My worry would be that it strikes me as very plausible that a political strategist could overlearn the lessons of his own success. The fact of the matter is that Obama’s margin of victory was more-or-less exactly what you would expect based on fundamentals-driven models of presidential elections. We know that the strategy Obama employed “worked” (he won, after all) but there’s no clear evidence that it was particularly brilliant. But you can easily imagine Obama and David Axelrod and other key players becoming overconvinced by their own success.
It’s worth noting that some of what made the Bush White House so ignoble was that it treated policy – you know, governing – as a way to win elections, exclusively, and not as a covenant between free citizens and their elected leaders. The closest Americans come to a sacred trust. The Constitution, a few wars, all that jazz.
Although it could be that Yglesias’ point in the above passage is that the Obama White House isn’t very good at campaigning as politics. A point made the other day by the Daily Show.
It’s hard to watch one’s team make tactical mistakes. But it’s worth remembering the overall strategy. Especially when that strategy isn’t winning a game – it’s changing the game.
When we reduce leadership to campaigning and voters to sheeple, we drift into relativism. It’s what allows The Politico, as noted by Josh Marshall, to deride our moral imperative to assist the less fortunate as “a discredited argument from the reform effort under President Bill Clinton.”
As if only those arguments that win elections are valid. Or worthy of the ultimate sacrifice.
You can rule by intimidation or you can rule by persuasion. Only one is legitimate. Persuasion is also not seduction (nor fear mongering) though it can be hard to disentangle our feelings from our thoughts. For example, a recent study suggests intense feelings can help soldiers make appropriate split-second decisions. Voting is not, however, a split-second decision.
Campaigning borrows from warfare but it is a replacement for it, not its logical extension. Politics even less so.
Alternately, the tactics that help pass a bill through Congress are not the same as those that help win the popular vote during a quadrennial election.