Wordcruncher

The Image Game

For non-sports fans, please bear with me through this. Forgive me for sounding patronizing, but you, perhaps more substantially than most, could benefit from understanding a certain phenomenon in American life that is critical to many people’s worldview. In pursuit of this, I am not making a gratuitous sports analogy; rather, I am illustrating a prism through which many rank-and-file, red-state Republicans filter their view of politics.

I will dare to venture a guess that most red-state males are football fans – much more so than NASCAR fans. Football in the South and Midwest is a kind of rite of passage for males. It is presumed to create the Ideal American Man: tough, strong, disciplined, determined. Only watching his son play could warm the heart of a red-state Dad more than watching his daughter date a football player. It’s an instant resume for life.

It is what the draft once meant to red-state Dads (send ‘em to the military, that’ll straighten ‘em out). And indeed, it’d be no coincidence that high numbers of men in the military played football. Most, but not all, of the friends I can recall joining the military had played football (I grew up and reside in a red state).

And if football becomes a standard right of passage for red-state males, it stands to follow that this right of passage is preparing the male to succeed in larger struggles in courtrooms, on executive boards, at war, in politics – and in the very struggle of good vs. evil. In other words, football prepares men to succeed in larger games that will require the same skills and leadership lessons developed in football. Larger games played like football.

I don’t see indications that blue-state urbanites understand this. Democrats in general, I believe, take politics much more literally than Republicans, failing to realize how the Republicans are playing defense, creating turnovers, advancing their field position and driving for touchdowns.

This is the way Republicans control the tempo of politics.

Allow me to interpose a more specific analogy into my argument. In the South, the kind of football to consider is the poke-you-in-the-eye college football of the pre-integration period variety. In those days, college football coaches wielded political power through (if nothing else) sheer community influence. Many were encouraged to run for office after retiring. Many were closely affiliated with state government officials, both fair and corrupt.

As a whole, southern head college football coaches were untouchable. Slipping players money under the table was not only encouraged, it was considered the cost of doing business. This kind of wink-wink rule breaking became a symbol of virtue. Coaches did whatever they could to advance the cause. And as long as the refs don’t catch you, it ain’t cheating.

Even if they do, it’s considered a minor setback. In football, if a player intentionally hurts the opposition’s star player, causing him to miss a few plays, the offending player gets a 15-yard penalty, but he benefited the team and thus becomes a de facto hero.

Even though the attack was unfair. Even if it was, to us, flagrantly brutal and personal.

The Republicans understand this, and so one of the images they would use to cast Mr. Bush is that of a football coach (and don’t forget, House Speaker Denny Hastert was also a coach). From years of covering high school sports, I have a pretty good ear for recognizing coachspeak, and there’s plenty of coded coachspeak in Mr. Bush’s rhetoric.

His campaign speeches had the ring of locker-room speeches. They didn’t need Democrats or “neutral” ralliers present; these were pep-rally speeches for players and coaches only, not an opportunity to “see the president” or make one’s voice heard.

When he spoke of questioning his generals before the invasion of Iraq, he mentioned that he looked in their eyes and asked if they had the right plan. Exactly what a head football coach would be expected to do; call a timeout, ask the assistant coaches for play suggestions, then as the time-out expired, look his coaches in the eye and make the call. I’ve heard many a coach describe this scenario after a tight game.

The “steady leadership” and Iraq issue didn’t hurt the president as much as we Democrats thought it would. That’s partly because a coach who doesn’t stick to his game plan (you make the players adapt to it), especially late in the game, will be seen as indecisive and quickly terminated. If, for example, your team is designed to run the ball and play defense, you never stop running and playing defense. Period.

How do we neutralize or counter this image? In the beginning of the Democratic primaries, I supported Gen. Wesley Clark in part because I thought he fit that rock-jawed, general/coach archetype.

For a while during the presidential campaign, Sen. Kerry would be photographed tossing a football. While it hardly meant anything substantive, I would have liked to see more of that. It may have connected symbolically with some red-staters, however insignificantly. And it may have helped us to create a quarterback archetype that could have advanced the cause in the red states without compromising our message and ideas.