On War Rooms and the Presidency

I saw the documentary ‘The War Room’ when it first came out. It was a fascinating look at how Presidential elections work. But ultimately, it was about politics, not policy. When the election was won, the war room disbanded.

Contrast that with this:

A war-room defense was “something we did well during the campaign,” said Nicolle Wallace, Bush’s communications director. “Maybe incorrectly, we had hoped or presumed that wouldn’t be necessary after the election.”

It is. The war room now is back, staffed with many of the same people who ran it in 2004, led by the Boy Genius himself, Karl Rove.

Campaigns are about selling a candidate. That’s fine. After the election, especially after the re-election, is it too much to ask that the focus be on actually governing the country?

The problem facing Bush is not that he didn’t sell well enough. It’s that his policy on Iraq stinks and needs to be deep-sixed immediately. No matter how much the new “War Room” tries to spin and smear, it’s not going to change the essential problem here.

Last Night’s House Debate

I managed to miss most of the House debate last night due to a cable box that seems to be flaking out (Comcast is coming Tuesday). But I did catch the last hour or so. I’m not exactly a CSPAN junkie, but it seems to me to be quite the piece of political theater. I had no idea who John Murtha was before 48 hours ago, but his gravitas and sincereity is fantastic. I wish we’d seen more of him in the past. All last night needed was some better scriptwriters, a few cute young House interns for jiggles, and a happy ending, and Hollywood would have loved it.

Seriously, though, what did it all mean? I don’t know. Supposedly the Republicans introduced the ‘get out now’ resolution to embarrass the Democrats. True, now everyone can go into the 06 election cycle and say ‘See, 400+ members of the House voted against getting out, so we must Stay The CourseTM‘. Whether that’s really worth anything is questionable.

NTodd has a good take on things, but I suspect we will not see Murtha’s resolution coming to the floor anytime soon. The House leadership won’t see any benefit in allowing debate over a proposal that’s acutally reasonable, now that they’ve had their chance to make a calculated political gesture.

The Things You Find

You never know what you’re going to find in a morning’s click through a chain of links. Today’s unexpected find was Vassar Blogs.

Looking at the list of fellow Vassar bloggers, I realized I vaguely remember a guy named Taegan in my class, but until today I had no clue he was THE Taegan Goddard of Political Wire.

The list is highly skewed to the Class of 2000 and younger, but it’s still a neat little resource for us Vassar folk. I hope the list continues to grow.

Tip of the Day: Freecycle

I know a lot of people are extremely fond of Craig’s List, but I’ve found Freecycle to be as good as, or even better than, CL when it comes to finding a new home for stuff. The ‘catch’ is, you can’t get cash for your stuff. You have to give it away. I suppose it’s deeply “hippie dippy Californian” but it works.

Goodwill is excellent for rehoming many things (plus you get a nice tax deduction), but there’s some stuff they don’t take. Moving boxes, for example. I hate throwing perfectly good (and not inexpensive) boxes away when a move is done. Twice now I’ve tried posting ads on CL to get rid of our boxes after a move, and didn’t get any takers. Today, in less than three hours, I found a willing taker for all our extra boxes on Freecycle. And the nice guy who took them promised to Freecycle the boxes in his turn after his move was done. So, the boxes get reused, I feel good and get some space in my living room back. All is well.

If you’ve got some stuff you don’t want to just throw away, and can’t find a new home for it on your own, take a look at Freecycle.