‘Dr. No’ is almost as old as Barack Obama

June 26, 2008

John McCain clearly wants to make unflattering Barack Obama comparisons, but he seems to be having a little trouble with cultural references.

A couple of weeks ago, McCain said Obama reminds him of William Jennings Bryan. Given that Bryan last ran for president literally 100 years ago, this was something of a dud. Shortly thereafter, McCain went with a Jimmy Carter reference, which is likely to fall flat with about half the voters.

Now, the McCain campaign is going with an ad, riffing off the first James Bond film, “Dr. No,” which was released just one year after Barack Obama was born.

“No To Drilling Offshore Oil,” the web video says, “No To A Gas Tax Holiday. No To Innovation. No To The Electric Car. No To Clean, Safe, Nuclear Energy. Barack Obama Truly Is The Dr. No Of Energy Security.”

I suppose this might qualify as outside-the-box thinking, but the video is pretty ridiculous.

First, of course, is the generational problem. James Bond movies remain popular, but if the campaign is sensitive about McCain’s status as a septuagenarian, picking a 46-year-old movie as a cultural reference might not be the best idea. (As Oliver Willis recently noted, “McCain went from a 19th century comparison to a 20th century comparison. At some point in his campaign I suppose he might join Sen. Obama and the rest of us in the 21st century.”)

Second, and more importantly, is the substance. Obama has said no to various McCain campaign ideas, but only because they’re bad ideas. Obama opposes coastal drilling? Yes, and so did McCain up until a few days ago. Obama opposes a “gas-tax holiday”? Of course he does; even the McCain campaign concedes that it wouldn’t lower the price of gas for consumers. Obama opposes “the electric car”? No, he opposes McCain’s gimmick for a battery bounty. Obama opposes “nuclear energy”? Actually, Obama was the only candidate in the Democratic field to suggest that expansion of nuclear power should be on the table as part of a broader discussion on energy policy.

The irony is, McCain’s title can be just as easily applied to himself.

* McCain said no to financial incentives to produce clean wind energy.

* McCain said no to subsidies for alternative fuels.

* McCain said no to supporting tax incentives for renewable energy and energy efficiency.

Remind me, who’s supposed to be “Dr. No”?

McCain’s new video is not only foolish, its message is actually backwards.

Lame beyond belief, but then that’s John McCain in a nutshell.

  • Hmm, “no to the electric car.” But what’s McCain’s emotional reaction to the horseless carriage?

  • Steve Benen: The irony is, McCain’s title can be just as easily applied to himself.

    John McCain: “No it can’t. I say yes to everyone about everything, which is my way of being a political maverick. Just ask my ‘base’ in the back of the bus.”

  • the mccain campaign had better be careful — i could envision a well-funded counter-ad campaign featuring bush as dr. evil and mccain as mini-me

  • McCain should refer to Trainspotters when talking about the transportation system. And The Angry Inch when talking about the metric system. Zoolander for Wildlife Protection and The Naked Lunch for TV censorship.

  • Bob Novak managed to find a slightly more contemporary quote. It doesn’t come from McCain, but it seems to apply nicely.

    “The Republican Party is a dead rotting carcass with a few decrepit old leaders stumbling around like zombies in a horror version of ‘Weekend With Bernie,’ handcuffed to a corpse.”

    Notice how it avoids the word “confused”.

  • You have to credit Karl Rove with earning the chutzpah of the week award. Now, one of the insiders who is uncharacteristically silent about the treasonous CIA betrayal enlightens us all with the observation that Obama is “arrogant”. Do I get a whiff of subliminal suggestions about “uppity n—–s”? That one ought to play well at the next Klavern meeting.

  • Considering that “Dr. No” is the nickname of Ron Paul, whose supporters McCain needs if he wants to have a prayer of winning, this is even dumber than McCain’s usual output.

    If anything, the ad will cause a trickle of libertarians to move over to the Obama camp. Heckuva job there, John.

