Month: August 2008

You are, according to Pew, the best informed audience in the country. Like I didn’t know that already.

It’s worth noting that pursuing the cross-in-the-dirt evangelical parable as it might have happened to McCain is in no way impugning anyone’s war record. No one is disputing in any way what McCain did in Vietnam, his heroism, his sacrifice or any jot and tittle of his combat in arms and time in captivity. What we’re curious about is how an urban legend in Christianist circles (attributed to Solzhenitsen but originating, so far as one can tell, in Chuck Colson) reshaped and altered an actual, utterly believable story of rare humanity in a prison camp. And how a campaign not only adopted the improved story but then wielded it in a campaign ad and as a critical message to evangelicals. If that ad is not actually true – and its depiction of the cross in the dirt we know is false (according to McCain, it was done with a sandal; in the ad it is done, as in Colson’s account, with a stick) – it’s a question of challenging a campaign’s veracity, and what can only be called a cynical use of religion. Could the campaign confirm that the ad itself is visually incompatible with the Salter story? Or were they unconcerned with such detail, assuming no one would be foolish enough to question a war hero’s unconfirmable anecdote – and eager merely to show the deeper (and true) point that McCain relied on God to survive the unimaginable?

This incident is not part of McCain’s military service – certainly not one he thought was in any way salient in his first 12,000 word account of his experience. It is part of his 2000 and 2008 campaigns and the religious mythology they coopted in order to appeal to a very specific audience. If a blogger cannot raise factual questions about a campaign ad and a campaign narrative, he’s not really worth much.

If you want a simple campaign question how’s this: why did John McCain approve a message about a searing event in his life when the image in the ad is not compatible with what he said happened?

Floyd Brown lurks in the shadows.

William Galston proposes one way to improve conventions:

The public always claims to be hungry for user-friendly information about what candidates and parties stand for … so, why don’t we allocate primetime slots at each convention to a reasonably detailed presentation of the party platform? Immediately afterward, the networks would feature panels of experts discussing the basis, significance, and feasibility of its principal proposals. Not only could this proposal help create a somewhat better informed electorate, but it would also force the parties to take their platforms more seriously. Concessions to organized interests now made in coded language that few notice or understand could be exposed to national scrutiny, and historically informed commentators could highlight subtle but significant shifts in long-held positions.

I think that’s a convention only Bill Galston would enjoy.

Three compelling memories:

The chapter is titled "’Tis the Season to Be Jolly." It says that on Christmas Eve 1968, a guard tried to compel McCain to attend a church service that was being staged for the benefit of visiting photographers. McCain decided "to ruin the picture," letting out a series of curses ("’Fu-u-u-u-ck you, you son of a bitch!’ shouted McCain, hoisting a one-finger salute whenever a camera pointed in his direction").  There’s certainly no mention of a cross in the sand in this account.

On Christmas Eve 1969, we’re then told, McCain had a civil conversation with the Cat, the one guard he’s said in other accounts was considerate to him — but again there’s no mention of a cross in the sand.

(Timberg tells us that McCain and the Cat discussed the Cat’s tie clip and cigarette lighter, as well as McCain’s decision not to accept early release.)

On Christmas 1970, Timberg writes, McCain was transferred to a cell with his friend Bud Day — "the perfect Christmas present" because he’d just spent two and a half years in solitary.  Again, no cross.
But he will never forget what Orson Swindle vaguely recalls.

 

It works. A reader writes:

I took Mansfield’s Gov 1061 on the history of modern political philosophy, and it was without a doubt the most rewarding experience of my undergraduate career. After receiving a C+ on my first paper after I’d turned in the usual, formulaic BS I had for most other classes, I actually applied myself. And when I got A-s on the next two papers, I was never more proud of what I’d achieved.

Going into a class knowing that a professor is a notoriously hard grader weeds out many of the grade-obsessed careerists who overwhelmingly populate Harvard – a refreshing experience to say the least. It puts the focus more squarely on actually engaging with ideas and getting something out of the material. And it certainly doesn’t hurt to get to listen to Mansfield describe sotto voce the philosophy of Machiavelli, punctuating his points with a closed fist pound of the podium.

I miss those days.

From a new PEW study:

Since 2006, the proportion of Americans who say they get news online at least three days a week has increased from 31% to 37%. About as many people now say they go online for news regularly (at least three days a week) as say they regularly watch cable news (39%); substantially more people regularly get news online than regularly watch one of the nightly network news broadcasts (37% vs. 29%).

