In faint praise of Terry McAuliffe - Democratic Underground

Youphemism

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Mon Jun-02-08 06:24 PM
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In faint praise of Terry McAuliffe

Edited on Mon Jun-02-08 06:29 PM by Youphemism

I'm going to have to go underground in a bunker for a few years after posting this, given what I've read on these boards, but here goes:

I'm an Obama supporter who has a hard time *not* liking Terry McAuliffe.

Before you go apoplectic on me, here's the pretext:

First, I'm admittedly largely ignorant of his history as DNC chair, which has obviously pissed off a lot of people. But for now, I'm only talking about his current job.

Second (and more important) I don't understand how *anybody* can do his job -- which basically requires you to frame all facts, no matter how much to the contrary, in a context that supports your candidate. Put more simply, the job requires you to lie whenever you're losing or being damaged by media coverage. How does anybody do that?

Given the fact that it's a job for liars on both sides of the campaign, Terry had the harder job, because his campaign was losing. That means he has to lie more.

The main reason I have a hard time disliking him is the way he carried off the "Yeah, I'm a political used car salesman" approach. I guess there's something appealing to me about his self-deprecating style and ability to laugh along with and then shrug off pundit questions that amounted to, "Yeah, Terry, but when you say that, aren't you pretty much full of crap?" It was water off his back when other folks would turn red, make wild accusations, and all but take off a shoe, pound it on the podium and shout, "We will bury you!"

I was often put off by other surrogates who would:

1. smile when you could clearly see they were truly seething
2. try to wrestle with commentators who gave them a strong dose of reality
3. introduce some of the most outlandish accusations and negative attacks (see "Geraldine Ferraro")

Sure, Terry did these things to some degree himself. But the differences I see, respectively, are:

1. He truly seemed happy. None of this seemed to get to him on a personal level. He had more of a "just doing my job" approach.
2. Sure, he wrestled with pundits. But he was much better at sticking to scripted talking points. When others would fold under questioning and make some of their most inane assertions, Terry would usually say something like, "But that's not the point/that's not what I want to talk about," etc. and move right back to the scripted talking points.
3. By staying on those points, he tended to make only those attacks that were sanctioned by the campaign -- granted, some of them were sleazy. But I never heard him say anything Clinton herself would not say. And yes, there are actually things she wouldn't say. (Again, see "Geraldine Ferraro," and even "Bill Clinton.")

Okay, go ahead. Flame away and tell me why he's the spawn of Satan. As a political guy, I'm sure he probably deserves it. Yet somehow, maybe even more than Bill himself, Terry is the Hillary supporter I'd most enjoy talking to over a beer.

Of course, I'd still keep track of my wallet that night.