politics

Howell Raines, Political Advisor – Who Knew?

June 2, 2004

Howell Raines, the recently deposed executive editor of The New York Times today has his first in a series of dispatches for The (U.K.) Guardian about the U.S. election. And, with typical modesty, Raines warns John Kerry that unless he rolls up his sleeves and gets real, it’s all over; that the Kerry persona is altogether too pompous, too ponderous and too off-message to stand a chance against the Bush re-election machine.

Once one gets past the conceit of Howell Raines giving anyone PR advice, the column is, if nothing else, entertaining — although Raines is not the first to make these observations. As Raines sees it, Kerry lacks the “exuberance” and “clarity” of a Bill Clinton on the campaign trail, and is given to the sort of nuanced hair-splitting that won’t penetrate the thick skulls of “an electorate schooled to respond to simple messages.” Ignoring polls that indicate that Kerry might be doing just the right thing, Raines writes that, “As America’s first war-hero candidate since John F. Kennedy, [Kerry] ought to be leading the national discussion on what went wrong in Iraq,” instead of laying low in the tall grass, as Raines seems to think he’s been doing these past few weeks.

Raines himself hasn’t actually hit the campaign trail, of course, but he has talked to those who have, and he worries that, “Every time I talk to a reporter who has covered him, new doubts creep in about his ability to connect with voters.”

Next, in a brief aside lampooning “Kerry’s lantern jaw and Addams Family face,” Raines concludes, “It’s as if Lurch had gone to Choate.” (He also notes that President Bush himself “looks like Goofy when he smirks.”) Having dispensed with this bizarre aside into the arcane art of facial analysis, Raines warns that Kerry risks passing “from ponderous to pompous” and offers his own example of an antidote: A lengthy, and somewhat tedious, Raines-crafted response to a question that Tim Russert asked Kerry earlier this year.

“Kerry,” lectures Raines, “has yet to learn to do what Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney do when they’re in the hot seat. They take over the interview even when they have nothing to say and nothing to sell.”

Next: Economic advice. As Raines sees it, “Americans aren’t antagonistic toward the rules that protect the rich because they think that in the great crap-shoot of economic life in America, they might wind up rich themselves.” Thus, Kerry “must appeal to the same emotions that attract voters to Republicans — i.e., greed and the desire to fix the crap-shoot in their favor.” It is greed that “will make folks vote for Democrats if it’s properly packaged, just as it now makes them vote Republican,” Raines announces — but he admits he has no clue as to specifically how Democrats might make hay of what he, Raines, deems to be a universal urge to live large and die rich.

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Finally, in conclusion, he warns Kerry, “to stay ‘on message,’ you have to have one.”

As an encore effort, Raines’ column is not that different from his own brief and tumultuous reign at The New York Times: Large in ego and ambition, colorful in language, shrewd in diagnosing problems and shortcomings, but grievously lacking in the sort of common sense strategy that might win over an electorate — or a newsroom.

–Steve Lovelady

Steve Lovelady was editor of CJR Daily.