David Letterman On McCain’s Campaign Suspension And The Political And Cultural Conventional Wisdom
Sep 24th, 2008 | 9 responses
So now GOP Presidential candidate Sen. John McCain, pointing to the Wall Street meltdown and the chance that Congress will balk at the Bush administration’s crucial bailout solution, has suspended his campaign — and reportedly won’t show up at Friday’s debate even if Democratic Sen. Barack Obama does.
In terms of the impact on Campaign 2008, the next few days will be critical as a new conventional wisdom — more important than any conventional wisdom you see emerging on right, left or centrist blogs — will begin to take shape. It’s the larger political/media conventional wisdom, and the cultural political wisdom.
QUESTION: What will reporters learn about this decision and report to their readers in coming days? Was it truly due to McCain’s concern? Reports indeed indicate the U.S. is poised on the brink of an almost unimaginable catastrophe.
Will various blog suggestions that McCain’s sagging polls have something to do with today’s “hail Mary” announcement prove correct or not? What was the chronology? Did Obama in fact privately call McCain first about a bipartisan statement of principles? Was his call unanswered for hours? Will McCain’s public announcement later for his campaign’s suspension and the debate’s suspension prove to be because of the actual immediate emergency, or will it come out that it was one-upsmanship after getting Obama’s call and trying to position himself as the bipartisan leader after Obama’s olive branch? Cynical minds will want to know and editors will try to find it out.
QUESTION: How will this play in another important court of public opinion — the court of the cultural influencers such as Jon Stewart, Jay Leno, and David Letterman? Comedians who do topical jokes and who’ve had significant influence on public perceptions go back to the days of Will Rogers, Bob Hope and Johnny Carson. I once had comedy coaching sessions with the great comedy coach Greg Dean who always noted that jokes involve the shattering of a shared assumption.
What’ll be most important the next few days are the emerging political and cultural shared assumptions.
Did McCain really feel he needed to do this and cancel the debate? Now his camp is calling for the cancellation of the Vice Presidential debate, too. Will it turn out that it’s never re-slated at all (which would mean Sarah Palin would go through a campaign protected from reporters and never having to debate)? Will McCain’s and Obama’s impact in Washington be substantive or will it turn out that either of them look like political chess pieces? And if there is hypocrisy on the part of Obama or McCain, is the press ready to point it out or only report official statements and show official photo ops? Attention is most focused on McCain now; Obama will walk through a political minefield as well.
And what will be the cultural conventional wisdom? A BAD SIGN: Watch David Letterman in full BELOW as he talks about McCain canceling an appearance on his show, McCain suspending the campaign and his shift from humor to serious political questioning.
Forget Rachel, Keith, Sean or Rush. If David Letterman, Jon Stewart and Jay Leno are all on the same page sharing unflattering assumptions on McCain’s suspension of his campaign and decision to scuttle a debate with Obama or a Vice Presidential debate, McCain won’t benefit from it.
Becoming a comedian’s punch line — or scold line — is not a good sign for any candidate who seeks to win.
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9 Responses to “David Letterman On McCain’s Campaign Suspension And The Political And Cultural Conventional Wisdom”
Checking a sampling of the reactions to the David Letterman bit from the comments sections on other websites, it seems the vast majority of the McCain apologists have decide to attack and belittle Letterman instead of address McCain's AWOL status.
Confirms my opinion that when McCain apologists don't have anything of substance to talk about on an issue, the attack the messenger instead.
Oh yeah, as if that was never done by Obama “apologists.” The only difference is that the pro-Obama sites make allegations about sexual dalliances, incest, and use obscene language that McCain sites do not.
Obama supporters are less-evolved and articulate and basically make scurrilous attacks in hyperventilating language that is often ungrammatical or misspelled. The tone is usually more like Sandra Bernhard or Randi Rhodes than like Laura Ingraham or Katherine Ham.
Preaching class warfare, but lacking any class.
Even though Friday's debate is about foreign policy you can be sure that our economy will come up. After all Obama has said all along that we should be spending billions on our economy instead of in Iraq. The top concern among voters is our economy (I forget the exact percentage, but it's 33% maybe) with foreign policy (and the Iraq war at number two at 15%.
So I can understand why McCain doesn't even want to debate foreign policy because our foreign policy is linked to our economy. McCain supported the Iraq war from the beginning, saying it would be a slam dunk. This only highlights McCain's poor judgement on supporting the Iraq War.
Gee fellows do you think Letterman got a little miffed because McCain thought trying to get us out of a financial crisis was just a little bit more important than appearing on a talk show? Sure seems like it. Letterman has quite an ego.
A noticeable difference, indeed, Dave in Boca. There's a jihadist side to Obamaniacs.
Letterman's behavior, if anything, will lead more Americans to support or at least defend McCain.
McCain was in New York for an appearance with Letterman and Bill Clinton(Global Initiative), but only canceled the Letterman appear, and yes Dave does seem to be a Liebral Demonocrat.
Leo – your statement would be true if Fibber McCain actually *did* what he said he was going to do. Instead of rushing back to Washington, Fibber McCain decided to give an interview to Katie Couric at exactly the same time that he would have appeared on the Letterman Show. I guess he considered that more important than the financial crisis, eh?
And, THEN did Fibber McCain head back to Washington? Nope, he stayed in town overnight so that he could appear at the Clinton Initiative this morning. I guess he considers *that* more important as well.
Frankly, I don't really care about David Letterman. Never cared for the guy, never liked him, and probably never will. But I *do* care about Fibber McCain's cheap little political stunt and the lengths that will go through to elevate his own self interests and his campaign over the interests of the country.
The term “jihad” (assuming, of course, that you're not just being disingenuous and attempting to associate Obama with Islam (like nobody has ever tried THAT before)) means literally “struggle”. It is actually quite appropriate, in that the blind, willfully ignorant people (such as yourself) who support the obviously craven, lying, hypocritical, power-mad, spendthrift Republican Party and its current water boy, McCain, can no longer be permitted to drive our country to ruin beneath the guise of being “just folks.”
Struggle against ignorance, stubborn foolishness, and hubris are exactly what this country needs. Stop fooling yourself. The country must change, and it must change now. McCain has shown himself to be unworthy of the office of president through his lies, his willingness to compromise every principle he once had, and his resoundingly bad judgment, both in running mates, and in his panicked response to the economic crisis. He's a bad choice, and he's not going to win.