Sorry, John McCain, you’re not our strong daddy
Around the blogs today, there’s a good deal of commentary, consternation, and near-confusion over the hallucinatory vision laid out today (and already memorialized in an online ad) by Mr. Double-Talk Express, John McCain, today:
By January 2013, America has welcomed home most of the servicemen and women who have sacrificed terribly so that America might be secure in her freedom. The Iraq War has been won. Iraq is a functioning democracy, although still suffering from the lingering effects of decades of tyranny and centuries of sectarian tension. Violence still occurs, but it is spasmodic and much reduced. Civil war has been prevented; militias disbanded; the Iraqi Security Force is professional and competent; al Qaeda in Iraq has been defeated; and the Government of Iraq is capable of imposing its authority in every province of Iraq and defending the integrity of its borders. The United States maintains a military presence there, but a much smaller one, and it does not play a direct combat role.
Eric Martin observes at Obsidian Wings that in this effort to substitute fantasy for policy prescriptions, McCain is “employing the Glenn Reynolds Field Manual” (“What should the U.S. do in Iraq now?” “Win.”), but there’s really more than that going on here.
In my periodic missives on political framing, one of the themes I’ve explored is the GOP effort to maintain its perceived position (as George Lakoff has famously identified) as the daddy party. McCain’s speech is an attempt to reach those voters who, consciously or not, would prefer to be ruled than governed — to elect not a representative, but a supreme authority whom we need only to obey. The implicit message is that if we elect McCain as our national father figure, the goals he describes will come about by sheer force of his determination, with no further thought or effort on our part.
As I wrote more than two years ago, the rhetorical strategy is to “Remind everyone that they’re the strong daddy, and as long as they’re in charge, the children (also known as us) shouldn’t waste time second-guessing about what they’re doing.” Of course, I wrote that about our current president, making this stylistic choice another way that — surprise! — McCain is turning out to be just a would-be extended version of George Bush.
What to do about it? Well, since this is such a timeworn GOP approach, I’ve written about that, too, here in early 2007:
The absurdity of such spin after all this time shows us what the antidotes are: facing reality, appropriate derision of those who would rather live in a fantasy… and, above all, communicating to the broader public that they — we — are fully equipped to judge reality and determine the best response to it, rather than waiting for some Wizard of Oz-like daddy to tell us what to believe.
Still seems like the right answer to me.
(Cross-posted at Firedoglake.)
Stumble it!
June 1st, 2008 at 11:22 am
[...] I voted against it”) that could be pounced upon as proof to further it along.  Since McCain’s would-be daddy frame (like Dubya’s) depends on him pretending to be infallible — which is why he [...]
June 14th, 2008 at 9:51 am
[...] McCain is really doing, though, is making the strong-daddy pitch (as in his infamous 2013 ad) that if we elect him, he’s so manly and decisive that unsolved, [...]