The Book of the Week is “No Excuses– Concessions of A Serial Campaigner” by Robert Shrum, published in 2007. Shrum was a political consultant for various Democratic candidates for more than four decades.
Shrum perceived that the Washington Post was the sole newspaper that understood that the Watergate break-in wasn’t just an isolated incident. That is why it took so long for Americans to see how evil Nixon really was. Then again, political people are a vengeful lot.
Beginning in 1992, the Republicans launched a “… nonstop, eight-year campaign to destroy his [Bill Clinton’s] presidency. Everything was fair game in a witch hunt on a tireless search for an offense.” Ken Starr was coming up empty on the Whitewater investigation, so after three and a half years, he convinced the three-judge panel to “… widen his mandate to include possible perjury charges against the president related to his relationship with Monica Lewinsky.”
During the 2000 presidential campaign, Shrum was an advisor to candidate Al Gore, during which there was rigorous fact-checking of everything Gore said in debates. Even so, he got a few minor details wrong. The Bush camp jumped right on the errors, accusing Gore of “sighing and lying.”
Voters have no idea how much cooperation (if any) there is behind the scenes of a candidate’s campaign, as media reports are distorted or exaggerated in this regard. But in September 2003, voters who believed the news, were focused on the supposed conflicts plaguing John Kerry’s staff instead of on John Kerry.
One of Kerry’s top aides, Jim Jordan was the source of the trouble. The press reported that Jordan was campaign manager. Jordan didn’t disabuse them of that notion. Howard Dean became a formidable competitor because he effectively raised funds via the Internet. Jordan didn’t believe that that fundraising channel would work, so he discouraged Kerry from trying it.
Jordan ignored political donors and couldn’t “… explain a coherent strategy for winning and we’re [the Kerry campaign] headed in the wrong direction — politically and financially.” Once Jordan was dismissed in November 2003, conditions improved. But not before the media trumpeted the turmoil and published Jordan’s negative utterances about the Kerry campaign.
Interestingly, Kerry enjoyed a small, unexpected boost in voter approval in late October 2004, when an unguarded cache full of American weapons was emptied by the enemy in Iraq. But Kerry’s advisers felt it was more important for their candidate to stay on-message than jump on Bush for this terrorist win; it would have been a distraction. It is such an irony that Americans are killed with their own weapons by terrorists through alleged anti-terrorist actions by the U.S. government.
So the way America’s enemies have acquired American weaponry hasn’t always been secret arms deals. Sometimes it has been. Other times, it has been caused by a raw, evil, greedy power grab perpetrated by a president who stokes fear that his country’s people will be victims again. Might makes right is never a good thing. It is simply a vicious cycle of needless deaths and ruined lives.
Anyway, read the book to learn of numerous other details of the fun insiders have in dealing with difficult: people, issues and publicity while advising a political candidate during an election campaign. So much fun.