One tough cookie

My six-year-old is one tough cookie. The other day he was looking for his shoes, and I told him that they were downstairs.

"No they aren't."

"They're down there, I just saw them."

"No."

"Go look."

"Oh, okay." He's goes and looks, and says, "See, they're not here."

He is standing two feet away from his bright red pair of Crocs. I point. He frowns.

"Well, they weren't there before, I didn't leave them there. Someone else must have put them there."

Any parent will recognize this as normal six-year-old behavior. The problem is that some of us never outgrow it (I for one must confess to the occasional bout of foul-mouthed rage at the imaginary industrious little gremlin who occasionally sneaks into my toolbox and steals my screwdriver, only to leave on my workbench...). But we deserve better from those who would presume to lead our nation.

I had to think of my son's shoes yesterday when I heard the once dignified Senator McCain defend the lies in his recent campaign ads, insisting "Actually they are not lies,and have you seen some of the ads that are running against me?" His campaign manager has also stood firm, claiming to have proof of everything they have said. Those shoes, he would have us believe, just aren't there.

The McCain campaign has adopted what one might call the tough cookie strategy: be stubborn, keep insisting that what they have said is true, and hope that the press will drop the matter in next news round in favor of something more interesting. But the press must not let this drop. If McCain has proof that Obama actually has supported "comprehensive sex education for kindergartners," let him produce it. If they can explain exactly when and where Obama made the claims about Palin that they allude to in their infamous distortion of a piece on FactCheck.com, let them explain it. And if they can't, the press and the public need to keep pressing the point.

McCain bills himself as a straight talker, and has promised a clean campaign. Now he has been caught lying. He owes us either the proof or an apology.

And preferably something more gracious than the petulant "Oh fine," I finally winkled out of my son.

The "Um"

In the run-up to this year’s election, the press and the blogosphere have treated us to thoughtful analyses of such pressing topics as flags in bags, shotgun marriages, hugs for running-mates and lipstick for dogs. So I have no fear of sounding lowbrow if I continue in this venerable tradition of dwelling on non-issues and discuss the “Um.”

Conservative pundits and bloggers have already been having some fun with Obama’s debating style, in particular his habit of saying “um.” Liberal bloggers have taken similar pleasure in McCain’s green screen and rigor mortis smile during his RNC speech. But the “um” matters. It tells us something about Obama. It tells us that he thinks.

Obama is a product of his education, and approaches problems as a lawyer and an intellectual. He takes nothing for granted, and is known by those who have worked with him to be almost pedantic in his scholarly insistence on gathering the advice of experts before coming to a conclusion. The “um” is like that little watch icon on your computer, it tells you that there’s something going on in there. It’s a reflection of his style of thinking and decision-making.

It must be said that “um” is the sort of thing that can get you killed as a fighter pilot. But I cannot help but think that, for all his vaunted experience, McCain the politician might have benefited from the occasional “um.” He has admitted as much in his comments about sometimes taking quick decisions and living with the consequences. Clearly there was not much “um” before he chose corruption-and-scandal-prone Palin as a running mate, although the consequences of that are not yet clear. McCain’s style of decision making is to come quickly to a conclusion and then back it up with unflinching conviction. In that it is similar to George W. Bush’s decision-making, quick and bold, but not always considered. It is um-less.

Obama’s lofty oratory and his halting, considered debating style do not endear him to the new breed of talk-radio conservatives who show consistent contempt for anything intellectual. They will mock the “um” as yet another reminder that Obama is one of those over-educated elite lawyers we are all told we should mistrust, even as they praise Palin’s wise-cracking and McCain’s folksy plain-talking. But they forget that there are many Americans who do not consider intelligence to be a bad thing, many on both left and right who fear the gut reaction more than they fear the perceived elitism of rigorous intellectual analysis. To those of us who would rather place our faltering economy and fragile security in the hands of a cautious thinker rather than a quick-reacting maverick, the “um” reflects a welcome brand of small-c conservatism.

So let them mock the “um”. With the bewildering array of complex issues our country is facing, I find the “um” kind of comforting.

Folks just like you...

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.