The battle to elect the most powerful person on earth continues, and the hot topic is... the consumption of dogs. Yes, really. Shana Pearlman, author of The Palin Effect: Money, Sex and Class in the New American Politics, explains how and why it came down to this.
Decision 2012: it comes down to one issue and one issue alone. That issue is: Dog On a Crate or Dog on a Plate?
You think I’m kidding? After the “war on women,” the “mommy wars,” and more cries of racism than Newt Gingrich gaffes, last week the political media and the chattering classes on Twitter were consumed with the Doggy Wars. What, you might wonder, are the Doggy Wars?
In 2007, the Boston Globe reported that on a 1983 Romney family trip from Boston to their vacation home in Canada, Mitt decided that there wasn’t enough room for their dog Seamus to ride in the station wagon so he strapped a dog carrier to the roof of his car and built a special windshield to make Seamus more comfortable. However, unfortunately Seamus experienced some, um, gastric distress during the 12 hour car journey, and the Romneys had to pull over so Dad could hose off the car.
Since this broke in 2007, Gov. Romney’s opponents have been having a field day with the story, accusing Romney of cruelty to animals, and insinuating that if he treated his dog this way, how would he treat the American people? “Seamusgate” reached its peak when Obama campaign manager David Axelrod tweeted a picture of the President and his dog Bo inside the President’s limo with the caption, “How loving owners transport their dogs.”
Conservatives have learned a lot since the heady days of letting journalists make stuff up about Sarah Palin and sell it as the gospel truth. In addition, social media, still in its infancy in 2008, can now get a meme to such critical mass that it can’t be ignored by the political press. So, Daily Caller blogger Jim Treacher, to highlight the ridiculousness of Seamusgate, pointed out that in Obama’s book Dreams of My Father, Obama detailed how he actually ate dogs growing up in Indonesia. You can listen to Obama reading that very passage. With a hashtag #ObamaEatsDogs, the joke grew and grew on Twitter, and even Romney’s campaign manager Eric Fehrstrom got into the fray, retweeting David Axelrod’s dog tweet and adding “In hindsight, a chilling photo.” This has almost totally defused Seamusgate, because every time Seamus is brought up by Obama supporters, Romney supporters say, “Well, at least he didn’t eat his dog.” ABC anchor George Stephanopoulos has pronounced that the “doggy wars have jumped the shark.” It simply isn’t useful to the Obama campaign anymore.
Are we really talking about eating dogs in the battle to elect the man who will be the most powerful person in the world, in control of numerous nuclear missiles, in charge of what (still) is the largest economy on earth? Yes, yes we are. And when DoggyGate goes away, there will be CookieGate and Lord knows what else. And this will be all we talk about from now till November.
Obama and Romney have polar opposite problems when it comes to winning over the electorate. Obama scores much higher on personal likeability with the American public, but they give him poor marks on the economy, and as we know from Bill Clinton’s 1992 campaign, “It’s the economy, stupid.” The public doesn’t like Romney very much, but they trust him more as a steward of the economy. If the Obama campaign can make the case that Obama is more likeable than Romney and can win a few points back on the economy, they have a better chance to win. So they will throw everything they have at Romney to make him seem weird, rich, out of touch, and bizarre. And yes, that includes Romney strapping a dog crate to the top of the car. Romney’s campaign isn’t going to stand for this, so we will be arguing about the latest outrageous outrage weekly till November (and we’ll keep score on which campaign won each outrage. This week? A draw).
Most people don’t really understand the economy, and find the discussion of marginal tax rates, bond auctions, and deficits as a percentage of GDP extremely boring. To be fair, most journalists don’t understand these issues well enough to make them interesting. It’s much easier and better for ratings or clickthroughs, to discuss animal cruelty, or outrage over stay-at-home moms, or whatever the latest kerfluffle is. We get the news that we deserve, and as we all reward silly news with lots of attention, that is the kind of news that we get.
One final thought: I remember back in 2008 it was considered the height of gaucherie to point out that then-Senator Obama came from a geographic and religious background that was different to most Americans, and rightly so. The United States is a diverse nation and one of its chief virtues is that literally anyone, so long as they have the Constitutional qualifications, can rise to become its leader. I find it fascinating, and deeply sad, that so many who lived by this laudable sentiment back in 2008 would try to insinuate that Governor Romney shouldn’t be President because he comes from a geographic and religious background different from most Americans. Maybe that’s something Obama partisans should think about next time they pronounce Romney to be “weird.”