The Post-Rove Guru
How the Republican Party stopped dreaming about a permanent majority and learned to think like McCain strategist Steve Schmidt.
Laurence Lowe
The New Republic
Published: Thursday, July 31, 2008
Sergeant Schmidt. The Artillery Shell. The Bullet.
Even in the hyper-competitive world of political media strategists--a line of work that tends to reward the studied deployment of affectation and outsized personality--Steve Schmidt, the tough-talking, shaven-headed, 37-year old former high school tight end from North Plainfield, New Jersey, who recently emerged from a scrum among John McCain's inner circle to become the head of day-to-day operations, arrived on the national stage trailing more colorful nicknames than most.
"He figured out pretty quickly that [a martial] reputation would work to his professional benefit," Dan Schnur, McCain's communications director in 2000, recently told me. "When he came on to the Schwarzenegger [2006 gubernatorial] campaign, I told his junior staffers: If you show up late to a meeting, Steve will waterboard you."
Schmidt's most recent promotion was announced on July 2. Campaign manager Rick Davis's duties were scaled back to fundraising, searching for a v.p., and making preparations for the national convention, while Schmidt was dispatched to the campaign's Arlington, Virginia, headquarters, where he assumed "full operational control." In Republican circles it was hailed as a move in the right direction; the question was whether it had come too late.
The campaign clearly needed a take-no-shit disciplinarian to whip the operation--and the message--into shape after it failed to capitalize on a four-month head start in the general election. And in the news accounts that followed the switch, the relatively unknown Schmidt was defined mostly by his nicknames: Sergeant Schmidt, the Artillery Shell, the Bullet. Still, none of these stuck quite as firmly--or have raised more red flags among Democrats--as the epithet that now precedes his name more than any other: "Rove protégé."
(Continued here.)
Laurence Lowe
The New Republic
Published: Thursday, July 31, 2008
Sergeant Schmidt. The Artillery Shell. The Bullet.
Even in the hyper-competitive world of political media strategists--a line of work that tends to reward the studied deployment of affectation and outsized personality--Steve Schmidt, the tough-talking, shaven-headed, 37-year old former high school tight end from North Plainfield, New Jersey, who recently emerged from a scrum among John McCain's inner circle to become the head of day-to-day operations, arrived on the national stage trailing more colorful nicknames than most.
"He figured out pretty quickly that [a martial] reputation would work to his professional benefit," Dan Schnur, McCain's communications director in 2000, recently told me. "When he came on to the Schwarzenegger [2006 gubernatorial] campaign, I told his junior staffers: If you show up late to a meeting, Steve will waterboard you."
Schmidt's most recent promotion was announced on July 2. Campaign manager Rick Davis's duties were scaled back to fundraising, searching for a v.p., and making preparations for the national convention, while Schmidt was dispatched to the campaign's Arlington, Virginia, headquarters, where he assumed "full operational control." In Republican circles it was hailed as a move in the right direction; the question was whether it had come too late.
The campaign clearly needed a take-no-shit disciplinarian to whip the operation--and the message--into shape after it failed to capitalize on a four-month head start in the general election. And in the news accounts that followed the switch, the relatively unknown Schmidt was defined mostly by his nicknames: Sergeant Schmidt, the Artillery Shell, the Bullet. Still, none of these stuck quite as firmly--or have raised more red flags among Democrats--as the epithet that now precedes his name more than any other: "Rove protégé."
(Continued here.)
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