EVERYTHING IS COMING APART, AND WHITAKER IS RIGHT AT HOME | 2003-11-29
The entire political mess over Iraq makes no sense to a sane person, but it is business as usual to me. I have been in the middle of dog-chases-tail politics all of my life.
At the end of every political campaign I have gotten panicked calls from people who were new to politics who told me everything was coming apart. I assured them, "Everything is always coming apart on election day."
When the titanic Persian Army came into Greece in ancient times, it looked hopeless for Greece. But a few Greeks stood shoulder-to-shoulder and whipped the Persians.
Rome took that strategy to miraculous levels. A few Roman soldiers could beat a hundred thousand Eastern soldiers in their hordes or thousands of disorganized Celtic warriors.
There is a political strategy that not only can win, it will win. I try to explain it, over and over, in WhitakerOnline. Each time I explain it, I get responses from people who tell me they liked what I said, which I appreciate. They then make further comments that show they have not the slightest idea what I am getting at. They then give me the latest news about how Bush is a bad guy and is lying.
The strategy I see coming would happen without me. People like me do a lot of big things because we can see reality while everybody else is chasing the Latest Thing. We don't create the big movements, but we sure help.
I was part of the ground-laying that got Goldwater nominated in 1964. Then Goldwater went to the "real pros" and lost it all. I spent years helping form the "Reagan Democrat" strategy that won in 1980. Every year before that conservatives were dashing around with yet a new excitement, but I kept on.
I had a ticket to the Reagan Inauguration. I gave it away and worked on the next thing.
I stopped the Internal Revenue Service from imposing racial quotas on private schools. I saved the Hubble Space Telescope. American politics is a huge world, and one person can do a lot.
But I never did anything by dashing around madly chasing whatever the Latest Big Deal is in political news.
Politics, like everything else, is a matter of keeping your eye on the ball. Everybody else will keep you up on the play-by-play action. That's where the fun is.
Whitaker Online is aimed at winning the World Series years from now.