By Rick Marschall

            The dust barely has settled from Campaign 2008, a dust-up of news cycles and national attention – and distractions – of two solid years’ intensity. A politics-weary country was visited with forecasts of another dust-storm of presidential politics, not one or two years over the horizon but imminently.

            The President-Elect himself, in what surely have been unprecedented acts, several times has told his supporters that his agenda “would not take one year, or even one term” to fulfill. It was the first time a winning candidate’s victory speech in effect announced his candidacy for a second term.

            So the dust hardly settles. But through the dust, and in a spirit of reflection, certain historical images assert themselves. Let us stop for a moment and consider the following:

            Here was a candidate whose role, and perhaps destiny, is Transformational.

          Unknown outside an urban neighborhood, in a few short years he sprang to national prominence… and international renown.

            Contrary to most national and personal success stories, his immediate ancestry was from outside the borders of the country that elevated him to its highest position.

            Rumors of dark associations in his past, and secret backers of his current ambitions, were rife, yet proved insignificant to his rise.

            “Self-made man” had a different meaning in his case: not just material success, but the vital details of activities and beliefs, he kept rather obscure. His supporters cared not at all.

            He wrote an autobiography while yet an obscure figure – perhaps an act of hubris – yet full of roadmaps and plans, also scarcely referenced even at the height of the campaign.

            Clearly it was not so much those associates and backers, beliefs or plans, that fueled his sudden rise. The force of his personality explained much. A nation battered by the effects of a war, hurting from a reeling economy, troubled by political disarray and corruption, was at first in inchoate in its appetite for Change. Once he identified with Change – and manifested those yearnings in an astonishing and impressive manner – a nation seemed willing to trust its future to him almost blindly.

            Detractors and admirers alike acknowledge a speaking style that captivates listeners. Measured words, an emotional cadence, old clichés were somehow transformed into seeming revolutionary volleys. The Speech typically ranged from grievances to hope, beginning quietly, obliging the audience to be deathly silent and hang on every word, and recounted past injustice and recent ills, then offered a list of battles to fight, then closed with inspirational words about a glowing future… both in the country and around the world.

            A pliant and adoring media (often enough a manipulated media) would not just portray a savior-like aura around the man or the Speech: how often did we see camera shots of worshipful listeners, their robot-like responses to applause-lines, their frozen smiles, and their tear-filled eyes?

            A kiddie korps was a feature of the campaign. Too young to vote, and obviously too young to understand the issues, many children nevertheless were dressed up with logos, symbols, and legends on their clothes, on their signs, and in their mouths. They sang special songs and chanted methodically, in nationwide commercials and in neighborhood rallies.

            Speaking of symbols, we remember that the candidate’s distinctive logo was seen everywhere, not just on placards but in faux-presidential seals on lecterns and eventually replacing the nation’s flag on the exterior of the campaign plane!

            His rallies were something to behold… and were impossible not to behold. Their sheer size commanded attention – size of venues, size of audiences, the very size of the Audacity. A convention hall was rejected for a sports stadium. Other politicians had been content with meeting-rooms or hotel ballrooms for victory celebrations, but an urban park, overflowing for hundreds of thousands of cheering supporters, was substituted.

            The rallies we remember as oftentimes at night, where the focus is perforce on the stage, the microphone, the man. Celebrities warmed up, but also attracted, the crowds. Music played a large role, lights were arranged meticulously, everything was arranged like a theatrical production; and we even remember the trappings of an ancient imperial forum.

            Thousands and hundreds of thousands of people were necessary at all times to imply a nation-wide groundswell, but also to validate the Speech and the speechmaker. Safety in numbers? He was choreographing Inevitability in Numbers. Yet as necessary as the multitude was, every speech was given in an eerie spotlight of solitude. Even on the night of victory, he stood alone, not just in that spotlight, but on a stage with no visible partners, friends, or family. The aura of Savior -- about much was, in fact, whispered, joked, and confessed during the campaign – could not be staged otherwise.

            All in all, these factors were impressive, for a hungry public as well as a Leader evidently in constant need of validation. Change becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy…

            But enough of squinting through the dust of history. That was all 75 years ago, another man, in another nation.

