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September 21, 2004Giving Props
Hence the saying: If you know the enemy
and know yourself, you need not fear the result of a hundred battles. If you know yourself but not the enemy, for every victory gained you will also suffer a defeat. If you know neither the enemy nor yourself, you will succumb in every battle. Sun Tzu: The Art of War Your humble SSG has been a veteran of many a campaign on both sides of the aisle. When it came to federal and national races, I had always worked for the right. For local races, for lack of a choice it was often for a Southern/Blue Dog Democrat. This duality of political experience made the jump for me to Gen. Clark's campaign an easy one. I was dismayed with the growth of government, the erosion of civil liberties, and a number of other things with the Bush administration. Gen. Clark was a fellow Army veteran, a Southern Democrat, and a Little Rock native. It was easy to move over to his camp for the primaries. Many of my Southern friends and Republican friends agreed that he was the only person they would consider as an alternative to the President. The Marine and his wife I mentioned here may well have crossed over and voted for the General had he have been the nominee. I first heard Mike say what he was quoted saying when I spoke with him last January and shared what I had learned about Kerry's post Vietnam activities. Yep, all this stuff the Swift Boat Vets are sharing know, we knew then. I was a Veteran's Outreach coordinator in two states and you can bet that more than a few vets were in New Hampshire and New York knew about this last January and February. One of the things I have always prided myself on in my campaign experiences has been my tendency to stay friendly with the opposition from the candidate down to their lowliest campaign volunteers. I'll never forget one time when I was having drinks with some other Arkansas GOP hacks and some ladies from former Oklahoma First Lady Cathy Keating (R) after a day of campaign events. They expressed wonder at how paranoid my Arkansas colleagues were about their Democratic counterparts. I had often wondered the same thing. They explained that they might fight like h#ll at the Capitol in Oklahoma City, but at the end of the day they could all go get drinks together and socialize. I suppose, for me, it goes back to sports or speech tournaments. Sure, I wanted to win and did my absolute best to wipe the competition away, but I never got anywhere by being afraid or avoiding them. I studied them, I picked up on some of their tactics and techniques, adapted to use as my own, picked their brains, tried to figure out how they thought and why they thought it. By embracing my competitors, it was easier to understand them and thereby defeat them. If someone was a skilled operator, I acknowledged it and gave them the respect they deserved. The same trait carried over into the campaigns I worked. If I saw someone who was a skilled operator, I tried to learn from them, even, nay, especially, if they were on the other side. Love or hate him, Bill Clinton was about as skilled a campaigner as this country has ever seen. Watching how he worked, you can easily learn a lifetime of lessons on successful candidates. Growing up in Arkansas, I watched him for as long as I can remember. The guy is good and there is no denying it. The same thoughts carried over to his campaign team. One of my first campaign heroes was not a Republican at all. I was hired as a field director for a scrappy Republican candidate that had nearly knocked off the incumbent in 1994. The incumbent stepped down for family reasons and we know had an open seat with plenty of name recognition and a promise to be a NRCC targeted race. Our campaign manager's first raining tool for our staff might shock you. We all gathered at one of our houses and watched "The War Room." If you want to see how a successful campaign was run in the early to late nineties, this is a must see documentary. In that movie, I found my first campaign hero. And he was from the other side. So imagine how I felt when February of this year, we had our big New Hampshire Veterans for Clark rollout event in the picturesque little town of Portsmouth, New Hampshire. In a small VFW building, we packed the room with veterans of all stripes on a small riser and had standing room only for the veterans in attendance. We actually had to clear room to let in all of the media who had come to watch our public salvo in the fight for veterans against Kerry in New Hampshire. At the time, veterans were all the rage because the media had attributed Kerry's Iowa comeback as due in large part to his support among Iowa veterans. This entire event had been my show for the New Hampshire campaign and I was overwhelmed with not only the quantity but the intensity of our support among New Hampshire veterans. At the momen,t I knew we were set to roll with the presser, I stepped back to catch my breath. I looked to the door and the most curious man in a full spandex body suit, shorts and t-shirt walked in the room. He had these small sunglasses on, was skinny as a twig, and bald. My first political hero had just walked in the door to observe my event. It was James Carville, in his bony flesh. It took a second, if that long, but I walked over and welcomed and thanked him for coming. His Crossfire colleague, Tucker Carlson, had come in right behind him. Seeing as it was a Democrat event, Tucker didn't have many fans, but folks were flocking to Carville. I had a few minutes with Carville and we chatted about Southern politics, the current primary, and we agreed that John Edwards was a better stump speaker than Bill Clinton. Of course, given my role with the campaign, it would have been inappropriate to ask for his autograph. I didn't, but I'll carry that meeting with me for a long time. This was a politico whom I had worked against and admired at the same time. Now, I am more and more identified as a Democrat. It is always my custom to clarify that as a Southern and/or Blue Dog Democrat. The best known of those kind of Democrats right now is Sen. Zell Miller of Georgia. I'm not registered as either major party. Even when I was active in GOP campaigns and GOP party politics, I had an independent streak a mile wide. This both helps and hurts a person like me because the current parties are so skewed away from each other and to the extremes that I don't fit with the party faithful of either side. Still, as a labeled Democrat (Ahem, Southern and/or Blue Dog Democrat), I am as always compelled to give credit where credit is due. About a week after the CBS Memogate affair had come to the top of the blogosphere's shared consciousness, I was on the phone with one of my best friend's from the Clark campaign. He now works for the Kerry campaign. I mentioned the affair and can you guess what Kerry HQ in DC had already been speculating? Rove. It must be Rove. To be honest, I know of a handful of national Democrat operatives I feel might have been capable of such a trick. However, as more and more unraveled, I ruled them out--much too sloppy for their work. Yet, I had said to my mother the day before, "I can't rule out Rove. He learned from one of the best and he's just genius enough to pull something like this off." I doubt he did. It looks more and more like that some over anxious Texas Democrats with a freak streak made it past the usual safeguards, probably because of Rather's and Mapes's zeal to get a story-any story-that might counter the Swift Vets information. Sunday morning I missed a call from my friend Jim who recently returned to blogging. He described what would make an excellent Flash presentation. And, then he blogged it. I have to agree, it would make a good Flash presentation and it would refer to another campaign hero of mine. I bet he would love it when they call him Big Poppa. (Does anyone know the folks at Jibjab?)
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