Bob Somerby at Daily Howler reminds again today about the basics of revisionism - in this case that it was "unthinkable that a black man could have been elected president" - and in fact that continual presence of revisionist history every day.

Somerby notes (you might have to go to the previous day's archive) that people like Frank Rich were all for Obama running 2 years ago, quoting Dick Durbin to say that a few more years of voting in the Senate wouldn't improve his chances. That was in 2006. By february 2007, pundits were proclaiming that Obama would quickly catch Hillary. Of course Obama's not the only black man high up in politics, and Somerby reminds us how back in 1995 the punditocracy was all agoggle at the idea that Colin Powell could be president. Of course this is much about Frank Rich's revisionism - a major part of the NY Times elite.

But we live in a land of revisionism. The late spring was dominated by the revisionism that Democratic contests are always decided early and peacefully. McCain is an icon of revisionism, pretending to be a man of new ideas when he possesses that certain "je ne give-a-fuck pas" lack of decorum and finesse normally needed for politics - regularly emboided in the über-revisionist impetuous baby, Bush-fils (alias The Son King). Of course McCain is permanently assisted by the press, who delightfull forget how many times he's adopted Senatorial kneepads to cater to the powers-that-be on the way up.

Of course Obama's recent rise was launched by his revisionist book, which he had to quickly re-brand as something of a mash-up, a "composite", not a real biography (which stood to hold the dogs at bay until everyone forget again that it wasn't quite historical). The lesson was learned - later revisions revised the details, while leaving the overal impressions the same. Obama remains the hope and change candidate despite the loss in altitude provided by the spat with his preacher, his post-nomination tack to the right, his recent adoption of the Clinton economic team.

What all of this should warn us about is that Revisionism sells. Sarah Palin is a completely shrink-wrapped revisionist media product. While a bit overdone with a too short shelf-life (actually not short enough), the real warning is how well it worked. Had there been just a wee bit more substance to the woman, she likely would have transformed her party (which is more of a continual exercise in shared revisionism and mutual hallucination than an actual party of ideals).

And why does Revisionism sell? Because we buy it. Often for the wrong or unobvious reasons. Researchers have discovered that smarter people are even better than dumb people at discarding facts that don't fit our desired point-of-view. Perhaps America is really really smart, so we're able to distort reality beyond belief, where every encounter, political or sports or foreign military, ends up with our allies becoming saints and our enemies becoming antichrists. Which I guess is understandable in wartime, since someone has to work themselves up enough to die for it. But in an election? Bringing it all down to earth, a bit of gloss of the petals would help. Come November, we will likely have Obama and a typically corrupt, pandering and ineffective Congress to work with. And we'll need to keep banging them on the heads and writing them nasty-grams to keep them on track. Unless we want to be writing another revisionist history of the next administration, just to cover up our inadequacies as citizens.