This inside look at the failed Scott Walker campaign featuring his campaign manager spilling his guts (and sounds like he may have even been a little drunk...) is wildly entertaining. Apparently they spent like drunken sailors secure in the knowledge that they had it in the bag. Until they didn't. And when they slipped in the polls and the money started to dry up they shrugged their shoulders and walked away. Walker sounds like he was hardly even present.
Boy, does that sound like a Republican president, or what? Downright Reaganesque if you ask me.
But Walker had a Walker problem: He just wasn’t ready for the national stage. It was often overlooked that just five years ago, he was the Milwaukee County executive. As he began the presidential campaign, according to advisers, he knew little about issues like immigration, the Export-Import Bank and foreign policy. Walker’s campaign brought in experts to brief him on those subjects. Aides said he enjoyed the briefings and worked hard to become fluent in policy issues.
But his lack of knowledge showed — like when he said that Ronald Reagan’s decision to fire striking air traffic controllers was the most significant foreign policy decision of his lifetime. Yet expectations were sky-high for the governor, and his early appearances did little to lower them.
Wiley blamed the size of the campaign partly on Walker’s newness to the national spotlight. “It takes a lot to build a campaign to run for president, especially around someone who is introduced to a new set of issues,” Wiley said. “Foreign policy — brand new. And just the dynamics of the federal issues are different, obviously. I mean, my God, this guy is a machine — I mean he really, truly is. But that takes staff, it takes time to do that. And we built the campaign that we needed to get him ready.”
Well, nobody can say he didn't create some jobs. It's just that they were a lot more short-lived than anyone expected.
Some of us did notice that Walker was the Milwaukee County executive just five years ago, by the way. Not that this necessarily means that someone can't be well versed in national and international issues. But it was clear from the beginning that Walker wasn't the brightest bulb so a closer look by the intelligentsia might have been warranted before everyone anointed him as the frontrunner.
