Even a blind hog finds an acorn now and then.
--traditional saying
Remember Karl Rove’s “inevitability strategy”?
It’s well-known that Karl Rove believes that swing voters like to vote for the winner. Therefore, one of the central political strategies for Bush has been to create an “aura of inevitability” that, theoretically, will bring people to his side. If everyone believes you’re a political juggernaut, the theory goes, then you will become a political juggernaut. (emphasis added)
Rove believes so completely in this strategy that when Bush II was running against Al Gore in 2000 “[t]o demonstrate his confidence, Mr. Bush traveled at the end of the campaign to California and New Jersey, states firmly in Democratic hands.” The strategic thinking seemed to be that having Bush campaign in states everyone knew he couldn’t win signaled to undecided voters how confident Bush was that he’d take the swing states he actually needed. To Rove, this “signaling” was more important than any substantive campaigning in the last few days might be.
Now, I’ve never been a big believer in the “Karl Rove is a political genius” school of thought. Karl Rove’s success has always seemed to me to stem mostly from his sheer unwillingness to abide by any sense of morality or decency if doing so might blunt his candidate’s chance to win an election. His readiness to simply forsake all previously accepted limitations on what constitutes appropriate campaign conduct amounts to nothing more than a breaking of the (unwritten) rules that - prior to Rove’s appearance - had always been understood to govern the contest. Put another way, Rove wins elections by cheating. This doesn’t make him a genius, it makes him an asshole.
But yesterday, whilst searching for something else entirely, I came across information that indicates ol’ Rover might actually be on to something with his “inevitability strategy.” It turns out that, when it comes to elections anyway, it might actually be possible for a political campaign to “create [its] own reality."
