Of course, the idea of casting any party as the whiners’ faction is silly. Politics is the act of organizing grievances. Pretty much every political group that has ever existed has involved significant amounts of bellyaching. That’s especially true of the modern right, whose Nixon and Goldwater contingents alike organized themselves around noisy, grouchy complaining about eastern elitists, bureaucrats, long-hairs, and the other bullying bad guys of the Republican imagination. But when insurgents, as the GOP was in the ’60s, harp on opponents’ every word, questioning their patriotism or their integrity or their fairness, it can sound like righteous indignation. When a party in the deep autumn of its political era does so, it comes off as petty bitching. And exhibit A, improbably enough, is John McCain.
With his five years of stoic imprisonment and his history of making nice with old tormentors, John McCain seemed like a perfect addition to the decades-long tradition of playing the foil for grievance-obsessed Democrats. But a funny thing happened to cheery McCain: He started whining himself.
The jury’s still out on whether McCain’s first three negative ads and accompanying attacks will sway voters. But there’s no doubt that they’ve already succeeded in driving a week’s worth of news, as talking heads debate whether the Illinois Senator is an out-of-touch celebrity, a troop-disser, a race card–player, or a fussy hysteric. Critics, including a onetime Republican rival and one of McCain’s own former top campaign aides, say the salvo has made him seem bitter and unpleasant, which is surely true. But Obama’s reactive posturing seems mostly like a slightly more competent update of previous Democratic losers. He expresses dismay or bemoans cynicism but doesn’t use McCain’s own words to make the sort of emasculating, delegitimizing point that seems most appropriate: John McCain is a sniveling whiner.
After all, what is the Republican really arguing for in his newly ferocious incarnation? He’s not actually talking about leadership, or plans to leave Iraq. He’s complaining about Obama’s good fortune. Boo hoo! The press likes Obama. Sob! The general public enjoys novelty and spectacle. Does someone have a hankie? Some people find his race an appealing reason to vote for him. Cry me a river. And forget pointing out the hypocrisy of such a line of criticism from the guy who’s never lacked an invitation to “Meet the Press,” nor been shy to accept one. Pointing out hypocrisy is for losers. Pointing out un-American wussiness, especially in someone whose life story involves plenty of the contrary, is a tactic the GOP’s own strategists would recognize. Ronald Reagan would have known just what to say in Obama’s place: “There you go again.” He’d have found a way, sweetly, to suggest over and over again that McCain ought to grow a pair. The response would have simultaneously belittled McCain and preempted future recurrences of the attacks. More importantly, it would have established an easy--and extremely unflattering--framework for people to interpret further Republican negative spots: as yet another example of the party’s inability to shut its whiny pieholes.