Ed Rollins Gushes Over Obama

Sorry, Ed.  The man’s an empty suit.

I have said in this space numerous times that the industry of political consulting and campaign management is only one wee slight little baby step above snake oil.  The reason is that the managers and consultants for winning candidates get the credit for the victory, even if their advice had nothing to do with their candidate’s winning the election.  They parlay that into climbing the ladder to run bigger campaigns.

Karl Roverrated was one example.  I think George W. Bush won two national elections in spite of Roverrated, not because of him.  Roverrated was the genius who “thought” up the GOP dumping the Southern (i.e. white) Strategy and putting in the Hispanic Strategy, which failed badly.

This Ed Rollins character is another one.  He has spent the last two decades living off Ronald Reagan’s 49-state landslide re-election in 1984, Rollins being the campaign manager for Reagan that year.  Except that the inconvenient truth of the matter is that a monkey could have managed Reagan to 49 states in 1984, for two big reasons:  (1) The economy improved, and (2) The other guy was the Vice-President for the stagflation and misery index President.

That said, there are examples to the contrary.  Lee Atwater singlehandedly carried George H.W. Bush to the Republican nomination in 1988 versus Bob Dole, who was the early favorite, and then the general election over Michael Dukakis, who had a huge lead in the polls over Bush coming out of the Democrat Convention.  And David Axelrod is pretty good, too.  Barack Obama is President today because Axelrod found the cracks in Clinton, Inc. and blew them wide open, at least open enough for his man to slip through, and Axelrod’s idea to narrow the Republican margin of victory in solidly red counties within swing states is part of the reason he beat McCain last November.

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