When one encounters such bald-faced egotism and blatant self-promotion as is regularly displayed by Stephen Colbert, one must pause in admiration of the sheer audacity it takes to so masterfully play the celebrity game. But simply laughing at the antics of Comedy Central’s brain trust and dismissing Colbert’s stunt as meaningless entertainment is missing something more important, here. While the pundits wave off the thing as a publicity stunt for book flogging purposes (which it most definitely is, and brilliant at that) they fail to recognize the possibility of Colbert having a very real effect on the Democratic primary process.
It’s no secret that the writers of The Daily Show and Colbert Report have political axes to grind. With Jon Stewart appearing in the last few years as the only voice in the wilderness crying out for reasonable debate on the issues, plus his unceasing, entertaining, and intelligent barrage of attacks on the current Administration, that would be hard to miss. And a cursory inspection of his show over the last six months or so demonstrates that his ire is not restricted to elephants. He doesn’t particularly like Hillary, a sentiment echoed strongly by the netroots who watch him so religiously. While Colbert’s character persona doesn’t allow for direct endorsement of any political faction, it’s pretty clear from the subtext of his show that he is less-than enamored of Clinton, as well. Perhaps it is her unwavering support of the Bear Lobby that fuels this – the point is open for debate. But if you had to ask which Democratic candidate the Comedy Central cabal supports in the primaries, the consensus opinion would NOT favor Senator Clinton. And that could be telling in this race.
Consider, for a moment, the possibilities. Colbert has injected himself into one of the most contentious and important primaries of the season, one that could prove telling about who the eventual nominee is. While I doubt he’ll get invited to any serious debates, the fact that he is a candidate allows him real potential for achieving some important strategic political strikes.
Let’s face it: a second or third place candidate is in a delicate position when it comes to their approach to criticizing a favored front-runner. This was the position Bill Clinton, ironically, found himself in at the beginning of his run. Obama and Edwards have a tough time openly roughing up Clinton because if they do it too well they appear as divisive, and may imperil a future job with the eventual winner. On the other hand, if they don’t go after Clinton aggressively enough, they will tacitly acquiesce to the idea that she is the inevitable nominee. To a certain extent surrogates – usually the candidate’s spouses – can be used to make the required points, but even they have practical limits as to how far they can go.
Not so with Colbert. Now the second-tier candidates have a perfect foil to use against Sen. Clinton. Colbert is not a spoiler, in the traditional Nader sense. If he pulls a few hundred votes he still gets what he wants – publicity – and it is unlikely that his candidacy will have any real impact on the race, numbers-wise. But his real motives might be far, far more practical than mere publicity and a few cheap laughs. Colbert is quite likely to use his "position" as a favorite son candidate to skewer the Clinton campaign in a state she desperately needs to win.
Consider what happened with John McCain’s campaign back in 2000, when Comedy Central sent a goon-squad of reporters to harass the candidates for cheap laughs and sound bites. One particular exchange with McCain led to a much publicized belly-laugh from the Senator which humanized him and eventually led to him emerging from the pack of stone-faced, humorless GOP wannabes. McCain got the joke, and rode his minor wave of popularity as long as he could. Comedy Central liked the bit so much that they played it in promos nine million times in the weeks leading up to the primary – a primary where McCain emerged as a serious challenger to George Bush.
This time around, Colbert has a real chance to do a gloriously funny hatchet job on Senator Clinton. His persona, a faux conservative pundit ala Bill O’Reilly and Rush Limbaugh, gives him the perfect leverage to take on the heir presumptive of the Democrat Party (sic) – "If Romney doesn’t have the balls to go mano-a-mano, wristo-a-wristo with Mama Bear, this is one candidate who lives for the challenge!" or somesuch.
Imagine him showing up with a crowd of supporters at a Clinton rally distributing Wristrong bands, or a gaggle of Colbert Nation fans appearing in Uncle Sam outfits, or staging a counter rally or a political ambush that strains the already frayed nerves of the Clinton people. Perhaps he could offer copies of his new book in exchange for Senator Clinton’s very, very, very, very, very bad book, It Takes A Village. He can take up the challenge of the front-runner and through his persona make it personal. Political theater of the highest (and lowest) order.
