Quote Of The Day: Dowd On Rove, Obama, And Terrorist Attacks
New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd has a MUST READ COLUMN today — pegged to GOP political maven Karl Rove’s assertion that Democratic presumptive nominee Sen. Barack Obama is like an arrogant country club member who hangs around the clubhouse smoking a cigarette with a beautiful woman on his arm making snide comments.
Read this in FULL because she notes at the beginning that, once upon a time (before he was the presumptive nominee), Rove said he was impressed with Obama. Read it from beginning to end. One thing her piece underscores again: as a campaign strategist (and he is an informal campaign adviser to GOP presumptive nominee Sen. John McCain) Rove will create and promote a caricature of a candidate that is then cloned on talk shows, partisan new and old media and in campaign ads.
But here’s our quote of the day — the end:
Charlie Black crassly argued in Fortune that a terrorist attack would “be a big advantage” for John McCain. And what’s scary is, Black is the smartest adviser McCain’s got.
It’s hard to believe that if Americans get attacked after all these years of getting strip-searched at the airport, they’re going to be filled with confidence at the performance of the Republicans on national security. And at least Obama wants to catch Osama and doesn’t think he’s getting his directions on war from “a higher Father.”
Rove’s mythmaking about Obama won’t fly. If he means that Obama has brains, what’s wrong with that? If he means that Obama is successful, what’s wrong with that? If he means that Obama has education and intellectual sophistication, what’s wrong with that?
Many of Obama’s traits are the traits that people in the population aspire to.
It looks as if Rove is on the verge of realizing his dream of creating a permanent position for the Republicans.
Unfortunately for him, it’s in the minority.
Read it in FULL. This column is one that has echoes of the late great Mike Royko.
See our earlier post on Rove’s comments HERE.
4 Responses to “Quote Of The Day: Dowd On Rove, Obama, And Terrorist Attacks”
When people are scared, aided by graphic images graciously provided by BigMedia, their brains don't rely on slow reflective thought about who will be the best candidate to get us out of the October Scare that's coming. The reptilian parts of their brains will take over and vote for McCain.
It's the same thing they're doing to thwart public pressure about not allowing more oil drilling domestically and instead pushing for alternative technology and implementation to finally stop being suppressed by BigOil. They're using talk of nuclear energy to scare normally thoughtful people into allowing drilling instead of standing firm and rightfully demanding clean, safe and reliable alternative energy at-site-specific to different regions/cities.
The darned thing is, the GOP/BigOil/BigMedia has teams of people who know nothing else but human psychology and the psychology of mass hysteria and media influence. These aren't fairy tales; they're real and reliable phenomenon that you can hang your hat on, or your candidate on…whichever applies..
Reflexive partisanship sure does have the ability to shut down the rational thought process, and people like Karl Rove have made a lot of hay from that dynamic. His shtick is getting a bit moldy these days though.
Thanks for the mention of Mike Royko. I used to love reading his columns, and sure wish he was around today. There wasn't much that got by that guy.
Dowd must be a Daily Show fan.
Stewart said much the same thing, i.e. that someone educated, successful and intellectually sophisticated is exactly what he wants his President to be.
I also want my President to be better qualified than I am.
Republicans are running on empty this year. To make matters worse, they would have half a chance if the democrats picked the usual clone of the past 30 years to be the nominee. However, they did not. Instead they picked a very savvy guy who is not afraid of the republicans.
And this scares them.
They know Obama is going to be tough to run against and they know he's going to have going up against them.