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Garry South:
Still Walking Tall And Talking Trash By Jonathan
Wilcox You’d think the
architect of Gray Davis’ strategic approach to government and politics would
be somewhat reluctant these days to offer his advice on campaigns and
elections. But if you
thought that, you don’t know Garry South, the beefy, bellicose consultant who
roared into Sacramento as Davis’ chief idea man and is still yelling the same
catcalls, albeit from the sidelines.
He may be standing atop the wreckage of all his good work and good
ideas, but at least for him, the view doesn’t seem at all unsettling. Political pundits
always have a funny relationship with history. Wins and losses aren’t the way they are measured after the
election fact, with results becoming far less important than relationships,
personalities and the ability to trademark themselves. This has made
intriguing media characters of the men and women who would advise those who
would lead us, and when combined with the human drama of political
competition, electioneers are today’s gunslingers, walking tall and talking
trash. No single
individual in California better represents this than Garry South. Never a major player among
consultants, he struck it rich by guiding Davis all the way to the top. His hard-fought rise and, well,
not-so-hard fall tell us all we need to know about how political celebrity is
gained and maintained. By any objective
measure, the 1998 campaign that made Davis governor was brilliant, and South
deserves credit. To gain the
Democrats’ nomination against better-funded opposition, South deftly used
radio ads, secured endorsements (and used them meaningfully) and devised the
slogan that tied it all together, “Gray Davis: Experience Money Can’t Buy.” From the time of
Davis’ landslide election for governor, South bestrode Sacramento like a
consultant colossus. He was
regularly identified as Davis’ chief advisor, and he raked in the cash that
is available to the power broker willing to put that influence up for rent. As the Davis Administration
began slipping into an energy crisis and then an economic one, South’s advice
offered the classic short-term objectives: keep raising money, smash your opponents, get through the
next election, and it will all go away. Well, three out
of four isn’t bad, unless the one you missed ends up bringing down the whole
operation. But this exposed
South’s greatest flaw: If the
sledgehammer can’t do the job, he has no other tools and no other techniques
to offer. Assessing Davis’
unimpressive 2002 re-election (of which he was chief strategist), South said,
“There was a huge Republican prairie fire coming out this way, and we kind of
braked it right at the Sierra Nevada.”
(Note to reader: Insert
“raging inferno/Gray Davis career” analogy here). Then again, maybe
South did see something coming.
With the Davis recall looming, he signed up as a strategist for the
presidential campaign of U.S. Sen. Joe Lieberman, saying, “I’ve got other
things going on in my life.” That his main
samurai considered Lieberman’s campaign a better prospect than his should
have alerted Davis that he was probably doomed. Fresh off
Lieberman’s failed effort, South is back to doing what he does best, the
broken windows/graffiti-on-the-overpass brand of politics the media tend to
find attractive but that have only short and occasional shelf lives. In a Sacramento
Bee op-ed that surpassed 1,000 words, South assesses President Bush’s
chances of carrying California this way: Golden State voters will punish the President for his
“sins” relating to the Los Padres National Forest, a landfill in Fresno,
clean water laws, zero-emission vehicles, Enron, a databank of people who
shouldn’t own guns, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, seasonal ponds
used by migratory birds and “the gases that contribute to global warming.” For informative
measure, he adds, “It's a standing joke among Democrats that Bush thinks
California is a foreign country because of the word ‘republic’ on our state
flag.” Couldn’t
we have gotten this quality analysis from any third-rate blogger?
Probably, but it wouldn’t come with the bitter aftertaste that is
vintage Garry South. This style may
have brought his recent clients nothing but setback, yet South is still
considered a hot commodity in an industry that would have made superstars of
George Custer or the captain of the Titanic … if only they’d survived their
disasters to tell their stories and sell their advice about Indians,
icebergs, and how what went wrong wasn’t their fault. Jonathan
Wilcox is a former speechwriter for Governor Pete Wilson. He may be
reached via his e-mail address: jwilcox1967@earthlink.net
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Jonathan
Wilcox is a former speechwriter for California He currently resides in Southern California
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