Tuesday, November 9 2004
THE BEST CAMPAIGN IN HISTORY: Charlie Cook writes today:

You have to give enormous credit to the Bush campaign, which unquestionably was the best planned, best executed presidential campaign ever. Campaign Chairman Marc Racicot, Manager Ken Mehlman, Deputy National Finance Chairman Jack Oliver, Chief Strategist Matthew Dowd, Political Director Terry Nelson, lead pollster Jan van Lohuizen, lead media consultant Mark McKinnon and of course, the chief architect, Karl Rove, deserve the political equivalent of an Academy Award for running a campaign that always anticipated the next two or three moves down the chess board and were ready for anything.

Cook is right. While Democrats are sucking up much of the current media oxygen licking their wounds, minimalizing the impact of Bush's win and insulting more than half the country as dimwits and bigots, let's not overlook the fact that the Bush team ran a near-perfect race from the top to bottom, with the ultimate strength and payoff of the campaign coming where it mattered most: on the ground on election day.

One of the most striking things about the Bush campaign to me was how quietly confident and methodical they were throughout. Even when the President's approval ratings were sky high in 2002 and 2003, the Bush team was laying the groundwork for a tough, tight battle.

Whatever their private thoughts were, Rove, Mehlman and Dowd insisted at every possible opportunity that the race would be close in the end. The utter discipline with which the entire campaign operated suggests that their analysis was spot on from beginning to end.

OPERATION PHANTOM FURY: For some reason, reading the details of Operation Phantom Fury in Fallujah triggered the memory of this exchange between Michael Moore and Bill O'Reilly:

MOORE: So, you would sacrifice your child to secure Fallujah? I want to hear you say that.

O'REILLY: I would sacrifice myself..

MOORE: Your child? It’s Bush sending the children there.

O'REILLY: I would sacrifice myself.

MOORE: You and I don’t go to war, because we’re too old…

O'REILLY: Because if we back down, there will be more deaths and you know it.

MOORE: Say, “I, Bill O’Reilly, would sacrifice my child to secure Fallujah.”

O'REILLY: I’m not going to say what you say, you’re a, that’s ridiculous…

MOORE: You don’t believe that. Why should Bush sacrifice the children of people across America for this?

Moore's question was (and still is) complete disingenuous garbage: we have an all-volunteer fighting force made up of adults who choose the brave, noble and dangerous work of defending our country.

More to the point, however, is Moore's belief that securing Fallujah is not worth the effort. The left in general sees Fallujah as a mess of our own making and part of the larger mistake of invading Iraq in the first place.

In reality, however, Fallujah is and has been a focal point of the terrorist insurgency for some time. History may also judge the success of Operation Phantom Fury as a decisive moment in the war in Iraq and some very real implications for the broader war on terror. So don't be surprised to see Michael Moore and his buddies on the wrong side of history - again.

"I HAD NO HORSE IN THIS RACE": That's the gist of a statement released by John Zogby yesterday. Here's the conclusion:

In short, I also missed the boat and I feel I must explain what happened. Whenever I rely only on history to make a call, I lose. That happened to me in both the 1998 and 2000 New York Senate races. My telephone polling was actually accurate both for Reuters nationally and in the 10 battleground states. My interactive polling for Wall Street Journal Online got 13 of 16 states right (one was tied). Because I have polled so successfully in presidential races in the past, I felt compelled to poll as late as I could and thought I saw a late-breaking trend for Kerry. Such a trend – fueled by a surge of young voters that was reported to us in our many calls to battleground cities on election day – did not materialize.

I don't have any problem with Zogby's explanation. Where I think many people do have a problem is when Zogby says he "felt compelled to poll as late as possible" - which I assume is a reference to his polling throughout election day.

Polling through the weekend or on the Monday before the election to try and pick up late trends is smart. Lots of pollsters do it. But polling on election day after ballots start being cast is something different. I'm not sure anybody else does it.

So the question is, what purpose is served (other than perhaps self aggrandizement) by polling on election day and releasing "final" numbers at 5:30pm Eastern when the polls in many states on the East Coast start closing shortly thereafter? I'm not sure Zogby has fully explained that one. - T. Bevan 10:30 am Link | Email | Send to a Friend