Archive for the 'The President' category

Pelosi’s Foreign Policy Blunder

Apr 05 2007 Published by under Congress, Craziness, Democrats, Government, Politics, The President

There is a reason that Congress is tasked with ratifying treaties while the President, via the State Department, is responsible for negotiating them. The simple fact is not every Tom, Dick, and Harry should be a diplomat. Nancy Pelosi proved that with her recent trip to Syria.

Today the Washington Post called her out on this ill-advised trip.

Mr. Bush said that thanks to the speaker’s freelancing Mr. Assad was getting mixed messages from the United States. Ms. Pelosi responded by pointing out that Republican congressmen had visited Syria without drawing presidential censure. That’s true enough — but those other congressmen didn’t try to introduce a new U.S. diplomatic initiative in the Middle East…

The really striking development here is the attempt by a Democratic congressional leader to substitute her own foreign policy for that of a sitting Republican president… We have found much to criticize in Mr. Bush’s military strategy and regional diplomacy. But Ms. Pelosi’s attempt to establish a shadow presidency is not only counterproductive, it is foolish.

I’m not sure at what point the Democrats in Congress lost all sense of reason, but this one really takes the cake. If Newt Gingrich had taken it upon himself to resolve the situation in Haiti, or negotiate a peace in Northern Ireland, or meet with Somali warlords during the Clinton administration, the howls from Democrats would be deafening.

The precedent that Pelosi has set is dangerous for our Union. Should the Democrats reclaim the White House, I would suggest every Republican with some frequent flyer miles to burn should start globe trotting as a self-appointed Deputy Secretary of State. The Democrats in Congress truly believe, despite clear Constitutional direction to the contrary, it is their prerogative to micromanage American policy – both foreign and domestic.

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The New Mexico Situation

Mar 13 2007 Published by under Craziness, Crime, Government, Operatives, Politics, Republicans, The President

I’ve resisted the temptation to write on the ongoing problem with New Mexico’s former US Attorney David Iglesias, his firing, subsequent congressional testimony, and fallout from the comments of people in NM who should know better.

I was raised in New Mexico and lived there until I was 29. I served as the Communications Director, Deputy Director and Executive Director of the New Mexico GOP at various times between 1995 and 2003. I’ve worked closely with just about everyone involved in this case with the exception of the current Chairman, and I like all of them. However, the stunning lack of judgment that is on display has made me speak out.

Unlike a lot of bloggers, I’m squarely on the side of David Iglesias. He’s a good guy. He was a lazy candidate, but he’s a decent person.

The public relations disaster in which the Administration finds itself is entirely of its own making. The Justice Department screwed this up terribly. The minute that they alleged the firings (universally) were due to performance problems, they should have seen this going down in exactly this way.

If you are asked to leave a company, for whatever reason, and you come to a deal with your former employer to make the transition smooth, you expect them to honor that. The last thing you would expect to see is the guys you just left trashing you in the media, and making you sound incompetent.

According to both his internal performance reviews and the White House’s own list of poor performing USAs, Iglesias was doing a good job. His firing, based on news reports, seems to be entirely a function of his refusal to rush an investigation and issue indictments simply so his party would benefit at the polls.

Sampson sent an e-mail to Miers in March 2005 that ranked all 93 U.S. attorneys. Strong performers “exhibited loyalty” to the administration; low performers were “weak U.S. attorneys who have been ineffectual managers and prosecutors, chafed against Administration initiatives, etc.” A third group merited no opinion.

At least a dozen prosecutors were on a “target list” to be fired at one time or another, the e-mails show.

Only three of those eventually fired were given low rankings… Two were given strong evaluations: [including] David C. Iglesias in Albuquerque, who has alleged political interference from GOP lawmakers…

In September, Sampson produced another list of firing candidates…

Iglesias, the New Mexico prosecutor, was not on that list. Justice officials said Sampson added him in October… [emphasis mine]

In other words, Iglesias was doing a good job, had been loyal to the Administration, was pushing the Bush agenda. All that good came to an end when he refused to issue bogus indictments.

