Redefining the enemy

When you’re a kid, wars are so much easier to figure out.

There is always an enemy, and the enemy is evil. To win a war, you must vanquish your enemy and thus vanquish evil.

That’s how we did it in the Revolutionary War with the British, that’s how we did it in World War II with the Axis powers and that’s how we were supposed to do it in Vietnam and Iraq, but things got a little messy.

According to my regressed fifth grade logic, the reason those latter two wars got so muddled is because our enemy was much harder to define, let alone find and conquer.

I mean, come on, imagine playing a game of Risk where you can’t see any of the opponent’s blue plastic cannons and horses occupying Kamchatka. It’s a preposterous concept.

Mao Zedong, who — for those of you who don’t know, is basically a Chinese version of Che Guevara — once said, “Politics is war without bloodshed, while war is politics with bloodshed.”  

So, following my shaky grasp of the transitive property of equality, I have concluded that in order to win a political election, one must find and vanquish one’s political enemy. I would create a flow chart, but I have word count constraints I have to work within. Sorry for not being sorry.

As ridiculous as this logical progression might seem, it does hold up in real-world situations. Watch any of the campaign commercials for the Senate race between Dan Coats and Brad Ellsworth; it’s like watching Luke Skywalker fighting Darth Vader in Cloud City all over again.

On a bigger scale, President Obama and the Democratic Party as a whole are facing possibly one of the highest political attrition rates in recent years in the upcoming midterm elections.

The incomparably educated, enlightened and politically savvy citizens of the United States are unhappy with all that nonsense liberal hogwash President Barack Obama is spewing around Washington, D.C. They want change. They want hope for a brighter, Democrat-free future.

This intrinsic hope for change has manifested itself partially as the Tea Party, the hottest thing in politics since Theodore Roosevelt’s Bull Moose Party.

With the backing of today’s most freethinking political theorists such as Michele Bachmann and Glenn Beck, the Tea Party and Republicans in general are set to take back the House and possibly even the Senate.

Obama should let them go ahead.

Since the Democrats took over the entirety of the legislative and executive branches of government, they have had almost unquestionable power in ramming their policies through the legislative process.

The problem with being unquestioned, however, is that when things go wrong, you have no one to blame but yourself.

Peter Baker of the New York Times wrote an interesting piece on the midterm elections this past weekend outlining his argument on why Obama shouldn’t sweat the election if things don’t exactly swing his way.

The basic premise is that by having the House and possibly the Senate back in the hands of the Republicans, the Democrats will have a scapegoat for their political follies. It’s actually a rather brilliant idea.

George W. Bush was possibly the greatest thing to ever happen to the Democrats. His constant political gaffes and highly controversial policy decisions gave the liberal base something to rally against. He was their sworn enemy, just like Scar from “The Lion King.”

And in the darkest hour, a white knight emerged on the horizon carrying a banner of hope and change. Using his impeccably cool oratory and sick-nasty jumpshot, Barack Obama won the big one.

Now, two years later, Obama is in some hot water. While the long-term economic benefits of his policy initiatives are hitherto unrealized, the short-term political consequences are slapping him in the face.

Of course, Obama’s job is safe for the time being. However, his current term is almost halfway over, and it won’t be long before the campaigning starts up again. Obama will need someone to wag his finger at, and it can’t be Dubya this time around.

This political strategy isn’t exactly a pipe dream either. Bill Clinton pulled it off in 1996 after Newt Gingrich’s Brooks Brothers-donning army took over Congress in 1994.

Harry Truman was able to barely win re-election against almost insurmountable odds in 1948 by blaming his troubles on an uncompromising Republican Congress.

The reality of the political landscape is complex and confusing to the ordinary voter. When people are confused, they tend to get frustrated. When people are frustrated, they tend to get angry. And when people are angry, they tend to vote against you.

Obama simply has to act as a matador and redirect the populace’s anger in the opposite direction.


E-mail: halderfe@indiana.edu