One thing the Mystery Democrat has always pined for is a kind of Will Rogers candidate who could advance liberal causes through the pinpoint deployment of folksy metaphors. But in the reality-based world, this rhetorical tactic is pretty tricky to pull off. Last week, we saw the McCain campaign's annoyingly successful attempt to make hay (stop me!) out of Obama's use of a porcine aphorism.Still, we try:
John McCain and the Republicans are talking about drilling our way out of high energy prices. But it'll take years to get the drilling done, and there's just not that much oil there. It's like if you owe the bank ten thousand dollars, so you cut up your sofa with a knife and shake out a buck fifty that got stuck in there. Now you owe nine thousand nine hundred and ninety-eight fifty, and you need a new sofa!
See? This is why they keep my kind on an island off the coast of America, far from the heartland. It's a bad allegory, and it's probably a bad issue for Barack, too.
Blogging is hard!
2 comments:
It's a good allegory, but it's questionably apposite. Can you really say how much oil there is in ANWAR, e.g., what difference it will make and when, and how bad it will hurt the ecosystem and aesthetics of the land in question? I think the problem with the ANWAR issue is that no one really knows. Very few people visit the land, but it's one of the few truly wild and natural places in our country. The economic value of drilling is also a mystery. We really oppose it on principle, just as some favor it on principle: people who think (1) government should help entrepreneurs make money and/or (2) liberals have taken over the government and care too much about fish and moose and not enough about their (the peoples') economic problems. The allegory doesn't work because it works based on stark assumptions about the value of the benefit and the cost, which are in reality unproven and value-laden, or at least in the average undecided voter's mind.
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