FROM: Nick Machiavelli, Senior Partner, Machiavelli, O’Blarney, Iago, Alcibiades, and Morris, Political Consultants.
TO: Karl Rove, Executive Assistant to the President, the White House, Washington DC.
Karl, let me apologize for refusing to take your telephone calls until now. The truth is that I did not want to talk to you until you had been sufficiently humbled by the president’s fall in the polls and the rise of a really dangerous Democratic challenger. You would not have been receptive to my advice. Or anyone’s advice.
Then yesterday morning I saw Junior being interviewed by Tim Russert and I said to my secretary: “Lilith, take a memo to Karl. He will be tearing his hair out in clumps today. Let’s get to him while he’s still in a mood of fruitful despair.”
Fortunately for you, Karl, my first piece of advice is reassuring: Don’t worry. Relax. It’s not the end of the world. Not too many million people saw Junior yesterday. Also, they were the kind of people you needn’t worry too much about–namely, political junkies–because their votes won’t be swayed by a single television program. Real voters don’t watch political interviews until two weeks before the election.
Besides, it was shrewd of you to choose Russert as the interviewer. Now is the time to shore up Junior’s conservative base–which worries that he is drifting into liberal positions. Russert might have really damaged him with that base by asking tough questions about his amnesty for illegal immigrants or federal boondoggles like the Iowa indoor rain forest or the State of the Union speech with its “lots and lots of little government.”
But as you doubtless calculated, Karl, it never occurred to Russert to ask such yokel-type questions. That would have offended Russert’s liberal base. So Junior didn’t continue alienating his base needlessly. Good thinking. Foresight. Damage control. Six-and-a-half out of ten.
Now, my second piece of advice: Worry.
Junior should have been commanding and authoritative on every issue raised. Instead he seemed like a fundamentally nice guy slightly out of his depth. That’s barely acceptable in a challenger; it’s death and taxes in a man who has been president for three years.
What’s worse news is that Kerry comes across exactly the opposite–namely, as a not particularly nice guy who swallowed an encyclopedia at age five. Ever heard of an English short-story writer called Saki? He forecast Kerry a hundred years ago: “He had no small talk but an infinite supply of the larger variety.” Alas, what the voters look for in a president is not niceness but authority. They want a president who knows what he is doing and who is forceful in doing it. And on recent showing Kerry beats Junior in the “sneer of cold command” stakes every time.
Which leads to my third piece of advice: Niceness won’t work. Sure, in the 2000 election you wanted to wipe away the harsh memory of the Gingrich Revolution. So Junior talked about “compassionate conservatism” and stressed education reform was the thing in life he cared most about. But Gingrich’s harshness paid off–it was he, not Clinton, who brought down spending and created a surplus for the first time in living memory. All Junior’s soft phrases and compassionate spending rested on the fiscal surplus that Gingrich had sacrificed his own popularity to create.
Today, we are drowning in red ink and fighting an anti-guerilla war in Iraq. The voters want evidence that the next President has the toughness to tackle these mountainous problems. Gingrich is not available on the GOP side–he’s retreated into punditry, largely because you and Junior decreed that he was an “un-person” to be removed from all official Republican photographs.
But Kerry is the Democrats’ tough guy–that’s why he defeating “Pretty Boy” John Edwards in the remaining Democrat primaries. Unless Junior convinces the voters that he is as tough as Kerry, not even a rising economic tide will lift his boat fast enough to come top in the November election.
No more Mr. Nice Guy then. But what does that mean in practice? Well, in the first place, it means Junior arguing a great deal more effectively than on Russert that the Iraq war was a war necessary to the security of America and her allies–and that Kerry waffled and zigzagged all over it. Yes, Kerry is a war hero–get over it. Key line for the acceptance speech: “As individuals, we can all trust our lives to Senator Kerry’s courage; as a nation we cannot afford to trust America’s future to his judgment.” (That’s compassionate conservatism.)
Second, here is a suggestion for Junior in the presidential debates: Draw up a list of foolish spending programs popular with Kerry’s key constituencies. Declare firmly that they were passed by the Democrats in Congress (yes, I know the GOP is in control, but very few voters know whether Congress be a man or a horse.) Pledge to abolish them after November. And then challenge Kerry to do the same. Just watching him open and close his mouth soundlessly like a goldfish will be great television.
Third, since the religious right will force Junior to keep his pledge to oppose gay marriage against the Massachusetts Supreme Court with a constitutional amendment, make a virtue out of virtue. Everyone knows Junior hates divisive hot-button “cultural issues.” Well, let him make a virtue of that too: “I did not want to raise the divisive hot-button cultural issue of gay marriage–but Massachusetts has insisted that we debate in the full glare of an election. With great reluctance, therefore . . .
Fourth, Karl, this is advice for you personally: learn some electoral mathematics. There are approximately 14 non-Hispanic white voters to every Hispanic voter. Two-thirds of non-Hispanic whites, and one-third of Hispanics, are strongly opposed to the president’s proposals to legalize illegal immigrants. However you add or subtract those figures, they scream one message: bury Junior’s immigration proposals.
Well, that’s my advice–and, of course, you will not take it. Take heart, anyway. Kerry won’t take my advice either. So the 2004 election will be a replay of the 2000–a fight in which the Mob seems to have blundered and bribed both fighters to take a fall. I will watch them wagging their faces in each others’ fists with a detached but satisfied interest. For my fee is due even if you ignore the advice.
Your devoted friend,
Nick.
P.S. Please add 30 percent to my usual fee on this occasion. I want it paid through a reliable middleman, and he insists on his usual commission. You know him, I believe; he claims that Junior and his father have used him for off-the-books business in the past. His name is Vicente Fox and he operates a nice little operation called the Mexican Treasury Laundry. Make sure the payment is in Euros. Patriotism is the last refuge of the scoundrel, not the first.
–John O’Sullivan is editor-in-chief of The National Interest. This piece first appeared in the Chicago Sun-Times and is reprinted with permission. O’Sullivan can be reached through Benador Associates