The Arugula Card

August 3, 2008

As part of the instantly mind-numbing “celebrity” attack, John McCain’s ostensible campaign manager Rick Davis said, “Only celebrities like Barack Obama go to the gym three times a day, demand ‘MET-RX chocolate roasted-peanut protein bars and bottles of a hard-to-find organic brew — Black Forest Berry Honest Tea’ and worry about the price of arugula.”

This prompted Andrew Sullivan to respond:

They really played the arugula card? For all McCain’s personal qualities, we’re learning that the machine behind the GOP simply re-makes the campaign in its own Coulterite image. Instead of actually fighting on the core questions — how do we get out of Iraq with the least damage? how do we get past carbon-based energy? how do we tackle al Qaeda’s new base in Pakistan and within the nuclear-armed Pakistani government? how will we reduce the massive debt bequeathed us by the Bush-Rove GOP? how do we restore the Geneva Conventions? — we are debating people’s cultural insecurities and food choices.

The slow collapse of conservatism as a coherent governing philosophy is not unrelated to this. If you never want to fight campaigns on policy, why bother crafting any?

Three thoughts here. First, McCain doesn’t want to fight a campaign on policy so he isn’t bothering to “craft” policy positions. Indeed, that’s precisely the point of the entire campaign strategy — it’s about winning, not governing. It’s been the hallmark of Atwater/Rove/Schmidt for a generation.

Second, if we “fight” on the “core questions,” McCain loses. It wouldn’t even be close. This is Campaign Strategy 101 — don’t debate the issues if you’re on the wrong side of the issues. So, what’s the campaign message been over the last 10 days? Race, celebrity, arrogance, presumptuousness, patriotism.

It is, in many ways, the nail in the coffin of “conservatism as a coherent governing philosophy.” It’s dead, and it won’t be back for quite a while. But the polls are tight, and as far as McCain is concerned, this is, again, about winning, not governing.

And third, like Kevin, Andrew’s concerns seem kind of familiar: “Cultural insecurities are the foundation of modern American conservatism. Surely we’re not just now noticing this?”

Without these cultural insecurities, Republicans’ power would be laughable, and the conservative movement wouldn’t exist.

t is, in many ways, the nail in the coffin of “conservatism as a coherent governing philosophy.” It’s dead, and it won’t be back for quite a while.

It was never alive. Modern conservatism has always been about benefiting an oligarchical overclass. The rest was just wrapping to fool the ignorant.

  • It’s about harnessing the coercive powers of the State for the private enrichment of your family, friends and retainers, and impoverish and punish your enemies not for their delicts in law, but simply because they’re not your family, friends and retainers.

    It’s about ruling, not governing. Scratch a Republican — funny how this sounds etymologically — find a monarchist.

    Party like it’s 1299!

  • “Cultural insecurity” is a very nice way of saying “bigotry and hatred of a world you’re not smart enough to understand.”

  • I look around my little NH community and I see who is actually doing things to solve problems. It’s my Democratic women friends who are working to start a farmers market so we can provide a place for local farmers to sell, and become more self-sustaining in agriculture. It’s the local land trust, on whose board I serve, a group of “elitist” environmentalists, a number of them gay, who are trying to save the very earth and water that sustain us. Etc., etc. And on the other side….cut taxes, cut taxes, cut taxes. Period. Nothing else.
    Yet all of these folks would be appalled if i pointed out to the community at large who they are and where their political loyalties lie. They would be convinced that they would lose all their community support. So we can’t tell people that Democrats do good work, and Republican make empty promises.
    How do I get past this? I want to scream, “Look at what your local progressives are doing for you!” But I fear they are right, and I will undermine the work they do. And then the Republicans carry the day, and make the work harder and harder, and the very fabric of our lives is being ripped from us and our children. I am so frustrated.

  • Arugula can’t be that exotic. A couple of months ago, I saw many plants for sale at a WalMart in western Wisconsin. I guess when you are going for the hillbilly vote almost anything can be portrayed as elitist.

  • “Without these cultural insecurities, Republicans’ power would be laughable, and the conservative movement wouldn’t exist.”

    Laugh if you want. I, for one, don’t find much funny about the last 8 years. Not gonna be smiling very much during McCain’s first term, either.

    Who do we nominate to run against him in 2012?

