China, like candidates, tries to put a specific face forward
Published 3:39 am Monday, August 11, 2008
By Staff
Beijing's opening ceremony on NBC Friday night was a dizzying spectacle directed by Zhang Yimou ("House of Flying Daggers") and featuring as many performers as the Olympics has athletes – and plenty of fireworks, though cameras caught President Bush checking his watch like his dad at a debate.
Like political candidates defining themselves, China, too, wanted an audience of 4 billion to appreciate its creativity and culture. The world ought to also heed their unity on this undertaking of major concern. We're not sure how 2,008 drummers with glowing sticks rehearse on a giant LED paper scroll representing the first great Chinese invention, paper. In formation, drummers lit their instruments to form giant digits in Arabic and Chinese numerals to count down the final seconds.
A trail of 29 colossal firework footprints went off at the rate of one per second from outside, marching along the city's central axis into the stadium to symbolize each of the 29 Olympiads and to celebrate China's invention of gunpowder.
The ceremony was welcome relief from an already-too-long 2008 presidential campaign and other channels devouring the story picked up from a supermarket tabloid about former North Carolina senator John Edwards' child-producing extra-marital affair in 2006 with filmmaker Rielle Hunter, who produced videos for his campaign. "If you want to beat me up – feel free," said Edwards, who lied for months about 5-month-old Frances Quinn Hunter. "You cannot beat me up more than I have already beaten up myself." It sure doesn't help his party.
This lull in the political action serves as a good reminder that we as a nation remain at war and teetering on the edge of an economic recession. We don't need campaign coverage focused on superficial trivia or driven by horse-race polling data.
Resorting to Paris Hilton, Britney Spears and Charlton Heston as Moses and Barack Obama's alleged Messiah complex enabled John McCain to control the agenda and put his opponent on the defensive. Obama, suffering from media overexposure, took advantage of the Olympic distraction to rejuvenate in Hawaii and prepare for debates, but he better not relax because there is no month more treacherous than August.
Ask John Kerry. Or Michael Dukakis.
When Obama pointed out keeping tires inflated could save money while conserving energy, McCain distributed tire-pressure gauges stamped "Obama's energy plan." A subtle insinuation, too, that the Democratic candidate himself is all air.
McCain knows the celebrity lightweight gambit has worked before – in 1980, when actor Ronald Reagan beat President Jimmy Carter. It seemed implausible Reagan could win, but he kept the fall campaign close until the debate and clocked Carter, asking memorably, "Are you better off than you were four years ago?"
Obama has been on the defensive since returning from his rock star tour overseas. Obama needs something like Reagan's question to redirect the campaign conversation to the differences between him and McCain and how much alike McCain and the unpopular Bush are.
Curiously, Obama ducked McCain's invitation of 10 summer townhall debates. His decision reinforced the notion Obama is not a good debater. He desperately needs to get this back to a campaign about issues instead of silly ads that nevertheless paint Obama as elite, aloof and out of touch.
Obama still has not made peace with the Clintons, who reportedly remain privately skeptical he can win.
McCain went to the Sturgis, S.D., motorcycle rally Aug. 4 to make the point that while "a couple hundred thousand Berliners made a lot of noise for my opponent, I'll take the roar of 50,000 Harleys any day."
No longer does McCain promise a "respectful campaign" or ride the Straight Talk bus with old press pals. McCain's new strategist since July 2, Steve Schmidt, a veteran of the 2004 Bush campaign, is intent on reducing Obama in the minds of Americans to an untested politician with rhetorical skills.
It was in August 1988 that Republicans attacked Dukakis on crime – remember Willie Horton? – and in August 2004 went after Kerry's patriotism with swift boat veterans.
Neither recovered from realizing too late it was a mistake not to respond strongly. Voters more fixated on the economy and gas prices than even a war are likewise going to take a dim view of Obama's $10,000-a-head September fundraiser hosted in the Swiss Alps by George Clooney.
China, like the candidates, will continue to advertise and put a favored face forward. The Bird's Nest (91,000-seat Beijing National Stadium) will take its place alongside long-established images, such as the Great Wall. The four-hour ceremony was reported to have cost more than $100 million to produce, but it is being lauded by spectators and the international press as perhaps the "greatest ever," which is priceless.