[lit-ideas] Re: Obama, McCain & Milton

<Jesus is usually the political model for Republicans,>

I often read Prof. Fish but this time, re the quote above, me thinks the good 
professor is smoking something.  And it's not cigarettes or cigars.

Re the rest of the article, it's not exactly true.  I hear Obama attacking the 
McCain campaign rhetoric frequently.
Also, the adds Obama launches are not exactly friendly, but I find them to be 
true mostly.  However, Obama is steady and consistent and looks calm.  I agree 
to that.

Veronica

  ----- Original Message ----- 
  From: Julie Krueger 
  To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx 
  Sent: Monday, October 27, 2008 1:16 PM
  Subject: [lit-ideas] Obama, McCain & Milton


  
http://fish.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/10/26/the-power-of-passive-campaigning/?8ty&emc=ty

  Other than the last paragraph (Republicans model their philosophy after 
Jesus???), and what I think is a misuse of the word "passive", I find this 
piece pretty interesting.  (I do love George Will's reference to O. as the Fred 
Astaire of politics...I hadn't seen that one.)

  Reactions, anyone?  Different "readings"?


  October 26, 2008, 9:30 pm 
  The Power of Passive Campaigning
  By Stanley Fish
  In the aftermath of the 2000 and 2004 elections, the post-mortem verdict was 
that the Republicans had run a better campaign. They knew how to seize or 
manufacture an issue. They were able to master the dynamics of negative 
advertising. They kept on message. Now, when many print and TV commentators are 
predicting if not assuming an Obama victory, the conventional wisdom is that 
this time the Democrats have run a better campaign. 

  When did the Democrats smarten up? When did they learn how to outdo the 
Republicans at their own game?

  The answer is that they didn't. They decided — or rather Obama decided — to 
play another game, one we haven't seen for a while, and it's a question as to 
whether we've ever seen it. The name of this game is straightforward 
campaigning, or rather straightforward non-campaigning. 

  We saw it in the 10 days when the activity around the mounting economic 
crisis was at its height. Henry Paulson alternated between scaring members of 
Congress and scaring the public. Nancy Pelosi alternated between playing the 
responsible Congressional statesperson and playing the partisan attack dog. 
Media commentators went from one hysterical prediction to another. John McCain 
went from saying there's nothing to worry about to saying there's everything to 
worry about to saying that he would fix everything by suspending his campaign 
to saying that he was not suspending his campaign and that he would debate 
after all.

  And Barack Obama? He didn't do much and he said less (O.K., he did say some 
reassuring, optimistic things), and his poll numbers went up. 

  Weeks later, the pattern continues, but in an even more intense form. The 
McCain campaign huffs and puffs and jumps from charge to charge: Obama consorts 
with terrorists; he's a socialist; he's a communist; he is un-American; he's 
not one of us; he's a celebrity; he's going to take your money and give it to 
people who never did a day's work; he's going to sell out Israel; he'll cozy up 
to foreign dictators; he's measuring the drapes. 

  In response, Obama explains his tax policy for the umpteenth time, points out 
that capitalists like Warren Buffet support him, details his relationship with 
Bill Ayers, lists those he consults with, observes that Senator McCain, by his 
own boast, voted with President George W. Bush 90 percent of the time, and 
calls for change. 

  What he (or his campaign) doesn't do is bring up the Keating Five, or make 
veiled references to McCain's treatment of his first wife, or make fun of Sarah 
Palin (she doesn't need any help), or disparage his opponent's experience, or 
hint at the disabilities of age. He just stands there looking languid (George 
Will called him the Fred Astaire of politics), always smiling and never raising 
his voice. 

  Meanwhile, McCain's surrogates get red in the face on TV when they try to 
explain away the latest jaw-dropping thing Sarah Palin has said, or proclaim 
that anything can happen in seven days, or respond to ever more discouraging 
poll numbers by saying (how's this for a weak cliché) that the only poll that 
counts is the poll on election day. (I know things are bad when my wife, a 
staunch Democrat, feels sorry for them.)

  What's going on here? I find an answer in a most unlikely place, John 
Milton's "Paradise Regained," a four-book poem in which a very busy and 
agitated Satan dances around a preternaturally still Jesus until, driven 
half-crazy by the response he's not getting, the arch-rebel (i.e., maverick) 
loses it, crying in exasperation, "What dost thou in this world?"

  Now, I don't mean to suggest that McCain is the devil or that Obama is the 
Messiah (although some of his supporters think of him that way), just that the 
rhetorical strategies the two literary figures employ match up with the 
strategies employed by the two candidates. What Satan wants to do is draw Jesus 
out, provoke him to an unwisely exasperated response, get him to claim too much 
for his own powers. What Jesus does is reply with an equanimity conveyed by the 
adjectives and adverbs that preface his words: "unaltered," "temperately," 
"patiently," "calmly," "unmoved," "sagely," "in brief." 

  In response, Satan gets ever more desperate; he conjures up rain and wind 
storms (in the midst of which Jesus sits "unappalled in calm"); he tempts him 
with the riches of poetry and philosophy (which Jesus is careful neither to 
reject nor deify); and finally, having run out of schemes and scares and 
"swollen with rage," he resorts to physical violence (McCain has not gone so 
far, although some of his supporters clearly want to), picking Jesus up bodily 
and depositing him on the spire of the temple in the hope that he will either 
fall to his death or turn into Superman and undermine the entire point of his 
40-day trial in the wilderness. He doesn't do either. He does nothing, and 
Satan, "smitten with amazement" — even this hasn't worked — "fell."

  Toward the end, the poem describes the mighty contest in a metaphor that 
captures its odd and negative dynamic. Jesus is "a solid rock" continually 
assaulted by "surging waves"; and even though the repeated assaults result only 
in the waves being "all to shivers dashed," they keep on coming until they 
exhaust themselves "in froth or bubbles." The power Jesus generates is the 
power of not moving from the still center of his being and refusing to step 
into an arena of action defined by his opponent. So it is with Obama, who 
barely exerts himself and absorbs attack after attack, each of which, rather 
than wounding him, leaves him stronger. It's rope-a-dope on a grand scale.

  And McCain knows it. Last Wednesday, campaigning in New Hampshire, he spoke 
sneeringly about Obama's campaign being "disciplined and careful." That's 
exactly right, and so far the combination of discipline and care — care not to 
get out too far in front of anything — along with a boatload of money is 
working just fine. Jesus is usually the political model for Republicans, but 
this time his brand of passive, patient leadership is being channeled by a 
Democrat. 


  -- 
  Julie Krueger

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