Why and Who
"...it is by the enjoyment of a dangerous freedom that the Americans learn the art of rendering the dangers of freedom less formidable."
de Tocqueville
Wisdom for the ages from a prescient and nattily-dressed little Frenchman. If you're looking for more of the same, read the Atlantic. What Shadow Campaign offers is rudimentary observations, unsolicited advice, and barstool strategizing from benchwarmers inside and outside of politics and media--that takes in just about everyone, which is to say we welcome even the most uninformed opinions and half-baked thoughts. (To be fair, some of our favorite half-baked ideas have been posted by fully-baked readers).
We are inside government and media but perennial outsiders. Curmudgeons with good ideas but without the most basic social skills to advance them. Losers who can't keep their shirt-tails tucked in. Axe-grinders and insufferable whiners. First class minds that opted-out and moved to second tier cities. And those who believe just enough to have their hearts broken ever other election cycle.
The bent is admittedly center-left, but without the orthodoxies and the received wisdom of the party establishment. And we're not ashamed to actually talk policy and governance in our own semi-literate caveman/cavewoman way. Chris Matthews may have dialed up the sex-appeal of politics (see his fawning descriptions of Obama's loping gait), but nobody's yet found a formula to make policy discussions equally steamy. True, our civic culture was impoverished long before Matthews, and we understand MSNBC pays his salary, not Brookings, but in this campaign year, he's been handed the perfect audience and the opportunity to elevate the dialogue. And if he doesn't see fit to seize it, others should. For if campaigns are the pre-marital sex, then governance is the marriage, and if it's anything like most, the marriage will last a lot longer than the sex. So here's to good sex, a strong marriage, and the eternal national quest for a partner who's great at both.
