Even though our readership is probably still dizzy from the insights into Washington's weekend social/political whirl provided by this blog's other world, we'd like to bring to your attention a few disparate news items over the last few days that highlight a new plague: that of overseas election spinners and pollsters applying their recipe to just about any election, anywhere. We don't know what's more dispiriting: the election consultants who see no clash between their home and foreign ideologies, such as American populist Bob Shrum whose firm consults for the Oirish elite in Fianna Fail, or those who have convinced themselves that there is a seamless but lucrative web linking their domestic and overseas activities.*
Let's deal with the latter first. Sunday's New York Times Arts and Leisure section (tellingly, not the politics section) had a lengthy story on Greg Stevens, a longtime Republican spinner who had some weird stories to tell about his international election consulting. Long years of dissolute living took its toll on his body and he died in the home of Carrie Fisher a day before this year's Oscars. Stevens is symptomatic of a breed that David Brooks, in a rare moment of lucidity, referred to as "sleazo-cons" -- right-wingers who see no conflict between promoting their ideology and stooping to any level to make a buck at the same time. A product of the Oliver North era of deals with repressive governments and murderous "rebel" movements: Iran, Honduras, Angola -- he went into election consulting in the early 1990s with a client list that still haunts the world today:
There was that time in Togo, when Mr. Stevens had to tell President Gnassingbé Eyadéma that he was going to lose an election. "So the president told him to get the hell out of the country, and then he canceled the election," said one of Mr. Stevens's colleagues in international political intrigue.
That would be the same dictator who dropped dead of a couple of months ago, the military installed his son as replacement, and then an apparently rigged election was just held to validate his accession. No word on whether butterfly ballots were used in that election, but there was plenty of other fishy stuff. And old rolodexes die hard:
At the time of his death, Mr. Stevens represented Pink Films International, a television production company in Serbia and Montenegro, and had solicited American producers to shoot cheap remakes of 1950's B-movies in Belgrade. One deal, with the Hollywood producers Craig Baumgarten and Lou Arkoff, fell through, Mr. Baumgarten said, because he suspected Mr. Stevens's Serbian partners had ties to Slobodan Milosevic.
Note, by the way, this issue of links between Slobo and Republicans is one that never quite goes away -- it's also come up as a thread in the Tom DeLay scandals. And of course the gay-Republican-White House-drugs aspect of Stevens' life has some familiar echoes. ** (update) And the NYT gets a quote from Roger Stone about Stevens, but did they ever Google Stone in his own right?
But while Stevens hopefully rests in peace, let's turn to the other breed, the dinner-party centrist pollster. Adam Nagourney has been doing the "compare and contrast" reporting for the New York Times on the UK election and we can only ruefully laugh as his wonderment at those different elections in the UK and his analysis thereof omits any role for hacks like himself on why the two elections are so different. His skill at "opinions differ on shape of earth" journalism and receptivity to Rovian talking points has even earned him a mocking website, but anyway, his latest piece is a catalog of late Spring junketing for Democratic pollsters:
STANLEY GREENBERG, an American pollster, was reading the morning British papers the other day when he saw something unusual among the torrent of articles about the coming national election here: a full-page photograph of a naked woman ... Mark Penn, an American pollster who, like Mr. Greenberg, has advised Bill Clinton and is now aiding Mr. Blair ... Joe Trippi, an American political consultant who has advised the Labor campaign and who worked for Howard Dean ...
Consider just Joe Trippi's inconsistency: having worked for Howard Dean and now Tony Blair, it seems that he was against the Iraq war before he was for it. Perhaps at the expense of indicating that we don't really understand elections, we fail to see what a parachuted-in consultant from a different political system really has to offer -- other than quotes for parachuted-in political correspondents. Along this dimension at least, globalisation sucks.
*UPDATE: As we read this post again, we're not even sure there's a difference between the two types of pollsters. The only distinction is self-styled liberal or conservative, but they both have an equal lack of principles.
Let's deal with the latter first. Sunday's New York Times Arts and Leisure section (tellingly, not the politics section) had a lengthy story on Greg Stevens, a longtime Republican spinner who had some weird stories to tell about his international election consulting. Long years of dissolute living took its toll on his body and he died in the home of Carrie Fisher a day before this year's Oscars. Stevens is symptomatic of a breed that David Brooks, in a rare moment of lucidity, referred to as "sleazo-cons" -- right-wingers who see no conflict between promoting their ideology and stooping to any level to make a buck at the same time. A product of the Oliver North era of deals with repressive governments and murderous "rebel" movements: Iran, Honduras, Angola -- he went into election consulting in the early 1990s with a client list that still haunts the world today:
There was that time in Togo, when Mr. Stevens had to tell President Gnassingbé Eyadéma that he was going to lose an election. "So the president told him to get the hell out of the country, and then he canceled the election," said one of Mr. Stevens's colleagues in international political intrigue.
That would be the same dictator who dropped dead of a couple of months ago, the military installed his son as replacement, and then an apparently rigged election was just held to validate his accession. No word on whether butterfly ballots were used in that election, but there was plenty of other fishy stuff. And old rolodexes die hard:
At the time of his death, Mr. Stevens represented Pink Films International, a television production company in Serbia and Montenegro, and had solicited American producers to shoot cheap remakes of 1950's B-movies in Belgrade. One deal, with the Hollywood producers Craig Baumgarten and Lou Arkoff, fell through, Mr. Baumgarten said, because he suspected Mr. Stevens's Serbian partners had ties to Slobodan Milosevic.
Note, by the way, this issue of links between Slobo and Republicans is one that never quite goes away -- it's also come up as a thread in the Tom DeLay scandals. And of course the gay-Republican-White House-drugs aspect of Stevens' life has some familiar echoes. ** (update) And the NYT gets a quote from Roger Stone about Stevens, but did they ever Google Stone in his own right?
But while Stevens hopefully rests in peace, let's turn to the other breed, the dinner-party centrist pollster. Adam Nagourney has been doing the "compare and contrast" reporting for the New York Times on the UK election and we can only ruefully laugh as his wonderment at those different elections in the UK and his analysis thereof omits any role for hacks like himself on why the two elections are so different. His skill at "opinions differ on shape of earth" journalism and receptivity to Rovian talking points has even earned him a mocking website, but anyway, his latest piece is a catalog of late Spring junketing for Democratic pollsters:
STANLEY GREENBERG, an American pollster, was reading the morning British papers the other day when he saw something unusual among the torrent of articles about the coming national election here: a full-page photograph of a naked woman ... Mark Penn, an American pollster who, like Mr. Greenberg, has advised Bill Clinton and is now aiding Mr. Blair ... Joe Trippi, an American political consultant who has advised the Labor campaign and who worked for Howard Dean ...
Consider just Joe Trippi's inconsistency: having worked for Howard Dean and now Tony Blair, it seems that he was against the Iraq war before he was for it. Perhaps at the expense of indicating that we don't really understand elections, we fail to see what a parachuted-in consultant from a different political system really has to offer -- other than quotes for parachuted-in political correspondents. Along this dimension at least, globalisation sucks.
*UPDATE: As we read this post again, we're not even sure there's a difference between the two types of pollsters. The only distinction is self-styled liberal or conservative, but they both have an equal lack of principles.
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