Clueless

By John Clayton

Originally Published in the Monocacy Monocle, Volume V, Number 90, August 8, 2008.

This is the August 29 issue, so if you haven’t noticed, summer is pretty much shot, and the kids are back in school. If you don’t know this, then you may be clueless. If you are clueless, then you are probably male as well, based on extensive empirical research by college graduates. I know you are probably wondering which studies these would be, but they don’t immediately come to mind, so I will have to have my staff get back to you.

My family and I have just returned from vacation. We went to South Carolina, where I felt reasonably safe until I picked up a copy of the local newspaper, The Island Packet (you should always support local newspapers), and noted that the Russians had invaded Georgia. This involved problems with people from Ossetia, which for all I knew at the time was a resort island like Jekyll, or Little St. Simons. As I had not chosen to secure travel insurance for our rental, I decided to stay put but keep an eye on subsequent issues of the Packet and take the necessary actions to protect my family should the Russians overrun Savannah. Yes, I chose to remain clueless.

The news as I write is alive with the insinuation that presidential hopeful John McCain, when asked how many houses he and his wife owned, showed that he didn’t know. This immediately became hot news and extremely highly-paid people worked up campaign videos attacking the other side about houses. (I don’t understand the “highly-paid part” at all. You can see equally worthless videos on YouTube that were produced free of charge.) Being a Democrat (note: this is a personal affliction, and not an editorial preference of Monocacy Press, LLC and this newspaper), I was of course glad to see the Republican candidate (who is not a bad sort otherwise) back on his heels, but I doubt if this will have much of an effect in the long course of things, for several reasons. One reason, that hardly bears mentioning, is the attention span of the general electorate. I am writing this piece several days before it will hit the streets, and by then, I will be lucky if anyone remembers the incident at all, as it will be firmly upon the ash heap of history, slowly being covered with the detritus of equally meaningless events.

More importantly, however, is that if we analyze the hoped for (by some of us) impact of this event, we will see that it probably does no harm at all, and may even enhance Senator McCain’s position with key segments of the electorate. For starters, it should be obvious by now that Senator McCain’s capable wife, Cindy, is running the family checkbook. For one thing, it’s pretty much all her money, and for another thing, in most American households, the wife handles the checkbook. We all know that already, so what’s the big deal? McCain the candidate has telegraphed this before, as I believe he once said back in the glory days—now long forgotten—of “straight talk,” that economics was an area in which he needed to develop more expertise. He’s married to a beer millionaire for crying out loud; economics did not need to be a personal core competency.

To exploit this supposed key event, the Democrats needed to nail McCain for either being a rich guy or being clueless. Both roads lead nowhere. First of all, Americans love rich people. We really do. Back in the Great Depression, when everyone was broke and miserable, Hollywood made millions making movies about rich people. Did anyone one want to see movies about plucky folks scrabbling to make livings? No way. The Grapes of Wrath was a great book and movie, but not during the Depression, only later looking back. Rich people are more fun to watch. They still are; scan the supermarket checkout magazine rack if you don’t believe me (okay, rich, skinny people). Why do we follow Donald Trump? His personality? His humanity? His hair? No—he’s a rich guy. The only rich people we hate on principle are professional athletes with huge contracts. I’m not sure why this is, and further analysis would be beyond my pay grade, but booing ballplayers on the field and slamming them on sports talk radio is indeed a form of entertainment, and by extension, a form of love.

Painting the Republican candidate with the “clueless” brush is really where the Democrats are wasting their time. I guarantee you that most American males, upon hearing that McCain didn’t know how many houses he and his wife owned, thought: So What? Big Deal. What, are we looking for a certified public accountant or a president? Hey, once you get past two houses, who cares anyway? They’re not homes, they’re investments—and what’s more, they belong to his wife, the considerably attractive beer millionaire. Ask him something important. Fly in Bob Vilas and have him ask McCain how many lawn tractors or cordless drills he owns. He’d nail those questions in a heartbeat.

As an aside, if American voters have a problem with presidents who have strong and quite possibly more-capable-than-they-are wives, then how did we manage to elect the last five presidents, back to Jimmy Carter? (Note: I would have counted the Fords as well, but he wasn’t elected.) Do we really think Barack Obama runs the checkbook or anything else in his household? Is this really a differentiator? Democrats, find another line of attack before you break my heart again.

The crux of the matter is that the Republicans are going to win or lose this election predominantly with the male vote, pretty much as in the previous who-knows-how-many elections. This particular incident takes the Democrats nowhere with the male vote. It may even annoy male voters into switching to McCain. As far as women go, I want to phrase this very carefully: We’re going to swing this election by showing that one of the male candidates is clueless about a household matter? No wonder so many voters miss Hillary. November can’t get here soon enough for me.