What, exactly, was that tire ‘debate’ all about?

August 6, 2008

After nearly a week of Republican excitement, the Great Tire Debate of 2008 has, thankfully, apparently run its course. Six days ago, Barack Obama mentioned to voters that there are things individuals can do to help conserve energy, including bringing their cars in for regular tune ups, and keeping their tires properly inflated. The remarks literally made John McCain and his Republican cohorts “giddy,” and led to a week of incomprehensible mockery.

Last night in Pennsylvania, McCain backed down, and conceded Obama was right. “Obama a couple of days ago said we all should inflate our tires. I don’t disagree with that. The American Automobile Association strongly recommends it,” McCain said.

And now that McCain is endorsing a position he’s spent a week mocking, Obama is taking advantage.

Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama on Wednesday taunted Republican candidate John McCain for agreeing on the importance of keeping tires inflated as an energy-conservation measure after having joined the GOP in mocking the idea.

“It will be interesting to watch this debate between John McCain and John McCain,” Obama said as he campaigned in Indiana with Sen. Evan Bayh, widely considered a top-tier candidate for running mate.

That’s a good line, which I hope we’ll be hearing more of. (If the Obama campaign is looking for background materials, I do have a list….) [Update: here’s a video of Obama’s comments this morning.]

But now that we’ve achieved an apparent Tire Detente, I am curious about one thing: what was it, exactly, that McCain and the GOP hoped to accomplish with this?

Most of the time, Republican attacks aren’t especially difficult to decipher. Even the subtle attacks (the whole “celebrity” meme) have fairly obvious subtexts.

But watching this tire nonsense unfold over the last week, I kept thinking, what’s the punch-line here? Routine auto maintenance? I don’t imagine anyone really thought of this as some kind of “gaffe” — everything Obama said was perfectly sensible — and the basis of the attack was a fairly transparent lie (the notion that inflating tires is the sum total of Obama’s energy plan).

It’s usually pretty easy to identify the intended narrative behind the various Republican attacks, but who was going to find tire gauges clever? Who was the intended audience? What was the message the typical voter was supposed to take away from this? I felt like I was missing my Unhinged Republican Decoder Ring.

David Roberts, though, did a fine job bringing this story together.

It’s an article of faith among greens that “there is no silver bullet — what we need is silver buckshot.” In other words, we’re not going to be able to simply replace the big, highly concentrated, brute-force industrial energy system that fossils built. We’re going to have to produce, distribute, and use energy in a much smarter way, and that means doing thousands of little things (like, in the area of transportation, inflating our tires, carpooling, moving to a four-day work week, telecommuting, offering a crusher credit, pay-as-you-drive car insurance, etc.). These things will buffer our shift to a system with new sources (clean electricity) and new techniques (plug-in hybrids, public transit, and transit-oriented development).

Problem is, the public doesn’t really get that. They are instinctively suspicious of the lots-of-little-things demand-side approach, and instinctively attracted to the big, macho, stick-your-derrick-in-it supply-side approach.

Obama is the first political figure since Carter to understand the energy efficiency and conservation approach and actually try to present it to the American people. Republicans want to nip it in the bud — that’s why they are so aggressively jumping on the tire gauge thing. They want to make it seem like a small and silly response to a very big problem. But all the things we need to do will seem small and silly in isolation; it’s the portfolio approach that will work. If the truth about efficiency gets out — how much cheaper it is than new oil, how many more jobs it creates, how much more it does for the domestic economy — Republicans are well and truly screwed.

Well said.

I personally subscribe to the theory that the Republicans want to push this “Everything Hurts Obama” meme. That no matter what Obama says, he should be mocked for saying it. That no matter what Obama does, he should be mocked for doing it. If Obama’s videoed tying his shoelaces, they’d mock it. If Obama’s seen ordering a cheeseburger, they’d mock it. The deal is, mock him, call him weak, call him foolish, call him anything, and sees what sticks.

Even if in the process the whole GOP looks like idiots and fools themselves.

