August 30, 2008

The Palin fallacy

Posted by johnmcquaid under 2008 campaign | Tags: , , , , |
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What more can be said about Sarah Palin? I think the politics of the selection could go either way. On the negative side, she will likely make gaffes on the campaign trail, and probably not fare well in a debate with Joe Biden (as long as he manages to restrain any impulses to cross the stage and wave a piece of paper in her face). On the plus side, maybe she will be a terrific campaigner, and the selection seen as bold and forward-looking. Though I doubt it.

The problem is not politics, but substance. VP selections don’t matter politically (if Dan Quayle couldn’t sink the top of the ticket, I don’t think Palin will). But they can matter tremendously after the election. And Palin is obviously unqualified to be president. Given McCain’s age, the choice is especially reckless.

McCain appears to have turned his campaign over to a bunch of people half his age - Steve Schmidt and the Karl Rove brain trust - who are fundamentally unserious. They lack the temperament and perspective of those with experience in government, or, for that matter, life. They have lots of experience winning news cycles and “tearing the bark off” Democrats. But they have no sense of how the government works, or the relationship between electoral politics and policies. Hence the McCain campaign is not really a campaign at all - an attempt to persuade voters on the candidate’s abilities and policies, with the aim of implementing those policies - but a series of “bold gambits” that get the media yakking, but later come to naught, or backfire, with no lessons learned. This is not surprising, as it’s a defining characteristic of the Bush administration.

 

August 28, 2008

No joke

Posted by johnmcquaid under natural disasters | Tags: , , , |
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There’s a certain gallows humor about hurricanes. We all joke about them. But let’s face it, some people shouldn’t make light of killer storms. And one of those people is Karl Rove:

“The Republicans can’t seem to get a break when it comes to August and when it comes to the weather,” said Rove, a FOX News analyst. “I know this is being thought a lot about in Washington and at the White House and discussed and I suspect they will monitor it carefully and figure out what to do.”

Rove, we should remember, was supposedly put in charge of the post-Katrina rebuilding effort. But it was never clear what, if anything, he did on that front. The historical record is still murky, but from the outside it appears he spent the balance of the Katrina aftermath on political positioning, trying to pin blame for the disastrous response on Democrats, and engaged in a politically overdetermined debate on whether to seize control of the Louisiana National Guard from Democratic Governor Kathleen Blanco. He and the president had multiple operational levers of the government at their fingertips, but they chose to focus on politics, not substance. And people suffered terribly for it. Which is the whole problem of the Bush administration in a nutshell.

 

June 26, 2008

Karl, meet Maureen

Posted by johnmcquaid under 2008 campaign, media | Tags: , , , , |
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Say what you will about the chattering classes’ inane regard for the alleged genius of Karl Rove - it’s obvious now he was a disaster for the nation and for not one but two political parties. But the one thing he did know how to do was forge devastating political takedowns, attacks that were so audacious that they often worked, in spite of - and because of - their absurdity and unfairness. Josh Marshall dubbed this the bitch-slap theory of electoral politics: if your opponent is strong, you attack his strength even though it might look ridiculous, betting he’ll be too stunned to fight back. That way you look strong, he looks weak.

Now, however, Rove’s best shots against Obama appear to be Maureen Dowd-esque riffs on the candidate’s personality, which seem either made up and remote from ordinary experience - Obama with a beautiful date, smoking, at a country club? - or so unremarkable it’s surprising he managed to get them published at all: Obama, a guy running for president, is self-centered.

 

June 6, 2008

Rove and Katrina: more, please

Posted by johnmcquaid under George W. Bush, environment/energy, natural disasters | Tags: , , |
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Salon has an excerpt today from Paul Alexander’s new book about Karl Rove, focusing on the White House’s handling of the immediate aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. I’m all for delving into the basic mystery of Rove: how did a political consultant whose principal skill was tactical - targeting and turning out narrow bands of conservative voters - and whose principal m.o. against opponents was toxic rumors and whispering campaigns, come to control the levers of government, something which he clearly neither understood nor cared much about? This is key to the failure of the Bush presidency, and I don’t think any of the Bush books have yet fully explained it or set it in context.

Unfortunately, neither does Alexander’s book, at least if the Katrina narrative is any indication. His account of the days following August 29, 2005 is lively, but it relies exclusively on interviews with Louisiana Democrats, including Senator Mary Landrieu and former Governor Kathleen Blanco. They’re important players in what happened, of course. But like the rest of us, they didn’t know what was going on behind the scenes with Rove and the White House staff. (Scott McClellan doesn’t have a whole lot more, but at least provides an insider’s perspective in his book.)

Alexander’s sources offer some opinions and speculation on what happened with Bush’s inner circle, some or all of which may be valid, all of which we’ve heard before. It’s clear, as they point out, that the White House began spinning very early, trying to shift blame for the debacle from the (Republican-controlled) federal government to the (Democratic-controlled) state and local governments. So, facing an enormous challenge in mobilizing the resources of government, an effort that should have included smart, honest public communication, the White House instead tried to save its own skin with spin and political positioning. This isn’t surprising - it’s what politicians do - though what I found shocking in researching this was that this seemed to be all the White House was doing.

What I’d still like to know, and am disappointed not to find in a book about Rove, is what were Bush and Rove saying and doing during that terrible week? Why was the president so disengaged, to the point of permanently damaging himself? How did Rove (apparently, absurdly) come to run the response effort, as the White House briefly declared? Answers to these questions would tell us how Bush his team acted in a profound domestic crisis, and offer an important clue as to why his presidency fell apart.