A good deal of attention has been devoted to Senator Obama's closing argument; in fact, he's got a new stump speech of that name and I'll take a look at that in a later post. But what's Senator McCain doing as the campaign mercifully moves to a conclusion?
On one level, his strategy is difficult to figure out because the appeals are incoherent. Presidential candidates, of course, tolerate a certain level of nonsense--their "spending cuts," for instance, never come close to their spending plans. But Senator McCain makes of incoherence an art form. He calls Senator Obama a socialist for advocating tax credits which Senator McCain advocates. He extolls Joe the Plumber, a man who is not a plumber. His advisors call his VP candidate a "diva" and a "whack job." He says in his stump speech, "I'm not going to spend 750 billion dollars of your money just bailing out the Wall Street bankers and brokers who got us into this mess" when he voted for the bailout and, in fact, "suspended his campaign" in order to round up support for the bailout--and famously skipped out on David Letterman. In short, there's no logic to what he says, no coherent narrative that he can hang his hat on and say, "This is why you should vote for John McCain." Is the campaign incompetent, as all of the elephantine rats leaving the sinking ship have been leaking to reporters?
No. There's a second level here, one that has little to do with traditional norms for campaign oratory. McCain deploys associational logics and images. He develops what Kenneth Burke calls "qualitative progression" in form, moves in which "we are put into a state of mind which another state of mind can appropriately follow." Associations and modes, I think, result in a status politics or status argument--McCain asks you to affiliate with him in order to confirm your status as important, valuable, middle-class (not to mention white)--see Joseph Gusfield on tempreance advocates, for instance. In short, to vote McCain is to confirm your status as important in this country. That's a particularly important move for certain audiences as the country seems ready to change symbolically--to make an African American the head of state, the part for America's whole, the president.
Thus, in his standard speech (now drawn heavily from his RNC speech), the Arizona Senator is "fighting," he has "the scars" to prove it, and he's "not afraid of this fight." "Fighting" imagery opens and closes the speech, indicating these are the phrases he most values. Literally and figuratively, McCain is a veteran; to vote for him is to affiliate with what Walter Mead terms "Jacksonian" America or Scots-Irish America. One identifies with the hard-scrabble, tough, mean kid, Andrew Jackson, Pat Buchanan, or, in the nice, less Scots-Irish version, Theodore Roosevelt. It is Nixonian--the man in the arena, sweaty, bloody. McCain says: "I have fought for you most of my life, and in places where defeat meant more than returning to the Senate. There are other ways to love this country, but I've never been the kind to back down when the stakes are high." Again, there is little logic here; these qualities may or may not make for a capable presidency. One needs to explain why they do, but McCain never does. Instead, they are thrown out there--you're expected to affiliate, associate, affirm your status, not give logical assent.
That, then, sets the appropriate mood for what is to follow. Fighting also has no logical connection to budget policy or to the capital gains tax cut McCain advocates. In fact, Jackson would be horrified by that idea--much less the Wall Street bailout. And, as I've noted, McCain constantly contradicts his previously held positions, even when those positions are less than a month old. Instead, the qualitative progression involves constant aggression and fighting--he'll fight for this, defend you from that: "I'm an American. And I choose to fight."
It's probably obvious, but the gender implications are also hard to miss. The reasons (if there were any) for picking his VP candidate aside, McCain "argues" to every audience that he is the most masculine candidate for the presidency and that should be the most important criterion. He fights. He will never surrender. He will "not quit" or "back down." His symbol is "Joe the Plumber"--lots of Freudian analysis to be done there. McCain was even in "a jet cockpit, waiting to take off" during the Cuban Missle Crisis (thank God we had a real president trying to get him out of his cockpit). Equally important, Senator Obama is "measuring the drapes" before you've voted and "conceding defeat" in Iraq. He's a girly man--like all Democrats. Vote for the tough guy.
It's also not much of a stretch to notice the racial appeals here; a good deal of the energy exerted by Jacksonian American was aimed at keeping the "other" down. Whatever his intent or personal beliefs, the affiliative beliefs McCain puts forward are clear and the lack of logic reinforces a particular kind of status appeal. Obama does not and cannot represent America or "put country first." McCain does and can.
So, McCain is not without a certain appeal and it scares this liberal commentator. He is behind, but status politics are a potent charge in the American imaginary. His rhetoric is emotionally coherent. That's what matters for his audiences. What matters for the nation is simple: Are those audiences big enough? As it were.
hol(O)heartedlyagreewithismessage...tempestsfugUS
Posted by: weisseharre | November 02, 2008 at 05:00 AM