Wolcott on Ghouliani, the Huckster, and "strategies" in the primaries

[bidenista]

Wolcott has a nice bit about the GOP primaries, but what he quotes about strategists is probably true of the Dems too - especially when you look at recent events:

Everybody and his doppelganger (me included) observed that 9/11 was the only power chord Rudy Giuliani knew how to play, rendering his campaign immobile once other concerns came to the fore. We may all deplore the horrific damage Islamofascism has inflicted on Martin Amis's prose style, but there are other challenges America faces as it shifts into low gear, other issues to be demagogued. Rudy's gift for demagoguery, which he filed to a serpent's tooth as mayor of New York, seems to have abandoned him once he became a money-hooverer for Giuliani Partners. A vacancy has taken hold in the executive suite of his brain. I saw him yesterday on CNN trying to shift his message to the economy and it was a pale imitation of the pitbull New Yorkers fondly knew and unloved. His economic recovery plan consisted of pandering to Larry Kudlow's pinstripes, saying he'd cut this top rate from 35% to 25%, this rate from 15% to 10%, and abolish the "death tax," which drew applause from the appreciative, well-to-do cadavers-to-be in the audience. Then came the moment to unveil his simplified tax plan, which would allow most Americans to file their returns on a single sheet of paper. He reached into his left jacket pocket and pulled out a folded paper, but it wasn't the right one. May have been a Chinese menu or something. Then he pulled out another. No, that wasn't it either. Maybe it was a scented personal note from wife Judith, reminding him to smile more, no matter how much it hurts his facial muscles. Then, in his right jacket pocket, he found what he was looking for and unfolded it for the audience's behalf. See, here's the thing. As simple stagecraft, you don't tout a Bold New Initiative and then pull out a sheet of paper that's been folded and unfolded and folded again so many times that it looks like a flyer taken from a laundromat bulletin board, complete with lint. It kind of undercuts the magic of the moment, lacks a certain showmanship. Well, he won't be airing out his pockets much longer. As Al Giordano explains at The Field, Florida governor Charlie Crist's endorsement of McCain yesterday may have dealt Rudy's chances a double deathblow.

The zombie march of Giuliani's and Fred Thompson's maladroit campaigns will entrance political dissecters for seasons to come but less remarked is the misguided direction the Huckabee campaign took after its win in Iowa. Despite his financial disadvantages, Huckabee had a real opportunity to bust open and make himself a real player and what does he do?--instead of broadening his appeal and message and opening up his passing game, he escorts himself down a narrow lane to the frayed, far-right fringe by crudely pandering on the tired old Confederate flag controversy ("If somebody came to Arkansas and told us what to do with our flag, we'd tell them what to do with the pole"--this from a preacher man) and proposing a pet list of fatuous, unpassable Constitutional amendments. He became Duncan Hunter with a grin, a most unappetizing combination day or night. Huckabee's banana-peel spill, after looking so surefooted earlier, lends credence to the Weekly Standard's Richelieu's contention that "strategy" is just a CYA buzzword for improvised scrambling and flying blind through a series of storm clouds: "Despite all the huffing and puffing in the media and among the campaigns about "strategy" and "strategists" and the myriad strategy teams and secret strategy meetings, the actual history of this contest clearly suggests that "strategy" is just a spin word fed to the media by the campaigns as they camouflage their retreats and defeats while each actually pursues the exact same plan, albeit with differing success: win everything you can, or die trying."

http://www.vanityfair.com/politics/blogs/wolcott/2008/01/everybody-and-h.html