People are incredibly sensitive about their puppets these days. Last December, while DC pundits grappled with how Congress would vote on increasing an upcoming debt ceiling, they faced an equally daunting news bite to chew on: how on Earth do we respond to a brigade of potentially communist hand puppets disseminating their heretical dreams of a classless society to our kapitalist kiddos?
For a brief moment in 2011, in the eyes of a few vocal conservative personalities, Fozzie Bear wasn’t just the friendly product of felt, glue and fuzz; his interior was probably lined with pages of Das Kapital. And when Miss Piggie wasn’t pining for the amphibious affections of Kermit, she was subtly endorsing a proletarian revolution to thousands of defenseless children around the nation. Meanwhile, the debt ceiling deal still loomed in the faces of a defunct Congress as many Americans’ unemployment woes mounted. Abroad, thousands froze in Moscow to protest government corruption in Russia. North Korea had a fresh-faced and relatively unknown Dear Leader. And yes, all of that was fine and well in the States, but still, what about those damned Marxist Muppets?
Fast forward some months and the only thing “surprising” about the month of October thus far is that pundits and politicians alike have chosen the same kinds of inanimate objects to aid in their sashaying around matters of actual importance. Mitt Romney drops the B-word at a debate, and all of a sudden a large, fictitious bird is no longer just that–a literal nonentity–it represents all that’s worth fighting for this election season (or in Romney’s case, against). And worse, what could have been better left as cheap and empty feather-puffing commonplace at any kind of modern political debate quickly became a central (though hopefully temporary) element of the liberal arsenal against the Romney campaign at the tail end of what will most likely be an incredibly close race.
But if it’s true that you save your best weapons for the final moments of a fight, what more is a big yellow bird in an Obama campaign ad than a white flag of surrender? Furthermore–and perhaps even more depressingly–what is it that we do as a culture that leads campaign staffers to think that a stuffed animal appearing in a thirty second advert is the stuff that should make us re-evaluate our opinions on the simultaneously wooden and amorphous being that is Mitt Romney?
Of all the things to assail Romney for–and there are plenty of them–in the final lap leading to November, Romney’s alleged antipathy toward a TV show character–and by extension PBS–doesn’t come close to qualifying, and it’s frankly embarrassing that anyone would ever think that it should. Taking Romney’s flimsy debate bait and running with it, the Obama campaign only discredited themselves, cheapened their argument and insulted the intelligence of their audience in the process. Which, of course, is exactly what the Romney campaign wanted.
As James Rainey at the LA Times put it, Romney was the first to toss out the anti-public subsidy triviality while eschewing specifics on the more substantive issues (you know, the stuff with fewer sing-alongs and feathers but much more bearing on reality), but should Obama bother to acknowledge it as such, it was Mitt Romney who could later on–and did–artificially beam into the eyes of working class Iowan crowds and say, “Come on, Barack, let’s move on. Let’s talk about the economy.”
That, however, is a challenge Obama does need to take from Romney–at least if he wants a second term. Obama’s performance during the first debate was about as riveting as watching your favorite cereal go soggy in a bowl of spoiled milk, and his public support is sinking just as quickly.
At this stage in the game, the only avian imagery the Obama campaign needs to be using is when it describes Romney’s “flight” away from telling the American public just what he will cut so that his tax plan will remain revenue neutral–in spite of a 20% reduction in taxes across the board–without negatively and disproportionately impacting the middle and lower classes. Or how Romney contemptuously crowed that no economist can say his tax plan will add $5 trillion to the deficit simply because, well, Romney said it won’t. Or how we must peck away at our out-of control spending, but only when it’s thrown away to needy yet “greedy” American families; not when it’s invested in expensive weaponry that will aid in the devastation of healthy ones overseas. And that’s just to name a few.
Time–though not that much of it–will tell if Obama will back away from political bird seed issues and instead tear into addressing the many, hefty flaws within Mitt Romney’s candidacy that, when portrayed correctly, could present Americans with a version of Mitt Romney that’s even more difficult to stomach than it is today. So come on, Barack. Let’s talk about the economy.