>The stoning of Sarah Palin has exposed enough cultural fissures in >American politics to occupy strategists full-time until 2012. We now >see there is a left-to-right elite centered in New York, Washington, >Hollywood and Silicon Valley who hand down judgments of the nation's >mortals from their perch atop the Bell Curve.
via The Onion's AV Club John Hodgman Interviewed by Scott Tobias October 22nd, 2008 AVC: Lately you've been blogging and Tweeting very earnestly about the election in support of Barack Obama's campaign. What has made this election so compelling to you? Is it just the desire to have someone new in office or is it the particular dynamic of this race? JH: The thing that I find so compelling is that right now Obama's whole campaign strategy is simply [to]speak to people as though they were adults and trust that the truth of the world situation will be evident to them. For him to be attacked as a friend of a terrorist, for "palling" around with terrorists and to simply go back and say, "No, I'm not"? That was such a refreshing political moment. It's like he's saying, "Oh, you know that's not true. You know what's happening here." So much of the past eight years in politics, whether you're a Democrat or a Republican, you have to acknowledge is based on what the Bush people to themselves have described outside the reality-based community. That the words they were speaking had no basis in reality and they felt no compulsion to exist in a real world. They were creating a world of their own imagining. They were writing their own book of fake trivia and that's a fine way to make a living, but I don't know that it's a very productive way to run a country. And I think we are seeing the results of that right now. So from a very selfish point of view, I'm enchanted by the idea that a politician can come along and speak simply and clearly and truthfully to an electorate as though they are grown-ups and to feel the electorate respond to that. I've found that to be astonishing and especially now that we are in the end game and you see basically the McCain campaign has nothing left but conspiracy theories to throw at Obama. It really has become a fight between fantasy and reality, and although I don't make my living off of it, I endorse reality. AVC: It seems that the truth is really what's at stake in the election, in a way. JH: McCain had a reality-based argument for why he should be President. It did not rely on magical thinking in any way. It was simply that Barack Obama was too young and inexperienced to be President and McCain is old enough, certainly, and experienced enough to be President. You may not agree, but that's what we need. You may not like McCain, but that's reasonable. That makes sense. In choosing Sarah Palin for whatever benefit you might get from it politically, he's throwing out his whole argument about experience. He negated his only reasonable argument to make and instead put him on what we now see is a disastrous path—potentially disastrous, at least, of pure magical thinking. That is I think exactly what people are tired of with regard to the Bush Administration. This idea that the Bush Administration… That if I say black is white, then that makes it so. If I say Sarah Palin is tried, tested, and ready to take the national stage and is going to save my campaign on the sheer energy of her enthusiasm and rhetoric, then it will happen, but not really. I have nothing against Sarah Palin. If anything, I think it's sort of tragic. She was clearly a Republican up-and-comer who, if they lose the election, her career has been dealt a very severe blow. We might think that's a good thing, but I'm just saying she was called up too early. She simply had no experience. Never mind whatever her thinking might have been on national issues, but she had never taken a position on a national stage before and she had no experience with the national media and that's what ultimately did her in. She didn't have the training. She's a quick study, obviously, but she's doesn't have the experience to talk to national reporters over and over and over again in a way that could make her seem confident and I think it really undid her. And just because John McCain wants her to be great in his campaign that doesn't make it so, anymore than just because John McCain wants to believe that if he suspends his campaign and makes serious faces in Washington that the economic crisis will be averted. That's magical thinking. It doesn't make it so just because you want something. Just because John McCain wants to be President does not mean that it must happen. That's the same magical thinking that really undid Hillary Clinton. It was like, "I don't need to put forward a compelling argument for my candidacy. My candidacy is a compelling argument for my candidacy. I want to be President. Obviously, you all know it's time. Let's get this over with." That wasn't good enough to go against somebody who I think really has looked at the reality of election, saw all the opportunities where he could make gains, saw that she was totally neglecting the caucus states, saw that that was a place where he could take an advantage, planned for