Needlenose

Robert Draper’s attempted dissection of the schizophrenic McCain presidential campaign in the New York Times magazine is an amazingly rich source of anecdotes — some insightful, some dubious, and some just plain weird.  This story told by pseudo-strategist Steve Schmidt to Draper may fit in all three categories:

The smartest bit of political wisdom he ever heard was dispensed by George W. Bush one spring day at the White House residence in 2004, at a time when his re-election effort was not going especially well. The strategists at the meeting — including Schmidt, who was directing the Bush campaign’s rapid-response unit — fretted over their candidate’s sagging approval ratings and the grim headlines about the war in Iraq. Only Bush appeared thoroughly unworried. He explained to them why, polls notwithstanding, voters would ultimately prefer him over his opponent, John Kerry.

There’s an accidental genius to the way Americans pick a president, Schmidt remembers Bush saying that day. By the end of it all, a candidate’s true character is revealed to the American people.

Leaving aside that this obviously wasn’t true for Dubya (although it may be proving that way for McCain), what are we supposed to make of a so-called strategist who says he got the best political advice of his life from George Bush? Isn’t that like taking performance advice from Howdy Doody or Charlie McCarthy?

Then again, I suppose that’s what Sarah Palin did.

Tags: McCain, WH 2008

This entry was posted on Thursday, October 23rd, 2008 at 12:01 pm and is filed under 2008 US presidential election. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.