The End of Influence

It used to be that the main sources of credible and allegedly reliable political information came from the major big city newspapers, the three major TV networks, the two major news magazines and, more recently, the two competing cable channels CNN and Fox. I do not wish to denigrate newspapers and television in other markets throughout the country, but most people will acknowledge that the lion's share of influence came from the sources I have cited.

By far the movers and shakers of the political world pored over the New York Times and the Washington Post as the bibles of the wise world view, the quintessential oxygen of the zeitgeist.

The mighty Washington Post had the power to bring down Presidents, and the newspaper of record, the old grey lady, the New York Times was the major news source with the clout to seed every important major media in America and, arguably, the planet.

Staffed by a dominant cadre recruited from the elite feeder colleges, Harvard, Yale, Princeton, Dartmouth, Columbia and others that could be shoehorned into that category, the major "elite" media became a kind of branch of this closed shop of contemporary academic orthodoxy and entitlement. Like ethnic groups who felt more comfortable in their neighborhoods with similar neighbors, the so-called major media became more comfortable with their own kind, those educated in these colleges and universities underline once again the old birds of a feather cliché.

It became true of all power clusters in America, from Wall Street to law and other major wealth producing occupations that an Ivy League old school tie was and, arguably, still is the major gateway to fame and fortune. As an aside, one cannot fail to mention that those recruited from the business schools of these great institutions led the disastrous charge on Wall Street that heroically bugled us all over the cliff into the greatest American financial debacle of all time.

Ironically, it might be unseemly to point out that three of the most powerful of our founding fathers, Washington, Franklin and Hamilton, never graduated from college, although the latter dropped out of King's College, the precursor of Columbia.

While working in the media does not offer the heady awards of wealth, it does offer a far more seductive aphrodisiac, power and notoriety, the ability to amplify one's alleged wisdom through the bullhorn of the printed and spoken word. The psychic satisfactions of the power to influence cannot be exaggerated. It is the Holy Grail of ambition.

Alas, this power to influence via the traditional media is deteriorating rapidly under the onslaught of technology, which has spawned a Tower of Babel Internet culture where the number of voices has expanded exponentially and the pool of influence has become an angry ocean of riptides making the old methods of navigation impossible. We are being informed more and know less. Everyone seems to believe that everyone is entitled to everyone's opinion.

What was only a few years ago called the "major media" is quickly losing its monopoly of influence. The signs are everywhere. Newspapers are losing circulation at an ever-accelerating pace. The once vaunted three networks have become shadows of their former glory. The news magazines are becoming increasingly irrelevant. The bottom line, of course, is that advertisers, whose only measure of effectiveness is how many eyeballs they can attract and where they can pinpoint their message, are fractionalizing their ads and spreading them over a wider swath undermining the economic base that fuels this media.

On television, the three major networks have long peaked in influence and offer their news messages to an older and older demographic, slicing away people under sixty from their range of influence. In a few more years they will join their print brothers in the influence cemetery of the extinct. Even the cable networks with their self-hyped authenticity and increasingly inarticulate talking heads increasingly cater to an ever more aging demographic. Look where their ads are pointed, to the incontinent, the erection disabled, the sleep deprived, the diabetic, all markers of the ravages of aging.

The people who run these enterprises are not fools. They are discovering that playing to people with the same biases is their only business lifeline, especially in New York City and Washington where the educated elite huddle together in an easily targeted and self-important, although increasingly leftist, segment. I suspect that if, for example, the Times took too a big a step right, they would lose enough subscribers to push them that much closer to a Bear Stearns finish. It is probably true of the other former big guns of the mainstream media.

The Times, however, does have one saving ace in the hole. It provides the most extensive and comprehensive coverage of the Big Apple's vast array of cultural activities. Frankly, as an avid consumer of such information, I hope it will give them enough revenue to sustain them in some fashion for the long haul, although I am not optimistic. The Washington Post, on the other hand, serving a less culturally charged entertainment scene, may have a more difficult time getting traction and will attempt to vastly increase its local service coverage to keep afloat.

As for real influence, the kind they enjoyed for decades, the Times is already in free fall on that score despite its vaunted slogan "All the News That's Fit to Print" and their promise to be "a newspaper of record." The truth is that for decades they did fulfill those goals. In the last few years their focus has been too narrow and blatantly biased to make that case.

