Rarely has there been a more ridiculous moment in American politics than the one that began on Tuesday when conservative blogger Jim Treacher dug into Barack Obama’s 1995 memoir and made puckish note of a passage in which Obama alludes to having eaten dog meat as a child in Indonesia.
For 36 hours, the chattering classes chattered of little else. The global Borscht Belt that has now taken up residence on Twitter (what is a Tweet, after all, but a one-liner?) generated literally tens of thousands of punchlines, quips, teases and simple vulgarities taking off from the Obama-eats-dog story.
This sort of moment often provokes explosions of high-minded dudgeon — usually involving TV panel discussions in which chin-scratching pundits express deep regret that we aren’t talking about “real issues.”
But, as it happens, in talking about the dog story, we are talking about a real issue. The issue is how we talk about candidates and their candidacies.
Treacher was engaging in a logical process called reductio ad absurdum — taking an argument so far it becomes an absurdity. The Obama-dog story was the “reductio” of a different story, one about which liberals and the Obama campaign have been in a state of glee for months.
In case you haven’t heard: In 1983, Mitt Romney and his family went on vacation. Romney determined that having five sons, two parents and lots of luggage in one car was enough, and decided to strap a dog carrier on the roof with the family Irish Setter, Seamus, housed inside. The plan went awry when Seamus relieved himself and Romney had to hose down the car at a truck stop.
We know about the story because Romney’s sons told it of him fondly — making him a combination of clueless dad and hyperplanner. But to those who believe Romney to be a heartless Social Darwinist, the story is an indication of his blithe cruelty toward a defenseless animal.
For the last few months, it has come up constantly, driven in part by the obsessive focus of Gail Collins of The New York Times. By blogger Matt Aldredge’s count, Collins has mentioned the Seamus story 55 times in the past five years in the paper and on TV. Yes, fifty-five.
She should get out more.
The talk became so pervasive among political types that the Seamus story could be alluded to with the barest of hints. Chief Obama strategist David Axelrod put up a photo of the president with his dog Bo on Twitter in January and attached the comment: “How loving owners transport their dogs.”
This was not a thoughtless bit of nyah-nyahing, it turns out. “They’re obsessed with the dog thing,” Chris Hayes said on his Saturday morning MSNBC show. “I have heard, in focus groups, the dog story totally tanks Mitt Romney’s approval rating.”
Could be. People love dogs, and it sounds like Romney did something thoughtless with his. The logic of making Romney’s treatment of Seamus in 1983 a campaign issue in 2012 is this: If he treats his dog this way, imagine how he’ll treat you.
And that’s where Treacher’s manufactured story comes in.
The tone of Obama’s sentence from “Dreams from My Father” is one of nonjudgmental, multicultural, oh-look-how-colorful-my-life-has-been pride. He was “introduced to dog meat (tough), snake meat (tougher), and roasted grasshopper (crunchy)” by his stepfather, Lolo, he wrote.
The message of Treacher and everybody who followed him was this: You want to make a political issue out of a decades-old dog story? Fine, then. Here’s one that makes your guy look really weird. How do you like dog stories now?
There will always be a dog story. Treacher’s amazing stunt indicates that, in part due to the Internet-driven democratization of opposition research, there will always be a counter-dog story, too.
So maybe candidates and their operatives really should focus on the issues, because that’s actually where they truly differ and where their differences actually matter.