  • “If the truth about efficiency gets out — how much cheaper it is than new oil, how many more jobs it creates, how much more it does for the domestic economy — Republicans are well and truly screwed.”

    Screwed and skewered, and it couldn’t happen to a more deserving group. Ah, if wishes were horses … we’d be facing a hay crisis and stepping around manure in the streets.

  • My take on the tire flap is that it was a feeble attempt by the McCain campaign to develop the Obama “celebrity” meme. According to this framing, Obama is a lightweight, vacuous celebrity who is popular because he gives pretty speeches but has nothing of substance to say. So, according to McCain, although Obama talks lofty on energy, that the only solution he can think of is to recommend that Americans go to the corner gas station and inflate their tires. It’s just a way of dumbing down Obama to their own scale. This tactic worked until Obama called the GOP out on it last night.

  • I think Mr Roberts is being too nuanced here. The whole idea behind it was to make Obama sound & look silly, having the meme picked up & mocked & ridiculed by everybody from late-night talk show hosts to the complacent (& complicent) media, with the ultimate goal of funneling down to Joe & Judy Average who sit in front of the tee vee at night, dead tired from work and paying not the least attn to the upcoming election, that Obama is this silly figure who thinks keeping our tires inflated will solve everything.

    They’ve been doing this for years: they’ve done everything they can to make Jimmy Carter look bad, and just take it from there: Mr Kerry (he speaks french, he windsurfs), Mr Dukasis (he looks bad in a helmet), Mr Gore (uses big words, makes stuff up) and of course, Mr Clinton.

    Obama doesn’t seem to want to go on the defensive about this & let himself be boxed into a corner as a tire-gauge lovin out-of-touch librul. Imagine that.

  • Sure, McMaverick backed down and acknowledged the obvious about the keeping your tires properly inflated.

    But he couldn’t leave it at that. He added: “I … don’t think that that (inflating tires) is a way to become energy independent.”

    Of course, nobody is suggesting that keeping your tires inflated is the way to become energy independent. But Maverick E. McSame isn’t quite willing to let go of the straw-man lie that his Rovian handlers came up with as part of their plan to mock Obama no matter what he says or does. How fiercely independent of him.

    By the way, Steve, will you be adding this one to the McCain Flip-Flop List? I think you could defend the argument that he was against keeping your tires properly inflated before he was for it.

  • Maybe the mockery itself was the point. It wasn’t a gaffe, like anything they run with, and it’s easy to mock as silly, and it’s something they can usually get away with. Sometimes, when something works, there’s this jump the shark moment where it suddenly becomes transparent. We all see what he’s doing here, but he’s doing what Republicans always do.

  • In addition to this, I think they were trying to make the tire gauge to Barack Obama what the purple band-aid was to John Kerry by de-contextualizing the symbol in question to make it and the person it represents an object of scorn and derision.

  • “That no matter what Obama says, he should be mocked for saying it.”

    Obama should speak out in favor of bathing regularly.

  • This debate should not end until it is plainly obvious that McCain is willing to lie like a rug to win the election. McCain’s website proudly displays this lie:

    “Senator Obama’s solution to high gas prices is telling Americans to make sure their tires are inflated.”

    This debate needs to be framed around McCain’s blatant dishonesty, not the particular merits of any given idea.

    * https://secure.donationreport.com/donation.html?key=ZELOB5NVCUQ8

  • what was it, exactly, that McCain and the GOP hoped to accomplish with this?

    To prove that Obama doesn’t have the judgment & wisdom to be president. With the tire gauges, he stuck with the first idea he had. Impulsive! Whereas McCain deliberated and arrived at a reasoned decision after weighing all the facts (i.e. opposing tire gauges made him look like an ass).

  • The monkeys in the McCain camp are flinging as much poo as possible. If something sticks, they’ll run with it. If not, there’s always more poo available.

    As to why they thought this poo with the tire gauges was a winner – I think they thought they’d hit the lottery with it. Keeping tires properly inflated is such a common everyday thing that it’s hard to believe that it could do a lot of good for the whole country. Plus it’s a presidential candidate who is asking people to “sacrifice” (i.e. “do something other than shop”) for America – an unpopular stance in the Republican feedback loop. Plus it’s a guy they’ve been painting as “elitist” telling the “common folk” that they should be doing some menial labor to do their part for the energy crisis.