I can imagine how many focus groups they have enlisted to try to reverse their dreary business prospects. They probably were obliged, based on their research, to double their op ed cadre of conservatives, adding neocon William Kristol to join with David Brooks to give them a patina of fairness, especially since these writers are part of the intellectually acceptable conservatives in the mold of William Buckley. I doubt it will help improve their bottom line. Most of their centrist and moderate right subscribers have probably already gone.

Indeed, it seems at times that desperation rules the roost among the Times editors who support the strident outpourings of Maureen Dowd, Frank Rich, Paul Krugman, Bob Herbert and their roster of like-minded columnists who clang the pots for the disadvantaged and put-upon, few of whom are readers. One wonders if this clique is in the wrong pew, considering that the advertisements for upscale jewelry and super luxury products that can only be afforded by the folks they rail against continue to fill the adjacent space in the newspaper.

The most hopeful survival sign in the media influence department is the Wall Street Journal, which the canny Rupert Murdoch bought as his flagship newspaper outlet. The Times pretty well abdicated its money coverage giving Murdoch the perfect opening to buy the Journal, whose theme is "Money," a universal subject. The Journal is more conservative in outlook, largely because people who deal in money are less comfortable with vituperative lectures by unsettling voices of grievance.

Note how the Journal is moving into the mainstream of traditional journalism, rowing cautiously down the center and adapting some of the Times' mindset from its glory days when its approach to news gathering was more impartial. It will be interesting to see if it transforms itself under its "money" umbrella to become some hybrid that eats its way into the Times' once dominant turf. As an avid Journal paper and website reader, I am deeply impressed by their imaginative effort at transformation.

The fact is that I sorely miss the old influential culture of the once great media outlets. Perhaps I am simply being nostalgic, but I did respect what passed as the elite media of yesteryear which, I sensed, gave me a more factual and balanced picture of our world than they do today. I believed in their news coverage. I believed in the honesty of their columnists' offerings, even those with whom I disagreed. I now take everything they say with a giant grain of salt, and I ignore the pretentious faux sagacity of their editorials.

Worse, as a former newspaper editor, I can easily recognize the bias of their headline writers and the subtle ways they place their stories to cater to their committed readers. Thankfully, my experience has given me the ability to filter out all the hogwash.

That said, I will never give up my paper subscription to the New York Times, which I have been reading since I was twelve years old. I know how to interpret their politically tinged news stories and their columnists' offerings, which I read diligently but without conviction. They amuse and entertain me, and I do occasionally learn something of interest from their efforts.

But the non-political content of the Times is unbeatable and, for the most part, well written, wide-ranging and wonderfully diverse. It covers a vast panorama of the local, national and global community. It offers the best coverage of the arts anywhere on the planet, and I cannot conceive of not seeing the paper at my apartment door every morning.

Yes, their political influence has declined and they have certainly lost traction among those who do not follow their political line, but I can understand the business decisions that they must have made to continue their bias. They have been dealt a terrible technological blow that might one day bring them to their knees and are trying to cope with this onslaught as best they can by gathering together the prime adherents of their bias.

As they say in politics, they are being loyal to what has become their base. Indeed, I have the sense that any dissent to their policies from within their ranks is met with tolerant contempt and, worse, the threat of expulsion.

I wouldn't deign to predict how this decline of influence of the once powerful media will play out. Indeed, it is impossible to embrace the dizzying spiral of information being hurled at us through cyberspace. I just hope and pray the center holds, but I'm no longer as certain as I was.

Warren Adler is the author of 30 novels, including The War of the Roses and his latest, Funny Boys.

Sarah

Of the four candidates running for President and Vice President of the two major parties, Sarah Palin has been glorified by her supporters and vilified by her detractors more than any candidate for high office in recent memory. While her defenders are many, the pundit aristocracy and the so-called mainstream media have subjected her to a drumbeat of shockingly offensive, insulting and angry criticism.

Having lived in Washington for three decades up until the middle eighties and known many of the political players of the day, I have seen a sea change in the way politics is conducted. It has become a brutal and angry game of “gotcha,” a sinister and cynical conspiratorial process that makes a mockery of civilized political debate.

