Let me help

by: DBK

Fri Sep 22, 2006 at 01:13:03 PM EDT

Dear Jill:

It's not easy being Kean, is it?  Or at least, not easy being a Kean spokesperson.  First you have to explain why your candidate left the Budget Committee in Trenton before a budget crisis and then complained about the way the budget crisis was handled.  Then the Vice President of the United States comes to New Jersey to raise money for your candidate and your guy hides in his car rather than be photographed with the VP.  Next the families of military personnel try to ask your guy questions about his support for the Iraq War and you have to figure out a way to explain his hiding from that, too.  And then, worst of all, you carefully manage a campaign to paint your opponent as ethically challenged and WHOOPS! some blogger spends an hour in the library and shows your whole campaign to be a pack of lies.

What's a Republican to do?

It's a shame your little campaign of deceit was exposed, but one can hardly blame you for claiming you knew nothing about it, that it wasn't you, that your technical people assure you that the damning information that appeared in your email a week ago actually hasn't been anywhere near your campaign for a month, and anyway, it's the "silly season".  Who could blame you for that?  It's no different than what great American heroes from Nixon to Ney have been doing all along.  When you get caught behaving unethically, deceitfully, or criminally, lie and deny.  Or blame your opponent's campaign for the actions of your campaign, as your boss did on television.

The only problem I see with all of this is that you don't seem to be controlling the story very well, which I hear is an important part of your job.  Instead of the Astroturfgate story going away as it should have, it went from drawing some derision on a New Jersey web log to drawing derision and scorn on some of the biggest web logs in the country to being covered by large East Coast newspapers to being picked up by ABC-7 on television and both the AP and UPI wire services.  I know it's a great thing to give your candidate a national profile, but a national profile as leader of a pack of clueless liars is not the sort of national profile you want.  It kind of hinders the effort to paint your opponent as unethical when you look mendacious and stupid at the same time.

Therefore, I am offering my services as a campaign advisor and staffer on blog control.  After all, you are much too busy to pay attention to Bluejersey and web logs and I pay a lot of attention to both, so it's a good match.  I'll control the stories for you.  The only area in which I may need help is that I have a bad habit of telling the truth, but I am sure that your staff can coach me in truth-avoidance.  If they can do it, how hard can it be?

Consider this my formal application.

If you do accept my application, I hope if it's okay if I just use my own IP address for the job.

Thanks.