UP@NIGHT

By now most all of you have heard that Sarah Palin has been jumping the shark fantastic with lie after lie: The Bridge to Nowhere Lie, The Earmark Lie, The Chef Lie, The eBay Plane Lie, etc. This is not news. Nor am I here to tell you that she hates cats, which she does. (My guess is that they are simply too domestic.) Nor am I here to tell you that she seems to have a tendency to fire those who disagree with her or who are insufficiently loyal (shades of Bush). Nor am I here to tell you how she received a per diem from the sate of Alaska to live in her own home for over 300 days. Nor am I here to tell you about troopergate, and how Sarah loves to make the personal political and the political personal (Rove: The Sequel). Nor am I here to tell you that she is unwilling to allow the media to question her about her positions or actions. Nor am I here to tell you that those who care about family values should consider her violations of the Ninth Commandment. Oh, there are so many things that I am not here to tell you.

So what am I here to tell you? It is a revelation that came to me while I was pondering why the Lord would endorse Alaskan pipelines. I now know who Sarah Palin reminds me of, and this is no small revelation. It is something that we all need to take seriously because it is no mere surface resemblance. It goes to the deepest depths of who she is (which I must admit is at the shallow end of the pool), and what we might become as a nation if we select her to be a heartbeat or so away from the Oval Office. However, I must first offer a preface, especially for those under thirty.

Rocky and Bullwinkle are legendary cartoon characters in the U.S. of A. They are in fact heroes who have fought demonic threats against America. Rocky is a flying squirrel and Bullwinkle’s full name is Bullwinkle J. Moose. (Keep in mind that Sarah loves to shoot Moose–or Caribou, see below–and likes Moose stew, which is just disgusting when one thinks about Bullwinkle, an American icon.)

The great adversaries of Rocky and Bullwinkle are the Russian spies Boris Badenov and Natasha Fatale. Recently on UP@NIGHT, Larry Geater suggested that there is a resemblance between McCain and Boris (LINK). Now this is insightful, because if McCain is a Boris, Palin is certainly a Natasha. (Don’t forget about Palin’s foreign policy experience; you know, Alaska is close to Russia. And this makes her close to being a Russian, using the same sort of logic.) Now from the Bullwinkle.toonzone site, we learn the following about Natasha:

Real Name: Natasha Fatale

Sex: Female

Occupation: Secret Agent

Home: Everywhere

Education: Expelled from college

Tag Line: Hello Dollink.

Biography: Natasha was a former Miss Transylvania. She is believed to be the love child of Axis Sally and Count Dracula, although nothing has been proven (blood work, yum). When she moved to the “New World” at age 19, she had a part time modeling job with Charles Addams and another popping out of cakes at stag parties. Although Boris has asked for her hand many times, she refuses to part with it. “Its my hand dollink, he can get his own,” said Ms. Fatale.

Okay, just remember here that Palin was a beauty contest winner (2nd place), and went to five different colleges before she was able to get a degree. Natasha was expelled from college. (That’s close enough for me.) Both are ruthless, although they can appear to be charming and charismatic. Palin is fondly called the barracuda. Natasha’s last name is Fatale. But I don’t need to go into any long explanation. Let’s just take a look at John and Sarah and Boris and Natasha, and you tell me if I haven’t nailed it. (Keep in mind that Boris likes to blow things up, makes a lot of mistakes, gaffes of a sort, and always seems to get foiled at the last minute. Palin has that strange accent, which could have been Ruskie before speech therapy.) And if I have nailed it, the question is, just how screwed are we if these people get into the White House, that is, John and Sarah?

THE DREAM TICKETS, circa 2008, circa 1964. Slogan both times: THE MORE THINGS CHANGE……

Not Convinced yet? Listen here to the voices of Boris and especially to what they are saying. It explains everything, even the (Hail Mary) Palin pick.   http://bullwinkle.toonzone.net/rbplan.wav

And here is a little bonus, what Boris (aka, McCain) really thinks about the American public. He’s talking to Bullwinkle, before Palin got to him. RIP   http://bullwinkle.toonzone.net/hello.wav

Kate Phillips reports the following in the NY Times on August 20, 2008 (article here):

“A dividing line shows up in this [NY Times/CBS] poll, according to the analysis by Mr. Cooper and Ms. Sussman:

Mr. Obama, the presumptive Democratic nominee, was trusted more by voters to handle their top concern, the economy. Sixty-five percent of those surveyed said they were confident that Mr. Obama would make the right decisions on the economy, compared with 54 percent who expressed confidence that Mr. McCain would. When it came to foreign policy, the image was inverted: 66 percent expressed confidence in Mr. McCain to make the right decisions, and 55 percent in Mr. Obama.

The economy ranks far higher than national security or the Iraq war as a top concern among voters in the new survey, which indicated that respondents were more negative about the economy than at any time since 1992 when, as the article notes, Bill Clinton won the presidency with the admonishment that ‘It’s the Economy, Stupid’.”

McCain has hung out the bait: you hate the war, well I am going to keep making outrageous claims about winning it. Come and get me. And we will if we are not careful. Because he was wrong about the war from the get go and his foreign policy is a throwback to the Cold War. But it’s a trap. While most Americans agree that the war is bad news, it is not what they are mainly concerned about right now. Or more to the point, it is not the central concern of most of the undecided voters, those who will determine the outcome of the election. They want to talk jobs, wages, foreclosures, mortgages, retirement, and medical care. If Americans are basically confident that Obama can handle foreign policy, and the poll suggests that 55% of them already are, then Obama has crossed the most significant threshold. He doesn’t have to top McCain. He just has to make sure that enough people feel comfortable about his ability to handle foreign affairs so that they can go ahead and vote for him based on economic self-interest.

My conclusion: as painful as it might be for Obama and his supporters, they should avoid responding to McCain every time he raises the Iraq War and foreign policy. A better course: remind the American people as often as possible that the war is costing us 10 billion a month when we have no health care and the economy is tanking. (And they should also remind the American people that McCain said that he needed to study up on economics just a few months ago. A captain of the economy he is not.)

P.S. Yes, of course, there will be times that Obama and his supporters will have to respond about the war and discuss foreign policy, but this is different from getting sucked into an endless debate about the war. It was and is wrong, corrupt, and strategically stupid. But this is going to be a pocket book election unless something unforeseen and very big happens internationally. Focusing on the Iraq War and foreign affairs is not going to win the election for anyone but McCain. And then we will have to stare at this for years to come……

UPDATE: August 23, 2008. The selection of Joe Biden as the VP candidate should work beautifully with the strategy outlined above. The basic premise of this strategy is that Obama does not have to poll better than McCain on foreign policy; he just has to convince a majority of Americans that he can handle foreign policy well. The NY Times/CBS poll suggests that he has already crossed this threshold. Biden will not only help to make sure that he remains above this threshold, he will help Obama improve his standing. My guess is that the selection of Biden, and other moves that Obama will make, will push him well into the 60% range on the question of confidence in handling foreign affairs. (A 3-4% lead in the popular vote will almost surely translate into an electoral college win. That’s a 52%-48% win, without third party candidates included.)