Perhaps we are going through an angry phase in our national life. I see it everywhere. On the Internet hate and anger of extreme virulence seems to be proliferating. Just browse through the comment sections of the various blogs on any subject, but particularly politics, and you will see venomous, hateful and scurrilous opinions that are nothing more than emotional, mean-minded and hateful rants that have little relations to factual and reasoned discourse.

In face to face conversations, political views have hardened to such an extent that one fears to incur blind wrath and nastiness by expressing anything that challenges the prevailing views on either end of the political spectrum. Which brings me back to Sarah Palin.

As a supporter and committed believer in equal rights for woman, especially in the workplace, I am confused and a bit appalled by the virulence of the attacks on Governor Palin by other women, particularly those who profess the same commitment she has to the upward mobility of women, of which she is a shining example.

She has been attacked for her faith, for her parenting, for her hair-do, for her supposed lack of knowledge of foreign affairs, for allegedly censoring library books, for her having been badly educated in state schools, for being too aggressive as an athlete, for not aborting her challenged fetus, for being a hunter and for being a hockey mom to only one of her offspring and, to top it off, too cute. Underlying the contempt of her critics is an unspoken prejudice of self-appointed elitists against people brought up in a blue collar environment, the sons and daughters of plain folks who work with their hands and do the heavy lifting for the rest of us, who fight our wars, police our neighborhoods, put out our fires, drive our trains and buses, clean our streets and build our houses and our infrastructure.

She has been put down for being Mayor of a small town and the Governor of an “insignificant state.” She has been portrayed as a cornball hick, as trailer trash, as a dumbed down “good ole girl,” as an empty-headed wannabe, as a liar and a fraud and as unfit to govern at any level, especially as an eventual President. In short, she has been crucified by what passes today as the best and brightest in media land, the thought police who believe in the infallibility of their judgment.

She has been dissed by the spoiled and overpaid Hollywood crowd who dispense advice as if they really were those heroic images they mimic on the silver screen. Her detractors don’t just dislike her, they hate her with what can only be described as homicidal passion.

To have become the Governor of Alaska, the largest land mass state in the union and a key repository of hydrocarbon energy reserves, a state which is merely a shade below the population of Delaware, from which Senator Biden hails, and to be dismissed as inconsequential in the pecking order of politicians seems to me bizarre and insulting to all women.

Dismissing Alaska’s importance as a State and becoming its Governor as a minor achievement, Sarah Palin’s critics seem bent on making her seem somewhat lesser than other politicians. Tom Daschle, the former Democratic leader in the Senate, came from South Dakota, a less populated and arguably less important state than Alaska, and few have criticized him for attaining his once vaunted and powerful position. Indeed, like him or not, the present Vice President hails from Wyoming, a state even less populated than Alaska and South Dakota.

To me, such criticism is not only ugly but the height of hypocrisy. As for her faith, talk to me about that when they take “In God We Trust” off our currency and excise the words “we are endowed by our creator” from the Declaration of Independence.

In terms of parenting, talk to the pillars of the feminine movement about juggling priorities and “having it all,” which has been their mantra. And which parent has the magic know-how to successfully discipline their children on sexual matters when the hormones start to rage? Try discussing the challenges of parenting with Gloria Steinem.

Some of her more hateful critics have gone so far as to say she is not a real woman, that she is merely a womb, that she is a religious nut, a far right wacko and a lousy mother, that she doesn’t have the brains or the experience to occupy any political post. Tell that to the people of Alaska and eighty percent of them will want to lock you in an igloo. I well remember when Roosevelt picked Truman to be his Vice President and the critics raged that he was just a dumb failed haberdasher and a corrupt machine politician.

As for her experience in foreign affairs, I wonder what the chorus of female naysayers might have said if an acknowledged expert on foreign affairs, such as Condoleezza Rice, was chosen by McCain to be his Vice President pick. As for her education, it is true that Ivy Leaguers and their “old boy and old girl networks” get an automatic leg up in the race for fame and fortune, but that exclusivity loses steam when they confront the real world and have to compete with the so-called lessers who got their bones and street smarts in State colleges or in the school of hard knocks where Harry Truman got his mojo. And what college degree is displayed on the walls of Mount Vernon, the occupant of which laid the foundation stone of our Republic? In this context, how about all those MBA geniuses whose overconfident arrogance and greed screwed up Wall Street?

