I'm not sure which to be more disappointed by: the fact that conservatives are enjoining the Catholic Church to openly step into political battles despite enjoying tax-exempt status, or that the Bush campaign has decided that the "secret Internet page" attack against Stephanie Herseth showed good moxie and are now going to go after not only 527s (I still don't understand why Republicans are going after the groups rather than forming and bolstering their own, but most of what Bush and the Republicans have done this election cycle mystifies me), but also accuse the Kerry campaign of federal crimes due to illegal collusion.
Much like the Richard Clarke "perjury" charges, I have a feeling this is going to have a very short public shelf life. Although one has to wonder why this is the third time in six months that the Bush Administration has accused domestic critics of federal crimes. After a certain point, that card does get worn.
Looks like Daschle's got a tough race ahead of him. Thune was a good challenger, but I never thought him strong enough to carry out the takedown. The entrance of a prominent, left-leaning Native American into the race will make Big Tom's (as I call him after that wild night in Vegas) life considerably harder. He relies on the Native-American vote and, in conservative South Dakota, lacks the safety margin to withstand a strong challenger on his left.
All of which underscroes why he shouldn't be Senate Minority Leader. Unfortunately, the position is now his best argument for reelection so not only won't he give it up, he'll be using it to show South Dakotans how he leverages his position to reflect their interests. Not good for Senate Democrats.
For what it's worth, I'd like to know exactly what got Tim Giago into the race. I wouldn't be surprised to see heavy Republican fingerprints on his entrance.
There are times where I look at political campaigns and see candidates and staffs too focused on being cute for their own good. John Kerry's got a lot of good lines, a lot of rather clever bits of wordplay, sometimes to his own detriment: the line gets in the way of the point, to the effect that you know that Bush and Cheney have bad ideas...but you're not sure why. During the primaries, the "one way [plane/train/bus/zeppelin] ticket back to Crawford" was probably the most used line other than "Hi, my name is..." It worked to appeal to an audience that knew, in whole or in part, why they disliked Bush. The message and the tone of the argument was great for a motivated partisan audience - but it desperately needs to be adjusted for a larger audience that doesn't necessarily feel the same way about Bush.
The main problem with the Bush ads isn't that they're airing, that they're pervasive, or that they're negative. The problem is that they're giving misleading single-"fact" summaries of Kerry's positions on important issues, and Kerry is taking a scarily Dukakis/Gore-esque approach to these gross misrepresentations. Every so often someone corrects the record (a phenomenon we'll get to later), but the main issue is that the candidate needs to counterattack on these very charges, undercutting the opponent's ability to attack, and hopefully using a little political aikido and making it an attack on the opponent on top of your normal attacks.
There seems to be a bred-in fear among Democratic presidential campaigners (Clinton being a notable exception), or at least the past few campaigns, to aggressively defend themselves from attacks, at least directly. Take Bush's ridiculous "350 votes for tax cuts" attack. As Annenberg's Fact Check points out, that list is so padded as to be meaningless. It includes votes for programs and positions that would have had no effect on taxes, regardless, votes against tax cuts that left the tax system exactly the same, and, most importantly, votes for tax cuts that Bush simply didn't approve of. Hell, you could craft a response around that which not only highlight's Kerry's record of voting for tax cuts, but also makes Bush look dishonest. There's a reason this is incredibly important - the media.
Quite a few papers and channels run so-called "fact checks" on campaign ads. Sometimes they're good, sometimes they're not. But they almost never find their way into the actual reporting of papers, particularly in important outlets. More often, however, they take the Bill Schneider route, burying any supposed factual corrections in an avalanche of polls and needlessly contrived partisanship. If Bush says Kerry voted to give money to al-Qaeda twelve times, even though the assertion's not true, the initial fact-checks on the statement's accuracy will eventually fall to the onslaught of covering how the statement is playing in the polls and among the electorate. In essence, they're more concerned with what it looks like rather than what it is.
