Think Like Rove

You are Karl Rove. Your charge is to secure the White House for the GOP in the coming 2008 election.

The first thing you do is use the tried and true strategy of helping the less likely to be elected opposition candidate to get their Party’s nomination. The most likely to be elected candidate was Hilary Clinton. Therefore you assist in her primary short falls. Having a Black candidate get the Party nomination would be a certain victory. America is not ready for a Black President.

Suddenly the opposition candidate is amassing a tremendous campaign financial chest and dramatically out spends your party candidate. He has also assumed celebrity status. Attempts to turn both against him are failing. You fall back on the tried and true of negative political advertisements.

It is the closing weeks of the campaign. You need to pull your candidate closer in the polls so that you can do a “slight of hand” with the votes. Your candidate needs a boost. Republicans are always viewed as the best in times of strife. Cindy Maclean gets on her private jet and heads to Georgia. Her strip was published, but there were no details on why she was suddenly leaving her husband on the campaign trial to go to this nation. A week after her visit in Georgia shooting starts between Georgia and Russia. However, the expected poll bounce for your client does not materialized, despite his war record. In fact Georgia internationally is branded a precipitator of the incident.

Just in case, you decide on a little financial strife that can fanned to stifle any social agenda just in case the worst should happen and the opposition candidate is elected. You create financial strife by picking the smallest of the investment banks and suggesting its financial uncertainty. The financial situation is under control. But short comings of Lehman Brothers soon appear. You decide to let it fail. You can not be seen as a party intervening in the free market.

The whole thing backfires and becomes a general panic. The panic spreads to the banking industry. Capital stops flowing. The Administration is in its own panic. It realizes the whole financial system house of cards might collapse. The SEC puts forth a financial rescue. Congress must approve the money.

Now ideology kicks in. Conservatives are say let there be failure. It is the free market way. The Administration briefs key members of its party on the real situation. A small group of the politicians cross the ideology divide to agree to vote for funds for the rescue. Trying to seize the national spotlight some party politicians use the situation as a platform to denounce government intervention. In comes their presidential candidate and derails the voting for funds. A true media event timed to get him a boast in the polls. It should have played well with the voters. The plan was for the Party to later participate in approving bailout funds. But it did not play well with the voters and the ideology posturing caused Wall Street to cut its political strings with the party.

The current President now finds himself in the fight of his life trying to execute a social agenda while a financial crisis rages.

Rove can point to the success of his worst case fallback strategy working.