The Celebrity Label on Obama

[humder]

 What qualifications does a politician need to be labelled a celebrity? A certain level of charisma or what? This McCain line of attack is not based on substance but is just image making of course.  But what are they trying to say? That Obama's supporters are too enthusiastic? What makes a politician a celebrity?

[Lunar]

It is [was?] a simple strike back at the enthusiasm gap.  Classic Karl Rove [any many others] political strategy is to turn your opponent's strength into a weakness.  Make those who love Obama into cultists and fanboys instead of rational pragmatists.

I don't know how else to explain it.  American political attack ads aren't EVER logical.

[classical liberal]

American political attack ads aren't EVER logical.

As well as is should be.  Politics is not logical; if it was then everyone would be either libertarian (i.e. individualist) or populist (i.e. collectivist).  I take the absence of a major political party whose platform is coherently pro-government or anti-government to be prima facie empirical evidence of the dominance of cognitive dissonance in political discourse.