McCain's and Palin's RNC acceptance speeches have shed some light on the campaign's election strategy. In the coming weeks, amid a flurry of swiftboating tactics from plausibly deniable third-parties "unconnected" to McCain, we will witness an attempt to put on a good cop/bad cop performance, with McCain cast as the dignified statesman and Palin as the conservative firebrand pit-bull (her term, not mine...). Saber-rattling over abortion and creationism will galvanize some on the religious right, but it won't win the election.
The choice of Palin's rhetoric, however, show another strategy at play. The "hockey-mom" routine, as silly as it seems, is a clear indication that the McCain team are going to paint themselves as "more like you" than Obama and Biden. In the coming weeks the McCain camp will barrage America with the same message over and over again: we aren't smooth-talking lawyers, we aren't fancy Harvard educated elitists, we're folks just like you.
They will get some mileage out of this. Now, this may anger some people, but the fact is that come election time we Americans love nothing better than to be told how wonderful we are. We are a great nation. The average American is painted as outstandingly brave and honest and hardworking and unselfish (How can we ALL be outstanding? What exactly do we stand out from? Cowardly lazy selfish foreigners, presumably...). The more a candidate praises us, the higher his/her popularity soars. Hence we are treated to Sarah Palin talking about the great state of Alaska (So which are the not-great states? Delaware? Hawaii? Rhode Island never seemed that great to me, it's so damned small.) From this near-masturbatory celebration of ourselves it is easy to proceed logically to the conclusion that the best candidate for higher office must look just like this superhuman "average American." Palin is just an ordinary hockey mom - hey I'm a hockey mom too, so yeah, she'd make a great vice-president. Sure, why not?
The absurdity is obvious. if you needed brain surgery, would you be tempted to vet your brain surgeon to be sure he/she was someone "just like you"? Personally I'd hope my brain surgeon was a hell of a lot smarter than I am. Someone whose intellect and judgement I could trust rather than someone who shares my religion or my enthusiasm for ice hockey. Unfortunately in politics a lot of Americans want their candidates to look just like them. The McCain campaign will use Palin in particular to pander to this sort of narcissistic nonsense. Obama is an extraordinary man. He is extremely well-educated, and was editor of the Harvard Law Review. In a sane world this would be to his credit. But no, this will be used against him. Graduating at the top of his class from the best law school in the country means he isn't your average guy. Neither is Joe Biden for that matter. Unless you are pretty extraordinary, they're not just like you. They're smarter. They know more about law and policy than you do, and are probably better able to muster the intellectual resources of those around them to analyze complex problems than you are. And no offense but maybe, just maybe, that's a good thing.
Particularly in the VP debates, the McCain campaign will attempt to portray Obama and Biden as slick overeducated lawyers, as not being folks just like you. How the Obama camp responds to this line of non-reasoning will be crucial in the weeks and months ahead. Does Biden need to suddenly take an interest in bowling? Should Obama confess to having gone to Harvard but plead that he spent most of his time shooting spitballs at Alan Dershowitz and wondering why all these lawyers can't just get by with straight talkin' like the rest of us? Heaven preserve us.
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