Don’t make us laugh? …Here’s what I cannot understand. As an opponent, John McCain is a gift. He has changed his positions drastically. He has made countless cringe-worthy statements. ($50 an hour to pick lettuce, anyone?) He has fibbed. He has twice endorsed Bush for president. He has done it all on video. Whereas the GOP must go after Obama with a Sherman tank, the Dems, thanks to McCain’s long video trail of shifting positions, have the option of using quiet ridicule and mockery. And mockery tends to hit at character–to make us casually feel that a politician is being, well, a politician. Obama used it deftly against Hillary Clinton. Humor works. It really, really works. So why dreadful ads about John McCain and email?
Let Peggy Noonan do the reminding:
Advice?…Wit, wit, wit. Humor. “A maid laughing is half taken,” said a randy old Elizabethan poet. A voter laughing is half yours, and just received a line he can repeat next weekend over a beer at the barbecue or online at Starbucks. Here is a fact of American politics: If you make us laugh we spread your line for free.