The fact is that Sarah Palin needs no defense from me. Having lived in the near West for more than a decade, I have met lots of women like Sarah: tough, smart, outspoken, authentic, independent women comfortable in their own skin who say what they mean and mean what they say. They are brimming with life, love their country, their parents and their extended families and revel in the energy of the world around them, and, although they might be loath to admit it, they are like the pioneering women of the early West who built this country with their tough optimism, their mothering, their sacrifice and their boundless energy and good humor.

I know. I know. There will be those who might take this essay as an exercise in political persuasion. No minds will be changed. No way. I glory in female achievement. Like many of us, I am the son of an adored mother with an abiding respect and a cheerleader for her gender. Yes, it was a cagey political move for Senator McCain to pick the Governor of Alaska as his running mate. Indeed, Barack, in my opinion, made a fatal error in not offering the Vice Presidency to Hillary Clinton. Now that would have been something, seeing those two tough ladies go head to head.

The fact is that I would rush to Sarah’s defense no matter which side picked her. Win or lose she deserves a fair shake and certainly not the ugly calumny heaped upon her, especially by her sisters. I don’t agree with her on every issue. Who does? And I’d fight like hell if she tried to tell me how to run my life or by legal coercion change my views about religion or a man or woman’s right to make choices that are important to them.

In fact, as a Governor of Alaska she has not tried to impose her personal views on Alaskans and, more importantly, she has not made these views part of her governance. Nor has she tried to hide them. Besides, Alaskans are independent, stubborn, free-wheeling and strong-minded, and many live in that rough climate by choice. For those very reasons, they would likely balk at any attempt by her to reign in their attitude by sending her packing by dog sled to the North Pole.

In Alaska she bucked the system and threw the rascals out. We could use some of that courage in today’s appalling political climate. What’s wrong with a lady who knows how to use a broom (and I don’t mean to fly on it)? And for those interested in irony, she was, as students of the Bible know, named after the right woman. My advice to the voters is to give the lady some space and, if you disagree with her, fight her fair and square.

It might be of interest, too, to assess the qualifications of other Vice Presidential picks in American history, both winners and losers. With a few exceptions, they were a dreary lot. Many were political hacks designed to balance the ticket geographically. Some, like Teddy Roosevelt and Harry Truman, were great. On the other hand, Aaron Burr was eminently qualified and a murderer.

If I were Joe Biden, I would armor myself well for his debate with Sarah. If he’s not careful, he might go home with a very clean clock.

Warren Adler is the author of 30 novels, including The War of the Roses and his latest, Funny Boys.

Contest News

Voting is now open until September 15 for our Summer 2008 Short Story Contest. Our five finalists will now be submitted to the general public for voting, and the winners will receive cash prizes based upon the number of votes they attract by their work. Many of the stories were quite wonderful, and a great deal of effort and angst was applied in choosing the winners. We have strived to put originality as the gold standard of our choices. By its nature our judgment is purely subjective. Our advice to those who have submitted is to stay with it. Not being among our top five is by no means a rejection. Thank you so much for submitting your work. We look forward to hearing from you again when we launch our next contest. Our motivation in creating our contests is to enhance and promote the art of the short story form and to encourage other writers to embrace it.

State of the Short Story

There is no doubt that, as Stephen King once alleged, the short story has declined in popularity. Once a staple literary form, evolving from the pulp magazines of the early twentieth century and morphing into the multitude of more respectable magazine media led by the once dominant Saturday Evening Post, the short story was a highly paid and sought after creative endeavor.

Even the less commercial marketplace through a large network of small literary magazines was once a highly prestigious and well-read enterprise. The short story was the entry-level form for most literary wannabes. I attended creative writing classes at The New School in the forties and fifties with Mario Puzo, William Styron and others of equal talent who cut their eyeteeth on the short story form. It was considered the curtain raiser to the big first novel.

The good news is that it is coming back big time thanks to the Internet and the declining time allotment to reading that is fast becoming a national affliction. Call it another manifestation of unintended consequences, but the short story form is the writing example of choice in the more than 200 university writing courses in the United States and the thousands of ancillary writing courses that dot the instructional landscape.

Short story writing contests are exploding on the Internet, including my own Warren Adler Short Story Contest, which has just ended its third successful installment. It is an extraordinary explosion of creative effort. Writers are being taught by example the efficacy of compression in the artful creation of character, plot, narrative drive, description and mood that is at the heart of the short story process.

