Wasted space, wasted advice

As I once heard a teacherly caller to right-wing talk-radio say, How stupid do they think we is?

They, in this case, being Ross Douthat and Peter Beinart, both men I respect enormously, but, again, in this case, both are merely stirring a quiet pot.

Here's Douthat, in "Playing the Mormon Card":

Hence the dilemma for the Obama White House. The president is entering a general election campaign in which his best chance of victory is to brand the Republican nominee as dangerously outside the mainstream, and in a sense Romney’s Mormon faith offers an ideal path to doing just that.... But it will be difficult for the White House to exploit [suspicions of Romney's Mormonism] directly.

And here's the tease for Beinart's piece in the Daily Beast, although Beinart judiciously focuses in his text on Democrats, and not specifically the Obama campaign:

There are votes in anti-Mormonism, but the Obama campaign must resist any temptation to play on it.

I find these overt admonitions offensive. Of course the Obama campaign should resist exploiting religious bigotry; but what's really offensive in these two pieces is the implication that that radiant superfluity has not yet completely dawned on Team Obama.

One suspects that Douthat and Beinart see themselves here as invaluable outside advisers, just as they might alternatively advise Romney's circular collection of loaded-for-bear amateurs, or at one time might have advised the stumblebum Santorum camp, or perhaps offered counsel to Gingrich's now-disbanding Schutzstaffel.

But this would be a poor assumption on the advisers' part: for whatever occurs to Douthat and Beinart on an issue as profoundly obvious as "don't play the bigotry game," occurred to Barack Obama & Crew months ago.

Comments

[caribbeanobserver]

I keep saying these so-called 'press' guys just don't know what to think,write,and say next. They keep churning out these pathetic pieces,exposing themselves for the hacks that they are. One sure and good thing about the Obama presidency 'it has surely separated the men from the boys, and earmarked the quacks and hacks!'

[You Don't Say]

Not to mention that saying Obama needs to not engage in it implies he and his team are struggling to resist it.

[Beauzeaux]

Yeah, that's exactly what happened. The Obama people just discovered that Romney is Mormon! OMG! They all start jumping up and down and making Mormon jokes until someone (Douthat or Beinart) wisely says "Simmer down! You know you can't speculate about a man's religion...unless it's a Muslimy marxist blackety black guy from Kenya..."
Suitably chastised, the Obama team subsides in shame.
The End.