50/50 and I think we tend to gravitate towards the center.

[Dave_LF]

Given that the Republican campaign has clearly labelled Obama as a dangerous liberal who will introduce socialist policies; then what if the American public goes ahead and chooses him?
Does that mean the public have democratically and with forethought chosen to have gone in a socialist direction?

I think the answer to that is a categorical "no". If Obama is elected, it will be in spite of the labels that have been placed on him, and probably a rejection of the accuracy of those labels. Americans might accept overt socialism if they believed the only alternative was third-world poverty (and it could come to that), but probably not under any other circumstances. Social healthcare could probably fly, though.

IMO, it would be a big mistake for the Democrats to interpret the likely blue landslide as an affirmation of their more liberal positions, and if they do so it will probably come back to bite them in another cycle or two. Rather, it will be a rejection of the far right and a recognition that the Democratic party is now closer to the center than the GOP.

[Cerin]

Given that the Republican campaign has clearly labelled Obama as a dangerous liberal who will introduce socialist policies; then what if the American public goes ahead and chooses him?
Does that mean the public have democratically and with forethought chosen to have gone in a socialist direction?

I think an Obama victory would not mean what you've suggested. I think it could mean various things: that Americans haven't bought into these Republican characterizations of Obama; that Americans aren't voting according to political classifications like 'liberal' or 'socialist' but are voting on the basis of other factors, like likability, the confidence Obama inspires with his calm demeanor, etc.; and maybe most likely, that Americans are expressing a rejection of 8 years of Republican control that has driven the economy into the ground, rather than voting to embrace any particular philosophy. In other words, they want change, and they see Obama as representing change.


Regarding the Palin expenditures, I don't know if that level of expenditure for personal expenses is common for political campaigns. I doubt if any Palin supporters would object to the money being spent on their beloved Sarah. I also doubt that any of the small-town, pro-America, real America folks that go to her rallies will care that she shopped at Neiman rather than Wal-Mart. I think it does raise a rather embarrassing inconsistency with that kind of rhetoric, but I don't think anyone will care. They haven't cared about her bald-faced lies or the incredibly arrogant (imo) refusal to engage with the press, and this seems far less important than those things.

[Maria]

The local talk radio station here has right wing shows on all day long. The only one I can bear to listen to is the O'Reilly show. He really isn't as bad as the others- which I guess means I'm agreeing with hal that he isn't as conservative as the others.

My husband leans right. I lean left. We used to split our radio listening time between NPR in the morning and the O'Reilly show at lunch and an audio book on the way home, until my husband got sick of politics a couple of weeks ago and started requested the audio book all the time for now.

OReilly leans right. NPR leans left. But neither is so extreme as to be out of our comfort zones. Sean Hannity invariably makes me ill when my husband tries to listen to him. That's just how it it is. It's just distressing to listen to someone with such wrongheaded ideas. Michael Savage so much worse he slips over into the ludicrous catagory and I actually enjoy listening to his shows once in a great while and I even read one of his books once. Its more silly reading about "red commie diaper doper babies" than hearing the term, but I still got through the book.

Whenever I tell my husband yet another bit of unpleasantness about Palin, he always challenges me about the source. Even something as minor as McCain and Tina Fey being on a magazine cover together in 2004, I had to look up the magazine and find a reputable source that he could believe- before he'd accept the image as non-photoshopped.

My husband is not *very* conservative. He's conservative on some issues and not on others and the upshot of this is that he ends up voting for Republicans most of the time. Hal seems to be *very* conservative. I think his level of comfort with sources is very limited and there are not many sources that he can accept as legitimate. I just want to say, I do understand this.

[sauronsfinger]

from Prim

sf, I agree: that is not a major news story.

But isn't it interesting that four years ago certain media centers could not get enough of John Edwards paying $200 each for two haircuts? And much was made of how he was campaigning on a populist "stick up for the common man" theme while enjoying fancy haircuts and spa treatments.

