If you are like most voters, the only stuff you know about GOP
candidate for governor Rick Snyder is what you see in his TV
commercials.
By now you know he is a nerd. You have also probably
determined that the Ann Arbor business guy is not a career politician
and has a total disdain for those who are. (Although he says he would
hire some if he became governor.)
At every juncture he tweaks his opponents as being career
politicians one and all. In fact it has gotten so embarrassing for
some that they have reinvented themselves as "career public servants"
instead. It may be a distinction without a difference but who the heck
cares?
Yet there are some puzzling aspects to Mr. Snyder's
anti-politician mantra. For openers he has surrounded himself with
campaign advisors, strategists, and other hangers-on who are, Ta-Da,
career politicians. Sure they are not elected officials but they've
been in the political trenches for ions and have found a client who
needs them as much as they need him for a weekly pay check.
Mr. Snyder has also made some very "career politician-like"
moves. He wears no tie. Is that because he doesn't like tight things
around his neck or is it because his career political advisors are
trying to mold an image that voters will like?
Building an image is as career politician as you can get.
Next some of his commercials have been right out of the career
pol's playbook although he has been good at dressing them up not to
look that way.
Knowing that his opponent Mike Cox has a "Kwame" problem visa vie
the Cox investigation of the party at the former Mayor's mansion that
never happened, the first Snyder TV ad featured a picture of Mr. Cox
immediately followed by a pic of Mr. Mayor. It was subtle but the
linkage was unmistakable. Even career political advisor John Weaver
conceded that nothing in the campaign is done by accident.
And then the most recent commercial where Snyder denounces all the
"bickering" in politics. He seemingly rises about the fray but then
neatly tucked into the ad, he repeats the very same charges that Mike
Cox and Pete Hoekstra have hurled at each other.
So Snyder gets a chance to question Hoekstra's spending habits in
Congress and once more raises the "Kwame" problem as it relates to Cox.
It was clever, sneaky and very career politician-ish.
In fact the Cox folks jump a step further calling Mr. Snyder a
"hypocrite."