Morning Jolt - Obama: Press the Mute Button When You See Attack Ads Criticizing Me!

NRO Newsletters . . .

Morning Jolt

. . . with Jim Geraghty

July 20, 2012

In This Issue . . .

1. Breaking Awful News out of Colorado

2. Obama: Press the Mute Button When You See Attack Ads Criticizing Me!

3. Thanking Elizabeth Warren without Reservations

4. The Coming Cornflation

5. Addendum

Happy Friday! Here's your Morning Jolt.

Jim

1. Breaking Awful News out of Colorado

The morning suddenly has an awful and tragic tone, after a horrific event that puts the daily back-and-forth in politics in perspective: "Fourteen people were killed and about 50 were injured early Friday when shots rang out at an Aurora movie theater during a premiere showing of the new Batman movie. A 24-year-old suspect in is custody and an apartment building in north Aurora connected to the suspect was being evacuated and searched for possible explosives, according to Police Chief Dan Oates."

2. Obama: Press the Mute Button When You See Attack Ads Criticizing Me!

Mark Knoller: "President Obama recommends his supporters 'press the mute button' when Republican TV ads targeting him are aired."

RealClearPolitics provides the video: "They'll have a bunch of ads with the scary voices and you know, most of what you hear you can just go mute. Just press the mute button. That's a good thing about the remote. Or you can use the DVR and fast forward. And the reason why you don't have to pay much attention is because these ads are going to say the same thing over and over again. They know, the other side knows they can't sell their economic plan because we tried it and it didn't work."

James Taranto: "Wow. He's in deep, deep trouble if he has to warn his SUPPORTERS not to listen to the other side."

Kat McKinley: "Obama basically said to his supporters today to cover their ears and hum when anti Obama ads come on TV."

You know, compared to some recent presidential statements -- see below -- this one seems pretty tame. I mean, I hate watching ads as is.

By the way, Thursday Matt Yglesias wrote something almost nice about this post, tweeting, "Watch @jimgeraghty show how to criticize things Barack Obama's actually said."

Yglesias is the guy who I . . . inferred the potential of sudden physical pain towards when he declared, upon the news of Andrew Breitbart's death, that the world is a better place without him. So of all the folks on the left who I could get a bit of unexpected praise or recognition from . . . he is not terribly high on my list.

I tweeted back that "It's kind of you, but it's probably not good for you or I for you to tout my blog posts." Too many attaboys from him and I'll lose my street cred among conservatives for being the kind of guy who Yglesias can find reasonable, and if he praises me too much, he'll probably get rounded up for thought-crimes and have to do time in some Center for American Progress reeducation camp. (I'm kidding. As far as I know.)

The ever-earnest Yglesias responded, "That seems like a sad perspective on the value of political dialogue."

I'm all for a lively exchange of ideas, but I think you find "valuable political dialogue" less and less on the Internet. Does anyone feel like the state of the national debate has gotten more substantive, more respectful, more incisive, more relevant, more intriguing, or more edifying as the culture of the Internet has matured? Maybe I'm cynical, but I suspect most liberals' encounters with the opposition on the Internet has convinced them that conservatives are morons (and not just the Ace of Spades variety), and most conservatives' encounters with the opposition on the Internet has convinced them that liberals are morons. I'd like to think that the world is full of nice, smart, well-rounded people all across the political spectrum. I think you probably don't find them spending a lot of time arguing with the opposition on the Internet. (If you do spend a lot of time doing that and you're reading this, obviously you're the exception!)

My guess is that if you encounter a random person of an opposing political perspective on the Internet and begin discussing current events today, within about five minutes the other person will have called your motives into question, suggested that your views are driven by some hateful or racist animosity, contended you act out of selfishness or greed, accused you of lacking compassion for those who are suffering, and generally concluded that you're some sort of moral reprobate who the country would be better off without. They'll probably believe that you have forced your values down their throat, that you've been closed-minded, that you've ignored all of the contrary data and hyped information from dubious sources, and that you refuse to consider the well-being of others. And then the name-calling will start, and one of you will be compared to Hitler. (It will probably be you.)

I do have some friends who are on the left side of the spectrum, and while I'm usually reticent about shop talk on the weekends, I find those discussions much more enjoyable and worthwhile because all of the usual character and motive accusations are off the table. Even if I think my Democrat friends are horribly mistaken or wrongheaded about a particular issue, I know they aren't bad people, they're not stupid, and all of their arguments are made in good faith.