Since 2006, daily online news use has increased by about a third, from 18% to 25%. However, as the online news audience grows, the educational divide in online news use — evident since the internet’s early days in the mid-1990s — also is increasing. Currently, 44% of college graduates say they get news online every day, compared with just 11% of those with a high school education or less.

Jonah Lehrer ponders emotional priming in politics, citing an old study:

When people were asked to think about pain, they preferred Kerry by a wide margin. His average rating was 5.5 points, compared to Bush’s 2.2. However, when the scientists triggered thoughts of death – the mortality salience condition – Bush suddenly became much more popular. In fact, he now received significantly higher ratings than Kerry. "The most subtle psychological manipulations can profoundly affect our political preferences," says [professor of psychology Sheldon Solomon]. "We think we are making these deliberate decisions, but that’s just an illusion. When the emotional shit hits the fan, our rationality is the first thing to go.’"

While the scientists associate such a conservative tilt with "terror induced irrationality" it’s not clear that these people are any more irrational than those who chose Kerry after being primed with "pain". In both instances, different emotional cues prime our decision-making machinery in slightly different ways. So don’t be surprised when you see Obama ads showing people grimacing in pain at the gas pump, or McCain television spots that emphasize the inherent dangers of the world. Political strategists, it turns out, intuitively understand how to bias the brain in their favor.

A reader writes:

From the Quote For The Day:

There was a time, seventy, eighty, a hundred years ago, that we Americans sat here in the western hemisphere, and puzzled over why British imperialists went to places like Iraq and Afghanistan. We viewed that sort of imperial adventurism with disdain. But, it’s really become part of what we do.

I think Andrew Bacevich is off base when he includes Afghanistan in that statement. 

We went to Afghanistan with a very specific mission, to find the nest of a terrorist group that attacked our country so successfully that it left a stain on our calendar.  It’s a shame that some of the people who were moved to join the military after 9/11 found themselves fighting Iraqis in Tikrit rather than al Qaeda in Afghanistan.  But going after al Qaeda in the aftermath of 9/11 was both a psychological balm to the country and a real tactical response to eliminate a serious threat that we had previously underestimated. We were making up for lost time, and trying to exact revenge on behalf of 3000 lost souls.  It’s a shame the mess in Iraq is commingled in the story at all.

Reacting to the same quote, another reader adds:

This definition of American exceptionalism is poorly crafted and the supposition that we are in Iraq and Afghanistan for the same reasons as the British in 19th cen is absurd. Even if you accept as Niall Ferguson asserts that we have now what amounts to a de facto empire, the causes for our intervention were based in assessments of threats posed by these countries post 9/11 not on territorial acquisition,wealth and power . I understand that some cynics insist that oil was the real reason for Iraq but they never answer the charge that if that were true why then did we feel the need to go to war instead of simply entering into contracts like everyone else was doing? Of course oil is vital but there were other ways of getting it short of a war.

Also, was the first gulf war an imperialist act? Somalia? Perhaps Panama fits the definition…of course each of these had other stated causes- the stopping of aggression, a man-made famine and  the overturning of a democratic election respectively. While Somalia morphed overtime into something else, I cannot see how it could ever be construed as an imperial action designed to in effect colonize Somalia so as to further enhance the  lives of American consumers. None of these with the exception of the Gulf War had anything to do with American creature comforts or cheap goods and to define GW1 that way is a bit absurd- the world not just America needs that region to be stable and having a Sadam invading his neighbors was deemed by GB1 to be unacceptable. All of these decisions can be second guessed and disagreed with but they do not support his case of British style imperialism. His complaint about Americans wanting their cheap goods applies to our relationship with China and the idea of free trade and globalization but that really has nothing to do with imperialism as conventionally understood or, as far as I can see, with notions concerning American exceptionalism.

From May of this year:

“I don’t recall us talking specifically about our faith,” says Orson Swindle, one of McCain’s closest friends and a fellow POW. “We talked about our friends, families, our resistance posture, and that our country didn’t seem to have the will to win.”

Belief in a higher power helped them survive the routine torture and daily indignities, Swindle says. “It would help us endure what we had to endure. But we knew God wasn’t going to come down and wave a magic wand.”

Swindle’s recollection today is here.