It seems like maturity in politics has taken as deep a dive as the DOW has lately. Consider two recent political tactics that are desperate and juvenile, in that order.
The first is that, according to top Obama political advisers, the campaign to reelect will focus on exposing Obama’s current GOP frontrunner, Mitt Romney, as “weird.” This is a new strategy in politics because candidates in the past who were in fact weird did a marvelous job of exposing that themselves. When it comes to weird, if it’s not obvious, you have to ask, is there really a case to be made? Are the folks in Massachusetts in the habit of electing Republican nuts into high office?
Well, just look at the way he dances, as seen on a recent cover of Newsweek. Oh, that was photo-shopped? Never mind.
Yes, you can be pretty sure that it will be his Mormon faith where most of the “weirdness” innuendos will land. And this from a president who had to finally and reluctantly distance himself from his own faith heritage.
But speaking of Newsweek covers, we also have this new zinger about Mitt Romney’s closest challenger to date. If you didn’t know Rep. Michele Bachman was the crazed “Queen of Rage,” you do now, because there she is on the cover of one of our nation’s most trusted and respected news sources looking like she’s just plan nuts. Newsweek is not some hack, partisan website. It’s not a college newspaper. It’s not a spoof publication. It’s Newsweek. So when you see a picture of some half-crazed zombie woman looking like she is waiting to receive her latest orders from the Mothership, you figure it must be real, right? Well, actually this is Newsweek acting exactly like some hack, partisan horn, offering a cover that the Onion might do for a laugh. Even the Huffington Post is wondering if this one is over the edge.
But it’s not a cheap shot, and we know that because Newsweek’s new rule-breaking editor Tina Brown explains via Twitter that their photo choice simply and accurately captures the intensity with which Bachman is engaging voters in Iowa.
Just like she’s doing in these other photos that Newsweek posted as outtakes from their own photoshoot.
Lame excuses speak of guilt like few things do.
Yes, our politics need to mature.
— Glenn T. Stanton is the director of family formation studies at Focus on the Family and a research fellow at the Institute of Marriage and Family. He is also author of the recent book Secure Daughters, Confident Sons: How Parents Guide Their Children into Authentic Masculinity and Femininity.