Obama/Tusk '08 - Steal your grandmother's ID

In recent years, the Polish government has been dominated by identical twin brothers, Lech and Jarosław Kaczyński. Jarosław is the leader of their party, Law and Justice (Prawo i Sprawiedliwość, PiS).

In 2005, after serving as the mayor of Warsaw, Lech declared that he would run for President of Poland. He said that if he won and his party took control of the Sejm (Parliament), someone else besides Jarosław would serve as the Prime Minister. Nevertheless, after Lech won the Presidential election, and his party became the majority, his brother became Prime Minister anyway. The two of them led the country, pushing for a very conservative, traditional Catholic platform, including a ban on Warsaw Gay Pride parade, continued abortion bans, and a relationship with the EU marked by extreme animosity. They were often seen as the most troublesome EU member country. They wholeheartedly supported the Bush Administration, the Iraq War, the missile shield and they even traveled to the US to speak at radical Christian fundamentalist meetings. More or less, they functioned as the Bush(es) of Europe.

In late 2007, to the relief of many, the Polish government fell apart and elections were held. The lead candidate for the main opposition party, the center (perhaps even center-right) Civic Platform (Platforma Obywatelska, PO) was the young, affable Donald Tusk.

Tusk ran a campaign of tolerance, promising to loosen Catholicism's grasp on the Polish government, establish better relations with Germany and the EU, discuss reparations with Jews who had lost their homes during the Holocaust, push tolerance (perhaps even for same-sex couples, something unheard of in Polish government), revisit the decision to allow the US to build a missile defense system near the Ukrainian border and withdraw Polish troops from Iraq.

Now for the fun. It was extremely exciting for a country still reeling from the end of the Cold War. The older generations were afraid of some of the changes pushed by Tusk, while the younger generation and the urbanites cheered in delight. Tusk even had the foresight to travel to England to campaign where over a million Poles now work to make ends meet. He was reaching out to the industrious, educated youth. Again, sound familiar?

In the lead up to election day, young Poles created a plethora of youtube videos, advertisements and songs, and used mass text messages to promote their candidate for change. The massive generation gap made it clear that the GOTV campaign for the younger generation was the only hope for Donald Tusk. The advertisements took this into account.

There were joke ads about how the twins would switch places without anyone else knowing and that's why their administration was in such disarray.
Kaczyński is derived from the word "kaczka", which means "duck", so some ads mocked the election as "Donald vs. the Ducks".

The best ad encouraged young people to "Steal your grandmother's ID", thus allowing the youth vote to reign and running one of the Ducks out of office. While the ruling government fumed, the young people laughed and fought on. And Tusk won! After a few days of pouting, Lech admitted his brother's loss and Poland was rid of one Duck.

Now, only backwards Lech remains as President, while tolerant, young Tusk and his centrist party start moving Poland forward. And Poland, Europe and the world breathed a sigh of relief! Sound vaguely familiar?

Perhaps in the states where ID is required (Indiana, right?), we can encourage the same thing to stop the out-of-touch McCain:

Obama '08 - Steal your grandmother's ID

We can only dream, because in reality that's disenfranchisement..... hehe.

a nytimes article on the subject if you're interested