President in Shining Armor
29th October 2012
Ross Douthat examines the creepy Obama regime.
To today’s Obama supporters, these forays — like the campaign’s broader “war on women” framing, and its recent attempts to make the election a referendum on abortion in cases of rape — just emphasize that the president is on the side of female empowerment, sexual, professional and otherwise.
But given the way Obama’s once-enormous edge among female voters has shrunk in many polls, tomorrow’s feminists may look back on his campaign’s pitch to women and see a different theme emerge: a weirdly paternalistic form of social liberalism, in which women are forever single girls and the president is their father, lover, fiancé and paladin all rolled into one. (Our future dissertation author may note with bemusement, for instance, that Dunham’s ad mirrors a similar advertisement cut for … Vladimir Putin.)
October 29th, 2012 at 14:10
*shrug* No more unusual than the tent revival flavor of Romney’s campaign, with Mitt as the Christ figure:
“Return to the Faith of Our Fathers”
“Repent of your Evil Liberal Ways and be Saved”
“I am the Way, the Truth, and the Job Creator”
Sometimes I wonder if it’s a political rally or a Chautauqua meeting.