Right now, Candy Crowley is interviewing Sens. McConnell and Rockefeller over Richard Clarke and Bush's poll numbers, and rather than debate any of the factual merits of the case that Clarke's making, or the ads that Bush is running...it's simply a ten minute explanation of how responses and counter-responses are "perceived". Somehow, in this conversation, the fact that people, in general, can only perceive what is there to be perceived got horribly, terribly lost. Are Dick Clarke's allegations true? Well, the White House is saying - it doesn't matter what the White House is saying, unless it somehow impacts the veracity of Clarke's statements. Often, it seems like the closest we come to factual news anymore in the era of the 24-hour news cycle is the rather robust mechanism by which news services tell us what they're being told. Truly a boon to the national discourse.
Kerry needs to take a more active role in his own defense, for just these reasons. In an environment where the news story isn't what's happening, but rather what the people involved are saying happened, and the battle in the public's mind over who's winning and who's losing, you can't just respond by constantly responding to attacks with different attacks. It behooves a candidate to stand up and aggressively put on the record that an attack isn't true - in large part because that's how the record is in and of itself constructed. It opens up a whole other realm of pitfalls and problems...but all are generally smaller and less problematic than the initial attack, particularly if the counter is smartly crafted.
It's the oldest form of response in the book, but it is effective, particularly among swing voters that can be swayed by claims that they may or may not check for themselves, and which the media will rarely check for them. It also provides a ready-made outlet in which to plug in either the promotions. It's simple, it may not seem as clever as framing decisions or large-scale policy proposals designed to accomplish several simultaneous goals at once - but unlike those, it addresses the direct attack and at least attempts to correct the record. Dukakis and Gore took it on the chin and tried to change the subject. But those small, specific attacks, dishonest though they were, did more to define their candidacies than anything they said or did. If Kerry lets that happen to him, he's done.
By the way, more anti-Bush/pro-Kerry politicians. Of course, some of them are Norwegian...and you know those Norwegians...
Well, Nader is becoming the second Republican candidate - which I'm assuming will tell him absolutely nothing about his campaign whatsoever.
Nearly 10 percent of the Nader contributors who have given him at least $250 each have a history of supporting the Republican president, national GOP candidates or the party, according to computer-assisted review of financial records by The Dallas Morning News.
Among the new crop of Nader donors: actor and former Nixon speechwriter Ben Stein, Florida frozen-food magnate Jeno Paulucci and Pennsylvania oil company executive Terrence Jacobs. All have strong ties to the GOP.
They all deny doing it to help Bush, but I really wish I had a thousand dollars to drop out of a sense of offended propriety.
This is my favorite Kos post ever. Imagine! A secret website created to clandestinely coordinate with liberal fundraising groups on that shadowy network known as DARPAnet. Scary shit.
Kerry's set to unveil his economic program over the course of three speeches (presumably, each one targeted to a specific sector of the economy).
Besides the fact that he needs to talk about foreign policy (remember, I was talking about this before it got all fashionable), particularly with Richard Clarke's story making headlines, I think this is a good idea. Bush never had a particularly broad economic strategy, and other than the initial promise of Reaganomics (which fell prey to the savage sensibilities of economic reality), we haven't had a large-scale, ideologically cohesive strategy in the past four presidencies. What we have had, particularly with Bush, is an idea or a package of ideas that stood surrogate for that large-scale economic policy.
The past three years, tax cuts have become shorthand for economic growth. Republicans have become really good at forcing an idea out there and focusing the debate over complex issues into a debate over their idea and their idea alone. I hate to say it, but the best reason for Kerry to put out his ideas isn't to inspire Americans, isn't to give them hope in a Kerry presidency - it's to give Democrats issue dominance.
My main hope is that Kerry can put out a platform that changes the debate from tax cuts to employment, and if it succeeds, he can put that success to use in debating foreign policy. But, at some point, Kerry needs to become not just credible on foreign policy, but an active agitator for foreign policy. It depends in part on what he says, but it depends a lot more on how willing (and capable) he is to stand up and say what Kerry's foreign policy will be apart from Bush's, rather than merely saying how he'd tweak what's there now. The long-term problem with attacking Bush isn't negativity, it's that it simply reinforces the idea of Bush's platform as the grounds of debate.
