Skip to content
Categories:

Gergen identifies code for ‘uppity’

Post date:
Author:

When it comes to identifying loaded campaign rhetoric, David Gergen probably isn’t the first media figure that comes to mind. He’s a Republican, and has been a member in a good standing of the DC political establishment for quite a while.

And yet, when he sees Republican “code”-attacks, Gergen isn’t afraid to call them out, as he did yesterday on ABC.

As Sam Stein reported, Gergen told his roundtable colleagues, “There has been a very intentional effort to paint him as somebody outside the mainstream, other, ‘he’s not one of us.’ I think the McCain campaign has been scrupulous about not directly saying it, but it’s the subtext of this campaign. Everybody knows that. There are certain kinds of signals. As a native of the south, I can tell you, when you see this Charlton Heston ad, ‘The One,’ that’s code for, ‘he’s uppity, he ought to stay in his place.’ Everybody gets that who is from a southern background. We all understand that. When McCain comes out and starts talking about affirmative action, ‘I’m against quotas,’ we get what that’s about.”

I honestly didn’t expect Gergen to be the one to take McCain to task for this, but I’m pleasantly surprised that he did.

It’s also worth considering whether Gergen’s take might ultimately shape the media’s perspective on this. Gergen is one of those guys — similar to the WaPo’s David Broder — who not only helps reflect the DC conventional wisdom, but who actually helps shape the DC conventional wisdom. And if he’s out there telling a national television audience, in effect, “Look, McCain’s playing a racial game here,” one wonders whether other media figures will soon pick up on the same point.

What else did we learn on the Sunday shows?

We learned that Joe Lieberman is probably going to speak at the Republican National Convention. He told Tom Brokaw on “Meet the Press”:

“If Sen. McCain feels that I can help his candidacy…I will do it. But I assure you this Tom, I’m not going to go to that convention — the Republican convention — and spend my time attacking Barack Obama. I’m going to go there really talking about why I support John McCain and why I hope a lot of other independents and Democrats will do that.

“And frankly, I’m going to go to a partisan convention and tell them — if I go — why it’s so important that we start to act like Americans and not as partisan mud-slingers.”

We learned that Mike Murphy isn’t impressed with his old boss’ message.

At the same time Gergen was calling out the Arizona Republican on ABC’s This Week, Mike Murphy, McCain’s campaign manager during the 2000 Republican primary, was describing the Senator’s recent spot comparing Obama to Britney Spears and Paris Hilton as “clumsy, juvenile, and a mistake.”

“I think it was a dumb ad,” said Murphy, during an appearance on Meet The Press. “Not because it asked the question, ‘is Barack Obama ready for the job?’ That’s a very legitimate criticism, and I think Barack Obama made it a little bit worse by his stumbling response later. The problem is that McCain — McCain’s strategy has to hinge, in my view, on one thing: how does a Republican survive in October and November a huge anti-Republican vote? Luckily for the party, McCain is a different kind of Republican. So everything in the campaign ought to build toward that case. And when if you get off into the small juvenile stuff about Britney Spears, I think you distract from that.”

We learned, unfortunately, that John Kerry doesn’t think much of Wesley Clark’s criticism of McCain.

And we learned that Lieberman is not only willing to repeat the word “celebrity” over and over again, but he’s also willing to play the age card.

Comments

  • Capt Kirk

    says:

    What somebody forgot to give David Gergen his talking points? Not to worry I’m sure Stephanopolous has several copies and besides he’s already memorized his lines.

  • SickofBushMcCainLiebermann

    says:

    The fact that McCain reflects poorly on old-school Reps is telling. In that way he is a maverick- a maverick against principle and logic.

    Pffftt….that’s the sound of the wheels on the Trash Talk Express Deflating.

