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BC04: Bereft and Bamboozled

Bush/Cheney and their campaign guru keep on floundering: why?

Despite recent attacks, the president remains resolute
in his principles: pro-flag, pro-photo op
(from the BC04 photo gallery)

Republican functionaries continue to stew about the White House's prolonged bout of political aphasia. In today's Los Angeles Times, a few of them are quoted:

"We've seen a lot of mistakes and, frankly, some degree of incompetence out of an operation that, up to now, was closing ranks and executing very well," said a GOP strategist who sometimes advises the White House....

"I worry about Ohio," said one outside campaign advisor, who also requested anonymity. "We've got a real vulnerability on the jobs issue if we can't get that discussion going in a different direction."...

"We need key states in the Midwest, where the whole outsourcing [of jobs] is a big problem, and we don't have an answer," said a GOP strategist on Capitol Hill who requested anonymity. "This White House that seemed to be so disciplined, so political, doing such a good job, looks awfully bumbling to me."

Read the rest.

Where is the genius Karl Rove in all this, and what's got him so hog-tied? I've already discussed a couple of the factors in past posts: the White House's very real shock at finding itself the recipient and not the dispenser of frontal assaults; the fact that Bush really has no record of unimpeachable accomplishments to sell--which is further complicated by the various messes his administration has made in putting politics over policy at every turn. (To the extent the "bipartisan" political establishment shows signs of turning on Bush, it is not an issue of ideology but of managerial competence; even if no one remembers it at the moment, former adviser John DiIulio's line about "Mayberry Machiavellis" who obsess over political control while disdaining the pedestrian details of governance is haunting the Bushmen in spirit.)

None of this is necessarily insurmountable, but I wonder if BC04's missteps are predicated on more fundamental mistakes in reading the political terrain--a plight from which they really might not be able to recover.

Based on what we've seen to date, Rove's tactical sensibilities seem not to have changed one whit. As he frequently did in Texas, he is leaning heavily on emotionally charged political sideshows--"wedge issues"--in an effort to retain working class voters who have gravitated to the Republicans in the past 20 years. The fabled NASCAR Dads targeted by Bush/Rove are not a new, adaptive factor in the equation; they used to be known as organized labor, and they are essentially the Reagan Democrats the party has courted in every election since 1984.

But Rove's wedge issues, gay marriage being the main exemplar, have a lot less traction so far than BC04 needs from them. Most working people this year are thinking harder about their own prospects than about stopping sodomy in its tracks. Gay marriage ranked 23rd out of 24 policy issues in a survey conducted by the Pew Research Center a couple of months ago. No doubt the number now would be marginally higher, given the media spotlight, but it still isn't clear that the Bushmen will be able to do anything to divert the Great Middle from the subject of its own pocketbooks.  

Posted by Steve Perry at March 12, 2004 6:23 PM

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