March 17, 2004
Filmed In RoveVision
It’s funny how fortunes, and for the sake of this argument - perception – can turn. I think back to those glossy business magazine covers of Enron’s Ken Lay and Jeffrey Skilling and the accompanying pulp piece lauding them as the envy of capitalism, itself.
I remember those words of reassurance, that the American voters should have faith in an MBA/CEO Presidential ticket. And finally, the aura of invincibility surrounding the Right-thinking, political strategist/wizard who, single-handedly reversed the conventional wisdom of mid-term elections, yet, failed to see the plot line lifted from an old West Wing episode, coming at him like a Wilbur Wood knuckle ball.
That’s not to say Karl and the boys at RoveVision have been dealing inferior product, as of late, quite the contrary. The rejection-triggering rewrites of the latest jobs and economics revisionist rationale would turn a Joe Esterhaus screenplay into an Oscar contender. Plus, Bush’s smarmy-delivered sound bites have been impressive, while the campaign’s first round of television ads have succeeded in, at least, giving Chris Matthews a boner.
No doubt, King Karl can take partial credit now that the ten-minute/gay marriage rule has been implemented. An obvious TV ratings winner, no more than ten minutes of cable news airtime may elapse without this wedge issue being cited in a segment, crawl or ‘Question Of The Day’.
Many charge that the use of 9/11 images, are a direct result of Bush’s failures on the ‘bread and butter’ issues. Or, is it in part due to Rove’s arrogance and insensitivity born of a career of unbroken political victories? Who else would dare offend even one family of a 9/11 victim? Or, trot out Rudy Giuliani or Bernard Kerik to drown out the objections of angry New York fire fighters, all the while whispering about their connection to a biased ‘union’?
In my estimation, RoveVision has prevented the direct hits, leaks and mishaps plaguing the newly launched $150 million dollar Bush/Cheney ’04 mother ship, from scoring major damage. How else can one explain the voter’s dissatisfaction with Bush’s handling of 4 out of the 5 major issues and Howard Stern hammering away at his white male base, yet, his overall approval numbers hover around 50% and he leads Kerry in a number of polls?
Laura Bush is uneasy about the direction of the campaign and Barbara Bush frets that ‘…she’s seen this movie before’.
Similar doubts almost prevented Francis Ford Coppola from making ‘The Godfather’.
Posted by Bert M. Caradine at March 17, 2004 04:19 AMAt this stage, isn’t it impossible to say whether Bush’s ads are working or not? I mean, if you’re a Democrat they’re not convincing you, but what does that prove? If anything, it looks like the pendulum swing of the polls has started back in Bush’s direction (even when you discount the Nader effect in most polls, or just add his 4-7% to Kerry’s totals).
The Democratic rent-a-911 family operation may have scored some points, but it may have backfired too. The general dissatisfaction with Bush that you cite was an understandable effect of the constant anti-Bush drumbeat of the much-publicized Democratic primaries together with the Kay WMD report—in all, a very bad couple of months for Bush. Nevertheless, throught it all, his approval ratings miraculously still hovered around 50%. It’s hard to see how things could get any worse for Bush or any better for John (“Chirac and Schroeder want me!”) Kerry.
Now voters are going to have to compare their grievances against Bush with their impressions of Kerry—which is only now starting to happen. And so far, from Karl Rove’s perspective, so good.
Posted by: Martin at March 17, 2004 11:19 AMMartin-
Your rosy Bush scenario would be believeable if we all lived in a Fox News world. Where the only campaign issues are the war on terror, gay marriage and this world leader flap.
Just as in a growing economy, the jobs come last, maybe in Bush’s failed presidency, his approval numbers are the last to drop.
After every month’s job number, Bush’s approval ratings on the economy drops. Every revelation on the war, those numbers drop. How are the Dems to blame when his poll numbers dropped after the State Of The Union and the Meet The Press interview?
