It occurred to me as a result of reading 2 interesting diaries posted today - about jumping the shark and Bush's worst mistake, that what we are seeing in the Bush's campaign- one slogan after another, apparent chaos, no planning for reversals, is an exact simulation of the Iraq war transposed to a campaign environment. They started out with Shock and Awe- $100 million of negative campaign ads intended to blow Kerry out of the water. Bush/Rove were planning (hoping?) on being in control at this point as they coasted towards a landslide election.
Instead, reality interfered. The economy is going to hell, Iraq is going to an even hotter destination, the media is no longer playing along as it once did, all the things any rational observer could have expected...except they weren't expected.
It's amazed all of us, even those who were strongly against the war from the beginning, that a supposedly sane group of people would plan a war without doing any planning. There wasn't a plan B, C, D, etc, and it's only thanks to the military that there was a plan A.
And yet they apparently did the same thing with the campaign, naively hope that Shock and Awe would knock off a politician known for ending up strong, and never plan either for the reversals from external events or from their opponents fighting back. Yes, I know they probably have plenty of dirty tricks to play, but they apparently haven't planned how to most effectively lay the minefield with them (mixed metaphor, sorry).
I don't have an explanation for this any more than any of us did for the poor war planning, beyond noting that a sure sign of insanity is to do the same thing over and over again hoping for a different result.
At least in this case, ignoring tinfoil hats, thousands of people won't die or be maimed because of the incompetence. In fact, in this case, the outcome is likely to be good for America and the world.