Will we buy the pig in the poke?

[radfringe]

It was Tuesday evening, June 8, 2004. Former President Reagan had died 3 days before, and news outlets seemed to have round the clock coverage complete with mini-retrospectives. This is not unexpected. Whether you liked former President Reagan or not, the fact that you have an opinion on his life and administration indicates that he had effected you.

Senator John Kerry had announced, out of respect for President Reagan, he was suspending his campaigning during the national mourning period. President Bush nor his campaign has made a similar gesture.

It was Tuesday evening, June 8, 2004, I was channel-surfing and paused on CNN to check out the news crawlers. The program paused for a commercial break. The commercial was an "approved" Bush ad bashing Kerry. The commercial focused on the economy, concluded that Kerry was a pessimist and implied that Bush was the optimist. Pessimism bad - optimism good, get it?

(I find it slightly amusing that the Bush campaign would run a negative commercial which focuses on pessimism. However, this is not surprising, as was recently noted on CNN - the Bush campaign has spent 70-75% of it's advertising budget on NEGATIVE ads. Kerry has spent 70-75% of his advertising budget on POSITIVE ads. Makes you wonder who really is the pessimist and who is the optimist?)

I thought no more of it, until Wednesday morning, June 9, 2004. NPR's Morning Addition had a story regarding Reagan. It wasn't the story itself that caught my attention, but rather the use of the word Optimist being used several times in describing Reagan. He was an optimist, he was an eternal optimist, he was optimistic.... etc. This was quickly coupled with "family values" and "American Family Values" and being optimistic.

The story also mentioned the Reagan Tax Cuts and the immense budget deficits and how all of this contributed to the prosperity we enjoyed under President Clinton. In all fairness, the story also mentioned that the Reagan Tax Cuts went to the wealthy and the rest of us were left behind.

We may be in the beginning stages of a slick marketing campaign, I thought. Bush has already invoked the "stay the course" theme, but that left may people wondering "what course? what road? where are we going?". Would he go as far as to co-opt the memory of Reagan for his own political campaign? The appearance of the new Kerry-Is-A-Pessimist commercial coupled with loud renditions from the Bush Choir of " Oh Reagan, Oh Reagan Our Eternal Optimist" makes it a "slam dunk" Reagan will be used as a campaign prop.

Behind the morphing of Reagan into Bush lies subtle questions. Will we be taken in by the notion that Bush has been endowed with Reagan-power? Will we fall for the slick-packaging that promises bigger, better "whatever" without looking inside the box? Will we buy the pig in the poke?

[radfringe]

1. wrote the above post this morning when I wasn't near the internet

so I'd like to take a bit more time and toss out a couple of other short "rambles"

our resident bush-supporter (RBS)at work (yup, same guy that insists on debating me) aske me what I thought of Reagan

I said didn't like him, didn't vote for him the first time, didn't vote for him the second time, I then asked him if he wanted my litany of why I didn't like him

RBS wisely said no, (he's learning...or so I thought then he opened his mouth again) and said that compared to Kerry - Reagan was superman

:wtf: does that mean I thought, and replied, "interesting, so what does that make bush? the wanna-be-superman-Jimmy-Olsen?"

RBS was not amused, but it got alot of laughs in the lunchroom

-------

on a more serious note, it occured to me that when bush* starts invoking Reagan's ghost in earnest that Kerry will not be running against bush* but rather running against Reagan's ghost.

comments on this?

[radfringe]

2. :kick: and then I will give up the "ghost"

[Deb]

3. I'm not too worried

Last weekend I made the unfortunate mistake of casually breaking Reagan's death to a group of Conservatives.

After the initial shock and awe they began to compare bush with Reagan. Not a pretty sight, their disappointment in bush was staggering. The discussion went to bush's election and one of the women said "He'd better not use MY Ronnie to get votes!". The group agreed and most admitted that they would NOT be voting.

This was bush's base, white, middle aged men. There was a consensus that bush is not a "real" Conservative. Amazingly it took Reagan's death to wake them up to that fact.

I wonder how many times this conversation was repeated in other areas of the country over the weekend.