The Unbearable Shallowness of This Presidential Campaign

RUSH: I was thinking last night, the shallowness and the lack of substance in this presidential campaign. It really hit me last night when I got home and I was thinking about the show yesterday — especially the first hour and a half of it — totally devoted to this insane, ludicrous proposition that properly inflated tires is a central, central, central aspect of an energy policy. I think, ‘Is this the best we can do?’ Is this the best we can do? There’s another story from the Associated Press today that sort of dovetails with the whole notion here that we’ve just got a plastic banana, good-time rock ‘n’ roller presidential campaign going on. Now listen to this:

‘John McCain’s favorite television commander in chief plays the first black US president. Just the role Democrat Barack Obama is looking to fill. ‘You know, I hope that I and all Americans can be colorblind about any president,’ [McCain] said when asked about the similarities between Obama and President Palmer of Fox’s ’24.” So we have a presidential candidate (that means, for those of you in Rio Linda, we have a guy running for the office of president of the United States) comparing Obama to a fictional character on a television show, ’24,’ saying I hope we can all be colorblind. McCain ‘said he likes Palmer,’ who is a fictitious character played by the actor Dennis Haysbert — who, by the way, is a nut. Haysbert thinks that Bush knew that the planes were flying into the towers. He might think Bush did it on purpose himself.

Haysbert is a nice guy. I ran into him in a couple of golf tournaments. He’s way out there. He’s laughably way out there, but he’s an actor, and he’s never been president, and he’s never run for president. McCain is saying that he likes ‘President Palmer,’ and there’s never been a President Palmer. He ‘likes Palmer because he ‘makes tough decisions, he takes charge, he’s ready to sacrifice his interest on behalf of the interest of the country.” We are talking about an actor! We’re talking about an actor that’s never been president. We’re talking about script writers who put words in an actor’s mouth. Ahem. I’m practicing restraint here again, ladies and gentlemen. You know, McCain did a set visit to the show ’24.’ He did a little cameo role in it a couple years ago. I wonder if he met Haysbert.

I wonder if he went up to ‘President Palmer’ and said, ‘You know, I really admire the way you handled that crisis in episode six.’ (laughing) ‘What was it like? Anything you can share with me about how tough it was?’

‘Yeah, well, Senator, we didn’t get it right ’til the tenth take, but we finally got it down.’

‘I know. I saw. I saw the final result. It was masterful, masterful. Very sad about what happened to your wife in that series, your wife turned on you. How did you deal with that?’

Moving on… ‘In separate interviews with Entertainment Weekly, McCain, and Obama, discussed their pop culture picks, films that choked them up as kids and who handles the remote control at their homes. The interviews appear in the issue that hits newsstands Friday. Obama says he has ‘some clout’ with the remote when he’s at home with his wife, Michelle, and their two young daughters. ‘I’m not home a lot, so Michelle is usually willing to give it up,’ [Obama] said. ‘The only time I grab for the remote is when a game is on.” I’m not home a lot? A guy with a wife… (interruption) His wife is one of the… (interruption) Well, a wife is willing to give it up, can be any…? (interruption) I think he’s talking about the remote here, Snerdley. He’s not talking… Getting your mind out of the gutter for five seconds would be helpful.

We’re talking about the Democrat presidential candidate and the remote control habits inside the family domicile. Everybody knows the women control the remote in every house, ’cause they hate it when the guys channel surf. They don’t like channel surfing. They want to pick one thing and stick with it, even through the commercials. Anyway, Barack Obama ‘said his television is usually tuned to HGTV, the home and garden cable network, ‘and I suffer that silently.” Okay, so you got the Home and Garden Network on, in the Obama household. No wonder he’s not there much, but, hey, Barack? Do you have another TV so you can go to the other TV when the game is on, rather than somebody sit there with a pick and a hoe and plot some grass?

‘McCain said he and his wife, Cindy, compete for command of the [remote control]. ‘Sometimes I win the arm wrestling contest, but foolishly she continues to try to assert her control over the remote,’ McCain said. ‘This is a battle that will continue for a long time.’ … Both candidates’ spouses watch ‘American Idol.” So there you have it, ladies and gentlemen. This is the kind of thing I mean. We get the story about who watches what, the remote control, who has control over the remote control, and this kind of thing. Can we do any better? It’s not like we’re in an era here of peace, where we’re suffering no threats, where nobody has any grievances against us. It’s not as though we live in a time where liberals have been defeated and can no longer destroy the America we know and love.

I mean, all these things are happening, and we? We get treated to guys that know more than God about the weather, that know more about health care than the people in that business — and the New York Times? The New York Times is writing editorials on energy policy and condemning Big Oil for making profits, when in fact the New York Times is demonstrating it cannot make a profit, it cannot run its business profitably, and how dare they tell anybody else how to do it? But they are liberals, and even though they’ve never done any of the things that they claim need to be done, they say they have all of the answers. And this reduces itself to arguments over who gets the remote control in the house and tire gauges to keep your tires inflated so we don’t have to drill for oil! We’ve got to be able to do better than this. We just have to. And then, today I wake up and I find out that Obama is out there bashing our country to a seven-year-old little girl at a town meeting! We have to be able to do better than this.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: Look, it’s come down to this. We did our A-B, side-by-side comparison: Paris Hilton discussing her economic energy plan versus Laura Tyson on Obama’s staff discussing his plan. When Paris Hilton, an empty vessel into whom words were poured — she memorized them, though — when Paris Hilton sounds smarter than the Obama advisor on energy, then you know we have succeeded in defining dumbness down. It’s just happened.

I’m having this dream, ladies and gentlemen. McCain out doing the set visit at ’24’ talking to President Palmer, portrayed by actor Dennis Haysbert. And, by the way, it’s gone to Haysbert’s head, too. He thinks he set the stage for the Obama presidency. He said that a number of weeks ago. He did. It’s all gone to these guys’ heads. So McCain is talking to President Haysbert, fictional character. (doing McCain impression) ‘You gotta tell me, how did you handle that crisis in episode six?’ And Haysbert says, ‘I called in Jack Bauer, he didn’t have any McCain amendments to worry about, he just went out and got the bad guys, and we won.’ We can dream.