Writers with unquenchable dreams of becoming the new Poe, Chekhov, Maupassant, Hemingway, Faulkner, Fitzgerald and countless other masters of the short story are honing their skills at a fast clip and creating a marketplace that, in my opinion, will grow into an explosive avalanche of awareness and a path to greater recognition for themselves as well as offering special joys and insight for the reader. Indeed, for many novelists, including myself, the short story was our first ticket to a literary career and continues to remain so.

I am not alone in my affection for the short story form and my attempt to promote its value and expansion as a literary enterprise. Thanks to Mr. King, and other practitioners like him, the short story renaissance will, in my opinion, not only regain but exceed its place in the literary pantheon.

Warren Adler is the author of 30 novels, including The War of the Roses and his latest, Funny Boys.

Second in a series: How I got the idea for my novel MADELINE'S MIRACLES

Of all the questions asked of fiction writers, the one most common is: Where do you get your ideas? It is a crucial question that goes to the heart of the storyteller's art. One might generalize and assert that it comes from an amalgam of one's life's experiences, stories told by others, books read, movies seen, dreams and fantasies, and the molten mix in the cauldron of one's imagination. This is one writer's attempt to pinpoint the spark that ignited the idea that became the story and its aftermath.

As a confirmed skeptic I do not believe in anything that is outside the orbit of logical reality. I eschew anything new age, strange repetitive rituals and self-professed gurus who allege they have "the answer" and demand obedience. I do not believe in anything in the supernatural, realm and that includes fantasy, Fairy Godmothers, angels, superheroes, weird conspiracy theories, miracles, doppelgangers, Dybbuks, and the thousand other mysterious ideas and imagined events that fall into this genre.

Hordes of people will disagree with such skepticism. It would be pointless to argue the point since there is no empirical evidence to the contrary, and the end game of the argument will always remain unresolved.

Nevertheless, I do believe in the power of the subconscious, which is essentially a mystery, although science continues to uncover more and more empirical evidence on the inner workings of the human brain. As a novelist, I know I am drawing on this still mysterious subconscious power although I cannot explain how or why it works. I accept it since I know it is the essential tool in the fiction writer's art.

There are insistent people who will cling with fervor to their belief in one or another aspect of the supernatural. Try to argue with someone who truly believes he has had an out of body experience, or has heard God's voice, or believes that Kennedy was murdered by Johnson, or the CIA brought down the twin towers, and any other of the hundreds of conspiracy theories that trigger unambiguous certainties. The list is endless, and the way in which these stories are conveyed, armed with the power of passionate belief, can be dangerously persuasive.

In every field, people will cite supernatural forces as having intervened in their personal narratives. Since I truly "believe" in the idea of "luck," I stand ready to be accused of hypocrisy. I suppose one can attribute a lucky break to "divine intervention" or somesuch, and we do know from the "what happens next" aspect of storytelling that events do happen without notice or foreshadowing, but I don't let myself go too far into the unknowable and resist all efforts by people to explain it by alleging that they had received some miraculous gift of foresight.

That said, there have been moments in which self-interest or, admittedly, blind fear, trumped logic, and I found myself willing to buy into a bizarre supernatural mindset. This recounting goes to the heart of that persistent question: "Where do you get your ideas?"

I got the idea for Madeline's Miracles from this ubiquitous fount. A friend of mine had lost an adult son, probably to AIDS, and was having a "death" celebration at the home of a friend in Beverly Hills. I had never been to such a themed event, and I was seated at a table next to an attractive woman who greeted me warmly. When I gave her my name, her response was: "I know." I had never met her before and was somewhat confused by the response.

Without missing a beat, she announced that she was a "psychic" and that she was certain that I would have a successful career in Hollywood. I was dumbfounded. I had been in Los Angeles less than a week when I was invited to this event by the mother of the deceased. I was, of course, both baffled and flattered. I had never met an acknowledged "psychic" before, and here was this complete stranger predicting my success.

Of course, she was playing into my aspirations. One of my books, The War of the Roses, was in the early phase of development, and I had relocated to Los Angeles in the hopes that I could speed the process and perhaps interest the movie crowd into optioning my growing collection of fiction. I was, of course, completely skeptical. After all, this was weird and woolly Hollywood. Nevertheless, I was intrigued by her assertion about my alleged future success. Who wouldn't be? To make the matter more baffling, she then told me that she could actually pick which of my books would be the next one to attract Hollywood producers.