As for the preference of the rest of the world, if we had their help under the banner of the UN, Iraq would be stable, less American troop casualities and $200 billion less debt.
Finally, your snide ‘…rent-a-9/11 family’ quip, is offensive and indicative of how low the Right will go, to score political points.
Posted by: Bert M. Caradine at March 17, 2004 11:05 PMWell Bert, only time will tell, I guess, what the public actually believes and who they’ll support. I don’t think you have to watch Fox News, however, (which I don’t, not having cable) to reject many of your more virulently anti-Bush interpretations of events. And the name “Karl Rove” conjures visions of horns and pitchforks for only a tiny minority of diehard activist Dems.
Granted, the job problem is improving slower than expected, but unemployment is at 5.6 and falling. It was 5.5, remember, at this same point of Clinton’s first term—virtually identical—and the economy wasn’t growing at a rate anyway near what we had in the last quarter of 03. And Clinton defeated Dole in a landslide, largely because an economic outlook which may not even equal Bush’s (again, time will tell).
The “rent-a 9-11 family quip” is perfectly justified, and if anybody owes an apology it’s the Democratic operatives and their media accomplices who trotted out a tiny minority of the thousands of 9-11 family members to recite the same set of talking points from a prepared script (and all within hours of the ads airing in markets where none of these people even live). Talk about stooping to new lows and cynically exploitating a tragedy! And as we now know, many of those we heard from belong to Heinz-financed anti-Bush organizations.
Many pundits seem to think the pendulum will swing back and forth, the lead changing several times—it’s a volatile situation. Kerry will probably get bounces after announcing a VP and then again after the covention. And who knows what Iraq will look like seven months from now? If the forecasted large-scale pullouts of American troops occur, we may be looking at a Bush landslide. But in any case, as the initial successes of the latest Bush ads show, Kerry’s in serious trouble.
Martin, I think it’s well established that partisans, given ambiguous results, will say their candidate’s building momentum.
You might be right, but how the hell do you test such a statement. It’s quintessential market equivocation- if nothing happens, it’s because we prevented the worse from occurring.
Unfortunately, that’s also been the way your people tout Bush’s War on Terror. Even though Al Quaeda’s attacke elsewhere, they say, he’s succeed because, you know- We haven’t been hit again. Right?
That thinking has a date attached to it: 9/10. We went several years before experiencing our next international terrorist attack. And it happened at the same place. All those years of thinking we were doing a good job. Then the date changed. It wasn’t rogue states that brought this on us. It was our failure to root out the terrorists on our home soil, and abroad.
Bush talks smugly about his opponents trying to serve terrorist with subpoenas. But has he or any of his supporters figured out the obvious? That if a sufficient number of the terrorist had been served arrest warrants, the towers would have been standing today?
Of course, sometimes, you will have to teach terrorist sponsoring and abetting countries a lesson. But isn’t it whole lot cheaper just to slap handcuffs on these people?
Oh Martin, by the way, you did know that the women Rush claimed to be part of that extreme liberal 9/11 group weren’t actually part of it, did you? Of course you did. You must have spoken up at the time, done the right thing, rather than try to gut the reputations of those fine women, who had to suffer through so much. Right? Of course, if they’re opposing Bush, you can never be too sure.
Posted by: Stephen Daugherty at March 18, 2004 01:11 AMIf that’s true, Stephen (your last point), I do stand corrected.
There were a good many 9-11 relatives who came forth the next day to support Bush’s ads, however, and these were the sources (not Rush) on which I base my characterizations of those called up at a moment’s notice to attack the ads. I’m thinking in particular of the relative of a pilot of one of the hijacked planes who had a piece in the Wall Street Journal asserting that those women did not speak for either her or many other 9-11 families, that in fact those fine women were either cynically manipulated or just plain wrong.
Posted by: Martin at March 18, 2004 01:24 AMMartin -
Democratic operatives? Media accomplices? As usual your side is quick with unfounded paranoid Democratic contrivance (Drudge) and very short on offering proof (Coulter).
