Karl Rove On Wonderboy's MidTerm Campaigning Ineptitude

Karl Rove wrote a nice piece in his weekly Wall Street Journal column the other day regarding Wonderboy's recent campaigning mistakes.


Why should we be surprised with Rove's assertions that Wonderboy is now making horrific mistakes in his midterm electioneering? Think about how the First Rookie got to the White House.


Prior to running for President, he'd only run once for federal office. That was when he bushwacked his mentor to get the Democratic Senate nomination, then happily stood by and allowed his Republican opponent's sealed divorce records to be used in the campaign. His comment when they appeared in the Chicago dailies was something like,


'When I heard/read about the divorce records, I went to get fitted for my swearing-in suit.'


Almost immediately upon arriving in the Senate, he began running for President.


This guy hasn't had a seriously issues-based, non -race-based campaign yet. Why should he know anything about presidential campaigning for other Congressional members?

Isn't his entire appeal and character based on- himself? His anointed minority ascension to the nation's and free world's most powerful job?

Can this guy even identify with anyone else deemed so far beneath his magnificent self?

Rove's editorial included some pretty terrific passages, including these,

"Last Saturday at a West Newton, Mass., fund-raiser, the president said, "facts and science and argument [do] not seem to be winning . . . because we're hard-wired not to always think clearly when we're scared."


In a penetrating piece in the New York Times Magazine on Oct. 12, Peter Baker profiles a president who "believes he is the smartest person in any room," according to one prominent Democratic lawmaker. He and his aides think that the core of their difficulties is "a communications problem" and the result of a "miscalculation" that the president could "forge genuine bipartisan coalitions."


Then there is this priceless quote involving a Democratic Representative,


Earlier this year Rep. Marion Berry of Arkansas warned moderate Democrats of a midterm bloodbath comparable to 1994. "Well, the big difference here and in '94 was you've got me," he reported the president as having said. "We're going to see how much difference that makes now," Mr. Berry added. Yes, we will."



See what I mean?

It would seem that Wonderboy is so arrogant as to miss the reality of his own shockingly fast rise to power, and the uniquely temporal reasons for it. Thus, he can't really understand any politics that isn't about his personality or race or presumed unrivaled intellectual brilliance.

Rove is correct in assessing the president's Congressional campaigning shortcomings, but it shouldn't really come as any big surprise.