Proud ignorance

The GOP and the McCain campaign fundraising the past week has been an offer of a Barack Obama tire pressure gauge. They have mocked his statement that we can save energy by keeping the tires on our cars properly inflated, alleging that that is the totality of his energy plan.

Now True Majority is doing fundraising making use of the video below, in which Obama responded to the GOP gimmick. A few things strike me about what Obama said at this rally. First, he calls their message a lie -- no euphemisms, they're lying and they know it. Second, he argues that their gimmick amounts to them being proud of their ignorance. He never makes a link to the Bush Administration, but it echoes a long-standing, repeated complaint about the way the country has been governed the last 7+ years: the people making decisions are more concerned about scoring political points than with finding the facts about what is going on and what is needed to improve things. Finally, he uses humor to make what could have been turned into another 'elitist' complaint. His underlying point in this video is that the McCain campaign is trivializing our politics, using ginned up issues and gimmicks and lies to try to distract voters from facts and from finding solutions to real problems.

The challenge for his campaign will be getting that message disseminated as widely as the silliness.