BLITZER’S BLOG: It’s going to get nasty!

By Wolf Blitzer, CNN
(CNN) – If you think it’s been a rough ride for the Republican candidates during this current campaign season, just wait. This will be seen as child’s play once the general election campaign begins.

I’ve said this before but I’ll say it again: the war of words between President Obama and his campaign supporters versus the eventual Republican nominee and his supporters will be fierce.

Even though there has already been a lot of talking and stuff happening during this political campaign, you won’t believe how much additional talking and arguing there will be as it continues. I have said in the past that Barack Obama and the person running against him will say things at and about each other, and I am saying it again. Things will be said.

If you think Wolf Blitzer’s blog post about the intensity of this campaign is finished, just wait. He quotes three lines from last night’s debate, then writes four more one-sentence paragraphs:

And that’s just for starters. Just wait for what’s coming.

By the way, the president and his supporters will not be shy in fighting back.

And like the Republicans, they will have hundreds of millions of dollars to finance attack ads.

Get ready for a brutal political season.

I am, Wolf! I am!

THIS JUST IN TO THE SITUATION ROOM: Every other political blogger has retired from political blogging to curate Pinterests about sandwiches instead, because Wolf Blitzer just made our jobs redundant.

The only remaining question is whether Wolf Blitzer is a better blogger than his Fox counterpoint in incisive online commentary, Greta Van Susteren. As long as CNN insists on “copy editing” Blitzer, we may never know for sure.

But progressives have no monopoly on political art. Last week, a realist painter from Utah, Jon McNaughton, offered a different take on Obama. A veteran of landscapes and religious tableaux, McNaughton caught the blogosphere’s attention when his 2010 work “The Forgotten Man” showed up on Rachel Maddow’s blog, as an entry in a caption contest. The painting depicts President Obama standing, arms crossed, on top of the Constitution, while a distraught James Madison, backed by a legion of fellow presidents, pleads for him to stop. To Obama’s right, a blond-haired, jut-jawed giant — the titular Forgotten Man — sits slumped over on a park bench. In the background, the White House stands, its flag at half mast, beneath menacing storm clouds (which McNaughton, writing on his website, says represent the federal deficit). A YouTube trailer that McNaughton did after he completed the painting now has 3.5 million hits. Salon caught up with McNaughton by phone at the McNaughton Fine Art Gallery in Provo, Utah.

Your painting has struck a nerve. How are sales?

Oh, they’ve just gone through the ceiling. We’ve probably had a 100-fold increase. Our website crashed, so I’ve been taking orders over the phone.

You used to paint mostly landscapes, then your art took a political turn. Why?

I started doing political paintings in 2008. The reaction was huge. When I painted a landscape painting, it was like dropping a pebble in a pond. When I started doing these political paintings, it was like throwing a stick of dynamite.

On your website, you say you’re not partisan, but there’s Obama trampling on the Constitution, and you have Franklin Roosevelt and Bill Clinton clapping in the background…

I also have George W. Bush standing behind Obama, grouped with them. It’s more about who’s for big government, not who’s a Democrat or Republican. They’re also all kind of looking off in the distance, instead of at the Forgotten Man. I did that to imply they have their own vision of what they want America to become.

I notice Reagan isn’t over in that group. But didn’t the debt increase a couple trillion on his watch?

I’m not saying he’s innocent. As I note on my website, he says the debt he accrued was the biggest disappointment of his presidency.

I’ve seen your website. Your work is exceptionally well-annotated. [McNaughton's site has an interactive feature for the larger painting, where you can scroll your mouse across the paintings and little explanations and notes on who everyone is will pop up.] Does explaining art rob it of its mystery?

I want people to understand exactly what I mean by it. Some people will just take it at face value, but those who dig a little deeper will find all these layers of meaning, of metaphor.

And the metaphor in the Forgotten Man?

The Forgotten Man is the the average American — every man, woman and child — who may not have the same opportunities in the future because of what our presidents have done, which strays from the original intent of the Constitution.

And Obama?

Obama standing on the Constitution represents his taking action against what the Constitution stands for, which, to my mind, is limited government. I wasn’t trying to make fun of Obama I tried to paint him in a very serious manner. He understands the Constitution and he knows exactly what he’s doing.

I mean, he was a constitutional law professor.

And that’s the irony. [laughs]

Several of your paintings, like “One Nation Under God” [in which Jesus holds aloft the Constitution, while, at his feel, various American archetypes sit in two groups, Last Judgment-style -- a Marine, a schoolteacher, a farmer and a minister on the left, a news reporter, a professor, a politician, a lawyer and a weeping Supreme Court Justice on the right] draw a strong link between religion and politics. How does that square constitutionally?

I don’t have an issue with separation of church and state. I just believe the Constitution is divinely inspired and our Founders were inspired by God.

The Forgotten Man is very handsome. Who’s the model?

[Laughs] I’ve got a close friend I use. I’m not ready to reveal him yet.

