Back-B-Log: O Canada
OK, I know I'm a bit late to the Bloggin' table, and numerous un and qualified pundits have all said their bit about the late unpleasantness (the election, remember a few months ago, you've been trying to block it out). Anyway, my few sundry observations.1. Don't go to Canada
I'm hardly one to talk as a confirmed ex-pat, but the first thing the blue-staters have to swallow is that they got it wrong. The let's go to Canada contingent are really those that would throw the toys out of the pram not getting their way. We falsely suppose that having the moral high ground of liberalism, a war hero, or even the guy more suited to the job has anything to do with winning an American election. The day after the election there was a deluge of spurned entitlement. It's much more wounding than the lawyers stealing the election in 2000 to think that despite mobilising all and sundry, we lost another close run numbers game.
Just before the election a UK TV station aired the West Wing episodes with the re-election of Bartlett. The amiable yet crotchety, intellectual yet personable, liberal wet-dream of a President wins handily after an uphill battle, the turning point... he wins the debate. This exemplifies our blue state thinking, a well reasoned argument based on facts, will win the minds then hearts of the people.
What we continually ignore is that Presidential Election Campaigns are high school all over again. The captain of the forensics team doesn't win, the popular guy or gal does, sometimes a jock, occasionally the class clown (let's discount my own Napoleon Dynamite style freak seizing of the number two slot my senior year after a particularly funny ad-libbed speech). Blue Staters have the self-righteousness of a geek club of D&D playing goths who can't understand why everyone else doesn't like them.
The winner of the election doesn't need to be qualified to do the job, he needs to personable, likable. The person you'd invite to your barbecue, or to pledge your frat, the guy you could share a foul tasting non-imported beer with.
Let's look at who've the Democrats have gotten elected over the last four decades, Kennedy, Johnson, Carter, Clinton. OK Johnson's the odd one out, but he might bring the ribs and beer. Carter, you'd invite, but once you got to know him, you wouldn't invite him back, except to make a fourth at bridge. The Republican's didn't cotton onto the right formula until Reagan, but then they were saddled with his VP, but the Dems came up with the even less charismatic Dukakis. Dole solidified the lesson, and my guess is that Republican candidates will be in this mold for the foreseeable future (perhaps until every member of the Bush family is used up).
2. Play to the lowest common denominator
We'd love to believe, especially in this age of advertising aware cynicism, that this doesn't work, or shouldn't work, or that it's evil, or you are descending to the level of the other guy. Screw it! It works! The results prove it!
Scare people! Appeal to their greed! Don't play on their sense of justice or future economic or financial stability! Play the God card! You know what God wants, and you won't let the Constitution stand in the way of your interpretation of his will! Watch out, the gays are coming to steal our women folk!
Don't be afraid to nominate an idiot! Lack of intellectual prowess makes a guy seem more ordinary. An innumerate dolt who genuinely believes that just over 50% is an "accountability moment" (it would hang a jury). Just the ticket.
3. Get the Canadians to immigrate.
Instead of Blue Staters going to the land of Maple Syrup and Poutine, convince any liberal minded Canadians to do the free world a favor and move to a Red State. Much of Canada is just like the mid-west, only they treat gun ownership as a privilege rather than a right, and assault weapons aren't OK 'cause they don't leave enough of the duck intact to eat.
How can we achieve this, lower import duties on Molsen and Moosehead, play up propaganda about the impending ice age, or get a Quebecois voted Prime Minister.
4. Make sure I get my absentee ballot in time next time
For the second time in three years my absentee ballot arrived too late to send back in time. Granted my voting State went for Kerry, so I can comfort myself. But I still feel the sense of guilt that perhaps we could have done more......
At least some others have felt the need to apologize.... http://www.sorryeverybody.com/
Labels: Vague-a-ries
posted by Brian R Tarnoff @ 7:07 pm
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