The New Nixon
John Ellis in RCP:
The antecedent strategy for the Clinton campaign of 2008 is the Nixon strategy of 1968. Then, the problem was: how do you make the country’s most disliked politician electable? Frank Shakespeare and Fred McWhorter started by trying to make Nixon warmer, friendlier, your next door neighbor. A young turk named Roger Ailes came in, took a look and said (and I am paraphrasing here):
“forget it. No one will ever warm to the guy. He’s un-likeable. We’ve got to change the narrative. This is about a man in the arena; this is about grit and determination and hard work and brains and perseverance.” Ailes went on to create televised “Man in the Arena” town hall meetings, at which Nixon answered voter questions, by himself, being himself. Voters didn’t need to like Nixon to elect him. He only needed to earn their respect.
Like Nixon, Senator Clinton is widely disliked. Like Nixon, she cannot be made warm, even by a modern-day Roger Ailes. Like Nixon, she is a politician whose resentments are always close to the surface. And like Nixon, she is a politician about whom her peers have real doubts. But also like Nixon, she is intelligent and diligent and determined and tough and she has been through hell and back.
And all that foreign policy experience.
November 21st, 2007 at 11:18 pm
Like the 1968 Nixon, Hillary Clinton has a shot only because the opposing party’s outgoing administration made gross political blunders. In contrast to 1968, the outgoing Vice President will not be her opponent.
I hope Hillary doesn’t become President, but I’d vote for her over Huckabee. And, looking forward, over another Bush.
November 22nd, 2007 at 12:10 pm
‘John Ellis’ has a familiar ring. After googling around, I consider it virtually certain that he is John Prescott Ellis, George Bush’s cousin. In any case, RealClear(?)Politics deserves a black mark for ambiguity.
Continuing Dinocrat’s quote:
Bill Clinton and George W. Bush is a…singular…pairing. Why not mention the other two living ex-Presidents? Is the Ellis piece meant as groundwork for an eventual Jeb Bush candidacy?
If so, fuhgeddaboudit.