Wednesday, August 25, 2004
Plausibly Deniable
(Quick hits today, as I'm up to my eyeballs in remunerative labor--whoo-hoo!)
It occurs to me--in what is not a startling insight no one else has had, I'm sure--that White House reaction to this morning's revelation that a lawyer with the Bush/Cheney campaign has been advising the Swift Boat Liars is of a piece with their claim that they never said Saddam was involved with 9/11. As I understand it, there is no formal record of any coordination relationship between the campaign and SBVT--but there doesn't have to be. Call it an understanding--just as it was intended to be "understood" that Saddam was linked to 9/11, even though the transcripts won't say so, and thus the White House remains technically simon-pure and wreathed in good intentions. But the desired affect is achieved anyhow.
Every day this story continues to roil (even when it roils like today and makes the White House look bad), it's bad for Kerry because the media has framed it in the worst possible way for him. Even Bush's supposed call to "take the ads off the air" makes Bush look better than he deserves, because what he really said is "take all 527 ads off the air," which isn't going to happen, and he knows it. So it's all political gain for Bush and no actual help for Kerry, and he looks worse for continuing to prolong what Bush is perceived as having tried to write finis to.
A commenter earlier this week nailed it: the Swift Boat controversy is Kerry's Willie Horton. If he loses, we'll look back on the last two weeks as the critical moment.
(Quick hits today, as I'm up to my eyeballs in remunerative labor--whoo-hoo!)
It occurs to me--in what is not a startling insight no one else has had, I'm sure--that White House reaction to this morning's revelation that a lawyer with the Bush/Cheney campaign has been advising the Swift Boat Liars is of a piece with their claim that they never said Saddam was involved with 9/11. As I understand it, there is no formal record of any coordination relationship between the campaign and SBVT--but there doesn't have to be. Call it an understanding--just as it was intended to be "understood" that Saddam was linked to 9/11, even though the transcripts won't say so, and thus the White House remains technically simon-pure and wreathed in good intentions. But the desired affect is achieved anyhow.
Every day this story continues to roil (even when it roils like today and makes the White House look bad), it's bad for Kerry because the media has framed it in the worst possible way for him. Even Bush's supposed call to "take the ads off the air" makes Bush look better than he deserves, because what he really said is "take all 527 ads off the air," which isn't going to happen, and he knows it. So it's all political gain for Bush and no actual help for Kerry, and he looks worse for continuing to prolong what Bush is perceived as having tried to write finis to.
A commenter earlier this week nailed it: the Swift Boat controversy is Kerry's Willie Horton. If he loses, we'll look back on the last two weeks as the critical moment.
