Not Even Good Vapid Crap

Bob McDonnell's response to Obama's State of the Union was just pathetic. I just made myself watch it. I think the Bobby Jindal staging was probably better, because while that was pathetic, at least it admitted as much. This looked like it was pathetic, but didn't know it. The whole thing just looked like a cheap imitation, rather than a response which is, after all, a different thing. I found the applause-line thing particularly hollow as well, and I think I know why: at the State of the Union, you have the full Congress assembled, along with the Court, and that group is never likely to tilt more than 60-40 in either direction. There's intrigue in the applause: will the opposition party stand? How about for the popular, consensus programs? If so, that's significant: it means the President has the opposition at least convinced it would look really really bad to appear virulently opposed. If not, that's also significant: it means the opposition is virulently opposed. This room was full of a presumably hand-picked crowd. Hell, for all I know they were paying the black woman behind him to sit there and smile. They probably weren't, but there was no one in that room who wasn't there on condition of supporting him. In fact that was the only criterion for being there, whereas the guest list for the SotU is automatically derived from governmental status.

Obviously I thought the content of the speech was awful, in the sense of wrong as to every particular. I also thought it was just bad, in the sense of, well, just bad. Vapid crap, as my sister put it, and not even good vapid crap. I note that it was just about the polar opposite of Obama's speech in the way that I highlighted earlier: McDonnell used 24 of those "values buzzwords" in his 12-minute speech after Obama had used 29 in a 75-minute speech. That's about a 417% faster rate. And that's not counting the six "agree"s, the 5 "America"s, 3 "American"s, and whopping 11 "Americans"s. Four "best"s, including one describing the American health-care system that was just bizarre. Three "growth"s. Six "people"s, which I'll bet tended to come after "American"s. Three "prosperity/ies". Okay, the numbers may not be that impressive, but the overall impression I got was that almost every word out of his mouth was one of these malleable-to-the-point-of-meaningless values words. He didn't say anything concrete, except for, in the words of Jon Stewart, "Rape this land!". He had literally no other concrete policy suggestions. "Let's create jobs!" "Let's promote opportunity!" "We shouldn't over-regulate!" (which is, of course, true by definition, since the over- prefix implies to an excessive extent). All meaningless bullshit.

His mannerism seemed to me to be largely a kind of almost childlike chuckling or boyish enthusiasm. At times it felt condescending; he seemed to be treating his policies as being so obvious, and kind of assuming that the Democrats must just not really have thought things through. After all, as he made perfectly clear, he respects the Democrats and believes our hearts are in the right places; it's just that our policies will create a socialized hellscape with no jobs and no electricity. So clearly we just didn't consider that. At other times it just seemed to lack gravitas. Obama, even while being in a very good mood, completely self-assured, enthusiastic about his policies, and happy to engage in some political jousting, was calm and composed and the epitome of gravitas. Obama, when enthused, sounded ringing and powerful. McDonnell sounded kind of silly. He also had a kind of assumed folksiness that may very well be an attempt to copy Sarah Palin, or might be his own; either way, it's silly.

I doubt this will be as disastrous for him as Jindal's was for him, in part because McDonnell has less to lose (i.e., isn't a plausible Presidential contender) and in part because he offered so few specifics. Yes, Jindal seemed kind of pathetic, but the real disaster for him was when he criticized volcano monitoring only to have an Alaskan volcano interrupt with, "Excuse me?"

What it did do, between itself, the speech it followed, and Obama's foray "into the lion's den," as the universal metaphor seems to go, is completely reverse the momentum. The Republicans don't have it anymore. The Democrats do. Obama's basic message of the past week was, I think, "It's on." He knows it's going to be tough, he knows the Republicans will fight like anything but gentlemen, and he's looking forward to the challenge. And he doesn't mean to lose.

One last thing about McDonnell: I sense in him something that, from what I hear, was present in Reagan, too, namely the ability to say utter meaningless nonsense, but say it with utter conviction that not only is it meaningful but that its meaning (a.k.a. every policy you support) must be self-evident. Now, look, he's no Reagan, and I didn't say he was as good at it as Reagan must have been, but it feels like the same kind of thing.