Marilyn and I never really watched all that much sports. I mean, we always watched the Super Bowl, but that was as much about the commercials as it was anything else. As a politician, though, I had to do some sports attendance and watching. If nothing else, I needed to seem like ‘one of the guys’ with my donators and fellow politicians, some of whom were very much into sports. Every year I would travel up to Baltimore, to Camden Yards, to throw out the first pitch of the season at the Orioles first home game. In addition, as the Fan in Chief, it was required that I call up the winners in most championships and congratulate them, whether I gave a damn or not. I stopped caring about football when the Colts left Baltimore, but I had to call the winner of the Super Bowl and congratulate them, an act that really bugged the hell out of me in February last year when the Indianapolis Colts won the Super Bowl. I was tempted to tell them where to head in, but Frank convinced me to behave. At least I never had to congratulate anybody for beating the Orioles in the World Series.
Meanwhile the primaries churned on through the spring. As soon as it was definite that Barack Obama was going to be the Democratic nominee, I asked John to see me. Something very nasty was about to hit the nation, and I wanted to stop it.
Everybody was proclaiming that the selection of Barack Obama as a national nominee was proof that racism was dead, that America had entered a glorious period where we had managed to put the sins of the past behind us, and we were now truly a nation without race. You sort of expected this blather from the liberals, but even the conservatives were babbling on about this. Of course they weren’t going to vote for him but after all, Barack Obama was a liberal, not a conservative, so they couldn’t be blamed for that.
What wasn’t so pleasant was the underlying tone out of the conservatives. Barack Hussein Obama shouldn’t be elected, not because he was black, but because he wasn’t American! His father was from Kenya. He had been born in Hawaii. He had lived overseas as a child. His father was Muslim. Where was his birth certificate? He was actually a secret Muslim. He hated Christians and wanted to sell America out to Iran and the terrorists. The conspiracy theorists were working overtime on this.
The Republicans mostly kept their mouths shut during the primaries. The hard core base of the party had enough to do running down Mitt and John that they didn’t need to branch out to the Dems. Besides, they hated both Democratic front runners! To the party base, Hillary Clinton was just as hated as her husband had ever been. They would have been just as foaming mad crazy if she had won the nomination, probably claiming that Bill was secretly running the country from his liberal Democratic bunker.
We had begun seeing the hatred well up almost from the day that Obama cinched the nomination. You first saw it from the radio and television talk show hosts, Rush Limbaugh, Glen Beck, and the like. As soon as that happened, it started spewing up from every conservative website and forum. Some of the crap spewing out was unbelievable, going apeshit over the possibility Muslims and blacks were going to take over the country and rape their daughters.
“What’s up, Carl?” asked John, when he settled himself in my office.
“It’s this birth certificate nonsense coming out of the base of the party, that and the crap over Obama being a secret Muslim. Have you been following this?”
He nodded. “I get it in passing. It’s not coming from the campaign, though. I’m not even sure it’s coming out of any 527 groups. I think it’s simple ranting from the mouth breathers.”
“Do you like it?”
“Not particularly, but I don’t know as we can stop it, either. As I say, it isn’t coming from the political side. It seems to be coming from the entertainment side. Fox loves this stuff. It keeps their ratings high. MSNBC, too, now that I think about it. It gives them something to scold the Republicans about.”
I snorted at that, and rolled my eyes. “That may be, but that doesn’t mean I have to like it. Remember during the last election when you asked me what I was going to do about the Swift Boaters? Shoe’s on the other foot, John.”
McCain gave me a shocked look at that. “Like I said, Carl, this isn’t anything organized. I can’t go in front of the American Legion and say a specific group is wrong. This doesn’t have an address on it. I can’t show up on their doorstep and tell them to behave. The ones spouting this stuff don’t like me to begin with. They don’t like you, either, just to mention it.”
That gave me a certain feeling of disgust. My Vice President was correct in saying that there wasn’t anybody we could point a finger at and say they were the one responsible for this. What I wasn’t hearing was any expression that he wanted to do something about this. That bothered me. “This is why I have told you we have to watch these guys carefully. Just as bad, however, you have to watch the damn consultants you hire. They like this, believe me!”
“Carl, I don’t…”
I didn’t let him finish. “Yeah, they like it. It’s the perfect negative campaign. You don’t have to spend a penny on it. You don’t have to say anything positive about yourself. You don’t have to make any statements as to what you would do or who you are. There is nothing that can come back to bite you about what you’ve done. You just have to let other people tell lies about the other side while staying out of it. It’s the textbook definition of what is wrong in American politics today.”
“You want him to win?! This is not going to be easy! I spent a lot more money fighting Romney and Huckabee than I should have, mostly because the base was fighting me. For once they actually get to do something positive for me!” he replied, getting a little hot about it.
I didn’t need this to get pissy. “This is going to bite you in the ass, John. Listen, the only way you or me or any of us get elected is by winning the middle, the independents and the moderates. The base of the party wouldn’t vote for Jesus if he ran as a Democrat. You could say the same thing about the Democrats if Jesus was a Republican. All of the money you spend, all of the ads you run, all of everything you do is aimed at the people in the middle. If you don’t come across as somebody who can be trusted and is willing to stand up for a principle, you lose the middle.”
“That is easy to say when you aren’t facing this. People love this guy. He is going to have more money than God going into this. I am going to need every vote I can scrape up.”
I sighed and nodded. “I know. Believe me, I know. He’s a new and shiny toy straight out of the box, a magical Negro able to cure the problems of the nation with a single wave of his hand. He’s not some old fuddy duddy who probably can’t remember how to tie his shoes.” John groaned at that one. “All I’m saying is that it isn’t impossible for you to beat this guy without playing these games. Sure, he gives a hell of a speech, but so what? What’s he actually done? You can’t answer that, since he hasn’t done shit!”
“That’s true enough,” John agreed.
“I have to tell you something. Sooner or later somebody is going to ask me what I think about this crap being stated about Obama, and when they do, I am going to tell them, and I won’t be pulling any punches. You know that sooner or later this is going to happen. Do you want to be ahead of the game or behind?”
McCain made a rude gesture, but one without any heat. “I hear you. I will talk it out with some people. This won’t be easy. The base already hates us. Now they are going to want to tar and feather us!”
John might not like it, but this shit hurt us just as much as it hurt the Democrats. Negative campaigning worked, but it was a devil’s bargain. When you did nothing but complain that the other guy was bad, it brought him down, but it also brought you down by a certain amount. When both sides do it, everybody ends up in the basement. When I had faced down the Swift Boaters, it actually helped me more than it helped John Kerry, since it showed I had ‘character’ and ‘integrity’, both qualities more notable for their lack in American politics.