Back when the Beatles were new and hogging the charts they were literally taking the bread out of the mouths of the top songwriters of the day who were used to writing the stuff that the top 40 singers recorded and these writers all got an OK living on the royalties...
The new singer-songwriter era messed up a good thing for the status quo. So The old guard got together with some producers and others interested in coming up with a vehicle to get back in the game. And the marketing and TV thing they came up with became the Monkees and it was a very successful tool that got these guys back on the gravy train. And why not. They were by and large good songwriters and the Monkees had a market and were entertaining and relatively harmless. I watched the shows back then and bought the records...I liked the Beatles and most of the "real" acts more. (shows you how ancient I am...) The downside is that the formula has been improved on and reinvented over and over again and music has suffered ever since as the labels and producers manipulate and control what we are supposed to like.
And what do the Monkees have to do with a blog on dkos? Politics has run the opposite of popular music. A politician used to be like a singer songwriter. That was mainly him (or her) speaking, and writing and THINKING the stuff you heard. At some point pinch-hitters came to more and more help with the big speeches but the main person did the heavy thinking and LEADING themselves mostly.
But eventually the whole balance flipped and It sure looks like Reagan was the big changeroo in the leadership formula and marks when US politics became just like the Monkees. The pretty face in front no longer had to be the guy really in charge. He had to understand things up to a point...But had to merely focus on the speeches and the teleprompter and the schmoozing. But what determined where that point was and who drew the line on what the figurehead had to know or do was a bit hazy. One has to look at the history of right wing Nixon revenge think tanks that were established in the 60's - 70's and later and grew they became part of the extended Brain of the right wing leaders... no longer just advising but more and more steering important parts of the whole enterprise. And the whole extended conservative family got to have a much more friendly climate for siphoning off a much better share of the National gravy train. So they were like a really evil version of the songwriters and heavies of the the music industry. They got to tell everyone much more important things than what song to listen to and buy. They got to tell everyone what to think and who to vote for....This is the Monekees strategy extended to running an entire country.
It did not always go according to plan. Poor Dan Quayle was an overextension or maybe a test on how dim the tool could be and the string-pullers still get away with the manipulation and benefits. The Monkees handlers had not evolved their system to the point where the pretty face the and right wing song could be backed up with the error correction and Media ripeness that would come to fruition later.
Bush Senior was a bit of a throwback...ex CIA and well connected to the whole policy-wing of the Right-wing extended ruling-brain he seems to have been more of an actual CEO of USA inc. than the front men-figureheads like Ronald or Bush Jr.. The Monkees politics was not required as much during his 4 years since he was able to walk and talk and think at the same time. BUT the Monkees-handlers in the background were proved right...give a guy with some sort of autonomy and intellect a little rope and there goes the in-power gravy train for the right.
But with Bush Jr and now with McCain they showed just how well tuned the Monkees paradigm was from their point of view. BUT what they have failed to realize is as their world view is stuck in the same rut that proved successful in the past and as these things do, they have run out of reality and audience, just as the Monkees formula ran out of gas in the 60's format. Newer incarnations of it have resurfaced again and again but as the take the money and run Svengalis have found to their chagrin the formula has a sell by date even for the most successful. The audiences wise up or move on or just lose interest...THANK GOD!
And so it is with the Political version of the Monkees...the McCain enablers in the background keep pushing the same guaranteed success buttons they used so well in the past but it has grown a bit stale. So it seems that the fad has reached the end of the road and failing a quick and unlikely re-invention/adjustment between now and election day their time is over.
For now...but I am afraid they will be back in a somewhat different format when the time is right to try out a new version of the political puppet frontman and it will still boil down to a political form of the Monkees. And someday there will be enough people who will eat it up and vote them in.