            We must see clearly today, and into the future.

– 30 – 

Ending the Campaign On a POSITIVE Note

By Rick Marschall

The election is imminent. Voting has been endless, thanks to new and fuzzy rules encouraging people to make up their minds before all the arguments are advanced. The decision might not be official for some time to come, an endemic trend whether because of evenly divided electorates or frauds disputed by Byzantine logothetes. The choice will not be official until the Electoral College convenes more than 10 weeks distant, or (as has happened thrice in our history) the House of Representatives will decide. There will not be a new president until Jan 20, 2009.

To back up slightly, we should take note that the 2012 presidential campaign will commence precisely after the victory speech following the concession speech on Election Night. The Endless War has given way to the Endless Campaign.

The biggest hog at the trough, by the way, is not the politician nor the citizen nor the lobbyists not the consultant class… but the Mainstream Media. Television, particularly, has raked in more than a combined billion dollars, local and network sales; and – purely a coincidence, of course – the more confusion and controversy they sow, the more the elephants and donkeys bid for expensive ad slots. Among the winners and losers in bloody campaigns, the MSM never loses.

Yet, let us recall the quatrain of Omar Khayyam, the Persian tentmaker, from his beautiful and wise Rubaiyat: “All the saints and sages who discussed / Of the two worlds so learnedly are thrust / like foolish prophets forth; their words to scorn are scattered; / Their mouths are stopped with dust.”

            What controversies will remain of this campaign? What will be swept away like placards after a rally? What ideas will take seed and grow? E S Martin, the prescient editorialist for the old Life Magazine and Harper’s Weekly a century ago, used to cast the two parties of his day as the Celestials and the Carnals; this year one party fueled the Big Momentum by retaining its carnal essence and dressing up in the celestial. Will the victors and vanquished put aside their causes, lick their wounds, and forget the animosities of the previous 20 months?

            Not bloody likely.

            In the interest of a different perspective, I would like to end this chapter of American history to which we have all been players or spectators, on a POSITIVE note.

            I am POSITIVE, for instance, that if Obama is elected he will move in his first weeks if not days to end all restrictions on abortion. To codify a national invitation to government-paid abortion-on-demand. To put Roe vs Wade outside the reach of a Supreme Court reconsideration. To end parental notification.

            I am POSITIVE that an Obama administration will do everything in its power – which it can, by Executive Orders, even before the Barney Frank juggernaut in Congress has its own opportunity – to make acceptance of homosexuality the rule and code of the land. That doesn’t mean just cooing nicely when a man visits his “partner” in the hospital (the way it is sold to us), but, say, the Obama Justice Department outlawing churches, private companies, groups like the Boy Scouts, from stating the belief that homosexuality is a sin. Such will become a hate crime punishable by lost contracts, bureaucratic harassment, and jail time.

            I am POSITIVE that home schools and even charter schools will suffer persecution and intimidation under an Obama Education Department.

            I am POSITIVE that the United Nations will gain status like a co-equal part of the federal government; that the US will be committed to international treaties and organizations, our sovereignty surrendered, often without the formality of a leftist Congress having to go on record committing treason.

            I am POSITIVE that taxes will rise precipitously; that suddenly government, not individuals, will discover loopholes in order to go about its confiscation (or, as it will be called, “fairly spreading the wealth”). There will be pogroms, willingly abetted by the MSM and wealthy celebrities, to make wage earners feel guilty for not digging ever deeper.

            I am POSITIVE that Obama will not shy away from the words “socialist,” Communist,” and “Marxist.” He ended the campaign mocking McCain by wondering whether little Barry Obama was a Communist because he gave away half of his sandwich one day in the first grade (great laughter from robotized crowd). No, Obama: that would be called “sharing” or “charity” or “compassion,” all voluntary and therefore elevating. You can’t be this stupid, but we can explain: socialism, Communism, and Marxism is when YOU say the kid HAS to give up half of his sandwich, or else. No matter what it took to put it in his lunch box, or whether the fat, hungry kid actually deserves it or not. That’s not a laugh-line – that’s coercion. And it’s coming.

