Hodes's folly
In my mail yesterday was an oversize postcard with a picture of a fish on one side. You probably got one, too.
The fish was a bass, and in case I didn’t know that, a headline above the picture read “Followis Bushis Bassius.” The text below explained that although the fish was native to New Hampshire, it had lost its way in the “brackish waters of Washington, D.C.”
To clarify this point, the address side of the card explained that Charlie Bass, New Hampshire’s 2nd District congressman, had supported “President Bush’s failed Iraq and energy policies” and “sold the citizens of New Hampshire down the river.” A note below the address read “Paid for by Paul Hodes for Congress.” Hodes is the Democratic nominee in the Nov. 7 election.
I can imagine the campaign people putting this ad together. They probably chortled to themselves about their cleverness. Maybe they wondered briefly if it was a good idea to make the obvious play on Bass’s name. It probably occurred to them that their creation echoed that briefly popular sensation of a decade ago, the wall-mounted fake bass that, at the push of a button, sang “Take me to the River.”
The Hodes mailing was a mistake, maybe not a colossal mistake but a bad one. Just when many voters are tuning in to the race, they get a card in the mail whose chief message is not about their familiar six-term congressman but about Paul Hodes, his little-known challenger. And what the message says about Hodes is that his humor is sophomoric and his campaign is not above a cheap shot.
Worse, if Hodes has any chance at all, it is in being taken seriously on the key issue of this race. This is that Bass and the dysfunctional Congress have failed to exercise the proper oversight of President Bush’s calamity in Iraq and that Bass is therefore unworthy of re-election.
That is, in fact, the point of the mailing, but it is not the point voters are going to take from it. Instead, they’re going to wonder about a candidate who was silly enough to approve an ad that makes fun of his opponent’s name. And they're going to ask themselves about a guy who makes light of an issue over which dozens of Iraqis are dying daily and thousands of American soldiers have made the ultimate sacrifice.
Hodes’s message isn’t complicated. Posed in a serious, clear, cogent way, it would easily have fit on this giant postcard. You have to wonder why Hodes didn’t see that.
On Bass, Hodes and gravitas
I haven't seen the fish piece, but I have seen two direct mail pieces that are deadly serious on the war in Iraq from the Hodes campaign.
Regarding seriousness, I only wish Bass were joking when he told the "Sandernistas" to go back to taxi-driving in the Bronx the other day. As a transplanted flatlander, in my eight wonderful years in the Granite State I have not once felt unwelcome, until those snide remarks.
And if Bass really wants to be serious, he ought not to insult our intelligence with a TV ad that counts on voters' ignorance of Kurdistan location in Iraq. To me, that kind of lack of seriousness about troops fighting and dying overseas from a sitting Congressman is clueless at best, malicious at worst.
seriousness
I don't think one needs to go to the Hodes campaign to find a lack of seriousness regarding deadly, critical issues. Here's Sen. Rick Santorum in today's Herald Standard:
"Embattled U.S. Sen. Rick Santorum said America has avoided a second terrorist attack for five years because the "Eye of Mordor" has instead been drawn to Iraq.
"Santorum used the analogy from one of his favorite books, J.R.R. Tolkien's 1950s fantasy classic, "Lord of the Rings," to put an increasingly unpopular war in Iraq into terms any school kid could easily understand.
"As the hobbits are going up Mount Doom, the Eye of Mordor is being drawn somewhere else," Santorum said, describing the tool the evil Lord Sauron used in search of the magical ring that would consolidate his power over Middle-earth.
"It's being drawn to Iraq and it's not being drawn to the U.S.," he continued. "You know what? I want to keep it on Iraq. I don't want the Eye to come back here to the United States."
If a sitting senator can get away with comparing a deadly war to a fantasy novel, I think a prospective congressman can be forgiven for poking fun at the name of an opponent who backs that deadly war uncritically.
Unless you'd like to continue the proud Democratic tradition of the circular firing squad!
Be seeing you, Mike. --MH
Hodes's folly
The Hodes campaign's Bass/bass postcard has been the only semi-lighthearted note to break the otherwise uninterrupted nastiness and superficiality to which politics seems to have sunk, and deserves appreciation for that alone. Desperately concerned handwringing may have its place, but Momma Mike and the Monitor in general should lighten up.
Roger Godwin
PS: My eldest son, a professional marine biologist and amateur left-liberal Democrat, continues the metaphor thusly: "Although not larged-brained, this bass species is nevertheless a capable and voracious predator. This bass is attracted to worms and various bottom feeding insect types, but its diet also includes a sizeable amount of pork. Unless fished aggressively, it can be a remarkably long-lived and opportunistic species that quickly adapts its behaviors to degraded habitats. ...."
It was good enough for FDR
On the aquatic theme, how can we forget a similar moment of levity from FDR during the 1940 campaign, regarding Hamilton Fish and other Republican leaders--at a time when the US faced a greater threat than it faces today, one might argue. FDR's singsong repetition of "Martin, Barton, and Fish," to the tune of "Wynkyn, Blynkyn, and Nod", had the crowd in stitches every time. I think in that light Hodes can be forgiven for "catch and release," or whatever his joke of the day is.
Mike, would you have upbraided FDR in the same manner? Nursery rhymes, my goodness, when we face the Nazi threat!
Robo calls
You forgot to mention the automated calls that started with "I have information about Charlie Bass" and then went on to trash Bass.
Why was this not news?
I agree with your assessment of this political "message". In general, I am underwhelmed by political advertisements when they don't outright anger or insult me.
Why is it that candidates insist on continuing to find ways, more or less obvious, to trash eachother while neglecting to actually come out and take clear issue-related stands coupled with goals that are attainable within the power of the position they seek? They all, nearly all, in the end seem weak and a bit foolish, saying hey vote for me 'cause the other one is "bad" for you. How do you think we'd do in a job interview with this attitude?
Not being a Bass fan, I am disappointed in the Hodes campaign.