it, took the advantage, and won. That's science. Do you know what I mean? That's reality triumphing over magical thinking. Do I like Obama, personally? I do. Do I think he's got good policies? Look, I'm like everyone else, I hope so. They sound good. They sound like something I believe in, so I think based on his performance and the way that he has run his campaign, I feel that it is reasonable to feel confident that he is going to take the same discipline and smarts and lack of drama and apply them to the very serious issues today and I think that makes him a good choice for President. Do I think that his candidacy is historic? Sure, that's exciting too, but what I think it's really amazing that he exists in the same world that I also inhabit and no other political candidate lives in that world right now. They live in a made-up world that is not reality. I think that that's why you see Obama surging right now. It's that the people like the fact that Obama lives in the world that they live in. AVC: One thing that's interesting about him is that he is so very cool, disciplined, thoughtful, and, as you say, a reality-based candidate. What is it about him that has so infuriated both Clinton and McCain? JH: Because they earned it. I have misgivings now about McCain that I never had before. I was never going to support him for President, because even though in 2000 he was the kind of Republican that Democrats liked and he can be real nice when he wants to be and, certainly, he has been a great friend to The Daily Show. People there love him and they are people that I love so I trust there's something lovable there. But would I pal around with him? I bet he's probably a great guy to have a round of beer with or whatever the latest folksy kind of way of putting is. I would like to IM with him, you know, but I was never going to vote for him. Now his judgment seems so off and dangerous that I would never entertain that idea, but it's no question that he put in the time. And maybe in 2000, when he was eight years younger and little bit more on top of his game, I could have said he's certainly qualified to be President even though I wouldn't support him. Hillary Clinton is absolutely qualified to be President and had she won I would have definitely voted for her. I think it's hard for people who have put that much time into public service, who have worked very hard for an ambition that I think they both share to be President, an ambition that they nurse far more than I think it even matters to them what being President really means. To have that taken away, to have to confront someone who is the political phenomenon of our times. That isn't easy. The experience issue is a reality-based argument to make as to why you would not want to vote for [Obama] and they both made that argument until John McCain decided to bring Sarah Palin onto the ticket and then bizarrely still made the argument and looked two-faced and weird. Hillary Clinton, I think, made that argument as compellingly as she could, but the problem is that he's just a phenomenon. He's an incredibly talented speaker, thinker, organizer, strategist, and manager who outclassed them both. Even if, by chance, he does not win the election, which is always a possibility, he certainly outclassed them. And he outclassed Hillary Clinton to the point of beating her in a primary that by rights she feels as though she should have won. And that's hard. That's confronting your own mortality. John McCain isn't going to get to run for President again and if Barack Obama wins, then it's going to be a long time for Hillary Clinton, too. I'm not surprised Clinton's support has been underwhelming, unfortunately, but that's the way it has to be. If Barack Obama didn't make it on his own, it would undermine his Presidency and that's what I don't want. If John McCain completely self-destructed, like if he vomited on stage and it was all over, that wouldn't be any good, too. It'd make a lot of Democrats feel more comfortable because they feel like they want a lock. They want a lock more than they want to breathe. They don't want to have to worry anymore, but you know what? It's better that Barack Obama grind out the votes, build the support, build the alliances, and get the victory cleanly on his own because you don't want him being in a position where he's got to. People will say that he owes the Clintons favors or he only won because John McCain went nuts or Sarah Palin imploded. Right now, he's already got the problem of the economy, which I think is not causing McCain to drop in the polls. I think that was going to happen anyway, but it certainly refocused the public's imagination, understandably, on a topic that does not favor McCain at all. If he wins because of the economy, there's a certain justice to that, too, because there's a reason the economy's the way it is. So there you go. Those are my five cents. AVC: If McCain does not win, you have to think that some interesting things are going to come to light about the inner workings of that campaign. It doesn't seem like the kind of campaign that McCain had in mind. Or, on the other hand, maybe this is a reflection of who he is