Thomas Veil
Nov 7, 2005, 05:06 AM
Interesting article in the Las Vegas Sun, describing the War Room (http://www.lasvegassun.com/sunbin/stories/sun/2005/nov/06/519618583.html) that Sen. Harry Reid has set up to help the Democrats:
WASHINGTON -- At 12:50 p.m. on Oct. 28, Fox News reported that top White House aide I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby had resigned, facing indictment.
On the third floor of the U.S. Capitol, inside Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid's communications "war room," eyes darted over a bank of seven flat-screen televisions.
Just moments later CNN reporter Ed Henry appeared on one of the screens, reading a statement of reaction from Reid.
That written statement, finalized about three hours earlier, was just one of the many handcrafted products generated daily by the war room in a city ruled by news cycles.
When Reid became Senate Democratic leader after last year's elections, he faced a Republican Party in control of the House, Senate and White House -- and thus, the bully pulpit. He needed more than a bullhorn.
Reid envisioned a nimble, high-tech communications machine that would serve Senate Democrats by unifying and amplifying the voice of his 44-member caucus.
The ambitious operation was designed to aggressively play both defense and offense -- to immediately respond to Republicans, as well as to better define the Democratic image in the minds of the public.
"It has become the epicenter of the Democratic message-making effort," former Democratic Leader Tom Daschle said.
The war room raised eyebrows even before its official launch Jan. 4.
Traditionally, Senate offices have press secretaries and Senate leaders have had small communications teams. But a war room manned by a staff of 12, housed inside the Capitol, was unusual.
The war room's expenses are paid from Reid's congressional office budget, and the war room's budget has not yet been separately tallied, Reid aides said.
NBC's Tim Russert in December asked Reid if he planned to go to war with Republicans his first week on the job.
No, Reid said, adding that he wanted to work with the GOP.
"But they can't jam things down our throats," Reid asserted.
Observers said the war room in its first year had taken a more aggressive approach than the communications machine operated by Reid's friend and predecessor Daschle....
But observers also note that Republicans this year have often made easy work for the war room, badly stumbling on issues ranging from Social Security reform and the Terri Schiavo case to ethical questions surrounding Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist and former House Majority Leader Tom DeLay. A troubled Bush White House has been a gift to the war room, they said.
Critics say the war room's biggest failure is not firmly establishing a Democratic message, especially in the minds of voters.
"If bitterness and negativity are the message, then yeah, they do that quite well," former Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott, R-Miss., said in an interview last week....
A glimpse inside the war room on Oct. 28, the day of the Libby indictment, revealed a whirring factory that manufactures, packages and aggressively distributes a single product: the party image.
The room itself does not resemble the cluttered, pizza-box strewn Hollywood images of a political nerve center. The 700-square-foot office is a mixture of ornate traditional and high-tech modern. On the wall opposite the flat-screen TVs is a working fireplace resting under a giant, gilded mirror. A shimmering chandelier hangs from the soaring arched ceiling.
Seven people work inside the war room. Five other communications team members work in nearby offices. They perform a wide variety of tasks, from speech writing and press-conference planning to peddling the Democratic message to Hispanic media, and monitoring the cyberscape of influential political Web logs, or blogs.
The room flickers to life each day at 5 a.m., when darkness still obscures the view of the Washington Monument and National Mall out the west windows....
"This is the calm before the storm," war room communications director Rebecca Kirszner noted in a quiet moment before the Libby resignation.
On Oct. 28 everyone in Washington knew that Special Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald was expected to announce the results of his two-year investigation into White House leaks.
Unknown was who would be indicted -- and at what time -- but Kirszner was already mulling angles. Even if only Libby is indicted, she figured, "it's still a black cloud hanging over the White House."
By 9:20 a.m., the war room had its answers -- news outlets were reporting that Fitzgerald would hold his press conference at 2:15 p.m. -- and that Libby likely would be indicted, but not Bush adviser Karl Rove....
When the 22-page Libby indictment appeared on the Internet about 12:45 p.m., war room printers spit out multiple copies. Staffers devoured it, analyzing just how bad this news was for the White House.
As the day wore on, Kirszner spent part of the afternoon working with Reid to prepare for his appearance on two national Sunday morning talk shows. Then it was off to a series of Friday afternoon planning meetings.
Good war rooms are always looking ahead a day, a week -- even months, Manley said.
Conservative pundits already are writing Bush's comeback story, predicting that Bush can turn around a spate of bad press in an "official rebound" beginning with his State of the Union speech in January, Manley said.
Plans to temper that spin are already in the works, Manley said. He wouldn't say how.
Good communications operations dominate the media and control the debate in the terms of their choosing, said Washington political analyst Stuart Rothenberg, author of the nonpartisan Rothenberg Political Report. The Democrats have kept the Republicans on the defensive much of this year, Rothenberg said.
"It's like a prize fight, in that it's a question of who is taking the fight to the other side," Rothenberg said.
The overall Democratic message in Congress this year has been: The Republicans are screwing up, Rothenberg said. What the Democrats have not done is laid out a clear, detailed legislative agenda of their own in the minds of voters, he said.
