http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/la-oe-huffington11nov11.story The Architects of Defeat
For Kerry's team, it was the economy. Stupid.
By Arianna Huffington
Arianna Huffington's latest book is "Fanatics and Fools: the Game Plan for Winning Back America" (Miramax).
November 11, 2004
Twelve days before the election, James Carville stood in a Beverly Hills living room surrounded by two generations of Hollywood stars. After being introduced by Sen. John Kerry's daughter, Alexandra, he told the room — confidently, almost cockily — that the election was in the bag.
"If we can't win this damn election," the advisor to the Kerry campaign said, "with a Democratic Party more unified than ever before, with us having raised as much money as the Republicans, with 55% of the country believing we're heading in the wrong direction, with our candidate having won all three debates, and with our side being more passionate about the outcome than theirs — if we can't win this one, then we can't win
! And we need to completely rethink the Democratic Party."<snip>
But shouldn't it have been obvious that Iraq and the war on terror were the real story of this campaign? Only these Washington insiders, stuck in an anachronistic 1990s mind-set and re-fighting the '92 election, could think that the economy would be the driving factor in a post-9/11 world with Iraq in flames. That the campaign's leadership failed to recognize that it was no longer "the economy, stupid" was the tragic flaw of the race. <snip>
It was the "Truth and Trust Team" that fought to have Kerry give a major speech clarifying his Iraq position, which he finally did, to great effect, at New York University on Sept. 20. "That was the turning point," Thorne told me. "John broke through and found his voice again." But even after the speech, said Thorne, who was responsible for the campaign's wildly successful online operation, the campaign kept returning to domestic issues, and in the end Thorne received only a paltry $1 million to run ads making the case. <snip>
How the campaign handled the reappearance of Bin Laden the Friday before the election says it all. "Stan Greenberg was adamant," a senior campaign strategist told me, "that Kerry should not even mention Osama." Greenberg insisted that because his polling showed Kerry had already won the election, he should not do anything to endanger his position. But because Bin Laden was dominating the news, a compromise was reached, under which Kerry issued a bland statesman-like statement (followed by stumping on the economy) and Holbrooke was dispatched to argue on television that the reappearance of Bin Laden proved that the world was no safer than it had been.
As at almost every other turn, the campaign had chosen caution over boldness. Why did these highly paid professionals make such amateurish mistakes? In the end, it was the old obsession with pleasing undecided voters (who, Greenberg argued right up until the election, would break for the challenger) and an addiction to polls and focus groups, which they invariably interpreted through their Clinton-era filters. It appears that you couldn't teach these old Beltway dogs new tricks. It's time for some fresh political puppies.
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