  • I WISH Obama would say no to nuclear energy.

    Requires taxpayer subsidies (no private utility run by a CEO in his right mind would invest in nuclear without subsidies). Safety issues with waste storage. Geo-political implications (uranium enrichment easily converted for weaponry). Limited worldwide supply of uranium. Etcetera.

  • I thought it portrayed Barack as a James Bond type–groovy!

    Me too. Tell you what–don’t put Obama in a James Bond context unless you’re willing to take the chance of being compared with Blofeld. (This means McCain will never be able to pick up a cat during this entire campaign. . .)

  • If you remember your Bond movies, Dr. No made his money by developing technology for nuclear plants.

  • Old Finger…

    John McCain, he’s the man, the man with the clumsy touch
    A clutz’s touch
    Such an old fellow beckons you to enter with his twisted grin
    But don’t go in

    Silly ideas he will spout in your ear
    But his (BBQ) sauce can’t disguise what you fear
    For the ole public knows what he’s told’em
    It’s not the truth from Mister

    John McCain, pretty girl, he is doing what he’s told
    That ploy’s just old

    Golden words he will pour in your ear
    But his lies can’t disguise what you fear
    For a golden girl knows when he’s kissed her
    It’s the kiss of death from Mister

    John McCain, pretty girl, he is doing what he’s told
    That ploy’s just old
    His ideas are old
    Just so old
    His ideas are old
    His ideas are so old
    Just so old
    He’s so old!!!!!!

  • Is Obama actually against electric cars and nuclear power? -JRD

    No.

    Although the article finds no specific mention of electric cars by Obama, it does cite his commitment to researching alternative energy technologies:

    And far from saying “no to innovation,” Obama has proposed spending $150 billion over 10 years to develop a variety of new energy technologies, specifically including advanced biofuels, “clean coal” technology, and wind and solar technologies. We find no specific reference to electric-car research, but we also find no evidence that Obama is opposed to developing electric cars.

    And Obama isn’t sold on nuclear energy, but he’s not opposed to it either:

    There is no perfect energy source. Everything has some problems right now. We haven’t found it yet. Now I trust in our ingenuity. … I have not ruled out nuclear as part of that [$150 billion proposed energy research] package, but only so far as it is clean and safe.

  • Am I the only one to notice the Target – Remember Hillary was pummeled for mentioning Bobby Kenndy. McCain has a whole commercial with a target on Obama and no one says a thing. Perhaps I am being sensitive but the target has zero relevance to the message of “No”. Can we have some pus-back please.

  • I thought the battery idea was the strangest thing. $300M for bringing to market a product which would represent the next generation? You need to pay people to do this?

    The truth is that there is no secret on who knows more about batteries: NASA. Why? Because NASA is very sensitive to the two factors affecting battery economics in cars: weight and size.

    You might say that they have a decades old obsession with battery technology.

    So hearing McCain, I thought I’d ‘do the google’ for NASA battery research:

    http://www.spaceref.com/news/viewsr.html?pid=27990

    The above is a grant program giving out $100k-$300k for battery component development. The announcement was on May 30, and proposals are due over the next few weeks. With $300M, McCain could fund at least 1000 such research projects, or even 3000!

  • Beware of energy alternatives which contain the ability to destroy us if something goes wrong.

    Attack and smear ads are all the McCain campaign can muster? Dr.No??? No one could ever accuse McCain of being a Dr. of anything?

    When is either of these candidates going to talk about speculation in the commodities market? How denying it would cut the price of gas/gal in half within a month. All this blowhard talk about “doing” something to help consumers apparently doesn’t extend very far if it means stopping the profiteering of the population by their wealthy buddies.

    It’s shameless…stop the speculation…stop the selfish profiteering…stop the hypocrisy of drilling to aid consumers when the only group it aids are the corporations.