Whaaaat?
Whaaaat?
Ooookaaaaay!
Whaaaat?
Seeking to grab the attention of the next generation, the truck boasts two Xbox (news - web sites) game systems and several plasma screen televisions.
Yeaaaaaah!
Ooookaaaaay!
I'd love to see someone put Bush on the spot and ask him to define "tax increase". By the time he was done, I'm pretty sure that breathing would somehow constitute an assault on lower taxes. His latest attack on Kerry is that Kerry voted to "raise" taxes 350 times. I put raise in quotes because a great number of those tax increases don't actually increase taxes at all - many of them are, in fact, tax cuts.
I always hated the language of what constitutes an increase or a decrease in a funding/governing sense - whichever guidelines best prove your point (real dollars, inflation-adjusted dollars, as a percentage of GDP, per capita, etc.) are, of course, the most relevant ones. But Bush, as he is wont to do fairly often, simply turns a word that generally has some specific meaning into anything he doesn't like. By Bush's logic, I could introduce an act that would outlaw the collection of any taxes whatsoever, and then when it was voted against, say that anyone who did so voted for a $3 trillion tax increase. I'd even call it "The Protection of American Values Act 2004", and really fuck you over.
If Kerry can get proper clearance from the various news networks, and from the Republicans themselves, I think he would be well-served to make an ad that features Republicans rebutting Bush campaign charges.
Of course, Bush is giving Kerry plenty of fodder on his own.
Now, I do have a question here - Bush himself promises that he will cut the deficit in half in the next five years, correct? Now, the projected deficit this year is $521 billion. Rounding in a friendly fashion, that means that Bush is predicting a deficit of around $260 billion in 2008/9. Now, excluding this year's deficit from those five year projections (meaning we're dealing with four budgets), this means that Bush is going to run up deficits higher than $260 billion three out of the next four years, with a hopeful $260 billion deficit during that last year. Now, what's $260 billion times four? 1.04 trillion dollars. Not over the next decade. Over the next term. And Bush's figure is going to be higher than that, by his own projections.
If someone can explain to me how you can run saying that your opponent's going to do a bad job while you're promising to do a vastly worse one, then maybe you can explain the end of Swimming Pool to me, too.
By the way, some good news - Zogby's latest poll shows that Kerry's running five points closer to Bush in red states than Bush is to Kerry in blue states, good news if we're going after swing states like Florida and Ohio. Namely Ohio. Because I live here, and therefore, it has the edge over Florida.
Kerry's running a new ad starting today, one that's positive and speaks to general themes while keeping the focus solely on Kerry - likely a good investment.
You can watch the ad here, and the thing I like about it is that on the Rage-O-Meter (the scale of how much sound and fury can be directed towards what the ads claim), it scores pretty low. It's a nice positive introduction for John Kerry, which is what he needs right now.
After having had a long and heated discussion with Ezra, I wanted to just post on something that's been on my mind recently. (Ezra will likely have something up coming at this from a completely different angle, which is why there's two of us, after all.)
Kerry has to be brutally intelligent over the next few months about how he communicates. He's going to have less money and less exposure than Bush, and perhaps most importantly, he's going to be articulating a message that, no matter what he says, will be taken as an implicit criticism of the past four years. It's what happens when you run against an incumbent - the question at the core of it is, "Has the guy in the seat of power done a good enough job to justify keeping him?"
We're going to be hearing a lot about how Kerry defines himself, how Bush defines Kerry, how Kerry defines Bush, etc. And Kerry needs to run against Bush, at least in part - the best way to face a beast like a $200 million war chest is to cut its legs out from under it before it has a chance to start charging (and what we're seeing now is merely the first snorts of anger).
Kerry is running as a change in the status quo, the status quo being Bush. Regardless of what he says, regardless of what he does, every critique, every recommendation he makes that would change the way we operate is an implicit critique of how things operate now, and how things would continue to operate if Kerry wasn't in office. And he's laid out the bare bones of that critique - a more prosperous, fairer America that exercises its power at home and abroad intelligently and responsibly, to benefit both itself and the world around it.
