The GOP’s presidential candidates amped up their frenzied rhetoric over the weekend, with Mike Huckabee comparing President Obama’s Iran policy to Hitler marching Jews “into the ovens,” following on Donald Trump’s attacks on Sen. John McCain’s military service; and the president has finally had enough.
Obama said people shouldn’t be “shocked” by Trump’s remarks about McCain, given a conservative culture in which “outrageous attacks” have “become commonplace” and are “circulated nonstop through the Internet and talk radio and news outlets.” He added, as a massive understatement, that “it’s not the kind of leadership that is needed for America right now.” (Click here for story.)
He could easily have said it’s not what America has needed for the last three-quarters of a century, because Republicans have been crawling in the gutter at least that long, dating from the red-baiting that began in the 1940s. Of course, GOP mudslinging — fueled by billionaires’ money — has become much more pervasive and sophisticated since then, with legions of conservative provocateurs now using airwaves and the internet to spread malicious lies and fictions about their ideological opponents; and when confronted, they brush off their fabrications as “jokes.”
Recent examples of conservative falsehoods include claims that Obama was born in Kenya, is a Muslim, and tried to order a nuclear attack against Charleston, South Carolina — the latter claim originated as an internet hoax, but some people took seriously, despite its patent absurdity. (When Rick Santorum was confronted with this claim in a town hall, he made no effort to debunk it.) During the 2008 campaign, Sen. McCain stood up for Obama when an audience member called the Democratic candidate “an Arab,” and some people in his own party hate him for that.
This stuff is propaganda. It’s not meant to be funny or construed as jokes. The reality is that American politics are tribal and vicious. Attack ads are the norm, and character assassination is far more commonplace than discussion of issues. The free speech principles of the First Amendment preclude any efforts to restrain over-the-top political rhetoric, which simply keeps escalating as partisan loudmouths compete for sponsor money and public attention. Being ignored? The solution is to ramp up the rhetoric of hate and division even more. That’s apparently what impelled Huckabee to go Holocaust in his remarks; he’s a desperate last-place candidate with no traction who has nothing to lose by being outrageous.
The general public clearly is turned off by all this. Trump has exploded to the front of the GOP pack because he’s perceived as a straight talker, in sharp contrast to professional politicians who dance around issues and triangulate public opinion. There are some flaws in that perception, and Trump’s fans are overlooking his dangerous lack of governing experience, but for now his style is making him very popular with grassroots Republicans even as the party’s leaders scramble to kick the stool from under him. The public’s affection for “plain speaking” also largely explains Sarah Palin’s brief popularity until most people figured out she’s an idiot.
President Obama’s rebuke of Huckabee’s and Trump’s rhetorical excesses is surprisingly mild, given context, and he isn’t saying anything about Republican tactics that Democrats haven’t known about for years and years. Activists on both sides take dirty pool for granted. Few like it, but the unfortunate fact is that name-calling, deceptive advertising, and malicious propaganda work, and are bound to be used in a game where winning is everything. Politicians have been accusing their opponents of wife-beating since before any of us were born.
Is trying to stem a tidal wave of banal human nature just an exercise in futility? Depends on what your objectives are. All the president is trying to do here is get the Republican candidates to tap the brakes a bit so things don’t fly completely out of control. It’s my sense that if there’s to be a single overarching theme in the 2016 campaign, it’s likely to be the public’s sense that the world is spinning out of control and they need leadership that can keep them from being dragged over a cliff. The Democratic ad men who concocted the now-infamous wheelchair spot understood, at least viscerally, the public’s deepest fears and tapped into them with that ad.