  • smiley

    says:

    Bob Herbert was good on Morning Joe this morning (though I didn’t see the whole thing). Said something to the effect of (referring the the Spears/Hilton ad), “We didn’t see that with Kerry, we didn’t see it with Gore, and we didn’t see it with Clinton. It’s not a coincidence that we’ve only seen those ads against Harold Ford and Barack Obama.” Might be worth seeing if a clip of his appearance is available later today over at MSNBC.

  • TomB

    says:

    I respect David Gergen. I remember when he was a regular on the McNeil Lehrer News Hour. He could speak from a conservative viewpoint without being “religious” about it.

    I’d be interested in getting Kevin Phillips take on McCain as well.

  • Racer X

    says:

    I hope the bobbleheads also noted how many false statements were in those ads, not just the dogwhistle racism. If the press can’t do that then we’re in for a very sad campaign.

  • Edgar M.

    says:

    I’ve always liked Gergen as well … seen him on the various chat shows for some time and I’ve often thought he had interesting things to say, although sometimes a bit too CW-bound for me. Actually I didn’t even realize he was a Republican until very recently. Norm Ornstein, he’s another one. I have no problem with conservatives who can discuss a point without having to launch into the usual smears against Liberals as Nazis, terrorists, perverts, etc…

  • James

    says:

    Regarding “code” attacks, and the associated dogwhistle attacks initiated by others to further a campaign that issued the “innocent” code attack:

    The use of the metaphor “race card” (or “age card,” or any other “card”) is problematic for Obama supporters. Here’s why:

    The metaphor implies that once the “card” is in play, it can be used by any and all according to rules that no one has to take responsibility for, because it’s “only” a metaphor. McCain says now the race card has been played, then anonymous racial smears ensue, because the ignorant cowards think they’re allowed to use the issue freely.

    Metaphors define reality, which I learned reading Lakoff and others in college years ago. Don’t accept the metaphor: for instance, “injecting race into the campaign” is equivalent without the other stuff a “card” implies. Each repetition is another dogwhistle toot.

  • Ohioan

    says:

    Kudos to Gergen, but if you look a little deeper the hidden codes don’t end with “uppity” –
    The claim of “self-Anointed” is the worst, basically saying “Anointed=Christ, Self-Anointed=Anti-Christ or False Prophet”.

    P.S. John Kerry did a good job of swatting down the drilling around, you have to give him that.

    KERRY: “The reason the gas effort is so fraudulent, Tom, is that the oil companies have 68 million acres currently, leases, available to them now, 40 million of them offshore, and they’re not drilling there. Ninety-five percent of the Alaska oil shelf is open for drilling today, they’re not drilling. It’s a fraudulent issue.”

    Thanks, Senator. Obama – follow Kerry’s lead please.

  • zeitgeist

    says:

    Kerry’s a pompous ass who isn’t 1/3rd as bright as he thinks he is. Dean would have been a better candidate and a better President. Kerry isn’t qualified to critique Wes Clark. We see again why Kerry was, is, and always will be a loser.

  • NonyNony

    says:

    We learned, unfortunately, that John Kerry doesn’t think much of Wesley Clark’s criticism of McCain.

    Kerry ran on almost the same message in 2004 that McCain is running on now – McCain is running on “Vote for me! I’m a war-hero and the other guy sucks!” That was pretty much the sum total of Kerry’s television advertising in 2004, so I can see how he’d be a little sensitive that someone might say “you know, just being a war hero might not make you qualified to be President.”

    Doesn’t change the fact that Wes Clark is right.

  • Shalimar

    says:

    But I assure you this Tom, I’m not going to go to that convention — the Republican convention — and spend my time attacking Barack Obama.

    Lieberman may say that, but that doesn’t mean it’s true. After all, McCain keeps insisting that he hasn’t been attacking Obama the last few weeks. Republicans have weird definitions of words like respectful and attacking.

  • Megalomania

    says:

    Obama is simply trying the best way he knows how to offer change.

    And as we watch the political show as News channels alternates between candidates one can see the balance act and neither is as flowing as they started out to be. Especially McCain very slow to think on his feet.

