Ten years ago Berlusconi stunned the country by holding up at a press conference an electronic surveillance device which he said had been found at his house. He railed against the "outlaw prosecutors" who were persecuting him. Politicians on the left and right denounced this outrage which risked subverting Italian democracy. An ally of Berlusconi said that what had happened was worse than the Watergate scandal that brought down President Richard Nixon. Weeks later a criminal investigation found that Berlusconi had held up an old bugging device that had been placed in his house by his own security guards. This discovery received far less attention in the press than the original dramatic revelation, in which the Italian public was put on alert that its constitutional order was at risk because of rogue prosecutors.Does this tactic sound familiar to you?
In 1986, Karl Rove ran the gubernatorial campaign for Bill Clements. Shortly before the election, he dramatically announced that he had found an electronic eavesdropping device in his own office. The Democrats, he alleged, had placed it there. There was an investigation by the FBI and the local constabulary, who understood immediately that any bug with a battery so small was useless for the presumed purpose. The battery needed to be changed every few hours and -- tellingly -- still had plenty of juice in it when Rove made the announcement. It soon became obvious that Turdblossom (or one of his underlings) had bugged his own office -- no other explanation was technically or logistically tenable. But the truth was still "getting its boots on," as the old saying has it, when the polls opened; Clements won.
Qestions:
1. Is there a playbook -- a literal playbook -- in which all these Machiavellian techniques are discussed?
2. Why do the Republicans never pay a political price when such underhanded tactics come to light?
2. Could a Democratic equivalent to Rove ever get away with pulling off such a ploy in reverse?
I'm not suggesting that any Dem ought to do so; such an attempt would be both wrong and foolish. My point is that the strategy would surely backfire. The Republican media forces would not be cowed for an instant; they would immediately scream that foul play was afoot -- and the public would believe their side of the story.
Which brings me to my deepest question. Why are the rules of political reality written in such a way that Democratic virtue is ever in doubt, while the Republicans are always given the benefit of every doubt? As long as those presumptions remain in place, the Rovians -- and the Berlusconians -- will continue to use underhanded vote-grabbing techniques.
5 comments:
Here's the playbook: Whatever you're doing accuse the other guy of doing.
Lying helps enormously in conducting political campaigns, and that tendency comes natural to people whose roots are in commerce and whose minds are mercantile. And far more than in Italy, Americans believe what they're told, in the form of advertising, whether that means a campaign commercial or Tim Russert.
Add that lax approach to the truth to the apparently religious conviction of "conservatives" that their program is divinely ordained, and they'll do absolutely anything to win.
Now look at the typical Democrat, whose commitment to social justice is barely lukewarm, who can't tell truth about the world, because the truth would offend corporate campaign contributors, and who will be vilified in the national media should he or she raise the courage to depart from the usual lies and myths.
As this Darwinian contest plays out, is there any real doubt who's going to win? You might as well pit a mouse against a ferret.
that playbook would be, ironically enough, 'bush's brain.'
What you say couldnt be more true.
The problem is that the democratic party is too weak and the media too invested in access journalism to tell it like it is.
The thing that is killing the media is that the liberal bias tag is sticking and therefore a double standard ensues.
Here is the playbooks most important ploy:
Divide and conquer the masses by
maintaining the illusion that America has two competing political parties.
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