Maybe we ought to pity our politicians every once in a while. Okay, okay, before you start throwing rotten tomatoes, hear us out. We at USDemocrazy have noticed, and some other smart people have too, that U.S. politicians engage in a “permanent campaign”. This is when elected officials use the same kind of campaign tactics that we saw (and saw and saw) during the eternal 2008 campaign to gain support for bills or policy measures while in office.
These guys ( and we citizens) just never catch a break between elections…. but that’s probably a good thing!
President Obama had to do just that today, flying ALL the way out to Indiana, to hold what looked remarkably like a campaign rally. Bt this time he wasn’t trying to rally votes from citizens, but was really trying to rally support for the stimulus bill (we found the video of it for you, and posted it above). He then flew ALL the way back to Washington, just to talk more stimulus. Phew!
Scott McClellan (who used to work in, later to be shunned by, the George W Bush White House) wrote in his book What Happened about this so-called permanent campaign. He talked about how old GWBush had to campaign around the country for bills he was trying to get passed in Washington. Clearly, that is one thing the Obama folks like about their predecessor!
The guys at RealClearPolitics.com helped us understand more about this permanent campaign, because they probably figured we all need to understand why we have to put up with — er, listen to politely – all the stuff politicians say in between the actual campaigns.
[...] and neighbors to garner support for the President’s proposal. This all sounds a lot like the permanent campaign, like we talked about a couple weeks [...]