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Layering the Kerry Campaign
Rich Galen Wednesday September 8, 2004
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From London, England
As the only person on this side of Mullings.com who has actually had cardiac bypass surgery, I want to wish President Clinton an easy, fast, and complete recovery from his.
In spite of the Kerry campaign's insistance that all is well; the Clintons have installed just about everyone who has ever appeared in Bill's defense on Larry King Live to try and breathe life into his campaign.
Professional Writer's Teaching Point: See, in that last bullet point there was a great temptation to use add a word like "gasping" to modify "campaign" and compounding the error by adding a clause including a simile like "which is wilting like week-old lettuce," or "drooping like a willow in an August drought" or "sagging like the front porch on a dust bowl farmhouse." However, because I am a Professional Writer, I withstood the temptation.
President Clinton, assuming his recovery goes without a hitch, will not be able to take to the campaign trail for the better part of six weeks. That is being seen as a setback to the Kerry campaign, but I'm not so sure. During his absence from the campaign trail, Clinton has installed his people at every level of the Kerry operations.
That means that Clinton, sitting at the kitchen table watching CNN, can call Paul Begala or his former White House communications director, Doug Sosnik, or on of any number of people and tell them what Kerry should be saying or doing this week, or today, or at his next stop.
As we noted during the Democratic and Republican conventions, the GOP is George W. Bush's party. Period. He wowed 'em during his acceptance speech and the delegates left the hall singing his song.
The Democrats are not the party of John Kerry. He happens to be their nominee, but the Democratic Party is in the total thrall of Bill Clinton, with Hillary Clinton available for understudy duties when required.
On the eve of Clinton's surgery he was on the phone with Kerry for 90 minutes. You think Kerry or his campaign staff speed-dialed the New York Times to tell them that, in between all those games he, Hillary, and Chelsea were playing in his hospital room, Clinton took time out to talk to John like a guidance counselor scolding an underperforming student?
Dear Mr. Mullings:
What happened to your "no simile" rule. And, by the way, just what IS a simile?
Signed,
Comparative Government Association of America
I lost my concentration. And the definition of "simile" is on the Secret Decoder Ring .
It was the Clintonistas who had to have called reporters to tell them of the phone call. It is in their nature to remind everyone, at every opportunity, that Bill Clinton is the Godfather of the Democratic Party in the US.
In politics there is a concept known as "layering." If you are layered you get to keep your title, but someone else gets to do your job and make the decisions you used to make.
The Kerry folks are trapped. On the one hand they will be treated like the kiddy corps because the grown-ups have been brought in to fix this thing. On the other, if they complain it will get into the press and cause even more turmoil among big-time Democrats and more distrust among rank-and-file voters.
John Kerry got into this predicament, not because President Bush has sprinted out to a 7 to 11 point lead. Kerry is in this predicament because he - in spite of month after month of bad news for the Administration - could not open up any daylight.
Clinton's move will cause the decision-making process to be much more efficient. Whether those decisions will work for Kerry the way they worked for Clinton is still a major issue.
Nevertheless, by layering just about every major portion of the Kerry campaign with his own people, Bill Clinton has done to the Kerry campaign what the surgeons did for him: He has bypassed the blockages.
On the Secret Decoder Ring Page today: The promised definition of the word "simile," a couple of interesting Mullfotos from London, and an amusing Catchy Caption of the Day.
--END --
Copyright © 2004 Richard A. Galen
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