The problem is, however, how to get that message out. Anything Kerry says will be responded to in kind (more than in kind - in almost overwhelming force and fury), which means that Kerry needs to work on figuring out a way to communicate with the American people that won't get immediately stomped on by Bush's millions.
The first thing is to make himself available. If Kerry sits down for an interview with the Today Show, or 20/20, or 60 Minutes, and is properly prepared to handle a tough interview, he does the best possible thing for an underdog campaign - get publicity that's both free and points out one of Bush's flaws, that he shies away from the media more than Michael Jackson shies away from healthy personal relationships. If you hand out news, it gives the opposition less opportunity to make it about you.
Befriend the media. George W. Bush spent more time rolling oranges and giving out nicknames than he did answering actual questions about his policies - and it worked. Gore got severely fucked over in 2000 because there were a committed cadre of reporters who liked hunting through his statements in order to fuck him over.
Decide who John Kerry is going to be, and sell that aggressively. Whenever he says something, regardless of what it is, people should know he's a good guy. What's worked for Bush (and Reagan, and Clinton) is that a lot of people think he's a genuinely good person, regardless of his ideas. Kerry isn't a person to a lot of people - even to a lot of us hardcore Democrats. Fluff can be your friend, even in the most serious of times.
And most of all, encourage fellow Democrats to get out there and work for and with you. Kerry's campaign is never going to work if it just seems like it's him out there. I'd love it if Kerry could somehow, over the next couple of months, find and train some effective spokespeople/shills who can stay on message and make the talking-head rounds. I always get frustrated when I see twenty Republicans on twenty different shows and the same four or five Democrats arguing against all of them.
Just my two cents, which, adjusted for inflation, is actually $4.58.
A writer to the Corner weighs in on how much better George Bush is than John Kerry. Okay, that was damned vague...how much better he is because of the whole Kerry getting hit by his Secret Service detail thing. It's funny what happens when you compare things.
''Governor Bush is in good condition and good spirits and hopes that Agent Hughey has not sustained any serious injuries,'' she said.
A witness, Ernest Bedford, 50, a pipeline inspector for the city who was working nearby, said he didn't hear any brakes squeal, just ''a big, loud bang.''
Bedford said he saw Bush in the clear but ''the other guy was reaching his hand up out of the debris.''
Bush used Hughey's cellular telephone to call DPS officials at the Governor's Mansion, and they called 911, Ms. Edwards said. ''The governor stayed with Roscoe until he was in the ambulance,'' she said.
I realize the conditions are not exactly the same, but Bush's immediate reaction was to tend to his security detail remaining by his side till EMT's took him to the hospital. Additionally, I could find no reporting of Bush berating the dump truck driver for almost accidently mowing right into him had he not jumped out of the way or boasting later that he doesn't fall while jogging . Kerry's reaction to his silly spill was to ensure there were no photo's taken by the accompanying photographer, then to blame the SS agent. Bush's incident was certainly a window into his character and I suspect the Kerry's is too. Why elect Kerry president when already thinks and acts like he is a king.
There's a reason why this whole thing is ridiculous (a few, actually, and I'll get to them all). I'll give you the period of the Jeopardy tune to figure out all the problems...go!
...
...
Okay, here's the story. The first thing you'll notice is that there were no reporters present at Bush's event - the story is entirely dependent on witnesses and Bush's press secretary. We have no idea what he said, because nobody was close enough to hear him. Surprisingly, this was covered as if the important part was that there was an accident, rather than wondering like 12-year-olds if he said bad words.
Another thing you'll notice is that the security person was injured. I'd hope Kerry would make sure the guy got medical attention if he needed it, but as far as I can tell, the Secret Service agent knocked Kerry over, and wasn't injured himself. Should Kerry have run to his side and called 911, even as he was getting up and brushing himself off?
That whole "the Secret Service agent knocked Kerry over" bit is also important - Kerry got knocked over, nobody was seriously hurt, and he was annoyed. It probably would have been better if he'd held his tongue, but to pretend like he cursed a man while he was laying injured on the ground is just ridiculous. Yet, somehow, par for the course and utterly unsurprising.