    Here is my really tough and hard analysis of Obama and the Media. Please understand I like Obama compared to the Republican Neo-Con’s but Obama has handed himself over too, too open for the critics and they see blood.

    Straight away Obama may have slickly pulled the race card but it was legit and off the top of the deck. Just like pulling a dollar bill out Obama said what some will consider funny and some will consider an insult. The way Obama said it they way he did it sounded like cheap Black street corner ideology. It is pretty tough for those analyst to make that call; you really would have to be open with a set balls to make that comment on national cable television.

    For me anyway. Obama said “Those guy’s don’t look like me”. Of course not their White and he is Black. At that moment Obama was in high gear and off message “Pure Audacity” of that inner black indignation a major long time social issue America has a problem with. As far as I am concerned, that will be a reason Obama will loose points. If you read Obama’s book “The Audacity of Hope” and reflect on what Obama said here one could conceive how Obama can embrace and make Judgement with the power and dynamic of his minister friend the Reverend Wright. All distasteful or repulsive yet handed to the caring audience in a jocular way, pleasantly contesting, laughingly inspirational. Mild and pleasant not charged with the loud rant of his friend the Reverend Wright, for me it was a deep, deep concern.

    Obama is getting to appear to express himself, choppier, quickly grabbing for his next word moving through issues in a quick spirit, perhaps too briskly not enough to show the value or surround an issue and take it apart show how it reflects to everyone. And resorting to street corner hi-jinx ebonics is clear example of pure Judgement failure, especially added comments from three Black hecklers at this time. It all was a gross error.

    But the McCain group and with Mainstream Media’s help avoided another most curious and obvious smear. But, let’s be honest when Obama gets going he can be inspirational. Seriously Inspirational, or as McCain and Company express as Biblically inspirational! Here, in plain view America we have the Media completely avoiding how McCain has been leaning but throws in the “Messiah Card”. So, instead of Moses getting the tablets the sea is separated showing how Obama divides is own party or the country and Obama’s emblem transcends center screen Cicil B. Demile style. Very clever.

    There is so much more that can discerned from this happening but one thing is growing in a message through out, what is Hillary going to do… lets not forget Obama may have won the primary but as time moves and political mistakes Obama makes could very well sink him as the nominee. Of course, even the medium Mongols are hinting about Hillary and what she may do, some one of character or many of character may ask Obama to bow out, if not true democracy could turn the page here before us and some one with superior credentials could change their mind and inspire the convention to nominate Hillary Clinton as President. If she is nominated and Obama is rejected America will see how much of a uniter he is.

  • Steve

    says:

    This accidental soundbite from todays “Sanctum Sanctorum” meeting of the Mccain tribe’s inner council:

    Okay—who forgot to give Gergen his daily dose of kool-aid barbecue? Double the dosage! Triple it, even!! And tell Mike Murphy he’s hereby banished from all the barbecue events!!!

    With Gergen turning on him, the McLie campaign is truly beginning to implode now. If we’re lucky, Senator McOlder-Than-Dirt* will take Darth Lieberman down with him.

    *This, by the way, is not a slander against the man; he’s actually referred to himself at that on more than one occasion.

  • Dollface

    says:

    I’m absolutely sick and tired of the negative ad campaigns against Obama. These ads are ridiculous, to be sure. However I can’t help but feel that they are subliminally taking hold over many people’s minds.

    When did it become bad for a Presidential candidate to be eloquent, intelligent and inspiring? Isn’t that what most people look for in a President? In my opinion, Obama is proving to be a worthy candidate. McCain, however, is showing his true colors: petty and small-minded.

  • jen

    says:

    Gergen on CNN also said that McCain was not telling the truth in his earlier ads about the non-visit to the wounded. He said that McCain knew that the ad was wrong and aired it anyway. Gergen sounded disappointed in McCain.

