As Awesomely Irrelevant

as Bigfoot?

Well, probably not, but judge for yourself.

First the awesome bit -- a shapely, well-written, scrupulously researched essay that explains in vivid detail why:

1. Even though he endlessly cites Teddy Roosevelt as his hero, Senator John McSame is just about the complete opposite of TR in every way imaginable. And,


2. If we were gonna go ahead and play the "Shall I compare thee" game, it would actually be the Junior Senator from Illinois -- Barack Hussein Obama -- who would bid fair to win the "Most Like Roosevelt" round.

From the NYT.

Rushmore or Less

Timothy Egan

August 13, 2008


In most every profile of Senator John McCain, there is some mention of his hero and role model — the bespectacled progressive who is one of the fab four on Mount Rushmore, Theodore Roosevelt.

Teddy has aged well, beloved both by Democratic environmentalists who feel he would appreciate the Emily Dickinson line that “hope is the thing with feathers,” and by Republican foreign policy hardliners who see a bird of a different type — the hawk.

I’ve spent the last two years trying to understand Roosevelt’s life and political convictions, reading his letters, books and speeches, as well as press accounts of him. From nearly every perspective, the John McCain of 2008 is no Teddy Roosevelt.

You start with the obvious: Roosevelt was the youngest man to become president, sworn into office in 1901 at the age of 42, after McKinley was shot. McCain, if elected, would be the oldest at 72.

McCain has attacked Barack Obama for his popularity, on the advice of Karl Rove acolytes in his camp who think that being a global celebrity is a bad thing.

You want celebrity? As the most popular American in the dawning decade of the American Century, Teddy Roosevelt was a global superstar — “the most popular human being that has ever existed in the United States,” as Mark Twain wrote.

…

Both McCain and Roosevelt are Republicans, though Roosevelt famously bolted from his party to run as a Progressive in 1912, trying for a third term after sitting out four years in favor of the befuddled William H. Taft.

But Roosevelt clearly tried to steer his party away from what would now be seen as its hard-right elements — big money, anti-environmentalism, race-baiting — into what he called in his autobiography “the fairly radical progressive party.”

Born of money in New York City, educated at Harvard and fussy in dress, Teddy Roosevelt might today be seen as, um, an elitist. But he turned against his class, not just busting the monopolies and promoting public ownership of natural resources, as most students of his presidency know, but taking hard verbal swipes at the predatory rich.

He called them “malefactors of great wealth” and “the most dangerous members of the criminal class — the criminals of great wealth,” in two of his best-known phrases.

Appalled by the historic gap between rich and poor, Roosevelt favored a national inheritance tax. “Of all the forms of tyranny, the least attractive and most vulgar is the tyranny of mere wealth, the tyranny of plutocracy,” he said.

A century later, in a time of similar disparity between rich and poor, McCain wants to cut the corporate tax rate, and keep those tax breaks for the wealthiest Americans that ushered in the Bush age of privilege. His campaign is thick with lobbyists who embody everything about how power in Washington has shifted to the well-connected moneyed class.

…

In at least one way, Roosevelt is closer to Obama. A prolific author who also penned more than 100,000 letters, Teddy wrote 15 books by his 40th birthday. Obama got his start as an author, and shows a literary flair rare among politicians.

…

The John McCain of old — who stood up to his party’s nasty demagogues, fought special interests and embodied the word maverick — was someone Roosevelt might admire.

The John McCain who ran a Paris Hilton ad, mocked Obama for inspiring people abroad and has proposed nothing to right the ship of economic inequality would be his fierce opponent.

A nice bit of writing, that.


The sadly irrelevant bit is this: we are still part of a national population that breaks down roughly like so:



Or, as seen from the other side of the looking glass, like so:


And however thorough and incisive Mr. Egan's scholarship may be, and however much people like you and I might enjoy reading this essay or a hundred like it, it will always be only people like you and me* -- people on the Blue/Left of the Great Electoral Pie -- who read it.

It will always be only people like you and me* who read anything at all.

(thx for the catch, IGotYerBlog)

And those on the Red Right?

If the last thirty years has proven anything about the tiny, underclocking brains of the critters on the Right beyond a shadow of a doubt it is that John McSame could be caught on film in a bondage dungeon servicing Pontius Pilate and Bigfoot, after which...

...Sean Hannity would lead the 27%-ers in a grand, national chorus of “But he’s a War Hero”...

...and eleven minutes later they would have blissfully forgotten anything ever happened.

Shrugs.

Fuck ‘em.

The 27%-ers have become so reliably loud and ignorant -- so furiously and proudly irrational -- that, within the political context, it long ago became genuinely pointless to bother to think of them as autonomous human adults anymore. They have become just another catastrophic force of nature that has to be factored into the equation, as unreasoning and adamant as a mudslide.

The filthy reality of politics in 2008 (about which more later) -- and the reason why things like FISA and gun control were speedbumped by the Obama campaign -- is that this election, like every other election for the last thirty years, has been a fight over that sliver of purple in the middle.

God knows it shouldn't be. And, in my humble opinion, it needn't be. But political campaigns are run by people who see themselves as pragmatists and who think of this as gospel, which is why they spend so much time and so much money saying so little to so few.

Which is why the Obama campaign has spent the last month trying to take one issue after another off the table by making all those appalling concessions: they’re trying to methodically neutralize every potential weapons for stampeding the Purple Sliver over the cliff again, because they are painful aware that these are exactly same people the Bush campaign terrified into voting Republican in 2004 with a relentless barrage of “Vote GOP or terrorists will kill your children!” ads.

And when it comes to deciding who to vote for, the Purple Sliver is going to impulse buy a candidate in exactly the same way they make up their mind to buy Trident instead of Big Red standing on line at CVS.

And Teddy Roosevelt?

Please.

This bloc of voters couldn't tell you the difference between Teddy Roosevelt and

Teddy Ruxpin if you promised them 40 virgins, a brand new Escalade, and gas for a buck a gallon until the end of time.