September 5, 2004
ADVISORS NUMBER 2301 AND 2302 REPORTING FOR DUTY:
Kerry Reshapes Campaign: Democratic Nominee Taps Two Veteran Party Strategists for Top Roles (Lois Romano and Dan Balz, September 5, 2004, Washington Post)
Under fire to shape up his presidential campaign, Democratic challenger John F. Kerry on Sunday tapped two veteran party strategists from Boston to assume top roles in an operation that has been criticized by Democratic allies for allowing President Bush to regain the initiative in the battle for the White House.Campaign officials said John Sasso, who has been running general election operations at the Democratic National Committee (DNC), will now become the senior Kerry adviser aboard the candidate's traveling charter until the election. Michael Whouley, who helped rescue Kerry's campaign in Iowa during the nomination battle, will take over Sasso's responsibilities at the DNC, reprising the role he played for Al Gore four years ago.
Kerry advisers described the moves as long planned and part of an overall effort to put the strongest possible team together for the final 60 days of the campaign. But the decisions, which caught some staff members at the campaign and DNC by surprise, were seen by other Democrats as an acknowledgement by Kerry that his campaign needed help in the wake of the most difficult month he has endured since winning the nomination last spring.
Those Democrats said Kerry had been slow to respond to criticisms and that the campaign appeared to be sluggish in some of its decision-making. They predicted that the changes would bring greater focus to the Democratic nominee's campaign. [...]
The addition of Sasso and Whouley come a few weeks after two other senior Democratic strategists joined the campaign -- Joe Lockhart, White House press secretary in the Clinton administration, and Joel Johnson, another veteran of the Clinton White House. The two were tapped to strengthen the campaign's communications operation.
Okay, stop giggling. We know, it's impossible to take seriously the idea that adding more advisors will lead to quicker decisions or a more focussed campaign unless accompanied by significant firings, but Democrats are getting very upset about how mean everyone's being to Mr. Kerry so let's all pretend that this smacks of genius and of the kind of daring you could only learn while piloting a boat up the Mekong in search of Mr. Kurtz or whatever it is they wish we all believed. Posted by Orrin Judd at September 5, 2004 8:56 PM
I'll know we're definitely getting into Cloud-Cuckoo-Land when Naomi Wolf, of Alpha Male Al fame, shows up on Kerry's payroll.
Posted by: Bart at September 5, 2004 9:08 PMYou know, if Kerry really wanted to hurt Bush on the economy, he'd fire all his advisors in October and cause the final unemployment rate announcement to surge upward by 1-2 percent the Friday before the election.
Posted by: John at September 5, 2004 10:09 PMJohn - good one.
Posted by: AWW at September 5, 2004 10:23 PMThis attitude of adding ever more advisotrs without ever getting rid of the incompetent ones they've already got is a recurring theme in liberalism-- look at how their only solution for a variety of domestic problems is to throw more money at it, even if there's no indication that it will make any difference.
Is there something in the Liberal/Leftist that makes it impossible for them to admit they made a mistake, or that they were wrong, or that if they repeatedly get the same result for the same action, there's a trend there that might point to a reason?
Maybe Kerry is afraid that canning his senior staff this close to the election would seem a move of desperation.
Better to keep them on, but diminish their roles.
Posted by: Michael Herdegen at September 5, 2004 11:04 PMHe isn't going to fire them because they know where the bodies are buried. That, and he needs all the votes he can get.
October surprise:
The entire populations of several major cities in swing states is being hired by the Kerry campaign and liberal 527s to serve as electioneers on November 2nd. Residents need only show up at the polling place and hold a sign for 5 minutes to earn their $50 salary..
From his hospital bed in New York, Clinton supposedly advised John Kerry how to turn it all around in a 90-minute phone call. How much you want to bet that 89:59:30 of it was spent talking about Clinton?
Posted by: Melissa at September 5, 2004 11:52 PMMelissa:
But wouldn't Mr. Clinton tell him to hire himself, McCurry, Begala and Carville and run to Bush's Right, the way he ran to the elder Bush's? Seems late for that, though he could still get the Right isolationists, protectionists and nativists if he ran way, way Right.
Posted by: oj at September 6, 2004 7:28 AMKerry's big problem, aside from any specific quibbles over Senate votes and image negatives from windsurfing and berating the Secret Service, is that only about 35% will vote for him with these %$##&^@ swift-boat ads exposing him as anti-American and seriously deluded.
Posted by: jim hamlen at September 6, 2004 11:07 AM