Is This Satire? God I Hope So. Politico's Jim Van

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Is This Satire? God I Hope So.
Politico's Jim VandeHei tells us about Normal America.



BY CHARLES P. PIERCE
APR 26, 2016

At 6:41 p.m. Monday night, a column appeared on the Wall Street Journal's website. It was written by Jim VandeHei, one of the founding geniuses of Tiger Beat On The Potomac.

The column was about how the good real white Americans of the author's hometown in the Midwest are hungering for a third-party presidential disruption, possibly by Mark Zuckerberg, perhaps bankrolled by Michael Bloomberg.

It took less than an hour for political Twitter to eat VandeHei's column, bones and all. You rarely see a single piece disemboweled so completely and so immediately, and from so many directions.

It was like watching pack predators descend on a wounded wildebeest. And, not for nothing, but the scorn blizzard was richly deserved.

VandeHei repeatedly reminds us that he is writing from the perspective of Normal America, his capitalization, not mine. This is already trouble that any relatively sober editor could have helped him avoid.

"The candidate has to be authentic and capable of having a rolling, candid, transparent conversation with voters on social and conventional media.

Voters aren't dopes: They want an unvarnished look at their future president's personality and ideas. They can tolerate uncomfortable truths. But they have to come from someone comfortable in his or her own skin. If voters trust the person isn't full of it, they are clearly willing to think differently about issues. Exploiting this ideological ambiguity is key. The ideal candidate would write a very specific agenda in normal, conversational language, not whatever nonsensical language today's political class was taught to speak.

He or she would engage voters daily on social media, with fun and flare. (Think Trump with impulse control and better spelling.) The candidate would inundate voters with transparency and specificity, even when it hurts. And exploit cable TV's addiction to whatever is hot and new. Mr. Trump has shown how technology has made money less important in modern politics."

Authenticity is the key. Once you've learned to fake that, the rest is gravy.

"Exploit the fear factor. The candidate should be from the military or immediately announce someone with modern-warfare expertise or experience as running mate. People are scared. Terrorism is today's World War and Americans want a theory for dealing with it. President Obama has established an intriguing precedent of using drone technology and intelligence to assassinate terrorists before they strike.

A third-party candidate could build on death-by-drones by outlying the type of modern weapons, troops and war powers needed to keep America safe. And make plain when he or she will use said power. Do it with very muscular language—there is no market for nuance in the terror debate."

Neither was there a "market for nuance" at Abu Ghraib, or at Bagram, or at all the black site prisons, either. VandeHei's lust for an American Peron with performance skills is ranging pretty close to actual fascism here. But, we're in luck, because his proposed candidate does not exactly make you think of Dwight Eisenhower or Zachary Taylor, warfare-experience-wise.

"Right now, millions of young people are turned on by a 74-old-year socialist scolding Wall Street; millions of others by a reality-TV star with a 1950s view of women.

Why not recruit Facebook's Mark Zuckerberg or Sheryl Sandberg to head a third-party movement? Maybe we can convince Michael Bloomberg to help fund the movement with the billions he planned to spend on his own campaign—and then recruit him to run Treasury and advise the president."

It is possible that I simply am getting old and I don't understand what the kidz are doing for satire these days. I certainly hope that's the case because, if this thing is meant to be taken seriously, most of the muscles in its language are actually in its head.

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