after all. JH: I feel like look at the end of the day the buck stops there. You know what I mean? I think that part of the tragedy is that either he's allowed the worser devils of his nature to take hold or he has put aside some of his better angels to let some devils run the show, but at the end of the day he's approving it. He's doing it. He is responsible for how things turn out. AVC: What does that say about how he would run things or how good of a President he would be? JH: Well, it doesn't say a lot because to some degree you can imagine that if he's saying, "Look, I hate to do this, but I just need to get to be President and everything will be OK." It's not wrong. He could go back to old McCain and that is a storyline that doesn't seem impossible, but I just don't trust that it's going to happen. The reality is that even if he were to win, we're looking at a Democratic majority in the Senate and the House. I think don't think he can successfully govern after saying what he's said and doing what he's done. I don't think it's a smart choice to vote for McCain if that's what you were thinking. AVC: It just seems like the Palin thing was such a shotgun marriage, and it's not a comfortable or compatible relationship at all. He must have felt that that it wasn't going to be feasible for him to pick [Sen. Joseph] Lieberman, so he went completely in the other direction. JH: Yeah, that's the story that you hear, but on the other hand, whoever was pushing Palin, that was a big mistake. I don't care what Pat Buchanan says on The Rachel Maddows Show. It was a bit of smoke and mirrors that worked for 72 hours, but there was no way that she was going to… First of all, there was no she was going to win over disaffected Hillary voters. That was an absurd fantasy. AVC: And media-promoted fantasy as well. The whole story about legions of embittered female voters that were not going to vote for Obama no matter what was totally overblown. And the Republicans kind of bought into it, right? JH: I think she was going to win over the Republican base that John McCain hadn't won over, but that is not really a measure of success. If you can't get the Republicans to vote for you or be enthusiastic, then just write them out. I don't consider that to be a masterful political move. I think that women were not going to go to her. They say there's great value in gut instinct decision-making. A lot of decisions become very bad if you completely divorce them from your gut instinct of what is right and wrong. You can justify just about anything if you have enough research to support it. It's a balance, but you can't conjure a national stature for someone who has just been governor for two years. It's not anything against her. It's just isn't true that she has any national, political, or policy experience, period. If you pretend that it's not true, then you look foolish and she sure did and they did, too. That was an inevitable disaster. Science predicted that. It was like weather. You could see it coming. There was no way that it couldn't come. The only reason Democrats worried about it was because, a) they like to worry, and b) because they're traumatized by eight years of George Bush. It's like they're thinking, [in disaffected voice], "The whole country voted for him two times. The whole country's stupid." Well, no, no. There are a lot of reasons that George Bush is in office, but, at least in the two national elections he has faced, half of those he won not because a lot of people voted for him. First of all, we didn't vote for him the first time. The second time, he won by an incredibly small margin and bizarre and unique historical times facing a candidate that was not compelling to the American people. So please don't tell me that the American people are stupid, because if that's what your point of view is as a Democrat then we don't deserve to govern as a party. It's not right. It's not okay. The reality is that if you want to be in a reality-based community, you've got to respect reality and that means calling it bad when you see the past ahead and it doesn't look good and acknowledging when it's going to work. The reality is Sarah Palin, for all of her good points, she just did not have a lot of political experience. No national media experience to speak of. No serious thinking of national or international policy. And no experience working on a national stage. How good would you have [to be]? You would have to be a wizard. You would have to be a magical creature to transform that aptly into a candidate of national stature almost overnight. I don't go out there claiming I'm an actor. I'm an older, wall-eyed, overweight, tweedy writer who has been lucky enough to be asked to play various iterations of himself in a certain realm of popular cultutre. That gives me great joy and excitement, but I don't go to the media saying, "And I'm also the world's greatest actor." --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "World News Now Discussion List" group. To post to this group, send email to [email protected] To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/wnndl?hl=en -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