            I am POSITIVE – and am sorry to contradict Joe Biden, who sold his Senate Committee Chairman credentials for a mess of potage; imagine scaring people like that – but there will not be a “generated international crisis” in Obama’s first six months. Except that he sees an opportunity to generate one himself (say it’s so, Joe; I getcha now) in order to divert attention or falsely rouse the restive masses behind him. I am positive that no enemy is stupid enough to oblige Obama to actually have to summon a military response. Or feel the need to rattle the sabre louder to satisfy hawks at home. Putative enemies, even flea-infested terrorists, and even Obama himself (if not Biden) are smart enough to know that with a little patience the New Order in Washington will voluntarily surrender more than anything in reach of terrorist attacks or diplomatic crisis.

            I am POSITIVE that American Jews, most of whom saw a virtual Messiah in Obama, will be the first to have “buyer’s remorse” when Middle Eastern policy tilts away from Israel. I am positive that blacks will fare no better under Obama than they have under Democrat massas for two generations, because that party depends on a permanent state of the underclass’s grievance and dependency. The MSM will also find itself treated as the liberal nobility was after the French Revolution. You thought the press lost its head in 2008?

            I am POSITIVE that we are entering the Actuarial Age under Obama. That is, as “changing” governmental policies will make abortion easier; will move American closer to legal euthanasia as practiced in pockets of the US and elsewhere around the enlightened world; will encourage parents to murder babies, including those with Downs Syndrome or the newly born after botched abortions; will move to new ways of dealing with incurable diseases and disabilities. Chilling ways. New definitions of “compassion” (mercy killing) will supplant the old (love and acceptance). I call this the Actuarial Age because the merchants of death will sell all this Change to us because the food supply shrinks, resources are dwindling, and the planet is warming. See?       

I am POSITIVE that not one horror under the coming political dispensation will be undeserved. We are getting what we bargained for.

            Of these things I am POSITIVE. Can’t we all just get along?

– 30 – 

Four days to go. Do you find yourself watching your candidate on TV and saying. “I wish he had said that in the debates!” or “Why couldn’t he have displayed that intensity three months ago”? Candidates and their supporters are finally saying some things “better late than never.”

And some are saying things about saying things that maybe they shouldn’t be saying. Or maybe it’s good they ARE saying certain things; that is, maybe we’re hearing things just in time.

On Halloween – appropriately – Barack Obama figuratively jumped out from behind a bush (no pun intended) and yelled Boo to voters. In Columbia, Missouri, he warned that the last four days of the campaign would be filled with hate, fear, and threats… from the Republicans. Just like they’ve been doing all along, he said. There would be attempts to keep voters from the polls… by the Republicans. (Big jokes from little ACORNS grow.) So forth and so on… but, understand, Obama will be there to protect us.

But saying these things do not make them true; or, to the real extent that all politics has become dirty, to tip O’Neill on his head, Obama’s portrayal of his campaign, the dirtiest in history, as the most innocent and cleanest will not make it so.

But with herd-instinct voters in the Media Age, you CAN put a Halloween mask on a pig and scare people.

One of the despicable tactics of the Obama campaign has been to play the race card. Actually, the campaign has dealt the race DECK. Did you notice that the outrageous racism of “Reverend” Wright, aired so early in the campaign, effectively erased a depiction of Obama himself as a Black Radical?

Then Obama said in many speeches that “they” (Republicans and conservatives) will tell “you” (susceptible voters) that “he” (Obama), “he’s different, he has a funny name, he… looks different.” Which is the same thing as accusing his opponents of stopping just short of the N-word and organizing lynching bees.

Notice that in this long campaign, Hillary and McCain were accused of being bigots, but the only SAYING of racist words were by people like Obama and Wright; the only bigoted words SAID were by Obama and his surrogates.

In the third presidential debate, a similar Big Lie was attempted. Obama claimed that at Sarah Palin appearances angry crowds were yelling, “Kill him!” at the mention of Obama’s name. But the Secret Service, a constant presence with the campaigns, denied they ever witnessed such a thing. The FBI investigated; the same thing – no evidence. No crowd members or reporters, even that reliably hostile press entourage, could attest to a single such imprecation.

