Rahm Emanuel's cynical ploy...

Q: What do these wanna-be candidates have in common? Cindy Sheehan (California). Paul Hackett (Ohio). Tammy Duckworth (Illinois) Tim Dunn (North Carolina). Bill Winter (Colorado).

A: The DCCC Chairman (and former top advisor in the Clinton White House), Illinois Congressman Rahm Emanuel, has decided to recruit candidates for House and Senate seats who claim military affiliations yet hope to embarrass George W. Bush and cause the loss of a Republican governing majority by subverting support for our national security. There are at least 14 Iraqi war veterans filed to run as Democrats in 2006 currently raising BIG money from anti-war groups.

In my role as an instructor for campaign (and grad) school classes, I teach others to look for life’s patterns. (e.g.: Intelligence is pattern recognition and chaos merely a nonlinear dynamical system, yada yada.) Here’s a clue for my USC students, the 2006 Dem candidate recruitment strategy shows a decided lack of sophistication. Running disgruntled candidates who are former war veterans (or their relatives) for House and Senate seats will not convince a majority of Americans to compromise.

In politics, it holds that for every similar action there is an repetitious outcome. When Bill Clinton was President (and after Monica Lewinsky became a household name), the 1998 mid-term campaigns ignored usual candidate standards of personal conduct. Instead, voters were presented with “character issues” where once these egomaniacs would have shunned public scrutiny.

Many, Republicans and Democrats both, campaigned for legislative seats regardless of their bad marriages, mistresses, second families (pre- the Big Love series promotion) and more. My favorite flaunt-er of conventional wisdom was an Indiana candidate who campaigned proudly as an Evangelical Christian Conservative – never mind that the much photographed woman who stood beside him at innumerable political events was not the woman to whom he was partnered in business and marriage. He lost a “safe” seat that November and so did the other “character” candidates.

Lesson One: Americans may not have supported punishment for their morally challenged President, but that determination did NOT translate into putting up with bad behavior from their local candidates. 1998 became the year of electing the true blue Congressman.

I have news for Mr. Emanuel.

Lesson Two: Democrat candidates - and veterans - critical of the War on Terror will not confuse American voters in 2006 into thinking that some military affiliation is more important than real military support. No matter how cynical the DCCC recruitment efforts may be, Americans want a successful national security strategy and will vote accordingly this fall.

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