Yeah, this is just brilliant.
The merchandise sold on www.georgewbushstore.com includes a $49.95 fleece pullover, embroidered with the Bush-Cheney '04 logo and bearing a label stating it was made in Burma, now Myanmar. The jacket was sent to Newsday as part of an order that included a shirt made in Mexico and a hat not bearing a country-of-origin label.
Oh, and in case you were wondering, there are actual punishments for importing Burmese clothing.
Violators of the import ban are subject to fines and jail, according to the U.S. Treasury Department.
Supporting freedom, democracy, and principle...theoretically.
I only caught the very last bit of this interview, but John McCain showed that even if he isn't a contender for the VP spot (he won't be, by any stretch of the imagination - he's not willing to subsume his differences with Kerry in order to get on a ticket, and it would be incredibly foolish for Kerry to select a VP who would be critical of him), he's still going to be a boon for him.
When asked on "The Early Show" if Kerry's election would compromise national security, McCain responded: "I don't think that — I think that John Kerry is a good and decent man. I think he has served his country."
And this isn't the Zell Miller-esque I'm supporting someone of the "opposite party" (wink wink), but an actual Republican with Republican principles making the seemingly bombshell argument that John Kerry won't give the Football to bin Laden in exchange for a signed glossy and a burned-up, urinated-on copy of the Bible.
I wish politics was a more decent business sometimes. It might be less boring, and I might be less entertaining, but I'd sure as hell feel better about the world around me when I wake up in the morning.
Kerry gave a speech today assailing Bush's foreign policy - which was good.
However, it's a newsworthy event in part because of its rarity - which is bad. Something I've noticed about Kerry over the past few weeks is how often he answers criticisms of his foreign policy credentials (whether it be the foreign leader brouhaha, or other general attacks on his stances) is that he always tries to change the subject to the issues he runs stronger on, all of which are domestic.
It's a really bad move, for several reasons - first, it cedes foreign policy to Bush. Accusing Bush of changing the subject (which he is) loses its impact as a response when you're guilty of changing the subject yourself. Kerry's got a strong critique of the Iraq war, and it's not like it's hard to say "he's handling the fight against terrorism the wrong way" or, you know, just say "terrorism" alongside "jobs, healthcare and education". Kerry got to realize at some point that regardless of what he says about it, the war on terror is going to be a part of his campaign. Kerry can't just act like it never occurs to him to do anything until Bush or Cheney attack him, or he's pressed on the issue.
The current psuedo-story about whether or not Kerry can name the leaders who want him in power instead of Bush is the first time I've really felt like we stepped over the line from covering policy and political differences to covering scandals masquerading as something important. In other words, Al Gore 2000.
That there are leaders who would prefer an alternative to Bush in charge of America, particularly someone to Bush's left, is so obvious that I blush to even say it here. But it provides the easiest possible story to cover: allegation/answer. Any more, competing claims aren't investigated, they're simply reported as equivalent until someone else comes forward with undeniable evidence.
The issue isn't even what people are saying - it's that they're saying it. As long as an attack isn't patently ridiculous on its face, news coverage in the main will focus the fact that newsmakers are saying things. The article I linked to features more people talking about how Kerry shouldn't talk about the thing which he hasn't talked about in a while than it does Kerry actually talking about the aforementioned "thing". It's a game the Bushes play well, and while the Kerry campaign is deflecting it about as well as can be expected, this entire election will be in no small part about whether or not Kerry has stopped beating his wife yet.
There's three likely responses to these sorts of questions, which are generally the sorts of things that arise out of otherwise innocuous statements and are immediately framed as if there's a scandal for which the person must answer.
The first response is the truth. However, the truth has two immediate downsides: it's almost invariably more complicated than the accusation, and it involves backtracking over and redefining the terms of the debate. If you're committed to it, it pays the highest dividends, but it also requires the most work. It also presumes that the accusation is based in a principled misreading of a statement or position rather than a feverish hunt for the worst possible interpretation of anything.
