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My favorite blog comment about How to Rig an Election: Confessions of a Republican Operative was “Well, that’s refreshing candor from a guy who’s probably going to hell.” It is a favorite because it assumes so much so wrongly.
Setting aside any debate over such a thing as hell, I was never hired by a campaign to be the moral compass. In fact, morality is a slippery slope and not a political dialogue I would willingly enter or incite. I was hired to engineer victory. With so much at stake, morality was not a luxury to be afforded candidates or their staff.
Campaign managers and consultants, in both U.S. political parties, are hired to win. Period. They are not hired to ease the political conscience – if anything they are hired to render it powerless (or at least frustrate it to the point of it giving up and going away). That was the dynamic I bought into when I became a Republican campaign manager and consultant; party v. party; Republicans v. Democrats; winning v. losing.
However, I never bought into the dynamic of Allen Raymond v. the United States government. So when that became my reality, the choice was easy. I never hesitated to tell the truth the moment our government knocked on my door and asked me what happened on Election Day 2002.
As a Republican campaign operative at the Republican National Committee it was drilled into me that election law attorneys serve the purpose identifying the bright line of the law so it could be taunted but not crossed. Anybody who has a problem with that or doesn’t get it doesn’t understand America. America is about self interest, within the rule of law. That’s where I erred.
I broke the law. It wasn’t my intent, but it was the effect. The law is like a wall, on one side the “decent hardworking Americans” like the Cleavers and the Huxtables, on the other felons and convicts. Nowhere in between, or anywhere else, is morality. The reason is because ours is a secular nation. Morality is the domain of organized religion, cults and Bill O’Reilly (allegedly), but not government. So when my judge derided me by asking, “Where was his moral compass?” I couldn’t understand a word he was saying. It was like comparing apples to fire trucks in Coptic. That was also a moment when righteous indignation got on its bench-level soap box and decided to make the law about morality, sending me the clear signal I was doomed to find myself on the same side of the wall as the felons and convicts.
Legislating morality was never my thing. When I was a Republican I believed in lower taxes and less government. I still do, minus the intrusion of snake handling, gun toting GOPers. What I believe in now, though, is compassion in every corner of life. As a felon I can attest there’s little of it directed at former inmates; for a Christian nation we sure don’t often act like it toward our fellow citizens trying to earn their way back over the wall.
The idea of going to hell doesn’t cross my mind much these days; there are too many inside-the-Beltway types ahead of me fooling themselves that they are Ward and Cliff. My suggestion is to not view politics through a morality filter and then get dismayed when elected officials start likewise legislating, because then there really will be hell to pay.
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“Sunlight is the best disinfectant” was a vivid analogy made by Justice Louis Brandeis about the benefits of candor and transparency. And that’s the spirit in which I wrote How to Rig An Election. The book is a completely candid account of my personal experience in Republican politics from the inception of the Republican Revolution to its demise in 2006. My objective in the book was to walk the reader through the process by which political campaigns are waged so that the next time they receive a piece of direct mail, see a television commercial, or hear a radio spot they will know why they got it and what the people who sent it to them are trying to make them believe. After reading this book the reader will no longer just react to the message as they are expected to, but rather pause and consider what reaction is anticipated and then perhaps instead act according to what they think – not feel.
Water is wet, the sky is blue, politics is rife with dirty tricks that orchestrate voter conduct and both parties do it. Witness the fact that an Iowa county chairman for Senator Clinton’s presidential campaign was fired for disseminating an email charging that Senator Obama was educated in a madrassa and is a “Manchurian Candidate” intent on sparking a Muslim revolution in the United States. Of course, that’s a whole lot of craziness coming from a campaign that at the time was faltering. But more interesting was the reaction by Senator Clinton’s campaign. They disavowed the county chairman, expelling him from the campaign. The campaign manager issued a statement condemning the email, saying it was not authorized, and that there would be personnel changes.
I’ve heard that one before.
That was the same reaction of the New Hampshire Republican Party when confronted with the phone jamming scheme in 2002. They went so far as to say it was a rogue operation of which the state GOP was unaware. It wasn’t true in New Hampshire in 2002, and I doubt it’s true in Iowa in the 2008 caucus campaign. It’s just another dirty trick – a standard part of the campaign operative’s playbook.
It is easy for some to try to beat me up for my role in the New Hampshire phone jamming scandal and try to define me in ways that smack of hysteria. The Democratic Party set that tone a long time ago when its chairman equated my crime to murder. It simply is not, and the charge was nonsense designed to evoke a strong emotional reaction from voters and party donors.
As far as contrition, that is between my family, my faith and me. My statement on the matter can be found in the public record and in the epilogue of How To Rig An Election. I wrote How To Rig An Election to vent my anger, but also as a public service, to shed a small ray of sunlight on a process that is in desperate need of disinfecting. The choice to set aside your prejudices and read my story and learn from it is yours.
***
Back in 1992, in one of Bill Clinton’s many exhibitions of his masterful grasp of spin, he called out Sister Souljah by criticizing her extremist comments during the Democratic primary season in 1992. In doing so, then-Governor Clinton signaled to moderate, undecided voters that he was a centrist, like them, and he’d be an acceptable alternative to the incumbent, President George Bush (No. 41).
In an inverted echo of the Sister Souljah moment from her husband’s first Presidential campaign, Senator Hillary Clinton recently opened the door to the issue of race – but without such positive results. In making the case that the Civil Rights Act of 1964 would never have happened but for President Lyndon Johnson, she essentially disparaged the crucial role of every civil rights leader of that era. But for Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., The Hon. Adam Clayton Powell, Jr. and many others, the pressure required to make voting and civil rights legislation a reality wouldn’t have existed. By the time she stammered her way through this explanation, though, it was too little, too late; Barack Obama’s campaign had fashioned the issue just enough to get the attention of a critical segment of South Carolina’s Democratic primary voters.
Senator Clinton’s poor attempt to illustrate her leadership qualities opened the door to the issue of race. Senator Obama smartly stepped through that door and made the tactically correct decision to appeal to minority women in Nevada and South Carolina (with the emphasis on the Palmetto State). Senator Clinton won New Hampshire due to women voters turning out in force and Senator Clinton now leads among women in South Carolina. Senator Obama’s campaign is wise to keep the New Hampshire results top of mind: while Senator Obama enjoys a wide advantage over Senator Clinton among black voters overall, Senator Clinton’s slight advantage with women would be all she needs to win South Carolina and begin to put the Democratic presidential nomination away. Therefore, Senator Obama had to throw the chalks under Senator Clinton in South Carolina by putting race in play and compel black women to choose between their gender and their race. Senator Clinton gave him a fantastic opportunity.
Senator Obama is a savvy candidate and likely had a sense of how inflammatory this issue could become. It would help him with a core group of voters, but it wouldn’t be in his interest to allow the issue to dominate the contest. So once he got the utility he needed from Senator Clinton’s original comments, he let it drop. Senator Clinton was not about to complain, likely relieved to have the issue dissipate from the news cycle. So Senator Obama succeeded in deftly manipulating this issue to reap the benefits going into the South Carolina primary, while avoiding raising the issue further, which could have dimmed his positioning as a candidate who transcends race. If Senator Obama were to stay with the race issue, there would be a real risk of alienating white voters and making his candidacy about race rather than hope and change.
Senator Clinton served up a softball to Senator Obama and he took full advantage, demonstrating an agility and, equally important, a calculated restraint. This is the kind of performance Senator Obama needs if he is to beat out Senator Clinton for the presidential nomination.
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