That's fine for them -- for now, he said, "because it's still a year away from the election."
The war room takes as much flak as it sends out. One early spat with the Republican National Committee in February ended when Reid asked President Bush to denounce an RNC attack. Bush did not.
Last week Republicans blasted Reid and his leadership team for blindsiding them with a rare closed-chamber session to discuss an Iraq intelligence investigation.
War room staffers scored political points with the party base when it spun the move as the only method Democrats had to force GOP leaders to pay attention to a serious concern. But the GOP was livid.
"Reid's stunt was just the latest in his yearlong quest to put partisanship over statesmanship," the National Republican Senatorial Committee, the political arm of the Senate GOP caucus, said in a statement that also blasted the war room.
RNC spokesman Danny Diaz said the Reid war room was overly focused on placating the liberal base of its party. The Republicans, on the other hand, "communicate with middle America every single day," he said.
War room chief Manley scoffed at that, saying the GOP communicates best with the "wealthiest individuals and corporations of this country."...
Monday, Oct. 31, brought a new challenge.
About 7:40 a.m. that day, news broke that Bush had nominated Samuel Alito for the Supreme Court, viewed as a move that would shore up sagging support for Bush among his conservative base.
A few minutes later, National Public Radio reporter David Welna was on the air reading from a Reid statement of reaction, which noted that Bush aimed to leave the Supreme Court looking "less like America and more like an old boys club."
Another hand-made product of the Reid message factory.
"The news," Kirszner said, "never ends."Nice to see that the Dems are finally getting organized, and are on the attack for a change.
However, Trent Lott and various other observers are not wrong when they say that the Dems still don't have their own message. It's fine to tear down Bush, but the Dems shouldn't be back-slapping themselves too much over his decline -- his idiotic policies were bound to collapse under their own weight. What the Dems have done well is point that out to the American people.
That's not the same thing as having a message or a plan of your own. And that's the part I worry about. Because the Dems still aren't sure who they are. The "squishy middle" still dominates -- you know, the guys who the rest of us derogatorily think of as "Republican lite"; the guys who are willing to defend liberal values...as long as it doesn't offend any corporate interests. And then on the other side, there is the vocal minority of Dems who still admire guys like FDR.
For better or worse, the Democrats are going to have to decide which kind of Democrats they are. For everyone's sake, I hope the "Republican lites" don't continue to dominate, because that's a losing proposition. Oh, they might win some elections, but they won't win the hearts and minds of the average working person...and thus, they won't have any "staying power".
It's nice that Harry Reid & co. are taking the PR battle back to Bush...but I wish they'd pay as much attention to what the American people -- liberals, progressives and populists in particular -- want them to be.
WASHINGTON -- At 12:50 p.m. on Oct. 28, Fox News reported that top White House aide I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby had resigned, facing indictment.
On the third floor of the U.S. Capitol, inside Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid's communications "war room," eyes darted over a bank of seven flat-screen televisions.
Just moments later CNN reporter Ed Henry appeared on one of the screens, reading a statement of reaction from Reid.
That written statement, finalized about three hours earlier, was just one of the many handcrafted products generated daily by the war room in a city ruled by news cycles.
When Reid became Senate Democratic leader after last year's elections, he faced a Republican Party in control of the House, Senate and White House -- and thus, the bully pulpit. He needed more than a bullhorn.
Reid envisioned a nimble, high-tech communications machine that would serve Senate Democrats by unifying and amplifying the voice of his 44-member caucus.
The ambitious operation was designed to aggressively play both defense and offense -- to immediately respond to Republicans, as well as to better define the Democratic image in the minds of the public.
"It has become the epicenter of the Democratic message-making effort," former Democratic Leader Tom Daschle said.
The war room raised eyebrows even before its official launch Jan. 4.
Traditionally, Senate offices have press secretaries and Senate leaders have had small communications teams. But a war room manned by a staff of 12, housed inside the Capitol, was unusual.
The war room's expenses are paid from Reid's congressional office budget, and the war room's budget has not yet been separately tallied, Reid aides said.
NBC's Tim Russert in December asked Reid if he planned to go to war with Republicans his first week on the job.
No, Reid said, adding that he wanted to work with the GOP.
"But they can't jam things down our throats," Reid asserted.
Observers said the war room in its first year had taken a more aggressive approach than the communications machine operated by Reid's friend and predecessor Daschle....
But observers also note that Republicans this year have often made easy work for the war room, badly stumbling on issues ranging from Social Security reform and the Terri Schiavo case to ethical questions surrounding Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist and former House Majority Leader Tom DeLay. A troubled Bush White House has been a gift to the war room, they said.
Critics say the war room's biggest failure is not firmly establishing a Democratic message, especially in the minds of voters.
"If bitterness and negativity are the message, then yeah, they do that quite well," former Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott, R-Miss., said in an interview last week....
A glimpse inside the war room on Oct. 28, the day of the Libby indictment, revealed a whirring factory that manufactures, packages and aggressively distributes a single product: the party image.
