Ezra Klein: A Bumper Sticker That Knows It's Not A Bumper Sticker

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June 22, 2007

A Bumper Sticker That Knows It's Not A Bumper Sticker

Matt reports on the Mitt Romney terror powerpoint presentation (this, by the way, is why we can't elect vapid businessman: Do you really want the State of the Union on Powerpoint, complete with whooshing sounds and Wordart?):

His next slide is a picture of a bumper sticker bearing the slogan "The Global War on Terror is NOT a Bumper Sticker" as if to perfectly illustrate the point that "war on terror" has become a vapid exercise in sloganeering.

That's, like, so post-modern.

June 22, 2007 | Permalink

Comments

This is NOT a pipe!!

Posted by: mkayser | Jun 22, 2007 10:45:40 AM

He used clip art on the title page? What's next, Osama's going to be represented by that stupid long-nosed clip art guy?

Posted by: SP | Jun 22, 2007 10:52:36 AM

(this, by the way, is why we can't elect vapid businessman: Do you really want the State of the Union on Powerpoint, complete with whooshing sounds and Wordart?)

The State of the Union being delivered on Powerpoint would be definitive proof of a steep and irrevocable slide towards "Idiocracy." (I suppose I should see that movie before opining, but the point seems clear.) A public who can't understand a speech without visual aids, and/or a president elected who can't give one? Save me. I'm not a traditionalist when it comes to arts like oratory, or most other arts, but even I have bare minimum standards.

And yet, a president capable of using Powerpoint is another matter. Not that he could and would produce his own while campaigning or in office, but if he's done so in a previous career or something. It's a given that any politician would be most specialized in the arena of people skills — diplomacy, bureaucracy, management, sucking up to people with money, etc. — but it would be a nice change to have someone with at least some awareness of other fields of endeavor. You never know, I guess we can hope that it would make them less likely to ignore experts, for example.

Posted by: Cyrus | Jun 22, 2007 11:11:15 AM

this, by the way, is why we can't elect vapid businessman

I would think the vapid businessman currently in office would already have made that point pretty forcefully.

Posted by: Tom Hilton | Jun 22, 2007 12:07:58 PM

I want a "The Global War on Terror is a Bumper Sticker" bumper sticker.

Posted by: Sanpete | Jun 22, 2007 2:13:15 PM

Then I want a ""The Global War on Terror is a Bumper Sticker" is a bumper sticker" bumper sticker.

Posted by: Sanpete | Jun 22, 2007 2:16:23 PM

doesnt this look like something put together by high school students, (not in an advanced placement class) on a sunday afternoon at the dining room table, covered with papers and pringles potato chips.
imagine, he is running for president of the united states.
it boggles the mind.
heaven help us.

Posted by: jacqueline | Jun 22, 2007 9:28:10 PM

I don't support Romney for President, and think that business generally does not provide good preparation for the presidency, but calling him a "vapid" businessman is symptomatic of not really knowing a whole lot about business. Do you know anything about Bill Bain, or why Romney was selected to start Bain Capital, his track record there and so forth? Do you have any idea of the role of strategy consulting or private equity in the information economy? Romney is many things, but vapid is not one of them.

It's funny that for most liberals this vast endeavor called American business is often treated as some abstract entity that is only dimly understood and treated as basically a cow for milking. People who spend their lives in and around government typically view people in business as parochial and possessed of, at best, a kind of feral animal cunning. My experience has been otherwise.

Posted by: Jim Manzi | Jun 24, 2007 1:16:35 PM

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