Operation Stumblebum

There is an eerie similarity between the beginning of the Iraq war and the beginning of the Bush campaign. The starting blocks have become stumbling blocks. Team Bush thinks that the voting public will simply accept an anemic economy (link via Atrios), while everyone was supposed to get all misty eyed (if not tingly) over imagery featuring September 11th.

Well, that's not the case. Families of the victims, fire-fighters, and indeed, the general public reacted rightly with outrage. Imagine Franklin Roosevelt invoking Pearl Harbor during the election of 1944. Even Texan standards of taste generally aren't THIS low, and that's saying a lot.

Update: Timshel, in comments, notes that a famous campaign button from 1944 said "I Remember Pearl Harbor: FDR". I stand corrected. However, as he points out, there's a world of difference between, say, asserting "Bush will fight terrorism better," and running an image of a flag-draped stretcher.

I'll check again for more information.

Karen Hughes, Rudy Giuliani, and Bernard Kerik have been dispatched to defend the administration, a sign that they recognize the magnitude of the problem. "Sept. 11 is not some distant event in the past," Mr. Hughes told ABC. "It's also important to recognize the impact it had on our national public policy." Ms. Giuliani noted, "This is part of the President's record It's part of history..."

One little problem, however, is that the Administration itself has maintained (scroll down roughly halfway) that "[we] need to be very cautious not to seek political advantage from [9/11 or the War on Terror]." The ad campaign shows once again that lying is virtually a trademark of the Bush team.

The fact that the US media is reporting this at all is a good indication that Rove really fucked this one up. If one looks at the foreign press, there is even more outrage over the low standards of such an effort.

My guess is that Bush will manage to find a few more high profile defenders of the ads while at the same time taking steps to quietly pull them from circulation. That said, it is a good sign that his cynical attempt to exploit tragedy for political gain was seen for what it is: pure unadulterated bullshit, with a side order of fearmongering.

The US media might eat that stuff up, but the public has no appetitie for such crap.