[Erunáme]

<off-topic>
What's with the new spelling of exploded as "asploded" that keeps turning up? Is this a new internet joke thing like "teh" or a new American spelling like "color"?
</off-topic>

What I was able to find:

http://www.hrwiki.org/index.php/A_Splode

So it seems it's just another internet thing like "O hai!" or LOLspeak. It certainly doesn't seem to be a new American spelling.

[Teremia]

I think it's pretty funny that "spread the wealth around" has been spun by McCain (& in the times I've heard him use the phrase, literally with a sneer) to mean "Socialism."

It's very hard to make Barack Obama look like a socialist, but never mind. The follow-up question I always want to ask is, "So you don't want to spread the wealth around? You want to lump all the wealth in a few rich sets of hands?"

I mean, really! Seems to me the opposite of "spreading the wealth around" is not exactly a winning formula for the campaign trail, either: "Give all the wealth to me and my friends!



The main point being that bullet points and nifty phrases rile people up without informing them -- and I can't WAIT for this election to be over and for those slick phrases to go away!

[Cerin]

<off-topic>
What's with the new spelling of exploded as "asploded" that keeps turning up? Is this a new internet joke thing like "teh" or a new American spelling like "color"?
</off-topic>

What I was able to find:

http://www.hrwiki.org/index.php/A_Splode

So it seems it's just another internet thing like "O hai!" or LOLspeak. It certainly doesn't seem to be a new American spelling.

I thought it was a Desi Arnazism.


edit to add quote

[Voronwë the Faithful]

from Prim

sf, I agree: that is not a major news story.

But isn't it interesting that four years ago certain media centers could not get enough of John Edwards paying $200 each for two haircuts? And much was made of how he was campaigning on a populist "stick up for the common man" theme while enjoying fancy haircuts and spa treatments.

Not particularly, at least to me. I didn't care about Edwards' haircuts, and I don't about Palin's clothes. To me, it's just another distraction from the issues that matter, and another example of some people's willingness to overload the discussion with partisan talking points rather than real discourse. As for what "certain media centers" do or did, that matters even less to me. This isn't "certain media centers" and the last thing I want is for it to turn into anything like that, whether its Fox News or the dailykos.

[sauronsfinger]

Voronwë - if you look at my original post, I compared this to the 1952 Checkers speech and the Nixon scandal that led up to it. I vividly remember being in college poli sci classes studying this incident as one of the defining moments of the 1950's. It was a major political event in more ways than just one.

In 1952, it was $18,000.00 given to a VP candidate. Today it is over $150,000.00.

Everyone - including you and I - have the right to decide what we think is an issue - large or small - in this campaign. Given the historical comparison with Nixon and the obvious small town/big city values theme which has been pushed by the Republicans this year, it is an event of note. Not a big issue like taxes or national security or ones record in office, but something of note regardless.

[Primula Baggins]

But in the context, with the election less than two weeks away and many much more serious issues at stake, this is not going to get the traction with the public that the Nixon scandal did.

It's not going to change anyone's opinion of Palin. Most Americans already dislike her. Those who don't dislike her never will.

[River]

It seems wild to me that anyone could spend that much money on clothes in a 2 month period. Boggles the mind. Granted she was going to places like Saks Fifth Ave but it's CLOTHES. Why do CLOTHES cost so much (this is routine rhetorical frustration on my part, btw - what is it about a pair of cruddily made pants with a label on them that drives their price up >4x their worth)?

I can understand why they decided to dress up Palin. She probably had a fine wardrobe before but it just wasn't up to standard for teh national stage. I am not being sarcastic. You have to think about these things and when you're a woman people seem to notice what you're wearing and what you've done with your hair all the more. It's silly, but it's the silly reality we all face.

**hopes she never ends up a public figure

Anyway, beyond wondering how in the world anyone can spend that much money on clothing, I'm a bit non-plussed. Okay, they dressed up Palin. They spent more money dressing up Palin than S and I bring in each year put together and S is on a very comfortable salary. But when you look at how much money gets tossed around on advertising, $150K is chump change.