    The problem for the McCain camp is multiple in this case. It’s good advice, so you can’t mock the actual advice very easily. It’s not much of a sacrifice. The actual clip doesn’t sound like Obama is lecturing people on what they should be doing – he’s just rattling off ideas for things that everyday folks can do to help. So the elitist thing kind of falls flat. And only a moron would actually think that that’s the sum total of the Obama energy platform, and the GOP has had the moron vote locked up for years.

    So the poo misfired. They thought they’d gotten a good hit, but they didn’t realize that Obama was just winding up to throw it back in their faces. This could very well be a winning strategy – a combination of treating the voters like grown-ups while simultaneously hitting the GOPers with their own poo hasn’t really been attempted by a candidate in my memory. I’d like to see them continue with this tactic.

  • I think they’re trying to find another “I invented the internet” thing to use as a constant punch line. If this one isn’t going to stick, just wait– they’ll find another.

  • zahk at # 4 makes a lot of sense.

    It’s jiu jitsu, (which means redirect). When they push something Obama doesn’t so much defend as slip the punch to mix martial arts metaphors.

    I’m thinking that they call it the “general” election because it’s not so much about particulars as it is about the whole package.

  • “It’s usually pretty easy to identify the intended narrative behind the various Republican attacks, but who was going to find tire gauges clever? Who was the intended audience?”

    Something I wish the Obama camp would have picked up on and used. John McCain and the Republicans ridiculed Barack Obama for touting simple, sensible measures the common folk can take to, in some measure, lower their fuel cost and conserve. What I kept wondering during the entire tire guage episode was, who are they really laughing at? Obama or the regular Americans buying into their scam? Every penny you don’t save on your fuel cost goes right into the big oil companies’ pockets. If John McCain, the Republicans and the big oil companies can dupe the American people into thinking conservation and cost saving measures are a joke…then the joke is really on the suckers who fall for it.

    Also, when McCain was talking about energy independance at the rally I found it ironic that the biker crowd responded enthusiastically by repeated reving their engines. A very conservative friend of mine told me they have the right to use as much gasoline as they want. It’s their right. John McCain is feeding off of a very entitled attitude in much of the American public. That attitude must change before we can ever hope to see real change.

  • Remember when the republicans claimed Al Gore said he invented the internet? They’re just trying to throw shit and see if it sticks or not. That’s all this was about.

  • The way I see it, the reference to Carter is correct….but in a different way. They were trying to use the tire pressure thing as an unneeded sacrifice that the public has to make. Remember the GOP is the daddy party, they know what is right for you and will do everything to make you safe and calm. Any time you try to put the responsibility for things in the hands of people, they lose power. Sure everyone can wear a sweater, turn off the lights 5 min earlier, keep your tires properly inflated, but the GOP cant have that because it will eventually hurt their corporate lobbyist friends and keep their Oil exec friend from reaping record profits.

    To combat this they must reap scorn on everyone who suggests that the public can do something to help themselves. The not to subtle message here is that Obama wants to make you suffer and sacrifice. He wants YOU to have to change your comfort level or way of living to save money. I (McCain) on the other hand doesnt want you to change the way you are living…remember those hardships you are facing are psycological! I will make the spice oil flow! DRILL DRILL DRILL! Invade ME countries and force the mullahs to open the spigots. The daddy party will do all this for you. You dont have to sacrifice a thing. Its a powerful message.

    Why it didnt work this time? The thoughts of wearing an extra sweater and shivering paints a starker picture than checking your tires occasionally when you fill up at the pump. In addition, people are more informed, and know that keeping tires properly inflated helps in gas mileage. There was enough information out there to properly and swiftly debunk the GOP on this issue.

