Get Me Roger Stone
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“I am the most qualified. I have the most experience. I am the smartest and the most educated.” Ń a foolish candidate for public office
I cringe every time I hear a politician say something like that. I loathe the guy saying it, but I still feel for him. That strategy never works.
At best, mentioning your brains and your experience makes you look like a boastful egghead.
At worst, people think you are telling the truth.
Being an experienced politician is not a qualification. It’s a huge strike against you.
It’s like saying: “Hey, I’m an experienced thief. Let me guard your money.” Or “Hey, I’m experienced at sending your sons to Asia to murder foreigners. Let me be your pastor!”
The American voter is willing to forgive almost anything Đ except the sin of being an intellectual insider. Roger Stone understands this better than anyone.
Roger Stone loves to show off the big tattoo of Richard Nixon that he has on his back. Stone’s worship of President Nixon makes total sense; Nixon was the master of anti-intellectual political success.
In terms of education, experience, and intellectual prowess, Richard Nixon was second to none. But he never would have told you that. He won a 49-state landslide victory in 1972 based on his personal appeal to the “Great Silent Majority” of working class Americans.
Conservative values only get a candidate so far. Republicans win elections by appealing to the anti-intellectual, anti-Washington, anti-establishment masses.
Roger Stone is the ultimate anti-insider insider. The colorful Netflix documentary “Get Me Roger Stone” presents him as the devious Forest Gump of Republican politics, conveniently popping up in the background at every major event.
The Watergate Hearings: 19-year old Roger Stone was there (he played a very minor dirty trick against Nixon’s GOP Primary competitor Pete McCloskey).
The Conservative triumph in 1980: Roger Stone was there (he was Reagan’s regional campaign director for the Northeast).
The 2000 Contested Election: Roger Stone was there (Stone claims that he organized a pro-Bush rally that intimidated Florida election workers from changing the results of the recount).
And if you don’t hate him enough already, Democrat readers, check this out: Roger Stone founded one of the original Super PACs in 1978 to run independently funded attack ads.
And he founded Black, Manafort, and Stone Đ a shamelessly greedy DC lobbying firm that represented the interests of anyone willing to pay them. Stone’s list of clients included Third World dictators like Ferdinand Marcos and Mobutu Sese Seko.
The neat thing about Roger Stone is that he doesn’t try to justify or explain away any of his villainy. If anything, he proudly over-emphasizes his evil achievements. It is better to be infamous, Stone proclaims, than not famous at all.
Though he works for Republicans, Roger Stone is far from a Conservative. He used to go to swingers parties with his libertine wife. He enthusiastically supports marijuana legalization.
He was pro-gay marriage long before any Republican (or any member of the Clinton family) supported it. There’s a surprising scene where Roger Stone proudly marches in a Pride Parade. He gets booed the entire time.
You can hate him all you want, but you must respect him. Roger Stone knows better than anyone how you win elections in the United States.
It definitely is not by claiming to be the smartest and the most experienced candidate. Just ask Roger Stone’s latest protege: President Trump.
