| May 2012 | ||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| S | M | T | W | T | F | S |
| 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | ||
| 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 |
| 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | 17 | 18 | 19 |
| 20 | 21 | 22 | 23 | 24 | 25 | 26 |
| 27 | 28 | 29 | 30 | 31 | ||
Nixon once famously told the press “you won’t have Nixon to kick around anymore.” David Greenberg compare’s Dean’s primary-night speech to that debacle.
We May Have Dean to Kick Around
Nixon showed how to successfully rebound from a disastrous speech.Early in Richard M. Nixon’s 1968 campaign for president, his speechwriter, Raymond K. Price, was among those charged with a delicate task: Review Nixon’s disastrous “last press conference” speech of Nov. 7, 1962, and figure out how to handle it in the upcoming race.
Nixon had delivered that rambling address after losing his bid to unseat Pat Brown as governor of California. Surprising reporters by venturing down from his hotel room the morning after his defeat, Nixon sneered at “all the members of the press [who] are so delighted that I have lost” and chided them for biased coverage. He concluded, “You won’t have Nixon to kick around anymore, because, gentlemen, this is my last press conference and it will be one in which I have welcomed the opportunity to test wits with you.”
...In the end, Dean’s resilience, or lack of it, will probably determine his fate.
How desperate do you have to be to compare your candidate to Nixon in an effort to restore your candidate’s reputation? It doesn’t seem like much of a plan in any case.
Added bonus: if you haven’t already heard it, here’s James Lileks’ brilliant remix of Dean’s “Yeaggh!” speech (via JackalopePursuivant):