He’s got that look of abject despair down pat, with those hunched shoulders …

Some people make issue of the fact that it’s a white guy sitting on the bench, like it’s somehow racial. I was talking with an African-American man and he asked why I didn’t make him black or something else. And I said, “Well, if I made him black, then certainly the issue of the painting would have been racial.” If I had made him Latino, then it would have been about illegal immigration. And if I’d made him a woman, imagine what that would have been.

The college student in “One Nation Under God” is black.

Yeah, in that bottom left-hand corner, that’s the one part I tried to show the actual percentages of different ethnicities in America. I’ve got a black man, a Latino, an Asian. I kind of like the idea of having a black college student, holding that particular book.

What is it?

It’s called “The Five Year Leap” [by the anti-Communist author Cleon Skousen]. It explains that our Constitution was divinely inspired.

That professor clutching “The Origin of Species” looks a lot like Jonathan Franzen.

Who’s that? Is he an actor?

He’s a writer. He wrote that book “Freedom.”

People say that Latino schoolteacher looks like Sarah Palin.

Should art be political?

If it’s an artist’s individual expression, sure, why not? I’ve had people accuse me of making propaganda. It’s a nice word to throw out there. It brings to mind posters from Nazi Germany and Chairman Mao and stuff of that nature. But those were commissioned by a state. I’m just an American citizen expressing his own views under the First Amendment. I’m not doing this for anyone but myself.

Speaking of world leaders, in “Wake Up, America” [a sequel to "The Forgotten Man," in which a beaming Obama, showered with money, addresses a group of supporters, unaware that they are being wrapped in chains; the Forgotten Man is shown taking a hacksaw to the chains] you’ve got a whole row of them watching Obama, looking pretty happy. Kim Jong Il, Putin, Ahmadinejad, King Abdullah, Hu Jintao — and is that Ben Bernanke and Tim Geithner? How’d they get in there?

Well, you know, Bernanke is the Federal Reserve chairman, which manipulates the dollar, which affects the inflation rate and the national debt. I agree with a number of Ron Paul’s critiques.

On your blog you say you’re a Ron Paul man.

No, I wrote that I like Ron Paul. There are things I like about all of the candidates and things I don’t like. Ron Paul is the one who I probably identify with the most because he’s a constitutionalist.

Who buys your paintings?

Conservatives. I’ve noticed a change in the art market the last few years. You used to paint pictures for people to decorate their homes with; now people want art that speaks to what they truly believe. They don’t care whether it matches their couch.

I have this idea that conservatives tend to eschew most art because they consider the art world the providence of elites.

Well, look at the NEA and how they’ve promoted out-on-the-fringe modern art and even some contemporary art — Mapplethorpe, for example — that’s very offensive to Christians. That kind of thing has created this resentment among conservatives that the art elite is out of touch with the average person. I think there’s room for all kinds of art — modern, contemporary, traditional. Maybe I have a different perspective than most conservatives because I’m an artist, but you wouldn’t see that in the music industry. They accept everybody. It’d be like someone who does jazz music walking up to a country music artist and being like, “You don’t do real art.”

Do you feel locked out from that establishment?

I don’t really care. But when I was an art student I was kind of frustrated because I was trying to get help as a traditional artist and I wasn’t finding it. A lot of my classmates were doing contemporary art, as were my instructors. I was kind of rebellious. I wanted to do my own thing and it was frowned upon because it was representational. Fifty years ago, it was the rebels who were doing modern art.

What are you painting now?

The title is “One Nation Under Socialism.” It’s a political one.

This is wrong. Flip-flopping is not a vice but a virtue. It embodies the very genius of the American political system. It helps explain how America could evolve from a backwater colony to a global superpower and why it is highly unlikely that a successful third party will emerge.

To see why too much principle makes bad politics we must look at a principle of physics – yes, physics. Called the constructal law, it holds that all design in nature – picture the tree-like shape of river basins, lightning bolts and our circulatory system – emerges to facilitate the flow of currents (in these examples of water, electricity and blood).

Politics is also a flow system with multiple currents, including ideas, infrastructure, money and supporters. As river basins move water through a network of rivulets, brooks, streams and rivers like the Mississippi, political currents flow through actual channels.  Politics, after all, is another name for the movement of ideas and other currents from here to there. All require paths to move. All must overcome various forms of resistance that dot the landscape, whether it’s hard ground or opposing parties.

National politics, then, is a tapestry of flows that sweep the land, leading to and coming from a decision-making point, in Washington, D.C. Just like the Mississippi River basin, the political flow has a tree-shaped configuration: The country is the tree canopy, and the trunk is rooted in the capital.

This explains why it is so hard for third parties to take root. Channels need time, work and resources to form. Rome was not built in a day, and neither was the Nile. Over time, these channels become entrenched, as they improve their capacity to move more current more easily.

The Democratic Party (founded in the 1790s) and the Republican Party (founded in 1854) have had a long time to generate good designs. Short of a cataclysmic event that reshapes the political landscape, such as the wrenching divide over slavery that gave birth to the Republicans, it is extremely difficult for upstarts to compete with these entrenched parties.

But this is only part of the story. Flip-flopping covers much of the rest. Or, to put it in physics term, the genius of our two-party system is its freedom to change. Just as river basins configure and reconfigure themselves to flow more easily, our major parties adapt to the evolving needs and desires of the American people.