Cam, sitting next to me as I write this Thursday night, points out that the personal, among friends, off-line debates are aimed at a much more targeted audience. Arguments don't reach beyond whoever's around the dinner table or sitting out on the deck. Nobody's posing, or attempting to sway a perceived audience of undecided minds out there. If you're trying to persuade someone to change their mind, it rarely is helpful to attack their character or motivation. But if you're trying to persuade everyone else that this person's arguments and viewpoints are not worth serious discussion, that's exactly the tactic you use.

If you think about it, the vast majority of the political discussions we see are for public consumption -- on Twitter and blogs, in newspaper and magazine columns, pundits on television, candidates on television. A lot of them aren't in response to the other side -- they're aimed at the folks in the middle, who as we've noticed, may or may not be paying attention.

Then again, Wednesday Yglesias asked, "How do people who haven't even tried cocaine get off criticizing it?" so . . . perhaps we shouldn't spend too much time trying to figure out what's going on there.

3. Thanking Elizabeth Warren without Reservations

William Jacobson finds himself in the unexpected position of thanking Elizabeth Warren:

Obama has stepped in it big time, and we have Elizabeth Warren to thank.

Obama gave voice to his political creed in the form of parroting Warren's famous rant about factory owners. . . .

This collectivist view of our economic system is alien to the vast majority of Americans. It is beyond class warfare, which is the envy of others who are more successful. Obama has attacked success, not just the successful.

The anti-success dog will not hunt outside of Massachusetts (and maybe not even there) and a few other states.

And now Elizabeth Warren's collectivist dog is Obama's dog.

Hey, don't count on this tanking Obama's chances. We all know how he deals with dogs.

Meanwhile Doug Powers finds Warren on the warpat-- er, she's sending smoke sign-- er . . . she's just coming to Obama's aid:

The administration and other Dems, along with the AP and NYT (pardon the redundancy), are putting some desperate spin on President Obama's infamous "you didn't build that" speech from a few days ago. Now that Obama supporters are in the process of trying to put so much distance between the president and that speech that they're in danger of rear-ending Voyager 1, along comes Massachusetts Senate candidate, alleged Cherokee Indian and self-proclaimed law school lactation pioneer Elizabeth Warren to back Obama on his original message while reiterating what she's said all along.

Warren is the winner of this week's "didn't get the memo"contest.

And now, in today's Jolt, I do the unexpected . . . I quote Pat Sajak at length:

It's as if President Obama climbed into a tank, put on his helmet, talked about how his foray into Cambodia was seared in his memory, looked at his watch, misspelled "potato" and pardoned Richard Nixon all in the same day. It's fun to imagine the hand-wringing that must be going on within the White House as staffers try to figure out how to undo the damage their boss has done with his anti-entrepenurial riff. Defining moments in politics are strange beasts. Sometimes they're only recognized in hindsight, while sometimes they throw the train off the tracks before a sentence has been completed. Sometimes their effect can be contained and minimized, while sometimes their effect on the political narrative mestastasizes. This one is very bad for the White House.

These defining moments take hold most devastatingly when they confirm what a large portion of the electorate already believes. Taken alone, it seems unfair that a single moment, an unguarded remark or a slip of the tongue can carry such weight. They're often dismissed as "gotcha" moments, but when voters are able to nod and say, "I knew it," these moments stick and do terrible damage. We have witnessed such a moment.

4. The Coming Cornflation

So, as if our economy didn't have enough to worry about:

Rain prices pushed to record highs on Thursday as scattered rains in Midwest did little to douse fears that the worst drought in half a century will end soon or relieve worries around the world about higher food prices.

Government forecasters did not rule out that the drought in the U.S. heartland could last past October, continuing what has been the hottest half-year on record. . . .

Worst hit are likely to be dairy, pork, poultry and beef farmers, who are seeing their feed costs go through the roof and already taking action to reduce their herd sizes. Consumers may not see immediate food inflation, but it is coming.

Over at Breitbart, John Nolte pointed to "ten pieces of bad economic news the media is covering up" -- although he points out that it's not a cover-up so much as pro forma coverage, not the daily drumbeat one might expect. One of his ten was the rise in food prices . . . in the year 2011.

5. Addendum

The always great Jim Treacher: "The left insists Obama's "If you have a successful business, you didn't build that" is out of context. The context is: They want him to win."