Perfectly Legal
David Cay Johnston recently came out with "Perfectly Legal," yet another polemic about the politics of greed and the coming fiscal disaster created by a lethal combination of tax policies, the massive wave of Baby Boom retirees, and the demise of Social Security. John Gilbraith, in his New York Times review, dispatches the book easily - the rhetoric is aflame with liberal rage, but largely empty of real substance. More importantly perhaps, Johnston does not apparently deal with common conservative arguments and according to Gilbraith and others, will therefore appeal only to the converted and not the coveted "swing voters."
I have to admit that such rhetoric will not win any arguments with your typical fiscal conservative - who would calmly and rationally dispose of all such nonsense as liberal hysteria. But I do think that using this kind of argumentation with many voters would be effective, since they pretend to like Bush for the tax breaks they receive, but the real truth is that they like him and will vote for him because they have been propagandized. Although I am a big fan myself of pragmatic policy choices, I think many swing voters are more inclined toward emotional responses to candidates and platforms.
So number one if we're going to kick Dubya out, we need to motivate people to personally dislike him and personally like his opposition. People should want to play golf or have a beer with John Kerry - he needs to be a so-called "active positive" with a chummy persona. I think this is a silly way to vote but what can you do? People often have stupid reasons for their behaviors and I guess I would rather obtain a smart outcome, as opposed to a stupid outcome, no matter what the quality of the reasoning that produced the action.
Secondly, people apparently like to be swept up in an emotional tidal wave on issues, otherwise they seem to ignore the issue entirely. So to get people excited about giving up their wee tax breaks, I think David Cay Johnston's rhetoric might be successful. I'm not saying these voters will read this particular book, but I think perhaps the screaming within as channeled (perhaps less screechingly) through the media, candidates, and even the lowly leftist voter may win over even wealthier voters by making them feel guilty about their selfishness and materialism. Hey, it worked for the Catholic Church for a 1000 years, why not Election 2004?
I also think that liberals should leverage fear, though not in the same way the Republicans do. How about the fear of revolution? After all, the poor in France stormed the Bastille because the army was cut from the same cloth. Or how about the fear of a depression-era loss of wealth? If Republicans can motivate middle class voters to vote against their interests because these voters think they will be part of that mythical top 1% one day, then maybe we should appeal to the top 1% with the same, though, reversed idea. We could even use Mrs.Lay's antique store filled with her own furnishings as the backdrop for the appeal - "This could be you - make sure Social Security and Medicare are in your future when equity and inflated salaries are not!"
I have the feeling like the BIG LIE may be Dubya's undoing - the press has finally picked up the scent, so we can only hope they do to him what they did to Clinton. That of course is a faint whisper of a hope, fueled by mostly fantasy. These days, some of us need to cling to any glimmer of civic responsibility and integrity in the media and politics, as a survivor of the Titanic might have once desperately clawed at the icy wreckage of that giant ship.
I have to admit that such rhetoric will not win any arguments with your typical fiscal conservative - who would calmly and rationally dispose of all such nonsense as liberal hysteria. But I do think that using this kind of argumentation with many voters would be effective, since they pretend to like Bush for the tax breaks they receive, but the real truth is that they like him and will vote for him because they have been propagandized. Although I am a big fan myself of pragmatic policy choices, I think many swing voters are more inclined toward emotional responses to candidates and platforms.
So number one if we're going to kick Dubya out, we need to motivate people to personally dislike him and personally like his opposition. People should want to play golf or have a beer with John Kerry - he needs to be a so-called "active positive" with a chummy persona. I think this is a silly way to vote but what can you do? People often have stupid reasons for their behaviors and I guess I would rather obtain a smart outcome, as opposed to a stupid outcome, no matter what the quality of the reasoning that produced the action.
Secondly, people apparently like to be swept up in an emotional tidal wave on issues, otherwise they seem to ignore the issue entirely. So to get people excited about giving up their wee tax breaks, I think David Cay Johnston's rhetoric might be successful. I'm not saying these voters will read this particular book, but I think perhaps the screaming within as channeled (perhaps less screechingly) through the media, candidates, and even the lowly leftist voter may win over even wealthier voters by making them feel guilty about their selfishness and materialism. Hey, it worked for the Catholic Church for a 1000 years, why not Election 2004?
I also think that liberals should leverage fear, though not in the same way the Republicans do. How about the fear of revolution? After all, the poor in France stormed the Bastille because the army was cut from the same cloth. Or how about the fear of a depression-era loss of wealth? If Republicans can motivate middle class voters to vote against their interests because these voters think they will be part of that mythical top 1% one day, then maybe we should appeal to the top 1% with the same, though, reversed idea. We could even use Mrs.Lay's antique store filled with her own furnishings as the backdrop for the appeal - "This could be you - make sure Social Security and Medicare are in your future when equity and inflated salaries are not!"
I have the feeling like the BIG LIE may be Dubya's undoing - the press has finally picked up the scent, so we can only hope they do to him what they did to Clinton. That of course is a faint whisper of a hope, fueled by mostly fantasy. These days, some of us need to cling to any glimmer of civic responsibility and integrity in the media and politics, as a survivor of the Titanic might have once desperately clawed at the icy wreckage of that giant ship.
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