    As for the punch-line? I think the punch-line is effectively the GOP standing around waving tire gauges. There really was no punch-line, I think it was overreach and grasping at straws trying to get some attack on Obama to stick. The bunker/echo-chamber old fogies in the GOP and congress immediately thought Carter. The public, and some bloggers who live in the here and now don’t really care about the past as much (and many today probably don’t remember the Carter “gaffe”)…so it doesnt play.

  • The MSM taking heads/suits belong in the same category of the “idiot republicans” on this and many, many more issues. Once the Repugs began to pounce on Obama on the “tire gate” issue I don’t remember hearing one of them, not once, say,

    ” Well, you know Wolf, he’s right. I called the Tripple A and they said Obama is dead right. I even got a call from Tony Penske and the NASCAR people say the same thing. One has to wonder Wolf, why the GOP hasn’t checked into this before going around like baboons and handing out tire gauges, etc.”

    ” You’re right. Seems to me that it’s our responsibility to correct these things when they are that obtuse and easily fact-checked Jack. And we all know that this was taken out of context from a decent speech he gave part of which where he was trying to answer a question on how an individual could help in this matter. We should be ashamed of our lack of journalistic ethics here Jack”

    Then I woke up…

  • I’ve been busy of late so I haven’t been able to read all your wonderful comments. If this has been said before, I apologize.

    This particular non-issue is specifically bad for McCain because of the audience he is targeting…that’s people who drive cars. With cars being something of a badge of honor and a rite of passage unto itself, American’s may not know much about politics, but they know alot about cars (think NASCAR). Because this happens to be true (the inflated tire thing), they are showing their low-info voters that the GOP is full of crap – and it’s about something many of those low-info voters know much about; their beloved cars.

    Of all the silly stuff they’ve thrown out there, this is one which will bite them. And I like that thought…A LOT!

  • For those who remember the 1996 campaign, here’s how it’s done…

    …Senator Bob Dole today called for the repeal of a 4.3-cent gas tax that a Democratic Congress passed in 1993 as part of President Clinton’s plan to reduce the budget deficit.

    Senator Dole, who has made deficit reduction a cornerstone of his campaign for the Republican Presidential nomination, did not suggest a way of making up the estimated $4.8 billion a repeal would cost.

    Mr. Dole, the Senate majority leader, made the proposal in a letter to the President that was released late today. The Kansas Republican, who has supported three gas tax increases over the last 15 years, said he was calling for the repeal to offset the costs to motorists of gas prices that could reach $1.31 a gallon this summer, the highest since 1991…

    …Mr. Clinton’s campaign aides quickly pounced on Mr. Dole’s announcement, faxing out copies of newspaper articles over the past decade in which Mr. Dole had spoken in favor of gas tax increases totaling about 10 cents. The gas tax is now 18.1 cents. Mr. Dole, as a Senator, supported three gas tax increases in the 1980’s — two for 5 cents and one for one-tenth of a cent.

    “Bob Dole should be the main champion in Washington as far as the gas tax increase is concerned,” said Joseph Lockhart, press secretary to Mr. Clinton’s Presidential campaign. “He’s responsible for tripling the gas tax.”…

    http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9C03EEDB1639F934A15757C0A960958260

  • Always remember that Republicans are not interested in solutions, only problems. The good thing about drilling for oil is that it won’t solve the problem they say it will, so they can continue to come back and point fingers at Democrats.

    If you want further proof of this, consider McCain’s 45 nuclear plants proposal. Once you make an exaggerated claim, any failure to solve the problem can be blamed on not doing all the big ideas.

    This is like the “man on Mars” proposals from Bush/McCain. One could guess that the whole point is to set the stage for either sinking trillions of dollars into a pointless idea or contractor pockets, or to gut basic research including planet/climate research.

  • I need to type quicker…NonyNony said what I was thinking and a clearer and more concise manner 🙂

  • I thought all along that the point was to further the connection to Jimmy Carter, the great whimp who was replaced by Reagan. McCain wants to see himself as Reagan and wants to paint Obama as Carter, who was famously mocked for offering actual policy proposals rather than platitudes. However the platitudes won (morning in America and all that) and the Republicans have been running with them ever since.

