The Politics of Contempt.

John McCain is declaring war on the media, the elites, really, anyone who's not you. The Republicans' thirst for contempt is limitless.

Paul Waldman | September 9, 2008


When John McCain secured his party's nomination at the beginning of this year, many of his admirers in the media offered assurances that because the Republicans had chosen a man of such impeccable integrity, so different from every other politician, this campaign would not be like those we have gotten used to. It would be respectful, it would be substantive, it would be so high-minded and civil as to make Pericles himself weep with joy.

Oh well. "Cultural affinities," wrote the Los Angeles Times at the end of the Republican convention, "are now central to the campaign strategy of GOP presidential nominee John McCain." No kidding.

But it's more than just cultural affinity, the standard issue "Our candidate is one of you, their candidate isn't" routine (after all, John McCain's life, from being the son and grandson of admirals to dumping his first wife for the beer heiress with the $100 million fortune, isn't really "like" anyone's). The real focus of the Republican convention, and the Republican campaign from now to Election Day, is on contempt.

The Republican delegates, those button-bejeweled representatives of the party's social conservative wing, arrived in St. Paul in a near-frenzy, their ambivalence about John McCain swept away by his pick of one of their own to be his running mate. They love Sarah Palin for her "spunk," for her good looks, for her hardest of hard-right ideology. But mostly they loved her for the fact that she obviously hates the people they hate, and with just as much vigor.

On the convention's key penultimate night, the events leading up to Palin's speech declared open season on the "elite," whether located in the media (to whom John McCain used to refer as "my base"), in the cities, or just anywhere where you're not from. The speakers were apparently out to offer some sort of performance-art meditation on hypocrisy. You had the Harvard-educated former Massachusetts governor whose father was the governor of Michigan and who is himself worth hundreds of millions of dollars complaining about the "Eastern elite." You had the cross-dressing, globe-hopping, thrice-married former New York mayor castigating Barack Obama for being "cosmopolitan." Even the video tribute to Ronald Reagan included the line, "The media despised him," which would be news to anyone who was around during the 1980s. But no matter -- the scorn of the swells is a medal to be worn with more pride than a Navy Cross, even if that scorn exists nowhere but the imagination.

And nobody wore that medal with more pride than Palin herself. She railed at reporters, at those who supposedly look down on folks in small towns, and at the "Washington elite." She invoked Harry Reid, a political figure about whom few voters have strong opinions, saying Reid "said, quote, 'I can't stand John McCain.' Ladies and gentlemen, perhaps no accolade we hear this week is better proof that we've chosen the right man." McCain is the right man, because Democrats can't stand him.

Perhaps most oddly to some ears, Palin even mocked Barack Obama for having worked as a community organizer after graduating college: "This world of threats and dangers is not just a community, and it doesn't just need an organizer," she said to derisive laughter and cheers. One could respond that this world of threats and dangers is not just a small-market local TV station, and it doesn't just need a sports reporter, since that's what Palin did when she finished college.

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http://www.prospect.org/cs/articles?article=the_politics_of_contempt