"Have you stopped beating your wife?"
"As I have never beaten my wife, it is impossible for me to have stopped."
"So, you can't stop beating your wife?"
The second response is the counterattack. The counterattack isn't going to be that successful unless the initial salvo is so small-bore that you can simply blow it away with your counterattack.
Unsuccessful counterattack:
"Have you stopped beating your wife?"
"My opponent passed a bill that wasted $20 billion worth of taxpayer money!"
"So, you're a wife-beater and lame."
Successful counterattack:
"Are you in counseling with your wife?"
"My opponent killed a Girl Scout unit and hid their bodies in his backyard."
"Thank you! Let's pack up and get out of here, guys."
A counterattack of equal strength is always weaker than the initial attack.
The third response is to work consistently to delegitimize the attacker. No matter the scandal (or "scandal"), it's never about this attack - it's about how you're set up for the next attack. Nobody thinks that whether or not Kerry talked to these leaders will actually impact his candidacy significantly - the issue is itself so banal that most people aren't going to remember it two weeks from now unless they're political junkies, in which case it likely isn't going to affect their vote *anyway*. However, the general theme, Kerry will say anything to get elected, is out there. And it will be built upon, mercilessly.
Kerry's goal is basically to attack the attack. Regardless of whether or not he even actually said it, Kerry needs to make anything about him that comes out of Bush's mouth subject to an instinctive check. You don't do this by sitting down and explaining in depth why what your opponent is saying is wrong, or by talking about something else your opponent did wrong. You do it by realizing that when your side of the story gets covered, your defense of yourself is going to get pared down to its barest bones for mass consumption - make your point ("my opponent's being disingenuous") and then tell people why that's important ("my opponent is disingenuous because he's treating this election like he treated his term - an opportunity to demonize everyone who doesn't agree with him").
Kerry's doing this, which is good for him. But at some point, someone on the Democratic side needs to sit down and figure out how this insufferably liberal, pro-Democratic media works, so that we can use them to our benefit rather than sitting back and straining to make our voices heard.
John, in comments, points us to this Washington Dispatch article, which says that George W. Bush should hire Dick Morris to run his reelection campaign.
You know, I've watched old interviews with Morris back during Clinton's reelection campaign...and he had no idea what he was talking about then. One time, he was comparing politics to selling products, which is about the most apt metaphor possible. However, he said that if you were selling a potato chip, you couldn't just repackage the same potato chip and hope that it would sell better. Yes, that's never been done successfully.
That alone cemented my opinion that Dick Morris is worse than worthless. Of course, the fact that he's been summarily wrong about everything since then doesn't hurt either.
So, as such, let's start a Draft Dick Morris movement. Nobody understands how the mind doesn't work quite like him.
Something I've been noticing recently is that George W. Bush's floundering campaign has a lot of the same rhetoric coming out of it that his failed tax cuts do: it hasn't even been implemented yet, really!
Just as the tax cuts passed nearly three years ago haven't really taken effect yet (because they haven't actually improved our economic outlook at all), Bush's incompetent campaign really hasn't unleashed its guns yet because, well, it's not working.
I just think it would be ironic if we're hearing in October what we've been hearing for the past two years: the recovery's right around the corner! Polls are a lagging indicator! We no longer stand behind our prediction of a victory, but we're still doing *great*, and anyone who says otherwise is just a liberal naysayer.
...What's the record for the largest debt ever after a political campaign?
I will say two things about Stephanie Herseth. First, she needs a weblog. And two, I'm not just saying this because Carpeicthus is right.
I think too many blogs get overloaded with trying to provide every bit of information possible, but they do provide well-organized locus points that allow for quick and streamlined organization. Plus, it would provide me an excuse to go back to the site.
I'm reading this AP article, and I'm not sure whose voice this is, but it makes no sense whatsoever:
"Nobody likes that part of campaigning — the personal attacks," Mrs. Bush said. "I certainly don't like it."
Well, two of those are distinctly non-personal attacks, unless we're now defining "personal" as anything involving the person in question, at which point the entire endeavor becomes pointless.