The room itself does not resemble the cluttered, pizza-box strewn Hollywood images of a political nerve center. The 700-square-foot office is a mixture of ornate traditional and high-tech modern. On the wall opposite the flat-screen TVs is a working fireplace resting under a giant, gilded mirror. A shimmering chandelier hangs from the soaring arched ceiling.
Seven people work inside the war room. Five other communications team members work in nearby offices. They perform a wide variety of tasks, from speech writing and press-conference planning to peddling the Democratic message to Hispanic media, and monitoring the cyberscape of influential political Web logs, or blogs.
The room flickers to life each day at 5 a.m., when darkness still obscures the view of the Washington Monument and National Mall out the west windows....
"This is the calm before the storm," war room communications director Rebecca Kirszner noted in a quiet moment before the Libby resignation.
On Oct. 28 everyone in Washington knew that Special Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald was expected to announce the results of his two-year investigation into White House leaks.
Unknown was who would be indicted -- and at what time -- but Kirszner was already mulling angles. Even if only Libby is indicted, she figured, "it's still a black cloud hanging over the White House."
By 9:20 a.m., the war room had its answers -- news outlets were reporting that Fitzgerald would hold his press conference at 2:15 p.m. -- and that Libby likely would be indicted, but not Bush adviser Karl Rove....
When the 22-page Libby indictment appeared on the Internet about 12:45 p.m., war room printers spit out multiple copies. Staffers devoured it, analyzing just how bad this news was for the White House.
As the day wore on, Kirszner spent part of the afternoon working with Reid to prepare for his appearance on two national Sunday morning talk shows. Then it was off to a series of Friday afternoon planning meetings.
Good war rooms are always looking ahead a day, a week -- even months, Manley said.
Conservative pundits already are writing Bush's comeback story, predicting that Bush can turn around a spate of bad press in an "official rebound" beginning with his State of the Union speech in January, Manley said.
Plans to temper that spin are already in the works, Manley said. He wouldn't say how.
Good communications operations dominate the media and control the debate in the terms of their choosing, said Washington political analyst Stuart Rothenberg, author of the nonpartisan Rothenberg Political Report. The Democrats have kept the Republicans on the defensive much of this year, Rothenberg said.
"It's like a prize fight, in that it's a question of who is taking the fight to the other side," Rothenberg said.
The overall Democratic message in Congress this year has been: The Republicans are screwing up, Rothenberg said. What the Democrats have not done is laid out a clear, detailed legislative agenda of their own in the minds of voters, he said.
That's fine for them -- for now, he said, "because it's still a year away from the election."
The war room takes as much flak as it sends out. One early spat with the Republican National Committee in February ended when Reid asked President Bush to denounce an RNC attack. Bush did not.
Last week Republicans blasted Reid and his leadership team for blindsiding them with a rare closed-chamber session to discuss an Iraq intelligence investigation.
War room staffers scored political points with the party base when it spun the move as the only method Democrats had to force GOP leaders to pay attention to a serious concern. But the GOP was livid.
"Reid's stunt was just the latest in his yearlong quest to put partisanship over statesmanship," the National Republican Senatorial Committee, the political arm of the Senate GOP caucus, said in a statement that also blasted the war room.
RNC spokesman Danny Diaz said the Reid war room was overly focused on placating the liberal base of its party. The Republicans, on the other hand, "communicate with middle America every single day," he said.
War room chief Manley scoffed at that, saying the GOP communicates best with the "wealthiest individuals and corporations of this country."...
Monday, Oct. 31, brought a new challenge.
About 7:40 a.m. that day, news broke that Bush had nominated Samuel Alito for the Supreme Court, viewed as a move that would shore up sagging support for Bush among his conservative base.
A few minutes later, National Public Radio reporter David Welna was on the air reading from a Reid statement of reaction, which noted that Bush aimed to leave the Supreme Court looking "less like America and more like an old boys club."
Another hand-made product of the Reid message factory.
"The news," Kirszner said, "never ends."Nice to see that the Dems are finally getting organized, and are on the attack for a change.
However, Trent Lott and various other observers are not wrong when they say that the Dems still don't have their own message. It's fine to tear down Bush, but the Dems shouldn't be back-slapping themselves too much over his decline -- his idiotic policies were bound to collapse under their own weight. What the Dems have done well is point that out to the American people.
That's not the same thing as having a message or a plan of your own. And that's the part I worry about. Because the Dems still aren't sure who they are. The "squishy middle" still dominates -- you know, the guys who the rest of us derogatorily think of as "Republican lite"; the guys who are willing to defend liberal values...as long as it doesn't offend any corporate interests. And then on the other side, there is the vocal minority of Dems who still admire guys like FDR.
For better or worse, the Democrats are going to have to decide which kind of Democrats they are. For everyone's sake, I hope the "Republican lites" don't continue to dominate, because that's a losing proposition. Oh, they might win some elections, but they won't win the hearts and minds of the average working person...and thus, they won't have any "staying power".
It's nice that Harry Reid & co. are taking the PR battle back to Bush...but I wish they'd pay as much attention to what the American people -- liberals, progressives and populists in particular -- want them to be.
