Random Acts of Writing: A game of misdirection
By Craig Carter
Thursday, September 11, 2008 11:16 AM PDT
After watching the Republican National Convention, I have to say I’m a bit confused. I thought a Republican has been in the White House for the past eight years, and the Democrats have only been in the majority on Capitol Hill since 2007. Apparently I was wrong.
The message of the convention was, as John McCain so eloquently espoused in one of his ads, Washington is broken, and the Republicans are the only people that can fix it. The insinuation being, of course, it was the Democrats who gave tax cuts to the wealthy and corporations (in wartime) that led to almost $10 trillion in crippling national debt, that led to the decline of the dollar in international markets, that led to the oil markets getting skittish, that led to oil and gas prices at record levels, that led to prices on food and almost everything else rising, that led to a general feeling of icky around the country. Oh yes, and let’s not forget that Iraq thing. That was the Democrats’ fault, too.
Yes sir, the Republicans wanted to let the country know Washington is broken, and they intend to fix it. Which is probably why the president and vice president didn’t come within a thousand miles of the convention hall. Oh sure, there was a hurricane for the president to attend to (not gonna make that mistake again), and the vice president was busy in Georgia bad-mouthing the Russians, but the question remains, when was the last time neither the sitting president nor his vice president attended their party’s nominating convention?
Approval ratings that resemble waist sizes surely couldn’t have played a role in that. And surely a grossly unpopular president making a speech to the party that nominated and elected him, talking about how their next nominee was the only candidate who could fix what he broke wouldn’t have hurt the Republicans.
In other words, the dirty little secret the Republicans really didn’t want anyone to even think about was the undeniable fact if Washington is broken, and I’m the last person in the world who’d say it isn’t, the people who broke it in the first place were in that convention hall in St. Paul, trying to insinuate, not only did they have absolutely nothing to do with the monumental breakage, the other party was to blame.
It was a game of misdirection that would have made the best offensive coordinators in the NFL jealous.
My favorite part of the entire convention, though, was GOP vice presidential nominee Sarah Palin, who showed herself to be a pretty good talk radio host and a danged fine basher of Barack Obama, but when it came to specifics, she was sorely lacking.
When you get right down to it, there were two very major flaws with the Republican National Convention. The first was the monumental dishonesty that came from the party that prides itself on morals and decency, and the second, most important, was their complete lack of specifics.
They claimed they wanted to fix a broken Washington, but their solution, as far as I can tell, is to just keep doing the things that broke it in the first place. Which is sort of like an inept mechanic telling you the only way your car is going to run better is if you drain all the oil out of it, and then when the engine inevitably seizes up, he tries to tell you it was some other mechanic who told you that, and furthermore, he’s going to fix it by draining any oil that was left out of the engine.
I don’t expect politicians to be honest, but I really don’t expect them to be this dishonest. (This was dishonesty that would have caused Bill Clinton to blush.) And frankly, I deeply resent them taking the entire electorate for fools.
Craig Carter, an Ontario resident, writes a bi-weekly column for the Argus Observer. Comments or questions for Mr. Carter can be directed to: Craig Carter, Argus Observer Newsroom; 1160 S.W. Fourth St. Ontario, OR, 97914