  • THE TRUTH: Obama was in Iowa visiting an Iowa farm and talking to an Iowa farmer. The farmer was growing arugula as a new cash crop. That is why Obama asked him about the price of arugula.

    Once you know the context, you can’t help but realize that the Republicans are lying in our faces. Each time you hear arugula, tell the real story.

    Only a Republican dipwad would think it elitist to discuss the price of arugula while standing in a field of it.

  • Maybe the arc of modern, movement conservatism, which got a start in the campaign of Arizona Senator Goldwater, will find its other end with Arizona Senator McCain.

  • Cultural Insecurity = clinging to a rigid and unsustainable worldview that has us on the path to chaos, continuing warfare, growing disparities, environmental and climatic ruin, and ultimate collapse. In short, attempting to keep the wheels on a failed vision of America and the world. And in their eyes, anyone who does not share that failed vision and seeks an alternate vision of the future is an unpatriotic elitist and a danger to the perpetual dominance of their failed ways. They brand their enemies with cultural hot button symbols in a attempt to create a common enemy with those who mindlessly follow their propaganda. And utilize their polished media savvy to dominate the airways with their toxic messages.

  • While I can’t say I’ve ever had any of it, it doesn’t appear that Black Forest Berry Honest Tea is all that tough to find either.

    I entered my area on their website and the large grocery stores in this area all carry it. The site says it’s available in “tens of thousands of stores across the US.”

    http://www.honesttea.com/community/find/

  • Since McCain is not going to win does it really matter what he says about Arugula. However, what Senator Obama says about farm subsidies is very important since his administraiton will be running the Department of Agriculture and putting together the future budget requests. One question that should be ask is how Senator Obama plans to reconcile is energy policy of higher energy prices to match his support for small family farmers. A question that should also be asked is how can a small farmer in Iowa get his product to market with a zero carbon method.

  • superdestroyer, that is a good point.

    anyone interested in the extensive intersection of agricultural policy with the broader economy, energy policy, health policy and immigration policy should be sure and read as an intentional “cluster” of books The Omnivore’s Dilemma by Michael Pollan, Fast Food Nation and Reefer Madness, both by Eric Schlosser, Twinkie Deconstructed by Steve Ettlinger and perhaps Postville by Steven Bloom. yes, all of those issues (and more) really do intersect as an interrelated web and readingthe above cluster of books makes that pretty easy to see (and as a bonus they are all pretty good reads, too!)

    The notion, for example, that there is a tension between ethanol production and high food prices generally is (take your pick) either myth or, if real, caused solely by manipulation. As someone who lives in corn central, for years on end now we have had so much production that the grain sits in huge piles next to overflowing silos and elevators. There is no shortage in any real sense – and to the extent that there is competition for the scarce resource, the starting point should be to quit letting ADM and Cargill control the agricultural economy — save corn by (a) getting HFCS out of nearly every processed food product sold and (b) quit feeding it to food animals in massive feedlot operations. If we did those two things, there would be more than enough corn for cheap ethanol (indeed, we likely would have to reduce corn production or, god forbid, provide it to countries with actual hunger issues rather than obesity issues), and most Americans would be much, much healthier, cutting health care costs.

    ok, i’ll hop off the soapbox there, but i would love nothing more than for a newly-elected President Obama to have a little top-advisor book club and discuss the issues raised by these books and how they can reform ag policy to favor farmers, consumers, health and the breader economy (including the energy aspects) instead of favoring ADM, Cargill, Exxon, and huge industrial farmers.

  • Now they are getting really silly. McCain is a rich politician who wears 500 dollar shoes, has 7 homes across the country, but Obama is the elitist. This is bullshit.

  • It’s been the hallmark of Atwater/Rove/Schmidt for a generation. – Mr. CB

    There must be a slag heap somewhere big enough to carve those rat’s heads into. Tourists will know it as Mt. Sleazemore. If a pile of appropriate size can’t be located then one can be created by combining mine tailings, (preferably radioactive to give the deserved sense of lasting contamination), with bullshit. Workers will die while working on it but that’s OK.

    Location? How about Pickens County, S.C.? That’s where Atwater is resting in peace while his legacy lives on. Visitors can get a twofer by going to both sites close to each other.