    The ads against Obama have so far been mild. The strategy seems to be cumulative. Little cuts regularly.

    And I agree with zeitgeist – John Kerry is a loser. An overinflated loser.

  • JoeW

    says:

    I think Gergen stopped drinking the koolaid some time ago. He seems to realize that his republican party has tossed all of their rational people overboard, and replaced them stark raving lunatics. McCain used to portray himself as counter to that trend, but has since abandoned all pretense of reason. He’s got his crazy on, and it suits him fine.

  • petorado

    says:

    I am surprised no one has better defined what all this “card” playing is. It is not mentioning that you are different than the other candidate, it is playing to deep-seated hatreds, racism and stereotypes.

    Obama can mention that he is different because it doesn’t cast McCain in a negative light because he is white, it just shows that in a year where change is on the minds of all voters, it is yet another symbol that a Barack will provide a different perspective.

    McCain’s resurrection of the infamous Southern Strategy is playing the race card. It’s not meant to cast himself in a better light, only his opponent in a worse one.

    Candidates have always used whatever they could to differentiate themselves from the other candidate. Last election the Republicans played off of Kerry being from the northeast and all the stereotypes that connoted. Bush Jr. played off the image that he was a Southern ne’er do well for his appeal. Barack is not a member of McCain’s political clique and that’s all Obama has been saying.

  • Prup (aka Jim Benton)

    says:

    My wife was watching the replay of MEET THE PRESS while I was finishing the catbox changing, and she was going into hysterics over Lieberman. “I didn’t realize he was such a comedian.” (Yes, she was being sarcastic, but she did find him hilariously absurd.)

    And Kerry reminds us yet again of who was most responsible for Bush’s second term — though I can’t agree that Dean would have been better. He was just too far in front of where the American people would find themselves now.

    As for Gergen, he is a Republican, but the sort of Republican that i grew up knowing, one who was basically centrist, but on the conservative side of the center, who accepted the post-Roosevelt consensus (that existed until Vietnam — the ‘liberal’s war’ threw everything into chaos) but who argued that change should happen, if at all, slowly. (Remember, Gergen worked in the Clinton White House, and, in fact, Clinton was closer to these “Eisenhower/Rockefeller Republicans” than to traditional Democrats.

    You got the Murphy quote, but he made a far more significant statement when he said, roughly, there will be an immense anti-Republican vote coming, and the only way McCain can win is to define himself as a ‘different type of Republican.’ (Of course, Murphy worked for McCain 2000, when he had a chance of fooling people that he was that sort of Republican.)

    The trouble is that — even having months to do so — he still hasn’t solidified his base, and every step he makes towards them turns off the ‘conservative centrists,’ every step he takes to run against Bush turns off the base.

    Which leaves him with no ‘upside,’ to repeat one of my more frequent statements.

    (Murphy made one other point that was worth thinking about. He, rightly, foresaw an immense Democratic pick-up in the Senate and House and wondered if McCain could play on the ‘divided government’ idea. It’s something to consider, and to counter, but I don’t think it is a strong argument.)

  • fillphil

    says:

    A truer comment couldn’t have been made. We Southerners pick up on that sort of thing. You’ll notice the Media avoiding calling it what it really is but it’s just subliminal messages to the base of the Republican Party. the most racist organization of any consequence in this Country. Wake up people, the Klan wants in the White House. Get out front and call it what it is-Racism plain and simple.

  • John

    says:

    Even though things look somewhat depressing now, with the Republicans and their talking points and the MSM parroting them…. Maybe things are slowly changing. It appears Joe Klein, Andrea Mitchell and David Gergen are just the beginning. Maybe McCain and the repubs really are going to go so overboard that the press will start to turn on them.

    I realize how much things would have to change – the press is solidly in McCain’s camp now and doing everything they can to help him. But there seems to be a sliver of light….

    (And Tom Brokaw should never have come out of retirement. He has already in a few short weeks ruined his reputation.)

