George Allen's A-list Advisers

Mary Matalin, Ed Gillespie and Dick Wadhams all join in Geroge Allen Senate Campaign to get an early start towards a Presidental run in 2008. Mary Matalin said of the Senator, "We're in the era of authenticity. He's serious, but he's comfortable. He doesn't get rattled. He doesn't tap dance." It seem Mary Matlin is wrong on all accounts, Geroge Allen is not going to bring back the "Gipper".

Senator Allen along with this campaign team tapped dance around this racial issues. Republican Ed Gillespie:

MATTHEWS: Let me ask you this. The macaca thing, I think that`s what started all this. ...

How do you explain that? Coming up with a word used as an anti-black term in North Africa years ago. ... He just made up a word that we know can be traced back to North Africa where his mother came from? Do you believe that, that he just made up the word macaca out of nowhere?

GILLESPIE: Well I know that he calls his finance director Jabba. I don't know why, and I don't know where that comes from.

MATTHEWS: Jabba the Hut.

Ex-RNC Cheif Ed Gillespie has to make a fool out himself and use Jadda the hut defenses for Senator Allen. Mary Matalin who is never scared to make a fool out herself showed on unserious she and Senator Allen really are.

Allen's campaign unearthed an insensitive article from 1979 about women serving in the military. There was a fair point to be made here, but Matalin's appearance on MSNBC in late October reeked of desperation:

TUCKER CARLSON: Wait a second, Mary. ... [T]he Allen campaign has beat Jim Webb over the head with this piece he wrote. ...

MATALIN: ... [W]hat was offensive about that was the language that was used. You know me, Tucker--I am no raving feminist here. But any man that ever says, in any context, or professes to know something about any woman`s horny dreams, is not somebody that I want representing me or even in the same room with me. ...

CARLSON: But wait a second, Mary. Wait, hold on. You just said a second ago, that kind of loose talk, both candidates in this race, as you know, have been guilty of loose talk, and it`s been my position from day one that loose talk is no measure of anybody, any candidate in this race certainly. You ought to judge people on what they believe, and Jim Webb, I thought, made a pretty cogent case for why women ought not to serve in combat. And I just hate to see George Allen attacking him from the left, which is what he's been doing.

MATALIN: You know, this is obviously no longer a current issue. The people who are voting in this race want to vote on current issues. This is a state that when, not too long ago, when we all moved here, the largest export was tobacco. Today, it's computer chips. Why? George Allen.

Watching this interview, it's hard not to think that Matalin longs for her old job.

The man who would be the next Karl Rove took the biggest downfall in the cause of Senator Allen, Dick Wadhams.

But the man most damaged by Allen's spectacular implosion isn't Gillespie, Matalin, or possibly even Allen himself (who will surely find a lucrative way to spend his days). It is Campaign Manager Dick Wadhams, who, for a long time, was thought to be the next Karl Rove. Slate called him Rove's "heir apparent," a reference to both his political skill (he engineered John Thune's stunning upset of Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle in South Dakota, and he was instrumental in the rise of Colorado Governor Bill Owens) and his Rove-like classiness (Wadhams: "There's nothing wrong with going negative. Staying positive is a disservice to the voters.").

But, after he enlisted with Allen, he lost his mojo. The campaign did not respond quickly or cogently to adversity, and it waited too long to show contrition for the macaca incident. And the decision to go after Webb for the racy content in his novels was a political blunder that made Allen appear puny and pathetic. The Denver Post, which had previously chronicled Wadhams's rise through Colorado politics, said he seemed to be "adrift in a cyclone." Wadhams, erstwhile golden boy, is now the aide who steered a once-sure-thing to defeat.

Go read the rest of Isaac Chotiner article in the New Republic.

All of of Geroge Allen's A-list advisers at the end of the day could not save the Senator from himself. Geroge Allen proved to be easily ratted by Jim Webb authenticity.