Against my better judgment, I found myself going along, figuring that this was yet another creative hustling ploy in La-La Land. Mostly out of curiosity, I made a date to meet for breakfast at the Bel Air Hotel the next day. She instructed me to bring four of my books for her "analysis." What the hell? I told myself. I decided to go with the flow.

When I arrived at the Bel Air she had with her a female executive from 20^th Century Fox, which greatly enhanced her credibility. She then took each of my books, closed her eyes, put the flat of her hand on the books in some mysterious incantation, and after this strange ceremony handed one of the books to the studio executive. "This is the one," she told the executive. It took great discipline on my part to hide my astonishment.

Suddenly she stiffened and seemed to go into a trance, then rose from the table remarking that she "sensed" that a person in this dining room was a hit man assigned to kill one of her clients. She rose from table and told us that she had to phone her client to warn him. The executive from the studio hardly reacted to this strange behavior. I was, to say the least, bewildered. It struck me as an Alice in Wonderland moment, challenging my concept of reality. She returned to the table and the conversation went on as before. The executive from Fox seemed to treat this woman's action as perfectly normal. Did they know something I didn't? Worse, I felt my entire belief system challenged.

Another luncheon meeting with the psychic was arranged at which the book was discussed, and I was assured that an impending sale was being arranged. The female executive was present at this luncheon and told me that it was happening, that the studio powers were on the cusp of a decision, and that she would call me soon to announce the purchase of the rights. The psychic nodded her approval. Despite all my previous skepticism, I sensed that my previous logic system was being challenged. I felt myself becoming a believer.

After this luncheon I was ecstatic. I had no doubt that what was promised would happen. It seemed so credible. My skepticism had miraculously vanished.

I waited for the call that was going to announce that the deal was sealed, convinced in my gut that these people were on to something that had eluded me all my life. I was hooked and knew it. I was completely convinced that another movie was in the hopper. I waited. Be patient, I told myself. It was a done deal. I continued to wait. And wait.

I never heard from these people again, although I tried reaching them, but they never returned my calls. Because I was in thrall to this supernatural circumstance, I began to believe that somewhere down the line I had thrown out bad Karma that scotched the deal. After awhile logic began to surface again, and I returned to the normality of my skepticism. Why such an elaborate charade? I am still baffled by the experience. I felt like a fool, a naïve and gullible idiot. I still do.

I know this story strains credibility, but it is absolutely true in every detail, and it gave me the idea for Madeline's Miracles, a novel in which a family becomes the total pawn of a psychic who eventually dictates their every move. And yet, even today, I ask myself: Did this woman really believe she had a psychic gift, or was she merely manipulating me for her own profit, a naïve wannabe in ambitious pursuit of his hopes and dreams. There is a lesson here that still resonates and raises a red flag on the road ahead for anyone with outsized aspirations. More importantly it shows how easily our vulnerabilities can be manipulated by people bent on gaining their own rewards. Anyone who has ever had an experience with a cult will understand the dilemma this incident poses.

Still, even as I condemn myself for my naiveté, a tiny window of believability refuses to close completely. By some measure, one might say that I have done pretty well in Tinsel Town. I have overall sold or optioned ten of my books to Hollywood. Three have been made into movies, including a trilogy on PBS. Does that constitute "success" as predicted by this psychic? I'm not sure.

The book chosen through incantation by the psychic was never made. Perhaps someday…

Read the first chapter of Madeline's Miracles NOW!

Obama in Berlin

If Barack Obama loses his bid to become President of the United States, he can trace the beginning of his demise to his campaign's boneheaded idea to speak in Berlin. While on the surface it might seem to offer a resounding image of popularity and approval, the historical memory it provokes and the powerful and sinister images it recalls to living memory is an ominous reminder of events that continue to resonate among older Americans.

    

The spirited young Obama people must have huddled around the planning table blinded with the brilliance of the idea that their candidate's speaking in Berlin would trigger memories of President's Kennedy's stirring remark that gave hope to the beleaguered people of that surrounded city, "Ich bin ein Berliner," and would offer the double reminder of Ronald Reagan's "Tear down that wall" speech a few years later.

