: Inside out…
I do not believe in letting candidates “be themselves.” In this age of instant communications and punditry, one wrong word can have a serious impact on a campaign. If I were in charge of campaign communications for Howard Dean, there’s no way I would have approved of this:
Howard Dean, who is increasingly giving his presidential candidacy an anti-Washington cast, cranked up his rhetoric on Tuesday, saying that if he won, members of Congress were “going to be scurrying for shelter, just like a giant flashlight on a bunch of cockroaches.”
Yes, it plays well to a certain segment of voters. A big part of me would weep at the loss of this line–especially if Dean wanted to use it in the South, where the roach is the king of insects.
But I do not believe in separating campaign promises (even metaphorically stated) from political reality. Doing so creates a falsehood. The fact is that presidents have limited power to make Congress do much of anything. There are some crusty old roaches up there who will snicker at Dean’s flashlight.
Outsider rhetoric may work to get one elected, but it just as surely works to hinder governance once elected. Further, outsider rhetoric is always false. The presidency is the consummate insider’s job, and it takes an insider to get it. “Insider” is a socio-political metaphor; one doesn’t have to be “in” or “of” Washington to be inside it. (via PoliticalWire)
UPDATE (1:05 p.m.): How quickly can a pithy sound bite turn into trouble? As long as it takes a well-read person to compare Dean’s quote to something sinister. Check out the comments for context; Jay Manifold points out a problem. Here’s some ammo that knee-jerkers can toss around. The Lenin quote is in the seventh paragraph.
Just as long as he doesn’t promise to “purge the … land of all kinds of harmful insects.”
Haha! Lenin…good one!