(UPDATED) McCain: “I am not a crook George Bush.”
It is baffling to me that so many of the barking heads on TV can be so tone-deaf and still keep their jobs. For example, one highly respected White House correspondent (I’m looking at you David Gregory) was beside himself with excitement the night of the third debate because John McCain had “forcefully” responded to Barack Obama’s ongoing charge that McCain simply represented an extension of the Bush years. “Senator Obama, I am not President Bush. If you wanted to run against President Bush, you should have run four years ago.” Oh, snap! David Gregory clutched his pearls and swooned — but not before he found his fainting couch.
Too bad for him (and McCain) because statements of that sort are notorious for being re-interpreted in exactly the opposite way the speaker intended. Every pet owner understands this basic fact: when you say “Don’t jump on the couch,” your pet simply hears “jump on the couch.”
Also, Shakespeare understood that when a person “protesteth too much,” it means that they have revealed something that they might have guilty feelings about. “I am not a crook,” said Richard Nixon, immediately raising the issue of crookitude onto the national radar.
Devotees of pop psychology (e.g., “The Secret”) know that whatever you think about, you eventually get. If you are thinking (and talking) about yourself in comparison with George Bush, don’t be surprised if that association becomes ingrained in the minds of everyone around you. In short — you get to be George Bush.
And lastly, a candidate should never ever use his opponents’ language in making his own case because he who is explaining is losing.
So go ahead Senator McCain, let’s hear it one more time:
At virtually every campaign stop, McCain is reprising a line he used last Wednesday in his final debate with Sen. Barack Obama: “I am not George Bush.” And in a television ad introduced last week, McCain looks into the camera and says, “The last eight years haven’t worked very well, have they?”
No, they haven’t Senator. Come to think of it, why didn’t YOU run against Bush four years ago?
UPDATE: Well, I have some good news and some bad news for Sen. McCain. The good news is that poll respondents’ #1 concern about McCain is no longer that he’d continue Bush’s policies. Their new #1 concern about a McCain presidency? Two words: “Sarah Palin.”