    

They must have reveled in the creativity of such a ploy that, they believed, would anoint Obama to be the heir apparent to such illustrious forebears. Unfortunately, the decision and its aftermath suggests that the vaunted brain power of Obama's inner circle is suffering from severe limitations of historical memory. The context of the Kennedy and Reagan eras was totally different. The battle then was between freedom and repression. We were in a very different time, in a war that literally had split Europe in half, and we were standing with allies against a tyrannical and nuclear armed state with serious designs on us and our European allies. Kennedy and Reagan were the cheerleaders for the good guys.
    

What Obama did, first in choosing to make his speech on the site of one of the principal monuments to German nationalism, and secondly in declaring that "This is our moment," against the background of a cheering and adoring crowd provoked memories of a German leader who through oratory and charisma stirred similar emotions and instilled the belief that he was the anointed one, the man of the moment whose magic would lead his people into a paradise of wealth and privilege over which they were destined to rule for a thousand years.

    

While such a comparison is odious in its implications and subjects a fine, idealistic, decent and eloquent man to be in sync with a monster, it suggests that his campaign strategists subjected him to a fatally flawed mission that forgot or overlooked or dismissed the power of historical memory. We know, of course, that the Germany of today is not the Germany of the thirties and forties, far from it. But long term memories are, as neurologists will attest, the last of the brain's complex functions to deteriorate.

What the Obama people failed to consider was that there are millions of people among the American voting public that are still haunted by memories of World War II when Americans considered Nazi Germany the most hated country on earth.

There were nearly 300,000 battle deaths in that war and nearly 700,000 wounded. Many of today's nearly forty million people over 65 lost grandfathers or fathers in that ghastly war or lived with wounded or disabled relatives. There are still more than three million of living American veteran survivors of that war and more than four million people 85 or over, voters all, who bear intimate memories of those times.

    

Consider too the millions who have seen Leni Riefenstahl's films depicting mesmerized sycophants of the Fuehrer, sieg heiling in robotic frenzy, and the millions born after who have studied those 13 years of German history. Then there was the Holocaust, an event that continues to resonate and stir bitter memories of horror and disgust.

    

Perhaps the youth oriented Obama people failed to understand the lingering influence of such imagery or took a calculated risk that such memories were swiftly fading into oblivion. That kind of misstep might be indicative of another mental hole in their ranks, the danger inherent in dismissing the aspirations and dignity of older Americans. I wonder if these elders are as hungry for "change" as our younger citizens. Considering the limited time horizons of older Americans, one can speculate if "change" resonates with a more ominous meaning within this considerable voting bloc. Be forewarned Obama strategists. Beware of using the "age card" against McCain.

    

The McCain people, earlier dismissed as clueless over-the-hill dolts, were quick to understand the real implications of the Berlin venue and the speech. Perhaps their retooling has borne fruit.

    

At this point let me stress that I am discussing process not partisan ideology. Campaigning is all about manipulation, and the two principal levers that strategists pull are based on hopes and fears. When we see these talking head strategists on television, they are characterizing the candidates they are paid to serve as products. They are immersed in the technology of campaigning based on statistics, polls, focus groups and image making. They are not advocates, but technicians. When Hillary Clinton talks about "playbooks," she is correct. Each side works from its own playbook, and one side inevitably is at war with the playbook of the other. Think football.

    

In the case of the Obama in Germany play, the opposition came up with what I believe is a brilliant counter strategy, creating matching commercials that got more exposure on the Internet and on televised news shows than their limited paid ad schedules. The first compared the crowds that came to hear Obama to the adoration of the mindless multitudes who worship on the altar of the celebrity culture, mostly the young, who the Obama people believe is their prime target audience. The second compared Obama, as his German oracular speech clearly spelled out in his "This is the moment" declaration, to the biblical prophet, Moses, but cleverly illustrated by the Hollywood actor Charlton Heston in the role. The implication is that Obama has received the call and is fated to lead us somewhere where magical change is supposed to happen.

    

The real message of those subtle and cunning ads was comparing Obama to you know who. It was not about Britney Spears or Paris Hilton or Moses, and anyone who thinks so is naïve and has not grasped the significance and subliminal effect of the powerful suggestion inserted into these two commercials. That message was designed to stoke fear and doubt, fear that Obama was insinuating to a giant crowd of mesmerized German onlookers that he was operating in the context of some self-generated messianic mission and doubt about the content of his words and his judgment in failing to assess the power of historical memory.

