What I learned from binge rereading David Foster Wallace in a spasm of grief was that John McCain's last presidential campaign is the inverse of this one. Maybe it's psychiatric, a kind of repetition compulsion. But regardless, we can learn from it. Above all, we should learn not to respond to negativity with negativity.
While binging on DFW after his recent suicide, I reread his Rolling Stone article on McCain's last presidential campaign and was stunned by its creepy harmonics with the present. In the wake of JSM's startling win in New Hampshire in 2000, the Bush campaign went aggressively negative, running ads that Mike Murphy called "willfully distorting." Sound familiar? McCain faltered in response, partly due to shock. He and Bush had a pulic handshake deal to keep their campaigns positive. But truth was also a mantra in that McCain campaign. Here's DFW:
There's another thing John McCain always says.... He always pauses for a second for effect then says: "I'm going to tell you something. I may have said some things here today that maybe you don't agree with, and I might have said some things you hopefully do agree with. But I will always. Tell you. The truth." This is McCain's closer, his last big reverb on the six-string, as it were. And the frenzied standing-O it always gets from his audience is something to see. But you have to wonder. Why do these crowds from Detroit to Charleston cheer so wildly at a simple promise not to lie?
Well, it's obvious why. When McCain says it, the people are cheering not for him so much as for how good it feels to believe him. They're cheering for the loosening of a weird sort of knot in the electoral tummy.... Because we've been lied to and lied to, and it hurts to be lied to. It's ultimately just about that complicated: it hurts. We learn that at age four.... that it diminishes you, denies your respect for yourself, for the liar, for the world. Especially if the lies are chronic, systemic, if experience seems to teach that everything you're supposed to believe in's really just a game based on lies.
At this crucial juncture, when McCain had to choose how to respond to the Bush campaign's egregious attacks, DFW recorded the wickedly insightful analysis of techs and cameramen on the Straight Talk Express--veterans of political campaigns without the solipsistic narcissism of name journalists. Their take? Negative attacks left McCain with two options: take the high road and risk looking "wimpy, and so compromise McCain's image as a tough, take-no-shit guy with the courage to face down Washington's kleptocracy," or go equally negative and "risk looking like just another ambitious, win-at-any-cost politician." But the vital tactical point here, the worker bee campaign vets explained, was that when campaigns volley negativity, voters get disgusted and lose interest. Only the hardcore base shows up on election day. Game won, writes DFW, because "low voter turnouts favor incumbents for the same reason that soft money does." People hate being lied to over and over.
Clearly Obama faces these same snakepits: don't respond to negative attacks and risk seeming weak, as many have already complained (without ever seriously considering that angering Obama might also be tactical since black men are not permitted to be angry in this culture, no matter how reasonably); or respond in kind and refuel everyone's soulsickness with politics, leaving the voting booths open for Palinists.
This is where we come in: we have to keep positively energized. We have to keep policing the media; we have to keep talking to friends and family members and neighbors to counter the lies; we have to canvass and phone bank; and we have to support our candidate in his clearly wise and risky choice to remain on the high road. These tactics will cease only when we stop rewarding them. Just as MLK said we can overcome hatred with love, we can overcome lies with truth. Keep it positive.