Posted on 06/19/2003 6:45:19 AM PDT by bedolido
President will try to smother Democrat, steal key issues
June 18 — For no justifiable reason—other than they could get away with it—officials of President Bush’s re-election campaign essentially barred reporters from his first big fund-raiser here the other night. I don’t know why the White House bothered being so secretive. Everyone knows what they were up to, which was to Hoover up as much cash as possible from every corporate suit in town.
EACH PRESIDENTIAL cycle is denounced as a new, groundbreaking descent into the hell where money and power meet. This one will break through the basement. But the irony is that the re-election game plan that Bush is following—both in terms of money grubbing and tactical positioning—derives directly from the play book written in 1995-’96 by Bill Clinton. The “coffees” are gone and so, thanks to the McCain-Feingold reform bill, is “soft money.” So, too, is Dick Morris, the political switch-hitter who gave rank maneuvering a blandly mathematical name, “triangulation.” But the basic strategic insights of Bush ’04 are identical to Clinton ’96: Use cash (ads) to suffocate your challenger’s campaign the moment it’s foaled, in early spring of the election year. Selectively abandon your own party dogma and join the other side to take the edge off of (“triangulate”) your foe’s key issues. Two wrongs don’t make a right, but, in politics, the first usually is a convenient excuse for the second. In 1996, Bill Clinton wrote scripts in the Oval Office for TV ads that would be paid for by allegedly independent “soft money” contributions. It was a clear violation of the intent, if not the letter, of the law. But with that money, the Democrats were able to launch an early, pre-emptive bombardment of GOP candidate Bob Dole and the Republican Party. After a string of primary battles, Dole locked up the nomination in March 1996. By late summer—even before he was officially anointed in San Diego—he was toast.
CLINTON’S 1996 MODEL Clinton’s team in 1996 had a profound tactical insight, which was that presidential campaigns had become three-act plays. Before then, they had been two-part dramas, a primary season and a “general” election. But with each passing cycle, the primary season grows more compact. Now it picks a winner no later than the middle of March. That leaves a six-month middle act between the effective conclusion of the primary season and the post-Labor Day start of the fall finale. As any screenwriter will tell you, the middle of the movie is the hardest part to write—and the most important to advancing the plot. Visionary tacticians though they were, the Clintonites were live-off-the-land amateurs compared with the Bush crowd. This White House has transformed Ozark-style freelancing into an industry, with George W. Bush as chairman of the board and Karl Rove as the all-powerful CEO. Other key players are Mark Mehlman, the COO; Ed Gillespie, the new chair of the party (in charge of keeping the Republican insiders on board and in line) and Ralph Reed, the former Christian Coalition organizer in charge of turning out the evangelical base. The aim is to raise $200 million. Ari Fleischer, the White House press secretary, said the other day with a straight face that his boss will need that much money to defend himself against Democratic attacks. No, the real reason is so that the GOP can fill the airwaves, cable channels and Internet with ads depicting the Democratic Party as a fetid nest of big-spending, tax-raising war wimps. Ditto, of course, for whomever they nominate. (By the way, if keeping a straight face were an Olympic sport, Fleischer would win the gold.)
(Excerpt) Read more at msnbc.com ...
That has been happening since the start, but the pace seems to speeding up. Too bad.
Hey! What happened to the line about Dick Cheney being the brains behind everything! Mr. Vice President, you're being dissed here! :-)
"There's no doubting that the nation is about to be led by its first sensitive male chief executive. He's the first President to have attended both Lamaze classes and family therapy (as part of his brother's drug rehabilitation.) He can speak in the rhythms and rhetoric of pop psychology and self-actualization. He can search for the inner self while seeking connectedness with the greater whole." -- January 25, 1993 Newsweek.
"The President's claims to budget-cutting fervor has some plausibility. The deficit is down -- perhaps 40 percent more than had been predicted, and Clinton vowed to submit a 'tough' budget next week. In many ways, it will be. He'll propose cutting hundreds of programs and eliminating dozens of others." -- February 7, 1994 Newsweek.
"You may recall that Ronald Reagan, on whom Forbes models himself, said his tax cuts would balance the budget. Instead, they helped add trillions to the national debt." -- Fineman and Mark Hosenball, January 29, 1996 Newsweek.
"Clinton is giving the best evidence yet of his approach to leadership. It's about understanding, not threats; accommodation, not confrontation; about getting people (or at least Democrats) to sing the same song. The style is reminiscent of another patient, nonjudgmental figure given to hugging in public: Barney the Dinosaur." -- Fineman and Eleanor Clift, August 9, 1993 Newsweek.
"The Oklahoma bombing has illuminated a once dark landscape much farther afield: a radical fringe of militant gun owners, `hate radio' talk show hosts, racial extremists, and religious cultists. Their numbers are small -- and their GOP ties tenuous at best. But their fervor is influential at the grass roots Republicans call their own." -- May 8, 1995 Newsweek.
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