I'm not sure if it's Laura or the AP reporter connecting those two ideas, but either way it's erroneous and silly.
Well, it works until you decide to have sex, at which point abstinence is fairly, ah...useless. I've been researching this, and I can't find a single sex-ed program which doesn't, in some way, mention abstinence as the most effective method of disease and pregnancy prevention. The thing with sex education is that you can't simply educate kids about not-sex - at some point, you have to address safe and responsible ways to participate in sex itself. That's why it's sex education.
By the way, donate to Ben Chandler (first BlogAd at right) if you can. He's a Democrat with a good chance to win in a red state, and to take a seat in the House.
Who says Democrats can't win in the South?
Oh, God, please let somebody use this as a campaign line:
In other words, Joe Trippi's wet dream. Howard Dean writes a check for $1200 (big tip) to the guy, turns to the camera and says, "I can write a check and pay off my debt in full. Does George W. Bush have $3 trillion laying around to pay off his debt?"
(Yes, I know that deficit and debt aren't the same thing, but if Reynolds is going to conflate them, so can the Democrats.)
After watching a bizarre Today Show piece on Howard Dean's wife and her lack of a public face, and then reading a borderline sophomoric editorial in the WSJ on how we shouldn't elect Dean or Clark because we "don't know much about them", I'm left wondering when, exactly, we got to know George W. Bush.
I don't know much about Bush as a person. I know random snippets of biographical information about him. I know campaign-calculated factoids about his personal life. I know that he has a penchant for verbal miscues, particularly in impromptu questioning. I know about his father's professional life, and I know that his wife is a librarian, and that his kids like to drink, and where they go to school. I know that his political backbone is constructed of a steel column of "do whatever sounds good, regardless of principle, and then let my people demonize whoever ends up disagreeing".
But I don't "know" Bush. I don't "know", or care to "know" a damn thing about his wife. Hell, I've been a part of a magical American ride through Bill Clinton's underwear, and I still don't "know" him. You know why?
It doesn't matter. This is the latest spin ("we don't know who these candidates are"), and it's even worse than the general level of continual factless scandalmongering aimed at the Democratic Nine, because it's not only irrelevant, it's nonsensical.
I know what Democratic candidates are saying, and what they've done in office or in their respective lines of work. And I judge them based on those merits. Similarly, I know Bush from what he's said, and from what he's done in office and in his respective lines of work. And I judge him based on those merits. I can derive from that a picture of them as politicians and as political thinkers, and judge accordingly.
But none of them owe me a Better Homes & Gardens tour, or a blatantly political purchase of a photo-op ranch, or the receipts from their last trip to the mall. Nor do I particularly want those things from political candidates. That your wife and your kids have functioning legs and facial muscles and can stand by you and smile for several minutes at a time does not convince me of your electability.
By the way, John Kerry only buys natural fibers, and he really wants an iPod.
I can't help but think that the Republican opposition to soft money rules has quite a bit to do with the fact that it's the one area Democrats are beating them in. Now that the sea change on Buckley v. Valeo is in full effect, and it's the Republicans who are advocating a too-restrictive ban on political advertising...oh, who am I kidding?
It'll be another round of conservative tooth-gnashing, followed by the admission that they're still going to vote Bush and vote Republican, because the alternative is a series of caricatured "liberal" positions that aren't in line with the principles that the GOP doesn't represent.
Keep in mind similar epiphanies occured to Republicans in 2000 when, all of a sudden, soft money started kicking their ass. And there seems to be no problem whatsoever with George W. Bush raising as much money eleven months out from the November election as the Gore/Lieberman campaign did over the entire 2000 campaign cycle.
I just want to mention that despite what Rove thinks, I see Dean as very optimistic. In fact, he is one of the most optimistic optimists that I have ever met. After all, would I have worked for a candidate who wasn't optimistic? Being an optimist< I highly doubt it.
A statement I never thought I'd make: James Carville and Mary Matalin may be the political prototype for marriage in the 21st century. With the gender roles reversed.