The Role Of Ridicule

Bush effectively deployed ridicule against Kerry in 2004. According to Legal Fiction, the tables are now turned:

Getting back to Dead-Eye Dick – slayer of octogenarians – I think the incessant jokes-to-come could undermine him (and the administration) politically – maybe not a lot, but they won't help. And yes, people ridicule Bush and Cheney all the time. But this one is different. To borrow from Ed Helms, he shot a 78-year old man . . . in the face. That’s so ridiculous that even people who pay no attention to politics will hear about it and find it pretty funny.

But here’s why it matters. Perhaps this is too snarky, but I think the continued political support for the administration has little to do with actual policy. How could it? Instead, it relies heavily on a cult of personality – a carefully-crafted aura or projection of toughness and decisiveness. To many people, Bush is still the 9/11 President, the decisive war president, the man who stood on the rubble with the bullhorn.

But the thing is – once you've pulled back the curtain, you can’t ever really believe in the Wizard again. It’s just an old man pulling some switches. Over the past year, the projected aura has lifted and revealed the bumbling incompetence of the administration. Call it the Wizard of Oz effect.

Katrina in particular was the last straw for many people. ... But their image of Bush changed that week. Suddenly the 9/11 President was indecisive, helpless, weak, and incompetent. It popped the bubble for a lot of people.

And now we have Cheney – who shot a 78-year old man . . . in the face. It’s kind of hard to square the tough-guy war-leader image that Cheney wants to project with the image of the bumbling hunter who shot an old man in the face at close range. Yes, in a rational world, this sort of thing would be irrelevant. But in the modern media age, it’s not. And even if the coming ridicule doesn’t pull Cheney’s ratings down lower, it will at least prevent them from being rehabilitated for some time to come. And again, because Cheney depends so heavily on this aura of toughness for support, the ridicule may well effect that support.