Dispatches from Up-is-Down World

There are things that you just wouldn't know unless you read right-wing blogs. For instance, did you know Barack Obama is a "Gaffe Machine"? That's a common theme on right-wing blogs. For example, in this fairly typical post at Powerline (entitled "Has the Gaffe Machine Gone Too Far?") John Hindraker writes:

Barack Obama without a teleprompter is an accident waiting to happen. Sometimes he reveals his ignorance of history, sometimes he stumbles incoherently, and sometimes he blurts out what he really believes.

Later in the post he questions Obama's intelligence and concludes that Obama is "unqualified to be a middle-manager in a well-run company, let alone President."

Now, if you just read right wing blogs like Powerline, you might come to the conclusion that Obama is some sort of drooling ignoramus who is constantly putting his foot in his mouth and that his opponent is a polished speaker who is well-versed on all policy issues and never makes gaffes.

Luckily we live in the digital age, so voters can see and hear the candidates themselves and don't have to rely on John Hindraker's analysis. But it still amazes me that people like him are willing to sit there and tell you that up-is-down and black-is-white.

I can understand efforts by Republicans to push certain narratives, i.e., that Obama is too inexperienced or too liberal or even too foreign (as despicable as that narrative is). I can see people being persuaded by those attacks. But do they really think they're going to convince people that Obama is a "gaffe-machine" or an ignoramus, especially when he's running against John McCain and running to succeed George Bush?

For starters, Obama is objectively a very intelligent person. He was the president of the Harvard Law Review and he's written several well-received books (by himself, without a ghost-writer). He was also a constitutional law professor at a top law school. Not only that, but he clearly comes across as being thoughtful and intelligent in interviews and speeches, particularly when compared to George Bush, our sitting president. There's just no way that an "Obama as idiot" narrative will ever gain even the slightest bit of traction.

The same is true of the "Obama as gaffe machine" narrative. Even before John McCain committed one of the worst gaffes of all time yesterday, he had made a number of embarassing misstatements on a whole host of topics. And the man can't deliver a speech to save his life. And again, the frame of reference here is George Bush, our sitting president, who has committed so many gaffes over the last eight years that most people long ago stopped even noting them.

It's fine, though. If right-wing bloggers want to waste their time trying to push these hopeless narratives, more power to them. At least it will keep them busy.