[Zepp note: every so often, one of my essays elicits a response that either improves or improves upon the original piece. This one, from rising journalistic star Isaac Peterson, does both]

I'd like to add a few of my thoughts if I may.

I have maintained that one reason why things haven't gone as well as expected is that Karl Rove is not the genius he's made out to be.

1. This campaign, as all of Rove's campaigns are, was mapped out well in advance of the campaigns actually starting. Rove has a history of plotting campaign strategy well in advance and doggedly insisting on "staying the course" (sound familiar?) no matter what.

It was obvious last year at the latest (there were indications even before that) that Rove intended to make this election about Iraq. Anyone who thought that the "Mission Accomplished" aircraft carrier landing was anything but a way far in advance photo op for the election needs to consult someone to see if a lobotomy can be reversed.

From what I gather, Rove assumed early on that Howard Dean would be Bush's opponent. Since Bush has been largely a figurehead doing photo ops and the like while others did whatever heavy lifting needed to be done, a look at some things he was saying before the primaries (no concrete examples off the top of my head) gave me the clear impression that he was gearing up to run against Dean. I believe that Rove was thrown for a loop when it didn't turn out to be Dean.

1a. Mapping out this campaign in advance without regard to "real world" complications which may materialize means this campaign was run with the exact same mindset that went into planning the war in Iraq. Planning consisted of believing that things would go the way they say just because they say so. "Reality based" intrusions scramble their signals in a huge way and leave them to flounder.

2. Rove's experience before 2000 was limited to races in the deep South. He ran the 2000 campaign and this one as if the United States is one big Texas or Alabama. He loves playing the religion card, for example, but that doesn't work everywhere as it does in the South.

Some may say, "Well Bush is in the White House," but that fails to recall that in spite of overwhelming campaign expenditures, photo ops, favorable media, etc., Bush was not doing well in the early primaries in 2000. Donors were getting pissed and demanding to know why they should continue hemorrhaging funds if they weren't going to get anything to show for it. I'll come back to this.

Anyway, Bush lost the popular vote in 2000. If Rove was responsible for the post-campaign strategy, he's been letting James Baker get away with taking credit for finally securing Florida.

Rove did not convince the majority of voters in 2000 to vote for his boy.

3. Rove only knows how to go negative. He was only able to get the nomination for Bush in 2000 by going extremely negative in the South (he had not done well in northern or midwestern state primaries) and knocking McCain out through whisper campaigns that McCain had been brainwashed in Vietnam and slanderous push polling insinuations about McCain's "black child." Rove's campaigns do not appeal to those who want to see candidates campaign civilly.

I don't believe Rove is an genius, at least not without the word "evil" attached. He is mean, vicious, and about as sociopathic as a human can be and still be human. His inability to campaign otherwise makes him actually predictable in some ways.

4. Rove likes to attack an opponent by going after his strength. This time attacking Kerry's strength helped serve to highlight Bush's weaknesses. Kerry's military record was what Rove decided to out his energy into attacking. Attacking Kerry's war record and his post-war activities emphasized Bush's lack of credentials in those areas. In fact, choosing to present Bush as a decisive war time commander doesn't hold up to scrutiny in any way. The Swift Boat Liars only resonated with people who either hadn't ever let go of Vietnam, don't know anything about Vietnam, or were going to vote Bush no matter what. Rove got a temporary "bump" for Bush with that, but it came as quickly as it went.

Who in their right mind is going to believe that a guy who stayed in the States during the war is more heroic than a guy who got his ass shot at every day actually fighting the war?

The Swift Boat attacks came too soon--they dominated during August, but they had been neutralized by September, and any attempt to revive their charges has been rendered moot.

5. Keeping Bush isolated throughout his entire term--huge mistake. Squashing dissent at his rallies--huge mistake. Bush has no experience dealing with people who disagree with him, and he dropped the ball badly in the town hall debate when he had questions from real people who were not predisposed to support him. Sometimes he was even openly hostile in his responses: to Charles Gibson, to Kerry, and even once or twice to the audience.

These were not the people coming to his rallies asking screened softball questions that were actually statements about how wonderful Bush is. It really stripped his gears, and on national television. I think that some comparable experience on the campaign trail could have been handled by a media prone to cover up for Bush, or spun in a way to embellish his mythical "down home, every-man" appeal (which I've never seen evidence of myself, but there are lots who do apparently).

6. Bad idea to send Bush into the debates armed only with quips, attacks, one-liners, clichés, aphorisms, spin, slogans -- everything but facts. While Kerry had previously been criticized for not being able to boil his basic message down to a few basic words, Bush's message was overly simplistic. Mindless repetition "hard work," "mixed messages," etc. emphasized his one dimensional nature. The debates turned this thing around for Kerry.

I've said here before that I consider it a miscalculation to not have built Bush's positives more and put more into tearing down the other guy. Bush is not the challenger this time and he has come off decidedly unpresidential to a lot of people who now realize that he now has a record to defend and has not been doing it.

It backfired when the guy Bush and Rove had been lying about for months was standing right there to shove Bush's lies right back down his throat. And open minded voters who were really seeing Kerry for the first time saw that the guy Bush had been telling them about bore no resemblance to the guy that showed up at the debates.

The worst they could come up with after the third debate was that Kerry had attacked and/or outed Cheney's openly gay daughter by complimenting the Cheneys for loving her? GMAFB!

7. I think it has been a miscalculation for Bush to abandon the middle and unrelentingly pander to his hard core, far right wing conservative base almost exclusively. Rove has left the middle ripe for Kerry's picking, and Kerry has made the most of it. Bush's feeble recent attempts to speak to the middle (like declaring the other day that states should have the right to define marriage, counter to his support of a Constitutional amendment that would take that choice away from states) leaves him open to the dreaded "flip-flop" charge that he has tried to demonize Kerry with.

Talking to Tad Devine, one of Kerry's senior advisors in September, I got the feeling that Kerry was doing a "rope-a-dope" on Bush, and it kind of looks like that in retrospect. The Kerry campaign took a gamble that Rove would hit too hard too early and too often while their boy took the hits to come back back in the late rounds with his energies more intact to go the distance and finish stronger than the other guy or knock him out if possible..

There are still a few days until the election and anything can happen between now and then; nothing can be taken for granted. I believe as well that it's getting too late for an October Surprise. However, I do find it ironic and funny that the October Surprise that we have seen was on Bush and Rove.

(At the time I wrote that last sentence, the October Surprise I referred to was the missing explosives at Al QaQaa. In the last few hours a new tape of bin Laden has surfaced. I believe the logical first question is "If the war on terror is being managed effectively and fought the right way, why is bin Laden--the guy who actually attacked the U.S. and admits it -- still running around free to make videotapes?" Bush should be glad that came out just before the weekend when some people won't be paying as much attention.)

Kerry hasn't won yet, although this is his race to lose now. And stranger things have happened. But if/when he wins, it may be more a reflection of how poorly the Bush campaign was run than how well the Democrats conducted theirs. I would still enjoy that; the Bushies and Naderites who pinned Gore's defeat on a poor campaign would have a new standard by which to measure poorly managed campaigns, if any of what I say is true.

But what do I know? This is just what I think. I cannot back any of it up, but it's what I think.