Now I don’t believe for a minute that Domenici intended to pressure Iglesias. His style is sometimes rough, but I have always known him to be a good guy. I have been on the receiving end of a couple of calls from him and I know the feeling Iglesias describes as a pit in the stomach. It’s more a reaction to his position than it is to him. I think he may sometimes lose sight of the position he holds in the eyes of others.

That said, I believe the blame for this debacle rests solely on the shoulders of the Justice Department. They screwed this up, and screwed it up badly. There were about a dozen ways they could have handled this better. None of them involved a public proclamation challenging the competence of people who otherwise had been party loyalists for years.

I am pleased to see Sampson resign, but I do not believe his head should be the last to roll.

I don’t want a US Attorney who will misuse the power of his office just to ensure Republican electoral victory. If we truly believe, as Ken Mehlman, Newt Gingrich, and Karl Rove have all said, that our party is built on the strength of our ideas, then why do we need to fast track indictments against Democrats to win? And why do we feel the need to punish and slander those who follow the law?

Anyone in the Department of Justice or the White House who has willingly misused the power of law to pursue political goals should be run out as well. When they’re fired, by the American people, they’ll truly know what it means to lose your job for poor performance.

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Dems08: Attack Of The Has-Beens And Never-Will-Bes

Jan 11 2007 Published by under Candidates, Democrats, Politics, The President

Dear god I would hate to be a Democrat primary voter this year. The slate of wannabe Presidents that are lining up on the left is absolutely ridiculous. Now Chris Dodd is jumping into the waters hip deep. It’s like every bad candidate from years past is lining up under the theory that they’ll be somehow more palatable.

So your field includes 2004 loser John Kerry, 1988 plagiarist-in-chief Joe Biden, 2004 joke Dennis Kucinich, and 2004 double loser (POTUS and Veep) John Edwards. Al Gore could jump in. You just know Al Sharpton wants 15 more minutes of attention, though Jesse Jackson might have to arm wrestle Sharpton for the right to be this years token wacko. All we need is Dick Gephardt to come out of obscurity and form a dream ticket with Geraldine Ferraro.

I look at the GOP field and yawn, but I look at the Dem field and cringe.

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Feeble, Empty Gestures

Jan 10 2007 Published by under Congress, Democrats, Government, Legislation, Pandering, Politics, Republicans, The President

It must really suck to win control of Congress, and then realize that the guy you abhor still has veto power over anything you try to do. Lesser politicians would give up, but not the Democrats. They, instead, will resort to useless, feeble, gestures and symbolic votes that the American people will largely ignore.

Ahh… the power of the majority…

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MittTV And GOP Failure To Think Outside The Box

Jan 10 2007 Published by under Candidates, Democrats, Elections, Marketing, Politics, Republicans, Technology, The Internet, The President

In a comment on my post about Mitt’s site, David All posed a question about the site.

I’d be interested in your thoughts on MittTV and the site Рin general.

I started to reply about MittTV in the comments, but it became long enough to make a post… so here it is…

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The one issue I have with MittTV is the fact that it looks like a PBS documentary. Republicans put together stuff like this, expect it to go viral, and act surprised when it doesn’t (unless you count 10k forwards as viral, which I don’t).

People don’t watch video online to look at stuff that looks like smaller versions of the same stuff they watch on TV. How much of the stuff you see on YouTube looks like TV? Almost none of it. The selling point to YouTube is the fact that these are real people doing real things. Mostly…

LonelyGirl15 didn’t reach her degree of notoriety because she put together some mock PBS documentary with cut shots of her friends offering testimonials. Even the fact that there is nothing at all real about her videos, doesn’t change the appeal it had. The production value wasn’t bad. The lighting was decent, the set was sparsely decorated. Most importantly though, it felt real.

Most of the stuff Republicans do online has none of that. It may have a flashy set, and an anchor straight out of Central Casting, and be professionally edited and polished, but it comes across like a used car salesman. I will say the only videos I have seen in GOP politics that I felt differently about were the stuff Justin did for the Bush campaign and the RNC’s Off the Record series with Mindy and Katie (before it was pulled).

Justin’s videos were great because they didn’t focus on selling the President. They focused on his interaction with real people. They focused on the President’s tours and the things he did on the road and the crowd enthusiasm. They captured the near total lack of reality about Presidential campaigns by demonstrating these ridiculous amounts of staging he has to endure to be a candidate, but the fact that the people still warmed to him.

