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I posted about this a long time ago...last March, in fact. Here it is; and it's all much truer now.
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So We'll Go No More A Roveing
So, you heard about this flak the Bush campaign is taking over using 9/11 in his campaign ads.
I'm going out on a limb with this, but what the hell. I got a feeling about this. I think Rove has outlived his usefulness, and it will be all downhill for them from here on in.
Rove's genius has always been about managing perception. In fact you could say that's the essence of Rove: image matters, substance doesn't. It is better to look good than to be good; in fact, actually doing anything to help the country is just wasted time that could be spent refining your public image. It's cynical to the core; but it has worked very well for Bush for a long time.
In a lot of ways, Bush is the perfect product for Rove's packaging: vacant, passive, and apparently infinitely manipulable. I don't think it's an accident that the market has been flooded with Bush dolls, some satirical and some reverent: I think that's evidence that even Bush's supporters recognize on some level that his value to this administration is his ability to put on and carry off whatever costume they slap on him. His supporters no doubt like being able to remake him in their own minds according to what they want and need; his detractors find that unsettling. From Rove's point of view, Bush's greatest assets were a) the fact that he has no pesky authentic substance that might interfere with the processing and b) his ability to genuinely enjoy whatever role he was playing that week.
The smart thing about Rove's approach was the way it exploited the role that television now plays in forming the average American's view of the world. The dumb thing about it is that it does not work for anyone whose understanding of reality is informed by anything *other* than the media under Rove's control. Once the viewers at home realize that their perception _isn't_ reality, and start comparing the two, it's pretty much over for Rover.
Rove's entire strategy depends on a reader who is too naive, lazy, or ideologically blinded to ask for a second opinion. All of those photo-ops, and all the campaign ads unveiled thus far, assume an audience that has not been exposed to or retained any information that would counteract their 'message.' Bush's state of the union speeches work the same way: if you only know what he's telling you, it all sounds really good. They presume a reader who accepts what he sees on television as the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth.
Unfortunately for Rove, those readers are getting rarer; and that's because reality has gotten so ugly that people have started to realize that they need to find out more about it--not because they care, necessarily, but because their survival instincts are finally kicking in. Bush is insulated from the consequences of his actions; but we aren't, and the more jobs are lost and the more Americans die overseas the fewer naive readers Rove is going to be able to pitch his message to. And here is the beauty of that, my friends. Once an individual reader becomes aware of the gap between the reality and the Rovian image of it, *none of Rove's strategies work.*
This is why, in my opinion, "Mission Accomplished" was the turning point. That banner made a definite claim that had to be ratified by reality. Reality failed to play along. That was the beginning; and now that the weapons of mass destruction premise has been exploded, there are even more readers out there looking at these images with new cynicism. And so it does not matter how much money they spend or what new packages they come up with. They have blown their credibility, and now the very thing that used to work so well for them--the airy disregard for the facts of the matter in favor of an unrelated image--is going to kill them.
Consider the 9/11 ads, for instance. No doubt Rove realizes that this is a risk, what with the desecration of the dead and all; no doubt he realizes that this will only evoke questions about Bush's stalling of the commission and his strange behavior on the day in question. But they *have* to run on this. They have nothing else. They have spent three years pissing away the treasury, the economy, and everyone's lifeblood and they've got nothing to show for it. All they can run on is Bush's image; and unfortunately for them, all of their images now come attached to very ugly realities. Carrier landing? 500+ dead. Turkey in Baghdad? Still not safe there. Flight suit? AWOL. 9/11? WHERE THE FUCK WERE YOU?
So it's nto going to work; but they are going to do it anyway. They have no choice. Rove is a one-trick pony. This managing-the-image thing is *all he knows how to do.* He's never had to care what the reality was before. He's been making a career out of *not* caring. The fact that his strategy is no longer working will by no means tempt him to abandon it, no matter how desperate things become--because *he doesn't have a plan B.* So he is just going to keep making the same mistakes over and over until finally he and his crew are outta there.
They who live by the photo-op shall die by the photo-op. And when the photo-op boots their asses out the door in November 2004, I for one am going to be lovin' it.
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W00t,
The Plaid Adder
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