Today, the reliably unctuous Dick Morris, useful idiot for the Fox News Free-and-Helpful-Advice-For-Democrats Network, descended from another cosmic plane to tell America what it wants in the next president. In a column with a title like a teenager's assessment of an after-school parking lot brawl, Dick Morris presents a picture-perfect example of the funhouse-mirror delusions of Republican sympathizers:
Obama Has the Upper Hand. But McCain Can Still Take Him.
John McCain is America's favorite kind of candidate. [Wah?] With his record of extraordinary patriotism and his distinctive Senate tenure, McCain is a nominee whom voters from both parties - and independents, too - could easily support.
But he has been dealt a terrible hand: a tanking economy, an unpopular war, a Republican incumbent whose approval ratings are at their all-time low and a gloomy national mood, with 82 percent of Americans saying in a Washington Post-ABC News poll last week that the country is on the wrong track. Political scientists add all that up and predict that the Democrats are destined to win the White House. But I don't do political science; I do politics, and I'm convinced that McCain can still win - if he's willing to follow the road map below.
Yes, Morris doesn't "do political science," he does "politics." Translation: for the rest of his article, he will pull a series of dubious assertions from his arse and portray them as certifiable facts.
However, this laughably predictable tactic is not enough for Mr. Morris. No, he's writing a Washington Post opinion column, so he'd better be sure to pack as much speciousness, triviality, and unfairness into his underhanded verbal shiv as possible. Indeed, in his short op-ed, he raises the name and specter of the Rev. Jeremiah Wright five (5) times, in a thinly veiled attempt to pull Barack Obama into the type of tribalistic "American" identity match-up that embodies the Republicans' only hope of being competitive in November. Here are all five mentions, collected together, in all their lizard-brained glory:
With the help of the incendiary comments of his former pastor, the Rev. Jeremiah A. Wright Jr., Obama's negatives have been rising even as he nears the finish line.
* * *
Wright has become the honorary chairman of McCain's get-out-the-vote efforts. It would be nice to think that race isn't a factor in American politics anymore, but it is. [Thank you, Dick, for your heartfelt concern.]
* * *
Obama's liberalism, his pro-tax agenda and his proposed weakening of the USA Patriot Act - as well as fears that he would appoint to office people such as Rev. Wright and William Ayers, a former member of the Weather Underground - will all assure the full mobilization of the right. Immigration reform and McCain's other acts of apostasy will be forgiven for the sake of beating Obama.
* * *
The collected quotes of Rev. Wright will be a bestseller this summer.
* * *
Obama's ex-pastor may have faded in the primary fight with Clinton, but Wright will loom larger in the general election.
(...and, Dick, I'm sure you'll have absolutely no part in bringing him back.)
Nevertheless, let's set aside these five rhetorical belches for now. Indeed, there remain so many more reeking morsels of fetid mendacity to be plucked from Dick Morris' bucket of bitter delights, I would hate to deprive you the pleasure of glimpsing each noxious one.
We'll start with Dick's idea of a clever turn of phrase:
To sum it up: A candidate who cannot get elected [Obama] is being nominated by a party that cannot be defeated, while a candidate who is eminently electable [McCain] is running as the nominee of a party doomed to defeat.
Like so many establishment media gasbags, Mr. Morris has this tragically half right. With the smirking, half-hearted nod to "balance" that signifies most breeds of media folks who "do politics," Morris manages to admit the daunting electoral prospects facing Republicans, while hanging the undeserved millstone of unelectability (read: blackness) around the neck of Obama - the candidate who has thrilled the Democratic base, energized the electorate, and simultaneously drawn the support of independents and moderates like few candidates can.
Moving on, we get to the crumbling summit of Dick Morris' lazily crafted verbal compost heap, wherein he reveals the dirty dagger in the hand draped around the reader's shoulder:
The growing fear of Obama, who remains something of an unknown, will drag every last white Republican male off the golf course to vote for McCain, and he will need no further laying-on of hands from either evangelical Christians or fiscal conservatives.
Morris caps the thought off by raising the possibility - no joke - that some independents and Democrats could be "convinced that Obama is some kind of sleeper agent sent to charm and conquer our democracy." I will let that poison pill of "concern" speak for itself.
Ultimately, however, Dick Morris is most revealing toward the end of his column, where he generously offers to speak on behalf of all of us Americans - a task, of course, for which a wealthy longtime Washington insider and frequent TV talking head is perfectly equipped.
The collected quotes of Rev. Wright will be a bestseller this summer. Obama once had to prove to us that he was not a Muslim; now he must convince us that he never really went to church much.
...The American public will not ultimately doubt Obama's patriotism; that is a bridge too far. [Banish the thought.] But we will come to think less of his credibility and strength as he fumbles his way through awkward denials.
Finally, there for all to see is the capstone of Dick Morris' hollow monument to character attack disguised as dispassionate observation. This is the favorite cream pie pundit clowns gleefully slam into the faces of countless believing readers every time they lean in for the insight of an overpriced political hack masquerading as an expert.
Truly, I have little doubt that Dick Morris wishes he spoke for all Americans. In his sweaty, misshapen dreams, no doubt the entire country shudders in a collective Victorian gasp at the prospect that "Obama is some kind of sleeper agent sent to charm and conquer our democracy." Surely, Dick fantasizes of an America that shares the "growing fear of Obama" held by those patriotic Republican males suffering on their golf courses, huddled in trepidation at the possibility that Obama "would appoint to office people such as Rev. Wright and William Ayers, a former member of the Weather Underground" (in case anyone forgot).
However, luckily for most of "us" out here in America, Dick Morris' wishful, narrow thinking is not reality. Indeed, he may be in for quite the rude awakening when no amount of invocations of Jeremiah Wright's terrifying name can save John McCain from the very real terrors of the Republican policies he has so helpfully advanced.
Still, I myself would be as delusional as Morris if I believed he would ever realize the transparency and brittle speciousness of his attempt to pass his own prejudices off as those of the entire country. After all, as Morris helpfully warned, he doesn't "do political science" - he only does "politics." Badly.