Puffy, Does This Dress Make Me Look Fat?
Friday, February 25, 2000
The fallout from the Michigan/Arizona primaries settled on Your Nation's Capital yesterday. It was not the loss in Michigan which has been the cause of major heartburn to Bush supporters. It was the amount of money spent in Arizona.
Political pros know there are a lot of reasons you win or lose a campaign. Campaigns are very complex systems - like the weather. As much polling as you do, as much radar data as the Weather Service collects, sometimes you get surprised.
Spending money on advertising, however, is wholly within the control of a campaign. The reported figure of $2 million spent by the Bush campaign in Arizona seems, in retrospect, to have been excessive.
One of the problems for the Bush campaign is the lack of a commander-in-chief in Austin. General Eisenhower did not ride around on tanks with George Patton. He stayed back in London to be able to understand the entire European Theater of Operations.
Karl Rove is a very, very smart guy. His capacity for work is legendary. His strategic skills are unassailable. But the tactical will always overwhelm the strategic. Being on the road with Governor Bush every minute of every day is taking its toll on the campaign.
To finish the WWII metaphor, in a famous scene from the George C. Scott movie, Patton is seen directing snarled traffic at an intersection. Eisenhower could have directed traffic, but he never did.
Bush's task now is to find a way to cut McCain off from circling back to the base Republican vote while attempting to recapture some of the center-right territory Bush owned last summer. McCain came right out Tuesday night with new, conservative rhetoric. That has to be countered, it seems to me, with a message which is delivered by Bush and surrogates which is compelling without being strident.
A recent poll indicates McCain has a gender gap problem with Bush - or the other way around. Women prefer Bush slightly over two-to-one over McCain in the GOP primaries. (Gore has a similar lead with women over Bradley on the other side). That poll might shine a light on the path Bush needs to follow between now and March 14th.
A Reuters poll the other day asked people which actor they would like to play them if their life were being filmed. The highest percentage of men chose Tom Hanks. Women wanted Julia Roberts. I want Mel Brooks. Or Mel Gibson.
At the Grammy Awards the other night, Jennifer Lopez wore a scarf disguised as a dress. When David Duchovny, her co-presenter, came out on stage, he looked like he had just seen something x-rated in the X-Files.
On John Gibson's MSNBC program last evening, I said it was time for Ms. Lopez to admit she had put the dress on backwards.
Later in the evening I attended the annual Washington Press Foundation awards dinner. The list of award winners included Linda Douglass of ABC, Alison Mitchell of the New York Times, and Judy Woodruff of CNN. I get to wear press credentials but I'm never confused; I work around journalists.
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