    Oh, and thanks Sen. Kerry – for being such an idiot. I believe the average progressive blog reader could be a better surrogate on these programs than the politicians that end up there.

  • Tom Cleaver

    says:

    You’ll notice the Media avoiding calling it what it really is but it’s just subliminal messages to the base of the Republican Party.

    Exactly – as I said elsewhere, these are “dogwhistle” ads to attract and keep the base McCain knows doesn’t think he’s a good enough hater to represent them.

  • Ernest Sedgwick

    says:

    you Kerry bashing ass holes have made me lose my temper. No matter what, he was there. He served. How many of you can say that.Veteran said that

  • Tom Cleaver

    says:

    Prup said: The trouble is that — even having months to do so — he still hasn’t solidified his base, and every step he makes towards them turns off the ‘conservative centrists,’ every step he takes to run against Bush turns off the base.

    Exactly. And that is where there are the “dogwhistle” ads that fillphil and I and others are pointing out.

    The truth is, the ads McCain is running are proof of his weakness, that he has to keep shoring himself up with the drooler wing of the Goopers, which means he and they continue to be the objects of derision on the part of the rest of us that they were born to be.

  • toowearyforoutrage

    says:

    SEN. KERRY: Yeah, I, I don’t agree. I don’t agree with Wes Clark’s comment. I think it was entirely inappropriate. I have nothing but enormous respect for John McCain’s service. I had the privilege of standing with John McCain in the, in the cell in Hanoi when we visited there together, when we worked on the issue of Vietnam together. It was an emotional moment. I, I have awe for John McCain’s experience as a prisoner of war, and he, and he does understand duty and service. But…

    He was “electable”.
    What a tool.

    Clark said that McCain’s military experience was not in a leadership role in combat conditions and therefore may not be directly applicable to being a commander in chief.

    He didn’t even say ISN’T. He said MIGHT NOT BE.
    Is Kerry of the opinion that ANY military experience makes you White House worthy?
    That’s the only way you can say you disagree with Clark.
    I personally, don’t think Clark is the cat’s meow, but I call em like I see em and Clark was dead on, bringing much needed perspective to the excessive adulation of McCain’s particular military experience.

  • zeitgeist

    says:

    25. On August 4th, 2008 at 12:38 pm, Ernest Sedgwick said:
    you Kerry bashing ass holes have made me lose my temper. No matter what, he was there. He served. How many of you can say that.Veteran said that

    And Wes Clark was “there” a lot longer than Kerry, serving our country in uniform.

    Yet when Kerry was given a choice to take sides in a dispute between (a) McCain, a bottom-of-his-class freakshow who has done little more when it comes to leading than leading his plane into the back of a carrier and who takes war lightly (bomb bomb Iran anyone?) and who votes against vets health and and extended GI Bill and (b) Clark, who graduated at the top of his class and lead with skill and success and said something absolutely inarguably true in support of a Democratic candidate who takes America’s role in the world seriously and supports the troops, Kerry chose to ignore what Gen. Clark actually said and instead parroted distorted Republican talking points.

    So, Ernest, Mr. I-Get-All-Bent-in-Defense-of-Vets, how is it you back Kerry when he threw a distinguished American veteran under the bus? Don’t you support Gen. Clark?

  • Nick Lento

    says:

    Zeitgeist # 28 said it well. Kerry demonstrated on MTP why he lost in 2004. If Kerry had fought for the presidency tooth and nail he would have win by more points than they could steal.

    I hope Obama learns from Kerry’s errors and fights.

    If Obama thinks he’s going to somehow “squeak by” with a low risk miolquetoast campaign he will lose.

    If it’s even close, Obama will lose.

    Obama has to take on McCain directly and kick his political ass. No mercy; the stakes are too high and Roves people will certainly be out to destroy Obama.

    It will be a blowout for Barack or a “close” loss. No middle ground here.