Did McCain Study French?
October 21st, 2008 at 3:08 pm by Eric Halvorson under Eric Halvorson's Blog
Today, I discovered something that may be at least part of the inspiration for John McCain’s references to socialism in the Obama campaign. It comes from Boom by Tom Brokaw.
It’s actually an observation made by Newt Gingrich about the impact of socialism in the French election of 2007. Brokaw wrote, in that race, “Nicolas Sarkozy, a law-and-order conservative, won by running against the lingering Sixties attitudes in his country’s politics. Sarkozy’s significant victory against an experienced and attractive Socialist candidate was built around older French voters receptive to his message that it was time to return to traditional French morals and values…”.
If we make a few changes in the last 20 words — transform the “older French voters” to “older American voters” and “traditional French morals and values” to “traditional American morals and values” and maybe we get a sense for McCain’s target audience in the battle for the swing states.