What does Colbert get out of it? Besides publicity, he gets the opportunity to press Clinton on the questions that the MSM are too vested to ask of the frontrunner. He gets to dredge up legitimate issues on her record (the AUMF, for example, and the recent Iran resolution) and take her to task on them. He gets to make fun of her appeal to gay activists despite her pointed lack of support for gay marriage. He gets to lampoon her efforts to lure Black rank-and-file voters away from Obama, and white Dixiecrat voters away from Edwards. He gets to target her lack of innovative policy, her position on the Iraq War, the special interest money she has so brazenly accepted, even the Asian busboys and waitresses who suddenly have enough money to throw it at her in truckloads. And he gets to slam her horribly affected, lab-grown cornpone accent that insults Southerners everywhere. For that, alone, he should get a medal from the proud people of South Carolina.
Colbert can do all of this with impunity, because the more riled she gets, the more successful he is. It’s just possible that he will cause her campaign to break at a significant cusp, cause her to emit a gaffe or cackle at an inopportune moment, or get trapped by the twisted dialog at which he is so adept. Or, if she ignores him, she loses what little street cred she has among the progressive movement which idolizes the character. Senator Clinton is in a tough spot – either she cooperates with Colbert (who is easily one of the greatest comedic ad-libbers of our age) and risks issuing one embarrassing sound-bite after another to the detriment of her campaign, or she tries to disregard him and risks looking like a humorless, robotic ice queen who can’t take a joke. Either way she risks something precious in one of the most politically important races in of her life. One good hit from Colbert, and she could blow her shot in South Carolina.
You’d have to be a Fox commentator or Limbaugh advertiser not to recognize that the Democrats have the next presidential race sewn up, so I doubt that Colbert will turn his vicious attentions on the GOP in any serious way. Oh, he’ll milk the party for laughs – it’s hard not to – but the idea that any one of those sad, broken white men will somehow triumph against the Bush legacy and public opinion and take the White House is sheer fantasy. The important race will be the donkey race, and that’s where I believe Colbert will intercede, albeit under the auspices of his persona’s conservative agenda.
From a personal perspective, I admire the sheer balls of the man. Instead of wasting his celebrity on simple cash or fame, he is positioning himself to become the ultimate foil, a blameless weapon that can help clear the field of a ponderous, uninspired status-quo candidate in favor of the many candidates that are legitimate opportunities for real reform. He has the ability to strike a blow for moderation – not the "Pragmatic Progressive" role that Senator Clinton has used in an attempt to portray herself as a moderate (about as adeptly as Bush used "Compassionate Conservatism" in the last two elections) but for the real moderates that make up the bulk of the electorate, and who cry out for real change in the direction our country is headed.
That takes gumption, and Colbert has it. He also has an ideal support staff – the comedic genius of the Daily Show’s "reporting" of Indecision 2008. If they make a full press on the South Carolina primary (and they’d be fools not to – opportunities like this don’t come around very often) they will be able to use their position in the "press" to seltzer Clinton on one side while Colbert throws pies from the other. No matter what she does, Senator Clinton will be covered in ick and looking dumb – or, to the astonished surprise of many of us, she might come across as good-natured and witty and use Colbert’s antics like she has used his lines, to her credit. But getting any kind of serious pre-prepared stumping through that kind of noise will be difficult, at best – especially to an electorate which was bored with Clinton’s lukewarm policy positions months ago.
There are some who see Colbert as an annoyance, a jester who appears during a serious time to detract from the national dialog. That opinion is short-sighted, and displays either the Clinton campaign's unvoiced fears or a craving for the political status quo. Colbert is a golden gadfly who provides the Democrats with a unique opportunity to overthrow the heir presumptive, break with the DLC-inspired more-of-the-same that Clinton represents and move forward towards real, concrete reform.
If you don’t believe that, I’ve got a bridge in Eastern Europe I’d like to sell you. (And if you didn’t get that joke, then you won’t get the point of the diary, either.)