  • I haven’t seen Dr No, or any other James Bond movies — they were forbidden in Poland — but, what I gather from your comments (esp. Max Edison, @16) is that people who’d made the ad may, themselves, to be too young to know what the film is about. All they know is the title.

    Denis, @18

    What is it with McCain? In all the photos of him I’ve ever seen, he looks like a baby bent on “business”. In the ones where he’s serious, he looks like he’s about to take a dump or a fart into his diaper and the ones where he’s smiling, it looks like a smile of relief afterwards (“phew! that’s over with”). You know how newborns “smile” and everyone tells you “it’s not a smile; it’s gas”? That’s what McCain looks like. Not a smile, all gas…

  • Weekend with Bernie.

    Remember that once John McCan’t said that if Alan Greenspan died he dig the guy up and keep him at the Fed just like they did in “Weekend with Bernie”? Did I get that right? Republican’t debate from 2000.

    Seems that the Prince of Darkness has internalized that too.

    As for the “No to the Electric Car”, its more like “No to waiting thirty years to get the Electric Car”. We’ve had the Electric Car, we don’t need to wait to get it back…

    … just execute a couple of GM executives.

  • Yeah, I too thought the ad made Obama look cool. The ad might have words saying otherwise, but the image makes him look like James Bond, not Doctor No. And if either candidate reminds anyone of Dr. No, it’d have to be McCain. You just can’t make Obama look unhip and including his image with that music and background just makes him look cooler.

    Beyond that, this might have worked better back when the Austin Powers thing was big, but that fad has passed and so not only does it miss the original Bond coolness, it missed the retro-Bond thing too. It still makes McCain look old and out of touch.

  • Backwards is core GOP strategy. Nothing new here. At least they give Obama’s image more exposure. That can only help.

  • Umm… this is all wrong… the ORIGINAL “Dr. No” is Ron Paul, he is dubbed this title because he is known for saying NO to ANYTHING & EVERYTHING UNCONSTITUTIONAL. I feel that both McCain is another round of Bush and Obama is an 8th cousin of Cheney and also they’re both members of the Council on Foreign Relations so I don’t know if I want to vote for either. I would say Obama is the ‘lesser of two evils’. I just don’t think it’s fair that they marginalized Ron Paul because he was actually making sense. The elites were afraid that he was making too much sense and they didn’t want the people to wake up from the “American Dream” as George Carlin put it.

    RIP George Carlin another man who made sense

  • Re Obama and nuclear energy:
    At the town hall I attended someone asked about this. Obama’s response was that there is no “silver bullet” as far as solving the energy crisis. That he would support nuclear energy as long as 1) we can safely store the waste (protect the environment and keep away from terrorists) and that 2) the projects are not boondoggles. I’m not a fan of nuclear, but this approach seems reasonable.

  • As for the “No to the Electric Car”, its more like “No to waiting thirty years to get the Electric Car”. We’ve had the Electric Car, we don’t need to wait to get it back…
    ——————————————————————————————————————-

    GM made a great electric car. See the movie “Who killed the Electric Car”. They leased them to customers and would NOT sell them to the public. The leasees loved them and tried to buy them. GM repossed them and shredded them. WHY?

  • BO has his own generational problem. He seems to have missed completely how community colleges have transformed America. In Audacity of Hope BO has only a single mention of cc’s and only in relation to universities. His website doesn’t mention cc’s at all. Doesn’t he know that cc’s enroll more than half of all students in higher education? Doesn’t he know that these students represent a cross section of America in every demographic, including age? BO cannot win this election without the vote of students who have attended a cc. BO should work with Gov. Mark Warner to learn about cc students and how cc’s have changed the face of American society and the economy. He should make speeches at cc’s. He should mention a cc student and their college in every public appearance. But he won’t because lives in the old America where you either went to university or you went to work. In the new America everyone has some connection (student, teacher, family member, business client) to a cc. Everyone except BO.

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