Any TV footage of Carville or Begala lurking in the background at these 9/11 families press conference? If Rush said it, then it must be true? What is the motivation of these grieving families to bash Bush? All I can think of is his stonewalling of the 9/11 inquiry.
Growth in 3rd Qt. ‘03 was around 8%, I think. 4th Qt. ‘03 was 4.2%. That’s trending in what direction?
The job numbers in Jan ‘04 was originally 127k, then revised down to 97k. The Feb job number was 21k. That’s trending in what direction?
I stand by my assessment of your 9/11 quip as insulting. Is that an example of your party’s ‘compassion’?
Posted by: Bert M. Caradine at March 18, 2004 02:07 AMBert, I agree that Bush should have agreed earlier to cooperate fully with the 9-11 inquiry, despite the danger of it being used by Democratic partisans for election year grandstanding instead of an actual attempt to reveal facts, but he has now done so. Bush has agreed to answer any and all questions that commission may decide to pose.
Carville and Begala aren’t idiots—they’re savvy political operatives who have the good sense to stay out of actual camera-range of their scripted stage-managed media events. And anyway, they’re not even the puppet-master in question (his name is Shrum). Those few 9-11 family members in question (a minority of all 9-11 familes) are undoubteldy stricken with genuine grief, and I don’t question their motivations so much as the use they were put to by manipulative Democratic operatives. Proof: these family members appeared within the same news cycle of the release of Bush’s ads with prepared canned remarks. It would have been impossible, in such a short amount of time, to verify the identities of these individuals and even begin to decide if their positions represented a consensus, or anything approaching it, among 9-11 familes (a standard of journalistic integrity totally lost on the media outlets that ran with this story) unless these folks were already groomed, prepared and waiting in the wings. It would be a different story if their objections filtered out days later—even ONE DAY later, even an hour and half later—but they were already preselected bit-players in a rapid-response strategy that kicked into action the very instant Bush’s ads were released.
If there is one thing I cannot handle, above all other things, concerning 9/11, it is the hateful rhetoric that demands that one take the NeoConservative line to be trusted as an opponent of the terrorists.
This president has time and again insinuated that to be opposed to him and his advisors is to be a supporter of the terrorists and all the other bad guys. I know where I stand. I know I’m not afraid. I know I don’t want Al Quaeda free to do harm. I know I want Osama Bin Laden brought to justice.
You know what else I know? I am old enough to know the old Cold War rhetoric when I hear it, even if it’s clothed in terms of fighting terrorism. It’s just as infuriating, and just as mindless.
It’s sheer stupidity to revive it now, to pain the ears of loyal Americans with such insulting, condescending language. Bush could not have gotten either of his wars without appealing to democrats and liberal moderates. He could not have had the popularity he had, if his calls for revenge on the terrorist had not rung true in the hearts of the left.
The reason Bush is back where he started, is he essentially started treating a whole big chunk of the American people as if they are bunch of Osama-loving traitors.
I know where my loyalties lie. I know I am not a traitor to my country, and I will not let people disparage my loyalty so casually, or that of others.
This country needs a discussion about what’s right more than it needs a fistfight about who’s right.
Posted by: Stephen Daugherty at March 18, 2004 06:41 PMVery well stated Stephen! I think the Right is happy to finally be playing offense. At least, it has fired up our fellow editors in the red column, to the far right.
Again Martin, I take issue with your unsubstantiated conspiracy musing. How do you know the views of those 9/11 families were not representative of the majority? Cite the evidence and the facts. Remember, 80% of Americans polled, objected to the use of those images.
Second, a quick Google search will reveal a number of organizations formed by all of the principal players (victim families, fire fighters, police, EMTs…). I have seen numerous stories involving these organizations, mostly in the context of the latest stonewalling tactics of the Bush administration. My point? I doubt if they needed a ‘Democratic operative’.
Posted by: Bert M. Caradine at March 18, 2004 08:34 PM
