THE STUMP MARCH 22, 2012
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There's been a lot of head-scratching in the past 24 hours over how Eric Fehrnstrom, Mitt Romney's longtime chief aide, could have stepped in it so badly with his "Etch-a-Sketch" comment yesterday. For those of you who were traveling in Albania yesterday, Fehrnstrom responded to a question on CNN about the risk of Romney being pulled too far right in the primaries by saying this: "Well, I think you hit a reset button for the fall campaign. Everything changes. It’s almost like an Etch-a-Sketch – you can kind of shake it up, and we start all over again."
But there is a fairly obvious explanation for Fehrnstrom's comment: it is just the latest example of the Romney campaign's remarkable, almost postmodern approach to political communications. Simply put, Fehrnstrom is a leading practitioner of the campaign's post-truth politics. Recall the quote attributed to a "top operative" for Romney defending the ad a few months ago that took brazenly out of context Barack Obama's 2008 comment, quoting a John McCain adviser, "If we keep talking about the economy, we're going to lose." Here's what the unnamed Romney aide said:
First of all, ads are propaganda by definition. We are in the persuasion business, the propaganda business....Ads are agitprop....Ads are about hyperbole, they are about editing. It’s ludicrous for them to say that an ad is taking something out of context....All ads do that. They are manipulative pieces of persuasive art.
In other words: truth, schmuth. I'm not 100 percent sure that quote came from Fehrnstrom, but it's not hard to draw a line between this kind of thinking and his blithe declaration yesterday that the campaign will be able to simply shake everything up in a few months and leave behind Romney's comments and positions of the past year for a whole new reality.
Jonathan Chait yesterday noted the downside with the Romney campaign's "general problem of failing to hide its cynicism":
The problem here is that, for the process to play itself out the way political scientists would forecast, you need to conceal the calculations a bit. For instance, you obviously can believe that your need to win elected office would make you more reluctant to hire illegal aliens, but you shouldn’t just say that. And obviously you’re going to reposition yourself for a different audience, but that works a lot better if you pretend you’re advancing actual core beliefs.
Likewise, there are a lot of techniques guys use to pick up girls that work pretty well. But if they just said things like, “I am going to feign strong interest in what you’re telling me in hopes of establishing an emotional connection that will loosen your sexual inhibitions,” the success rate of those techniques would probably fall.
That's certainly true. But let's also take the opportunity here to praise Fehrnstrom. I doubt he's all that much more cynical than everyone else in the game; he's just being more honest with us about it. It's almost refreshing.
7 comments
See my comment on the previous MacGillis post: this is the way a business executive thinks and works. You sell shit to boost the quarter's numbers, and you say what you need to say to get it to sell. Why anyone would expect a successful CEO - unless maybe one from a private company that is in the market for long lived goods or constructions - to think any differently is completely beyond me. Certainly not a turnaround CEO - their entire DNA is about changing the message to whatever will bring in some dollars this quarter.
- IowaBeauty
March 22, 2012 at 11:37am
Romney 2012: It could be worse! Can't wait for your review of Will the Real Mitt Romney please stand up (http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=bxch-yi14BE). 1.5 million YouTube viewers can't be wrong!
- chaitless
March 22, 2012 at 11:52am
There's also this: http://healthland.time.com/2012/02/28/why-the-rich-are-less-ethical-they-see-greed-as-good/
- miceelf
March 22, 2012 at 11:54am
As the primary contest may be coming to a close, it's easy to pitch independent voters that their primary season displeasure with the candidate will end once the general election begins. The pitch includes statements that changing times require that candidates reconsider their views. When the general election begins, how does the candidate explain to primary voters who supported the candidate that they misunderstood the candidate? Bait and switch? What kind of car are you driving?
- Doug12
March 22, 2012 at 1:35pm
Role playing isn't limited to the theatre. Or politicians. It's what we all do. Romney's role playing has been problematic because the chosen role for his campaign, the successful businessman and successful governor, doesn't work very well, not for a corporate raider in an era of economic decline and when his signal achievement as governor is anathema to the base. So he resorts to singing America the Beautiful in a spot on imitation of Chevy Chase in the scene from Fletch in which Chase leads what are depicted as fools attending some patriotic convention in the singing of the National Anthem in order to create a diversion so Chase can escape from the bad guys who are after him. Romney as Fletch. That's the perfect role for Romney. Singing to create a diversion to escape from the bad guys who are after him.
- rayward
March 22, 2012 at 2:04pm
In answer to the final request of this post: no. I refuse to endorse such allegedly honest cynicism. Fehrnstrom--and the media enablers that let his ilk get away with this by not calling politicians and their spokesmen on the lies, hypocrisies and manipulations--ought to be ashamed, and it's this tacit acceptance of such a disgusting status quo that (in no small part) disaffects so many Americans from our politics.
- Curran1
March 22, 2012 at 3:31pm
he's just being more honest with us about it. I think the word should be "candid". Admitting to lying is not a sign of honesty.
- Nusholtz
March 22, 2012 at 3:47pm