  • Obama needs to turn this around to talk about healthy food, exercise being important – maybe if the Washington fat cats ate better and exercised they would be thin like he is (though I’ll bet thinness is wired into Obama’s genes). And the fact that those making the accusations are so out of touch with regular folks that they have no idea that these products are available in thousands of stores nationwide. In fact, John McCain has to read from a cue card how much a gallon of milk costs! Really, just paint them as out of touch (which they are). In addition they’re living high off the hog, many cases, on the taxpayers’ dime.

    Trash ’em! OUT OF TOUCH!!! Elitist pigs.

    Hannah, getting really testy

  • Middle class Republican voters always remember how your party looks after you –

    Thank you for your support, SUCKERS!

  • Mark @7: Excellent point. I’ve lost count of the number of times I’ve told conservatives the context of the arugula comment. Their answer: “Oh.” Dumb look. Shrug. “But what about. . . ” another out-of-context statement.

    Zeitgeist @11: LOL. I’m still trying to figure out how I’m going to survive the annual family trip to visit my Republican relatives this month, but I don’t think that I’ll try that response on them. 😉

  • MoveOn or Air America needs to start doing infomercials correcting the Republicans. Like the commercials which convinced so many Americans national health care was a bad idea. A group of Nascar dads around the tv with a football game going on talking about increasing the pressure in tires and about how their doctors told them to exercise more to reduce high blood pressure. It could be very funny and make a good point..

  • Oh, and don’t forget Obama is so “elite” that he drinks iced-tea — a beverage even us regular folks like and grew up drinking. We do so to this day. Hardly elite. Practically everyone I know drinks iced-tea.

    As for Obama’s lettuce prefererence, a person in his or her late 40s should be health conscious and exercising…how many hours a day does Bush devote to exercising? A lot.

    I can’t believe the political discourse has sunk this low. That’s why I no longer watch the TV pundits in the morning (including “Morning Joe”) and later in the day other than “Keith Olbermann”. I’ve had enough. Instead, I tune in to “The Bill Press Show'”, “Rachel Maddow”, “Randi Rhodes”, and other rational voices on my local, progressive-talk radio station and associated Internet streams.

    More often than not, silence is golden.

    Again, I can’t believe McCain and his stupid and trivial attacks.

    Should Obama bring up the Keating Five scandal (especially in light of today’s housing crisis and foreclosures), McCain’s voting record, his absence in the Senate since April 9 and other issues? Or how about McCain and Cindy owning multiple homes while millions of Americans struggle to hold onto their sole homes? Talk about elite.

    I’m wondering if the Obama campaign is saving the best for last — that is, just a week or so before the November election…before McCain has time to effectively respond to his sorbid political career/congressional record and personal life.

  • “Have you seen the little piggies living piggy lives” The song was valid then it still valid now

    Have you seen the little piggies
    Crawling in the dirt
    And for all the little piggies
    Life is getting worse
    Always having dirt to play around in.

    They love to wallow in the dirt.

  • Well, let me take a swipe or two at Rick “DogSh!+” Davis

    “Only celebrities like Barack Obama…

    To begin with, this is certainly a difference between the two candidates, as Presumptive Nominee McLoser is no celebrity. No, I take that back—he could qualify as a stand-in for the back-up to the substitute temporary broom-pusher at Barack Obama’s high school reunion—but he’d have to pass a lie detector test and a random drug screening series first.

    …go to the gym three times a day,…

    To be honest, I don’t think that even a massive overdose of Pat Robertson’s super-shake mix could get Senator Iron-Lung through a 5-minute appointment on a self-propelled pair of crutches if he was lying on his back on a hospital gurney and pushed every inch of the way from start to finish by the entire complement of an Iron Man Triathlon contest.

    …demand ‘MET-RX chocolate roasted-peanut protein bars…

    Candidate McGastrointestinal-Dysfunction cannot digest chocolate, or peanuts, or protein bars—so he’ll have to settle for a super-sized order of Metamusil.

    …and bottles of a hard-to-find organic brew — Black Forest Berry Honest Tea’…

    The only “organic brew” that Citizen McMalted-Barley associates himself with is the foreign-owned Clydesdale Piss that his trophy wife peddles as “beer.”

    …and worry about the price of arugula.”

    McSlacker the Job-Abandoner should spend less time complaining about how much President Obama has to pay for arugula, and spend more time on how much he’ll have to pay for protection to live in a veterans’ homeless shelter when he loses the election and his trophy-wife kicks his impotent little groin back into into the gutter where it belongs.