    Carter was also famously mocked for being too detail oriented (see SNL skit in which Ackroyd as Carter instructs a postal worker how to repair his specific mail sorting machine and then talks down a kid who is having a bad trip — he advises side 2 of Eat a Peach). He was also mocked for saying turn down the heat and put on a sweater.

    I assumed the tire gauge was simply a metonym for Carter’s sweater. By the transitive theory of political advertising, if Obama = Carter and Carter is the opposite of Reagan, the McCain = Reagan.

  • It was part of their ongoing campaign to trivialize Obama. He’s a silly celebrity with silly little ideas – like solving the world’s problems by putting air in your tires! The only problem is that it didn’t gain any traction other than to make McSame and his surrogates look like raving lunatics. The glee with which they pounced on tire gauges shows how desperate they are to find something – anything that sticks. In this case, they thought they had a winner, but came up grabbing at air.
    They’re going to do everything they can think of to trivialize Obama.

    As they say, we ain’t seen nothing yet.

  • Note when they switched to the tire guage gambit. The day after Obama said that he would be willing to entertain offshore drilling as part of a comprehensive energy program. When he made that move, he sucked the air out of their “we are the pragmatic GOP who will drill, and they are the purist Democrats who won’t” meme, which had been the only thing working for them. It was a desperation move to hang onto the energy issue. The energy issue now belongs to the Democrats — we have the comprehensive plan; they defend the oil companies.

    The lesson is not only do we have to push our issues, but we also have to make the moves to deprive them of their issues.

  • I think the GOP’s intent here was to reach the blue-collar males who would view fiddling with tire pressure as gay and un-macho; the bold, manly, all-American solution is drill, drill, drill (or invade countries and drill, drill, drill).

  • Excuse the second comment in a row. But consider the “celebrity” issue. It’s also a sign of the fact that they don’t have an issue on which to run right now. The more that they bring it up, the more they appear to be against the popular culture. It locks them into their age demographic more and more. “Something is going on here, and you don’t know what it is, do you, Mr. Jones?”

  • @ Steve @ 29

    I disagree. When you watch NASCAR or an any auto racing on TV, they show pit crews adjusting tire pressure down to a 1/4 of 1 psi on specific tires to effect handling. Furthermore, NASCAR commentary is 50% a discussion of managing fuel (since pitting takes a lot of time).

    I wish Obama would have someone research this a bit and incorporate it into his talking points.

    NASCAR fans understand tire pressure and fuel efficiency at an intimate level when it comes to racing. The trick is to get them to make the leap to understanding it on a societal one.

  • I like Buffalonian’s idea.

    Obama should find a friendly NASCAR team and go take a few hot laps, getting some good in car shots as he blasts around the track (let’s see gramps do that!) Then he should have the team talk about how Americans can help conserve fuel.

    On a side note, I hope someone gets a shot of the Straight Talk Express with a low tire (or flat!).

    Heh.

  • Let’s see here. McCains solution to improve our energy is to drill our own oil, make more refineries, expand nuclear energy, and continue Bush’s funding of alternative energies like wind and solar power. Basically, he wants to do it all. Obambi on the other hand wants us to inflate our tires and get tune-ups, and to tax the ‘evil’ oil companies more and force these enterprises to pay the citizenry for their turmoil. I don’t know about you, but it seems like it’s a no-brainer who’s right on this issue. McCain is offering viable solutions which would create jobs, stimulate the economy, and keep our oil money in this country. Obama would rather continue getting our oil from overseas.

    Here’s the thing, America is run on oil. We need oil for autos, to run industry, to transport our goods, to stop squeaky doors, to make plastics, to run our trains and planes, the list goes on and on. So why not use our own oil? So now, all of the sudden, we’re going to change everything because some environmentalists are crying chicken little over global warming. This utopian vision the dems have is nothing more than a pipe dream that they’re trying to force onto the masses. Do you think John Q. Public living in rural America gives a flying fart about mass transit and hybrid cars? No, and no amount of whining is going to change that, it only solidifies their positions that the left is a bunch of kooks trying to tell them how to live.

