What Would Lou Diamond Phillips Do? Has L.A. writer Richard Rushfield identified the key dynamic of the 2012 election: “there is no such thing as good attention”? Rushfield intends this to be a much broader theory, explaining everything, or at least everything cultural, including Girls. But politics is a subset of everything, as he acknowledges. The more Obama was out of the spotlight during the GOP primaries, the better he did. Now he’s energetically campaigning and drawing attention to himself–big mistake! Meanwhile Romney has been a passive or absentee target, and he’s rising in the polls. …
Rushfield identifies one mechanism behind the “no buzz is good buzz” phenomenon–New Media Backlash:
[I]t seems very clear that there is no such thing as positive attention in the Twitter age; that anyone who sticks there head up is going to just have it picked apart by 100,000,000 gnats. The internet has largely become a roving lynch mob and you can’t stop a lynch mob with comedy GIF’s.
It may also be that voters are simply sick of the bogus tested themes that pols and their handlers come up with when they do try to grab the spotlight. … Come up with a third reason and it will be overdetermined!
P.S.: Romney seems to have wised up to the phenomenon and consciously implemented a Rushfieldian strategy–he’s sharply cut back on his campaign appearances. …
P.P.S.: Your going to have to read Rushfield’s piece to get the Lou Diamond Phillips reference. Sorry …