  • zeitgeist,

    If you got ride of feedlots, the American beef industry would collapse. Have you every tasted free range beef (what used to be called grass feed beef). It is very gamey and not to American taste. If you get ride of beef thousands would lose their jobs in the meat packing industry, in transporting beef, and in the restaurant business. Once again, something to think about.

    The Economist had a article about how the ethanol program cause the price of corn to rise so that it was not economical to make ethanol. Ethanol has just made the price go higher. I think you are over estimating the importance of grain storage. Corn is only harvest once a year but the need for animal feed or corn syrup (or ethanol feed stock) goes all year. If the U.S. was interested in ethanol, it would cut the subsidies to sugar cane and start trying to make ethanol out of sugar. It would be best for a state like Hawaii. But once again, worrying about arugula statements appears to be more fun for 95% of the blogging world than worrying about the price of soy beans or what ranchers in wyoming would do without the beef industry.

  • i actually do like grass-fed beef (and Slate did a great tasting panel where Niman Ranch multi-grain – i.e. not just corn – fed beef that were finished on grass won easily). i agree that part of a transition away from a corn-based ag economy has to involve changes in sugar tariffs and subsidies.

    at some point, we are going to have to harm some of the people we aim to protect in the short term to ever make progress in the long term. much like the Wal-Mart argument the other day (every way to protest hurts the low income workers more than management, yet hurting Wal Mart is a valid goal), the meat packing and CAFO production methods are harmful to employees, cruel to the animals, bad for the health of consumers, bad for the environment, and in the long run bad for the economics of most farmers. shifting away from that model will certainly cause economic harms to some farmers and low-income workers, but the current arrangement is only sustainable if the harms it causes get progressively worse. it really is important to change the nature of agriculture in America.

    you didn’t mention whether you had read Omnivores Dilemma and/or Fast Food Nation, but if you have not I really commend them to you on these issues (and Reefer Madness for a similar discussion of how the economics of the fruit and vegatable industry in California is built on the backs of very poorly treated immigrants). small scales, slower pace, safer working conditions, better land management, additional biodiversity, subsidies captured by farmers, not agri-industrial giants, subsidies in concert with healthful eating – all are critical changes that really will have to be undertaken even if it causes short term pain.

  • Andrew Sullivan is no progressive, but sometimes he’s spot on.

    Nevertheless, one thing I never understood: what was Obama thinking when he spoke about the price of arugula at Whole Foods instead of, say, the price of spinach at Safeway?

    Not that cultural standard bearers are written in stone. I recently knew a nice guy who didn’t think anything was true unless it was reported in the Murdoch media. One time, because of a time crunch, he had to bring his supper to some sort of meeting at church. What was his supper? Sushi.

  • Arizona is the second largest producer of leafy green produce in the US behind California. Yuma and Maricopa Counties are large producers and marketers of arugula and other greens. Obama should give an agriculuture speech in Arizona and ask why John McCain is confused about the economy of his own state and not get put on the defensive by a made up issue. Also, it would do Obama well to repeat ‘Country First’ McCain’s comments about Americans not being able to pick lettuce for $50/hour.

    http://westernfarmpress.com/vegetables/103107-greens-agreement/

    http://blog.aflcio.org/2006/04/05/50-an-hour-to-pick-lettuce-you-bet/

  • McNasty would have mocked Reagans jogging on the beach, or even Clinton’s saxophone playing. This celebrity hypocrisy has to stop. Isn’t McCain a celebrity as well to a degree? What about his campaign riders?

    It’s all to distract the sheeple away from the real issues. Just like Iraq was for Bush- a “got nothing” President says hey I’ll start a war and piss away hundreds of billions of taxpayer capital….

  • What’s so bad about working out three times a day? Celebrities who do that and utilize the products he mentioned should be praised for providing a quality influence on those who look up to them as role models.

  • It’s dead, and it won’t be back for quite a while.

    Oh ye of too much faith.
    Low taxes is a campaign a kindergartner can understand, thus its simplistic appeal.
    The less folks have to think about something they aren’t being paid for, like voting, the more they like it.

    Personality, and low taxes / more take home pay… Done!
    Hardly a neuron need be fired.

    Conservatism isn’t even dead. It’s just getting its wind back.

    CB, you’re the kind of guy that turns his back on the serial murderer in a horror movie and kisses his girlfriend right before he buys an axe between his shoulderblades.

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