I’m a week late to this, but did anyone catch the Newsweek post-election wrap-up, called “The Inside Story”? It’s where they share all the stories that they weren’t allowed to run during the campaign, and I look forward to it every four years.
The big over-arching themes this year? The Kerry campaign appeared to be in disarray pretty much all along, with aides fighting amongst themselves and Teresa wreaking havoc, bashing her husband at every turn and consuming “perhaps a glass of wine too many” each night (I’m telling you, she’s Karen Walker!)
Meanwhile, liberal bias notwithstanding, the story made the Bush campaign sound like summer camp, with the staffers seemingly constantly huddled around Karl Rove’s omnipotent and omnipresent Blackberry. But my favorite tidbit of all involved Peggy Noonan, the former Reagan speechwriter who was brought in to help with the convention speechwriting. Here’s how Bush aide Mark McKinnon responded to her effort:
The campaign sent Noonan a bunch of photos and told her to try harder. McKinnon tried to imagine the speechwriter—a "feeler," he called her, "she's very artistic, very poetic... she's a feeler"—using the photos to get over her block. He thought of Noonan "getting naked and rubbing the pictures, lighting incense, channeling." Whatever: it seemed to work.And all this time I assumed the Democrats were the party of getting naked, lighting incense, and channeling!
And finally, the Google result count for “Why Kerry Lost” has reached 59,900. Compared to only 1,320 for “Why Gore Lost.”
Posted by Stephen Silver at November 15, 2004 10:15 PM