Who will have the best narrative in the final days?
We didn’t watch the debate, though we understand that Joe the Plumber featured rather prominently in this one. Some commentators on the right liked senator McCain’s performance; some were disappointed. The polls are mixed again, and the reviews from the punditocracy as well, though they leaned Obama of course. Some thought that voters will decide their choice on who looked cool or angry, and maybe that is so; we don’t know.
But it wouldn’t be surprising, in this strangest of political seasons, when conventional wisdom has been turned on its head time and again, if something else mattered instead. We have a real crisis that has emerged in these last days before the election, and, at least in our view, it overshadows both candidates. The economic mess could transform this contest into a rather high concept affair when the voter goes to pull the lever in a couple of weeks: which candidate has not only the best narrative of a solution to the problem, but also the most compelling villain to blame for the scary world that has suddenly, without warning, come to be. No doubt Senator Obama has some effective ads blaming Bush-McCain for today’s problems. However, the Republicans now have some good villains too, Fannie and Freddie; here’s a particularly effective ad, and here’s another, the best tested negative ad in the campaign, according to Frank Luntz.
A betting man would have to say that the odds favor those running against Bush the Unpopular and all his works. That villain has high name recognition and among the lowest popularity ratings of any President in recent history. But all of a sudden the Democrats have some potential villains with high name recognition and low popularity as well, Fannie and Freddie, and the wicked sorcerers who gave them life. It remains to be seen if the GOP can capitalize on an opportunity that has suddenly fallen into their laps when they needed it most. (Of course it remains to be seen if the tactic would be effective, even if well presented.)
October 16th, 2008 at 5:42 pm
Two guys from a Congress with a 12% approval rating are running. None of the above would win in a landslide. I wouldn’t follow either of these guys across the street.
I’m sure there will be some sort of investigation to blame everything on somebody else. I’d bet my life there will never be a report that says that having a quasi-governmental agency like Fannie May wasn’t such a good idea, and we should never pressure financial institutions to make loans which are unlikely to be repaid. A divided government is the best we can hope for.