The Weekly Screed (#600)

Notobama for President
by David Benjamin

BROOKLYN — The campaign is entering its home stretch with only one clearly defined candidate. President Obama, after almost four years, is familiar to most Americans. We know, more or less, what we think of him, and what to expect of him.

He has an opponent, however, whom we still seem to be viewing through the wrong end of a smudgy telescope. After six years of chronic campaigning, he remains a sort of composite Republican, seemingly assembled by a team of right-wing cosmetic surgeons who inadvertently left a few vital organs in the kidney basin. In the end Mitt Romney is a whole that doesn’t quite equal the sum of his parts, and he poses an unconvincing choice for even the most rabid of Republicans.

Fortunately, there’s a third party in this race, which is not so much a person as a feeling. Rage, which could still tip the election, was well-expressed the other day in a Washington Post piece by Joel Achenbach. He quoted Ray Morrison, a retired steelworker from Steubenville: “If they had Idi Amin, Saddam Hussein and Barack Obama running, Barack Obama would be my last pick. If you want to know the true story about Obama, you have to watch Fox [News] a little bit. I hate him.”

Like Ray, the Romney “supporters” who really care about the election don’t care about Mitt. They care, fiercely, about Obama. They hate him — mainly for his tan — but they also hate his uppitiness, his Muslimicity, his Kenyanism, his simian ears and that snotty bitch of a wife who doesn’t know her place. And then there’s his fake heritage at Harvard, where he never went to class, but all the bleeding-heart professors patted him on the Afro and said, “You go, Sambo! Get out there and make us proud.”

Obama-haters have various explanations for how they feel, but a hatred this visceral can only be rooted in the toxic soil of turf, tribalism, unreason and vendetta. They also detested Bill Clinton, but that was just warm-up. Obama-hate is 1000 degrees hotter.

Hating presidents is hardly uncommon. I think I hated LBJ during the Vietnam War, before eventually forgiving him. George W. Bush inspired similar animus among a lot of people, especially after he launched his personal war in Iraq. Many votes against Dubya in ’04 were motivated more by Bush-hate than love for John Kerry. But given a more lovable opponent, Kerry still would have been credible. He passed the “look test.” You didn’t have to be a yellow-dog Democrat to picture him as President.

Romney however, is a unique phenomenon for either party. Neither the look test nor the yellow-dog standard applies. Picturing him as President is embarrassing. And to get even a yellow-dog Republican to love him, you’d have to wrap him in bacon.

Republicans have begun to forsake the fiction that Mitt deserves a chance on his merits. But when you think about it, Mitt’s meritlessness is his secret weapon. Merit wouldn’t make him a better opponent, nor does his dearth of any discernible qualifications disqualify him — because it doesn’t matter who he is.

What’s important is who he isn’t.

The coded message that inoculates Romney from instinctive rejection by every voter not in his immediate family is that he isn’t Obama. You can tell just by looking at him. “I’m not,” says Mitt implicitly with every ham-fisted, whitebread utterance, “the guy you hate with all your heart. I’m just the guy you can’t stand.”

Alas, Romney has muddied this awesome, winning message. Right now, his campaign is like looking at a 3-D image without the funny glasses. There seem to be two of everything, both fuzzy and off-register. The most eye-catching element in the picture is the Not Obama part. The Mitt part keeps fading in and out, cluttering the view.

For Romney to regain his footing, he has to get out of the picture. To become the complete, quintessential, 110-percent Not Obama, he must self-erase.

In yesterday’s news was a photo of Arizona governor Jan Brewer at the Republican convention, her mouth agape as she shrieked like a Shakespearean shrew, crimson with anger and spewing contempt for the president. Behind her were signs bearing a four-letter word. Sadly, this word was “Mitt,” a mildly ridiculous synonym for “baseball glove.” The right word to caption Jan Brewer in full war-cry was “HATE.”

Every sign, rather than “Mitt” or “Romney/Ryan” should’ve carried that one great unifying expletive or, if not that, then “Rage!” or “Not Obama!” or “NEVER Obama!” Even better, no words at all: just a nice unsubtle big-eared, Ubangi-lipped cartoon darkie inside a red circle with a red bar across his face.

Hate will work wonders, if left to fester. My advice to Mitt: Listen to Ray. He’ll be voting against Obama, but he doesn’t care who you are. You could be anybody. You could be a yellow dog, or a lawn deer. None of your PACs, superPacs or rich donors actually give a rosy rat’s ass who you are or what you have to say (if you had something to say). Most of them still wish they had Santorum or Gingrich or the fishwife from Minnesota. They didn’t switch to you because they like you. They don’t like you. You’re not likable, Mitt. They’re only on your side because you’re the Notobama.

From this day, your every rally should be strangely anonymous, your name barely mentioned — better yet, forgotten. Better yet, no rallies. No speeches. If you were to disappear entirely from America for a while, you’d be the ideal Notobama. No more confusion with some shnook named Mitt, because there would no Mitt for comparison.

Everything about you, in your supreme not-thereness would remind voters how thoroughly and adorably Notobama you are. The hating voters’ hate would be undiluted by diversion, discussion, debate or explanation. Your every non-appearance would re-focus Obama-haters on the despicable object of their raging hatred.

Do yourself a favor, Mitt. Trust hate. Hate is your best hope, and Barack Obama is your ironic co-pilot.

Stop selling. Stop lying, smiling, waving, emoting, pretending, trying to sing. Quit campaigning. Above all, stop being Mitt. Stop being anything. Nobody wants you to be anything. They never did.

They only want you to be what you’re not.