Now He Tells Us
David Frum has an editorial in The New York Times claiming George Bush, with Karl Rove, has hurt Republicans by being more interested in politics and coalition building than in leadership. (It's a bit odd since Democrats believe David "Axis of Evil" Frum was part of that Rovian strategery crew.)
He has some reasonable points to make, but the main thrust strikes me as after-the-fact sour grapes. Frum disagrees with a lot of policy decisions Bush and Rove made, and tries to pin it on political (mis)calculation--they were trying to win voters--rather than disagreement on substance.
Frum believes "In 2006, Republicans and conservatives paid the price for this we-know-best attitude." So Bush and Rove just didn't listen to people who knew better, like Frum, because if they did, obviously they'd have changed their minds and the Republicans would have nothing to fear in 2008. Now that's arrogance. (I'd like to ask him what happened to Republicans and conservatives in 2002, or did that work out because they were still listening to Frum then.)
The reason Republicans are in trouble, more than every other reason combined, is the public has soured on Iraq (a war I assume Frum supported). If it had gone better, Bush would be doing relatively well in the polls, his party would still run Congress, and Frum, who lists a whole bunch of reasons why conservatives are in trouble, wouldn't have anything to write about.
(James Carville has a similiarly-themed but even sillier article about how Rove lost a whole generation of Republicans--this coming from the man, remember, who got his guy elected President but managed to lose the Democrats' lock on Congress.)
posted by LAGuy @ 1:43 AM
2 Comments:
Timing is everything. Just a few years ago, Rove seemed to be an (evil) genius -- and everyone was sure he was all powerful and believed him nervously when he said he would create a permanent Republican majority. Now, the pendulum has swung back and he's an idiot who sacrificed the Republicans' status and longevity for short-term political success and very little in terms of policy gains. The truth is probably somewhere in the middle-- but Rove does seem to be a victim of his own hype. When you state your goal as taking over the political system of a giant democracy indefinitely, it's going to be hard to live up to that. It also seems to me that he's a bit of a good pitcher on a poor hitting team. You set your team up to win, but they just can't score the runs and you get stuck with the loss. (But maybe the fact that you intentionally beaned several of the other team's hitters got them fighting mad and also got the umpires against you.)
Another rule in politics is someone's gotta win, and since we really only have two parties, it's likely one side or another is gonna have good streaks, which will be interpreted to mean more than they do.
As I've written before, Reagan and Clinton look like major political successes, but if their re-elections had come up a year or two earlier, they might now be remembered as one-term losers. On the other hand, if Bush 41's second shot were in 1991 rather than 1992, he'd have been a two-termer. (Of courses, he wouldn't even be a one-termer if Reagan hdn't raised him up, just like Gore wouldn't have had a serious shot if it weren't for Clinton, etc.)
Rove did a good job, as did Carville, but you're right, it's also about being in the right place at the right time.
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