    

I cannot believe the very clever Obama pros and the candidate himself did not see that one coming. In one swoop it cast doubt upon Obama's content and eloquence and suggested a comparison to a man who created one of the greatest bloodbaths in human history and who used words and eloquence as his principal weapons of mass persuasion.

    

The reaction to it telescoped the message that the McCain people are no longer as lackadaisical and out of touch as they have been portrayed.

    

Were the ads negative? Depends on whose ox is being gored. It was certainly a putdown of deliberate Obama campaign manipulation. Wasn't the Berlin speech an attempt to trash the Bush legacy and spread manure all over the McCain candidacy? It was staged to illustrate the alleged low esteem that some Europeans have for the present American administration and by inference John McCain. Good in theory. Bad venue. Clueless speech.

    

These campaigns are not playing tiddlywinks. They are engaged in combat in a war for the greatest democratic prize of all, the Presidency of the United States. All their debates, their utterances, their commercials, are a form of combat, and they have enlisted armies of officers and foot soldiers to win their war. If you have any doubts, just plug into the blogosphere and survey the hostility and anger in the war of words that motivates the followers of both candidates and what is sure to see slashing counterpunches to this blog. I stand prepared. It's an old cliché to shoot the messenger.

    

Even in the fast moving battleground of a contentious presidential campaign, the McCain people will surely wield its weapon again and again to reinforce the blunder of Obama in Berlin. What does one remember of the Goldwater campaign if not the Lyndon Johnson "Daisy H bomb commercial," which you can find on YouTube, or go all the way back to the Dewey campaign and the image that characterized him as the "little man on the top of the wedding cake?" I could go on and on. You see, historical memory matters and political campaigns are often won and lost on imagery that can act like a vampire sucking the blood out of an unwitting candidate.

Expect both campaigns to make errors of judgment as they progress. The McCain people have already made their fair share of dumb moves, but their counter to the Berlin speech indicates that there are some very shrewd and canny people who have just come aboard the Straight Talk Express.

    

This is not to say that the Obama braintrust has lost its way. There are many talented and hard eyed professionals in the upper ranks of the campaign. And their candidate is certainly attractive, astute and, despite disclaimers, calculating and politically combative.

But they had better not start believing their own publicity and not let the generational divide blind them to the reality of the folks who dine on early bird dinners, wear hearing aids and spectacles, and know that George Patton wore pearl handled pistols, can remember cars like the Nash and the Hudson, that Clark Gable was once the king of Hollywood and that the Hula Hoop once swiveled the hips of a nation. However haltingly, these folks are ambulatory enough to vote, even in those new fangled voting machines.

Warren Adler is the author of 30 novels, including The War of the Roses and his latest, Funny Boys. Read more of his blogs at The Writer's Life. 

The Loaded Query

Oblique and often innocent questions can reveal character traits that I have found useful in my fiction. I ask the following question often since it reveals the level of a person’s expectations.

What is your number?

This means what is your comfort zone in terms of your net worth. I have asked this question of people of all economic categories from the very poor to the super rich. Obviously those with the least net worth answer that their level of satisfaction would be a million dollars in liquid assets.

As we ride up the scale, most people think five million is more than adequate. Sophisticated and well-off people who have reached the five to ten million mark will set their comfort zone between fifteen and twenty million.

A large category places the comfort level at 25 million, but this answer comes from people who have attained that figure. Of course, for many people to whom I have posed this question, their answer has been “The sky’s the limit.”

Usually they follow this up by saying that extreme wealth is more a report card of achievement than a comfort zone. Some tell me that acquiring wealth is merely a game or that they enjoy the process of giving their money away, which they call “giving back.”

To many the process of “giving back” gives them a high from being honored and butt kissed by the recipients of their largesse. They never will admit this. Nor will they ever admit that having extreme wealth gives them perks and power and the ability to buy bigger and better toys.

I have not found any difference in their level of happiness or self-worth. Indeed, many of my super wealthy friends and acquaintances have just as many psychological problems as those who have a lot less.

I have also found less envy of the super rich by the less than rich, although the very poor are naturally angry with their circumstances and vocal about the inequality.

What do you think?

Warren Adler is the author of 30 novels, including The War of the Roses and his latest, Funny Boys.