    Drill here in America, Drill now, and pay less. Just the thought that we might be drilling for more oil has already bought the prices down, imagine what would happen if Comrade Pelosi and Congress would lift the referendum on drilling.

  • Couple other things fed into this, I think. 1) Obama does have a tendency to say the obvious sometimes, which a lot of people (especially male Republicans) interpret as “he’s talking down to me.” Another chance for McCain to paint him as arrogant and “out of touch.” 2) That kind of advice usually comes from a sitting president (“We’re turning our thermostats down to 68 in the White House”) not a candidate promising what he’ll do for people. So another chance to paint him as presumptuous, acting like he’s already won it. Unfortunately for McCain, I think it adds to the perceptions that he’s either desperate or looney.

  • “It will be interesting to watch this debate between John McCain and John McCain,” Obama said as he campaigned in Indiana with Sen. Evan Bayh, widely considered a top-tier candidate for running mate.

    That’s a good line, which I hope we’ll be hearing more of.

    Well, part of it anyway. The part about “Evan Bayh” and “running mate” I’m hoping to hear a lot less about soon. Ugh.

  • But now that we’ve achieved an apparent Tire Detente, I am curious about one thing: what was it, exactly, that McCain and the GOP hoped to accomplish with this?

    Let’s start with a simple assumption: The racism of the GOP cannot be overstated.

    Now let’s ask a simple question: Where can you almost always count on seeing a tire gauge? How about this: In the pocket of a mechanic. That is, a common laborer, someone who does the dirty jobs. (No disrespect intended toward mechanics, btw.)

    Now, maybe I’m reading way too much into this, but isn’t it possible that this spirited — even relentless — attempt to link Obama with tire gauges might be yet another way of saying he doesn’t know his place, and suggesting what that place should be?

    It’s a bit convoluted, sure. But we’re talking about some pretty twisted people.

  • Now, maybe I’m reading way too much into this, but isn’t it possible that this spirited — even relentless — attempt to link Obama with tire gauges might be yet another way of saying he doesn’t know his place, and suggesting what that place should be?

    If that was their thinking, then they’re really even stupider than I thought.

    A good chunk of the votes they need to win are middle class folk who do their own car maintenance – out of necessity or because they think paying someone to do it is a waste or because they enjoy it. If McCain was trying to connect “doing your own auto maintenance” to “not knowing his place” then it’s a huge misfire on his part.

    In fact, that’s a terrible way to go about trying to make the “he doesn’t know his place” narrative stick because it undermines the “he’s an out of touch elitist” narrative. In fact this whole “tire gauge” thing undermines the “elitist” narrative so much that it really makes me think they didn’t think it through very much. So I stand by my assumption that the monkeys were just flinging hot poo around randomly and thought they had found something that would stick.

  • They are desperately looking for the waving flip flop sandal or purple heart band aid for 2008 , trying to replicate the -oh so effective – bullshit that attached itself to Kerry. We really need to nail one of McCains weakneses and meme the shit out of it

  • @ Racer X nay and forsooth no Puleeese do not Obama in a Nascar racing car It will be Dukakas take 2

  • At first, I thought of a McCain/McCain debate being like the “discussions” between Smeagol and Gollum in LOTR—but then I thought to myself, “No. It’s more like a stupid old dog fighting over a bone with its own reflection in a puddle.

    A really stupid, Grandpa Simpson kind of old dog….”

  • #33 — if the additional drilling and the offshort drilling is really for the benefit of our own country, would you then agree to a law that prohibits the export of any crude oil or refined products yielded from that drilling?

    If it is really for us, then keep it here.

  • Problem is, the public doesn’t really get that. They are instinctively suspicious of the lots-of-little-things demand-side approach, and instinctively attracted to the big, macho, stick-your-derrick-in-it supply-side approach.

    The Republicans have spent the last thirty years arguing that supply side economics is the way to go. The drug policy is based on supply. Dealing with demand requires hard work and serious commitment because it means actually telling the American people that they need to make real change. Change is the enemy of conservatism so that means conservatives cannot support it.

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