Here’s an article close to my heart.
The best thing about the year in analogy is how diverse the comparisons have been. Almost simultaneously, Obama has been described as 2008’s version of 49-state winner Ronald Reagan as well as its incarnation of 49-state loser George McGovern–in fact, he’s been compared to every presidential candidate since World War II. A vote for John McCain has been likened to both a third term of George Bush as well as a first victory for the unelected Gerald Ford. The comparisons also don’t end at the border: Obama critics have derided him as the second coming of Canada’s Pierre Elliot Trudeau; McCain’s admirers see British titan Benjamin Disraeli when they gaze at the Arizona Senator. Meanwhile, the campaign they’re fighting gets equated with struggles as varied as the elections of crisis-afflicted 1860 and prosperity-tinged 1996. Prominent pundits at different points have managed to compare Obama to both parties’ candidates in the 1980s election.
We get this in Australia too - for instance, the really silly claims which have now died down that Kevin Rudd is the new Gough Whitlam.
It’s one of the other fallacies of political journalism apart from all the ones associated with polls, though it doesn’t get as much attention. We heard a lot of it last year - particularly when the claim that John Howard would pull a rabbit out of his hat was repeatedy invoked. While, occasionally, analogies to the past may be illuminating, and poltical strategies can be recycled, they tend to harden into a sort of determinism and a blindness to new and different configurations of political leadership and public opinion.
Our crap political analogies pale into mediocrity against the selection of howlers from US politics. This presidential election seems to have produced a particularly purple crop, doesn’t it?
Sure does!
If you follow the link, the avalanche of weird analogies actually gets quite funny!
And I turned in my display case when that petty bourgeois reformist Paul Norton drew an analogy between myself and that White Guardist reactionary Yeltsin last year.
The analogy between Brendan Nelson and the Federal Parliamentary Liberal Party, and the Grand Old Duke of York and his ten thousand men, founders on the fact that there aren’t ten thousand men amongst the current Federal Liberal MPs and Senators.
Obama is the new Martin Van Buren.
Don’t ask me how.
Rudd is certainly not the new Gough. He doesn’t come anywhere near his achievements, and, what is much, much worse, probably doesn’t want to.
Can I be the New Al Grassby, hats, ties, funky mo, good policy and dodgy friends? I’d probably settle for the New Mal Meninga though.
That’s it, I’m done.
I declare all political figures, past, present and future to be akin to Hitler.
As per internet protocol, all analogies must cease.
Problem solved!
That’s not silly Mark. You want silly I’ll give you silly. Julia Gillard is a red-headed Joh Bjelke-Petersen, Bob Brown is a tree-hugging BA Santamaria and peter Garret is Malcolm Fraser only a noodle-nut.
.
That’s silly.
.
And anyway everyone knows that Obama is the new Ulysses S. Grant. Buffalo Bill? No wait. Wyatt Earp.
John Dickerson in Slate wrote about the presidential primaries that they are such infrequent events and unique evetns that meaningful ‘rules’ or comparisons drawn from them are not really reliable as there is never enough data to work with. General elections could be identified as much the same.
The over-use of previous election analogies stems in part from the fact that as the coverage of elections (especially U.S. elections) is so breathtakingly content-free as far as actual substantive policy or competency issues go. All many news organisations largely cover is the campaign itself, rather than issues being suppoosedly debated over, the only real base of knowledge they know how to refer to outside the campaign is the detail of previous campaigns.
It’s also interesting that for the first time in 65 years, the two contenders for POTUS (and what a lovely and very opposite acronym that these days, so redolent of everything from palliative care to pompous Roman job descriptions) are not State governors or former POTI or Veeps. Instead they’re both members of the most exclusive men’s club ever.
Correct me if I’m wrong but I think the last sitting senator to get oval action was JFK.
If the political analogy (”[x] is the new [y]”) is the sure sign of a hack, then what about “No candidate has ever [X]”? Sounds like a sure sign of a lazy journo texting it in from the public bar at the local.
FiveThirtyEight has a post on this, and its utter uselessness as an argument. Notice how easy it is to rebut “No Democrat who hails from north of the Mason-Dixon line has been elected since 1960″ (from an actual article) with “No candidate as old as John McCain has ever been elected to a first term.”
“very opposite acronym”
I meant “apposite”. Fuckin’ spielcheck.
“If the political analogy (”[x] is the new [y]”) is the sure sign of a hack, then what about “No candidate has ever [X]”?”
Well I think McCain is the new Andrew Johnson. And Obama the new Warren Harding.
analogy, metaphor,… why not? when your guess is as good as anyone else’s
“Unless you are educated in metaphor, you are not safe to be let loose in the world.”
- Robert Frost, ‘Education by Poetry’
quoted by Professor Parini on Ramona Kowal’s book program, ABC radio national
Commie!
I offer this observation as a datum point, perhaps worthy of serious analysis, but certainly not as a coherent commentary.
Has anyone tried to crunch the electoral track record on POTUS candidates as they are generally referred to by as first or last name, initials or diminutives?
FDR, Harry, Ike, JFK, LBJ, Nixon, Ford, Carter, Ronnie, ?????, Bill, Dubya. And now we’re looking at either Obama or McCain. Interesting to note the choice now is between first and last names.
I thought Bill Clinton got plenty of oval action. :))
“ooooh Paul Burns - you are AWFUL !!
(purrs: but I like you)”
-Benny Hill, noted pundit to the populace