Justin was given creative freedom to express what he saw and experienced on those trips. He wasn’t told to stay on message and make sure everything presented the President in the best light. He was given the freedom to experiment. Occasionally he produced something that looked like Andy Warhol’s nightmares, but they almost always were very, very good.

Mindy and Katie did a phenomenal job given the set we had. They demonstrated the power of video. They made the media take notice of the fact that the RNC was doing something new, different, bold, and yes, a little odd. They proved a video series featuring two unknown staffers interviewing elected officials could get attention and get people chattering.

Unfortunately, the studio was dilapidated (it was left over from the days of GOPTV back in the mid 90s), the lighting was poor and the equipment was old. Oddly, when viewed on RNC PCs, or tape, the videos looked fine. When viewed online, however, they were dark and dingy. But they still got attention in a way that nothing else the RNC did in the last two years was really able to do. Mindy and Katie were recognized in airports and the open rates on those e-mails were as high as the open rates on notes from the President.

Of course, the plug was pulled because the series wasn’t “Presidential”. The professional communicators felt the media attention it received reflected negatively on them. They said it needed to be more sophisticated, look less like Wayne’s World and more like Meet The Press. The RNC invested a bunch of money to upgrade the studio, hired a former news anchor and professionally created an almost completely unwatchable propaganda series.

The other thing the GOP likes to do is the webmercial. They create what would be a sketchy spot if it ran on TV, and promote it online. It’s like a cross between an ad and a press release. They’re done to generate media, not to attract viewers. It’s really sort of a cynical tactic because it assumes people can be spoken to only in sound bites and will regurgitate on cue.

That’s the one thing the Democrats are doing better online. They are embracing technology and trying different things. They’re willing to take a chance at doing something goofy. Would any GOP Congressman ever consent to giving a press conference in Second Life? Absolutely not!

The GOP tends to look at online trends like vlogging or Second Life and make comments that, “I’ll look cartoonish. I won’t be taken seriously.”

Well a lot of people said the same thing about Presidential candidates going on late night TV until Clinton played the sax on Arsenio. People were watching late night TV. The Clinton team tapped into a world that people related to and connected in a real way. What was “Presidential” didn’t factor into the equation.

Did it matter that Arsenio was cancelled? No. Should it matter if Second Life is a fad? Probably not. The fact is people are responding to it. Suddenly the concept of what may or may not be “Presidential” is shifting. Should Mitt Romney or John McCain do a press conference in Second Life. Hell no! But they should be willing to have fun with online media.

One thing I wanted to do on the Bush campaign, that was rejected every time I brought it up, was to do a series about life in the campaign. How does a major event like a rally for 100,000 people come together? How does a TV ad go from concept to buy? We had a videographer in house to do the shooting, we would do all the editing in house, so our exposure was nil. We could make sure that nothing sensitive was released (unlike inviting the media to follow us around all day).

The upside is you create something people respond to because they see how hard the staff is working, how creative they are, how much fun they are having while working 20 hour days. The downside is nobody has done it before.

How great would it be to see life inside a major Presidential campaign as it unfolds? To see the process for creating a new ad at the same time the ad is released? To see the work that goes into creating a rally and playing the video that shows that as the teaser for a live webcast of that same rally? To ride on the bus with the candidate as they role through middle America.

We need to adjust our concept of “Presidential” behavior because the public, while respecting the office, responds well to people that appear to be “one of the guys.” That’s why Bush always won in polls of “which candidate would you like to have a beer with?”

As long as we hold the President to a fundamentally different standard than the general public, and let that standard dissuade us from being innovative and force us to produce uninteresting uninspiring pabulum, we’ll continue to be behind.

In answer to David’s question, MittTV is only as good as the idea behind it. If the idea is to use video to put up otherwise stale issue material, I say they’re right on track. If the idea is to get people to connect with the candidate and the campaign, they need to rethink their approach.

One example would have been a video featuring their big call-a-thon the other day. Show what it took to make that happen, the excitement of the people there, the tireless hours the candidate, his campaign, and his friends worked to make it happen. That will resonate with more people and get passed around more than a video telling my why Mitt’s health care program is a great thing.

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