I’m having way too much fun with this extremely vague “Change you can believe in” slogan. It’s ripe for so much material! You guys realize I slipped Obama a buck to say that, right? What a great investment.
Even though Obama inspired it with his campaign, I chose a generic politician for the strip. The concept is universal and applies to all politicians. Yes, McCain as well.
Oh, and Happy Halloween!
UPDATE 11/22/2008:
Obama to delay repeal of ‘don’t ask, don’t tell’
“Repealing the ban was an Obama campaign promise. However, Mr. Obama first wants to confer with the Joint Chiefs of Staff and his new political appointees at the Pentagon to reach a consensus and then present legislation to Congress, the advisers said.”
The change is coming as promised… eventually. After all, the article points out this is a “potentially explosive issue”. Translation: A principled stance that can be harmful to his political career.
Couldn’t have put it better myself.
Has a distinctly Abe Lincoln look in the third frame. Nice.
Nice work and great detail.
I really like moon and the clouds
in the background.
Too bad we failed to elect: Tron Paul!!!!1! http://xkcd.com/497/
LOVE IT! And completely true. I do like the Abe Lincoln vibe in the third panel. Do all voters suffer amnesia or something that prevents them from remembering that this happens with ALL (almost—Ron Paul the exception, of course) politicians???
A bit unfair to assume Obama/McCain is not going to deliver on his campaign promises. As for the slogan, “Change that you can believe will be practical given the political climate while I’m in office” is a bit of a mouthful. What would you propose instead?
Geoff, that kind of makes my point actually, which is that the climate and the system corrupts the candidates which is why they seem so unprincipled and even unable to do anything significant. This is just one simple comic, but I’ve discussed this in more detail previously in blog posts. The system itself is the problem, IMHO.
For instance, I was participating in a war protest a few weeks ago and asked a guy next to me with an Obama sign if he really thought Obama would have us out of Iraq in a reasonable time, and he was already making those excuses about the political climate and what the generals on the ground recommend and so forth, but the president is the Commander in Chief of the armed forces. If he shows a spine and is willing to take the heat from a myriad powerful special interests and media forces, he could end this war. So the guy’s deluding himself because it just makes him feel better to have a different face on the evil system. I said to him, in so many words, “I’m truly against this war. You’re just against Bush and Republicans in general.” I’m for fundamental change. He just wants to change the dressings. There are war protests every Saturday in Keene’s main square. I’m very curious to see if they suddenly stop after the election.
i like the Lincoln bit too, was it intentional?
and yes, it will be interesting to see if the war protests stop or scale back after the election. i remember Clinton totally getting a pass on Bosnia and all his other foreign hijinx back in the day, including the “free speech zones”, which were actually his idea, and when he came out with don’t-ask-don’t-tell, he said it was because of the political climate in the military and they simply wouldn’t accept out gays. not that we should be beating down the doors to get in, just sayin’..
I disagree. The political climate is what it is; you can’t tell the public not to have an opinion, and you can’t tell everyone in Washington not to push their agenda. A skilled leader will be able to navigate the politics, advance what he believes is the best agenda, and manage his image at the same time. Sure, the system isn’t perfect. But it is certainly possible to do the right thing from within it, even if our current leaders aren’t very good examples of it.
As for whether war protests will stop after the election…there’s no reason the public will think the president-elect will have the power to stop the war at that point. So we’ll be in a lame duck period where things stay on the same path for a few months until the new one takes office. After that, the public will probably give him a free pass for about six months. If progress isn’t made, the protests will probably start to pick back up.
As for being against Bush and the Republicans, I think that’s a fine position to take. If you look at this graph: http://zfacts.com/metaPage/lib/National-Debt-GDP-L.gif you’ll see that for the last 30 years, Republican presidents have pushed forth irresponsible, high-debt budgets while Democrat presidents (ie, Clinton) have turned around the irresponsible spending. The current financial crisis, generally regarded as a result of deregulation initiated by Reagan, is a very real result of this financial irresponsibility that is hitting all of us in the wallet and making us less rich (and therefore less secure) as a nation. Anti-Republican? Hell yeah. The public has seen where modern Republican leadership has taken us, and their voting shows that they demand change.
[...] have this tendency to not fulfill their campaign promises, as illustrated in this brilliant comic from cartoonist Dale Everett. Unfortunately, people seem to forget this just before an election. [...]