But – having raised his libel from McCain as an individual to voters in general – Obama’s “saying” such trashy fabrications had the usual, slick success.

The latest bit of scabrous-saying from Obama surrogates and supporters comes from a doyen of American letters, the feminist icon Erica Jong. In Rome at the moment, she was interviewed by the newspaper Coriere della Serra on October 29.

Stick with my translation (the entire interview is here: << http://archiviostorico.corriere.it/2008/ottobre/29/Follett_Jane_Fonda_liberal_americani_co_9_081029030.shtml >> ) but here is what a Pulitzer Prize winning author, an oft-displayed supporter of Obama, said:

“… liberal Americans have anxiety about Obama.” The article quotes her feeling that there will civil war in the US if Obama were to lose. “There are voting booths that cast your vote for McCain when you pull the Obama lever.… the Republicans have already perpetrated swindles.”

She continued: “…my generation has seen, first-person, the murders of JFK, his brother Robert, Martin Luther King. Squads, armed with Kalashnikovs [machine guns] will also kill the Obama Dream.”

She asserts she is not alone in such assurances: writer “Naomi Wolf calls me every day in order to see if my mood is any blacker. Yesterday Jane Fonda sent me an e-mail” about her stress and back pains caused by anxiety of what will happen in the wake of an Obama loss. “My back also spasms a lot,” Jong said, “making me take Valium. This is what they [the Republicans] have caused….”

She claims “if Obama loses, the second American civil war will erupt. There will be the blood in the streets, believe me. … Bush has recalled from Iraq a contingent of soldiers who under the command of Dick Cheney will be employed in the streets against American citizens.”

The Italian reporter calls Jong’s analysis “apocalyptic.” But the American authoress continued: “Jewish intellectuals like me are not astonished, after eight years of Bush, as Naomi Wolf wrote in ‘The End of America,’ because the United States has been transformed into a police state -- from the torture of… journalists to the Patriot Act.”

So say Obama surrogates among the intelligentsia and overseas (is it any wonder that polls say Obama would carry European electorates?) Does Obama ever distance himself from such lunacy? Of course not. In his semantic paradigm, rather an existential exercise, you see, saying such things makes them perforce true. His absurd claims to ignorance of Jeremiah Wright’s racism and treasonous charges neutralized their significance. What Americans should be asking is” “Even if you never knew this guy whom you quoted for your autobiography’s title, why weren’t you outraged when you DID learn about it?”

Finally, let’s consider the threats made by Obama supporters like the celebrated writer Erica Jong. If her candidate loses, there will be civil war, blood in the streets. Indeed we have heard about big-city police departments, and inner-city officials, already scheduling extra security on the streets for election night.

What Erica Jong said, oh my. I have to disagree. I don’t think there will be rioting in the streets if Obama loses. You see, she says it as a threat (besides, if she incites to riot she will be safe in Rome or Israel or Beverly Hills).

What I foresee – and I pray and I keep hope alive that I am wrong – is that if Obama loses, the inner cities will riot. If Obama wins, the inner cities will riot. This happens when basketball teams lose and win; why not this presidential candidate?

This is what democracy in America has come to: lies, threats, and dangerous nonsense. Say it ain’t so.

– 30 – 

Rick Marschall has been called by Bostonia Magazine "perhaps America's foremost authority on popular culture.” He is the Managing Editor of Rare Jewel Magazine, the Christian journal of politics and culture; and founding and Contributing Editor of Hogan's Alley, Journal of the Cartoon Arts. The author/editor of 62 books, he has been a political cartoonist, columnist, syndicate editor, publisher, and lecturer. His wide experience includes Editor at Marvel Comics, writer for Disney Comics, consultant to the US Postal Service, and lecturer for the US Information Service of the State Department. He has been on the faculties of the School of Visual Arts, Rutgers University, Philadelphia College of Art (now University of the Arts), and the Summer Institute for the Gifted at Bryn Mawr University.