No one would confuse the Democratic Party led by Thomas Jefferson, with its embrace of slavery and celebration of the yeoman farmer, with the party led by Barack Obama. Republicans extol Lincoln and Teddy Roosevelt as iconic figures, but few of today’s GOP faithful would support their push for activist government.

The two parties have persisted because they have offered new ideas when the older ones no longer flowed.

Similarly, a key to Romney and Obama’s success is their ability to adapt their message to a changing electorate, without appearing to lack all integrity. Take healthcare, where both men are being accused of flip-flopping. In reality, they reconfigured their views to overcome resistance that threatened to block the flow of their ideas. Both men vowed to reform healthcare when they took office – Romney as governor of Massachusetts, Obama as president. Romney, as leader of one of the most progressive states in the country, offered a plan that he felt would improve the delivery of care and move through his legislature. (He’s also noted that many of the bills he signed and the judges he appointed reflected the state’s political realities.)

Obama, recognizing that he was no longer addressing Hyde Park liberals, ditched the single-payer concept he had long endorsed in favor of a plan that could overcome the resistance for a House filled with antagonistic Republicans and Blue Dog Democrats. This is why both men describe their plans as imperfect, and as the best they could have hoped to accomplish.

Romney, adapting to a different electorate as he runs for president, is reconfiguring his plan once more.

One could offer a similar analysis for most every politician on a host of issues. Practically speaking, those who accuse politicians of flip-flopping focus on the idea they want to flow but ignore the resistance it must overcome.Compromise and tradeoff are two other names for the process of finding ways to change the design to maintain flow when ideas encounter bottlenecks and resistance. This is the physics of politics. So the next time folks accuse your favorite candidate of flip-flopping, thank them for the compliment. The ability to change is a virtue.

Bosch actually mentions my recent piece on “the prudes of the GOP” by way of saying that, “clearly, Christie isn’t in that camp” — but I’m not so sure that prudery is at odds with a demeaning sex joke. In fact, I see it as an essential element of prudery, which casts sex as a dirty and shameful act (except under a very rigorously policed – and, quite frankly, rare — set of circumstances. I don’t know what Christie actually intended by his remark, but if it was to say, “Suck it, sweetheart,” I wouldn’t be in the least bit surprised. It would be yet another prime example of right-wing conservatives viewing sex itself as a “gotcha.”

You wouldn’t want to play a drinking game pegged to the outright lies and distortions told at the event, hosted by Citizens United and Mike Huckabee, whose documentary “The Gift of Life” also premiered. It was attended by Newt Gingrich, Rick Perry, Michele Bachmann and Rick Santorum. (Mitt Romney and Ron Paul had other commitments.) It was the stuff of stomach-pumping. President Obama notoriously supported Kathleen Sebelius’ decision to overrule the FDA and keep Plan B away from most teenagers, but Bachmann made it sound like Obama wanted to give your tween daughter “the morning-after abortion” pill anyway. How’s that for compromise and reason? (Since it may need to be said again, emergency contraception doesn’t end a pregnancy. It prevents ovulation.) Nearly everyone made repeated references to federally funded abortions, which under the Hyde Amendment remain practically nonexistent. And Bachmann made her favorite baseless claim, that “repealing Obamacare” is a pro-life cause, despite the fact that the Affordable Care Act didn’t change the status quo on abortion coverage, much to pro-choicers’ disappointment.

Throughout the evening, it was clear that even though it feels like reproductive rights are under assault from every angle, anti-choicers still feel like they’re losing and that no one cares about them.

“Why is it that the pro-lifers are always told to stand against the wall?” asked Bachmann plaintively, assuring the audience that they wouldn’t have to wait their turn in a Bachmann administration. (They just might have to wait a very, very long time for a Bachmann administration.)

That sense of beleaguerment is Santorum’s specialty — it fuels resentment to have never experienced a bump in the polls. He mimicked the press asking him, “ ‘Are the social issues really as important? And isn’t just the economic issues? Oh, it’s just the economic issues.’ I always tell the press, has the vote yet been cast?” He insisted that abortion (and implicitly, homosexuality) “are not these unique set-aside issues.”

Then it got really motivational. “You may think we’re failures. We’re not. We’re not,” Santorum insisted.

It depends how you measure success. As I reported recently, the anti-choice movement has succeeded in passing lots of laws that make abortion odious, shaming and expensive, but they have no widespread public support for an outright ban of abortion, a handful of Iowa voters aside. Not only does the movement keep having its hand slapped by the federal courts, it’s split by a debate over how to push its legislative agenda in the first place. The incrementalists, however miserable they are making women’s lives, have a pretty strong argument that their way is best, even if they wouldn’t have gotten applause at the forum tonight.  A total ban in Mississippi, the Personhood amendment, that would also have gone after birth control and IVF, failed at the ballot box. Just today, the leader of the Ohio Senate suspended debate on the so-called Heartbeat Bill, which was trying to ban first-trimester abortions.

None of this is reason for pro-choicers to take a breather, but if anti-choicers feel like failures, it’s probably because the majority of the country doesn’t agree with them.