Denver, Ten Minutes from Now – Even before Sen. Barack Obama makes his triumphal acceptance speech, deep beneath the convention chamber it’s champagne and high-fives for employees of S&C, the secretive marketing gurus who are advising both Democratic and Republican campaigns.
Schmendrickson & Clott are a privately owned, multinational, umpteen-billion-dollar marketing firm. Started a generation ago when they pioneered New Coke, they went on to design packaging that cannot be opened without power tools, bagels that harden almost instantly to 9.5 on the MOH scale (slightly harder than carborundum), yogurt containing saturated animal fats, and tomatoes that don’t taste as good as they did when we were kids.
“They’re eating it up,” said a handsome woman in a lab coat, letting me peek through the brass periscope disguised, up on the convention floor, as a defibrillator. Delegates wore the same idiotic, blissed-out gazes they wear every four years.
“Is it drugged organic food?” I asked and she shot me a hostile look. I was told in no uncertain terms that it was strategic repositioning, in other words Sen. Joe Biden, the running mate quietly selected by the marketing wizards.
“People love Obama for his gentlemanly, soft-spoken self-restraint. Biden, oratorically, is a pit viper on amphetamines. Obama won’t even bad-mouth his opponents for despicable tactics, while Biden produced some of the most hateful lies in recent American politics, especially against Supreme Court nominees Robert Bork and Clarence Thomas. So, together they bring balance to the campaign,” she explained.
“Obama is new to Washington and promises to jettison the mistakes of the past. Biden, in the Senate since the Upper Paleolithic Era, authored most of those mistakes himself. Together, they bring more balance.”
“Obama is young and loved for it, while his Republican opponent is old and decrepit,” she said. “So, Biden brings that geriatric sense that narrows the difference between Republican and Democratic tickets.”
“Then, McCain is for more wars, Obama for fewer ones. That distinction needed blurring and Biden has been for and against everything. He was against the first Gulf War until he decided he was for it, and he was for the second Gulf War until now when he is against it.
“He is for everything Israel wants except an immediate nuclear attack on Iran and a century of cut-throat enmity between America and the Muslim world, which is all that Israel really wants.
“Biden wants America involved in Darfur, and nobody else wants that, even guys running for sheriff. So, Obama is for something new, while Biden stands for absolutely everything else all at once. More balance,” she added.
“They complement one another in religion too,” she said. “Obama goes to church so seldom that he never noticed that his preacher is a bigot. Biden claims to be a Catholic but supports abortion and 50 million foeticides since Roe v. Wade.
“So, the one who isn’t much of a Protestant may appeal to Catholics, while the one who isn’t much of a Catholic may appeal to Protestants. And together, they have the agnostic vote sewn up, except for agnostics who want tax cuts. Clever, huh?”
“Isn’t this a little counterintuitive?” I asked hesitantly.
“You obviously have no advanced background in statistical analysis,” she sneered correctly. “Where Obama scores plus one, Biden corrects it with minus one, and vice versa.”
“Doesn’t that equal a big zero?” I asked.
She scowled momentarily, and then brightened. “Look,” she replied. “Do you want to see our marketing plan for McCain? Or, we can try our new uncooked food line for McDonald’s, called Chicken McSushi.”
Examiner contributor S. J. Masty, a former Washington speechwriter, is an international communication consultant based in London.
