GOTCHA POLITICS

"We now know there really was a vast right wing conspiracy."
-Larry Davis

Just about everyone dislikes "gotcha" politics, where you find some little dumb thing someone said and trumpet it about with glee. Someone mispronounces a word, miscounts the number of states, says a word like "macaca" which nobody understands but is sort of close to a French slur, and so on.

The problem is, this kind of campaign device works. Its like an attorney blurting out something that the judge rules inadmissible then tells the jury to disregard it. Yeah, like they're going to ignore what he said, the very order to do so seals it in their memory. The blight of such an event when broadcast repeatedly and picked up by comedians and popular culture makers to be repeated and referenced in movies and TV shapes the perception of the voting public, even when it isn't true. How many people still think Sarah Palin said she can see Russia from her house?

So the push goes on to catch people, find them saying something that can be exploited or that is embarrassing, something which can be misunderstood by people or seems offensive. Consider Rand Paul's comments on federalism and individual ownership. I happen to agree with him, but what he said is offensive to many who believe that our only hope is for the federal government to force us to be nice to each other. With the omnipresence of cell phone cameras and the ease of recording events, politicians are now in more trouble than ever. The slightest slip of the tongue or comment shows up on YouTube within minutes and the whole world sees their foolishness.

Consider the Town Hall meetings of last year. Dozens of these were shown on YouTube, demonstrating the contempt politicians held for their constituents, and the boiling rage building up among voters. And Democrats want to take advantage of this for the upcoming elections. They can sense as well as anyone that a monumental defeat is on the horizon for the Democratic Party, and they are looking for ways to turn that around.

Kimberly Schwandt at the Fox News blog Liveshots writes about one such attempt:

In a strong sign that YouTube videos and camera phones will be ever-important in this year’s election, the Democratic National Committee (DNC) is launching a new program called “The Accountability Project” encouraging anyone to upload videos catching and “documenting” Republican candidates at public events.

They are hoping to then point-out any “misinformation, lies and double-speak” they see from “candidates try to make misleading attacks and false claims under the radar,” the DNC said in a release announcing the project.

"Who knows what else is being said when the cameras aren't running?" the Democratic Party asks. Who indeed? And I just shrug at this. I was registered as a Republican briefly during the primary season in Oregon, but I don't feel any particular allegiance to the party. As far as I'm concerned, its good if the stupidity, ignorance, and bad ideas of a politician are well-known to the public as broadly as possible. I want to know if a politician thinks we all should pay higher taxes, for the greater good. I want to know if a politician thinks one race or another is inferior.

And if the politician simply says something stupid or mistaken like "57 states" well, that's just what happens when you talk for a living all day long. As far as I'm concerned, its better for us all to have more information than less and I welcome the effort. But the Democrats need to be careful. What works for them can work against them - those cell phones are pointed at everyone, not just Republicans. And this kind of effort is practically tee ball for the GOP, as RNC Spokesman Doug Haye demonstrated:

“If the DNC now believes in openness and transparency, the best place to start is not on the campaign trail, but with this White House and this Congress."

“We would also ask for footage of a budget being drafted, but we know no such footage exists – just as no budget exists.”

What I don't welcome is how this information often is used. If the press was more evenhanded and the entertainment community more neutral, then there would be less of a problem. If Joe Biden got even half the abuse that Dan Quayle did, with ten times the stupid statements on record, then things would be a bit more reasonable. If the stupid or offensive statements and ideas of the left were given the same contempt as those on the right, then we'd have a well-run system.

They aren't. Granted, the internet is a great leveler, and a good YouTube video is good even if CNN doesn't care to mention it, so the playing field is significantly more even than it used to be. But you can bank on anything this "Accountability Project" finds will show up on the nightly news and fronts of newspapers far more readily, more repeatedly, and more often than anything that hurts Democrats.