I wonder about some things.

We all know that Bob Shrum is 0 and 7 in “The Big Game”, he having involved himself in seven losing presidential campaigns. He has a decent success rate in Senate campaigns, though even there he has a fair number of losses.

Kerry, sometime in late August, is said to have reshuffled his campaign staff a bit. Moved in some Clinton people, decreased the role of Shrumites in the campaign, and so forth.

Drew Bledsoe was the starting quarterback of a losing Superbowl team against the Packers, and the back-up quarterback of a winning Superbowl team against the Rams. Thrown out early in the season due to injury, and benched because the other guy actually started winning these games. Bledsoe did defeat the Steelers in the AFC Championship game when the starter was benched due to an injury, which propelled the team into the Superbowl. But, he was promptly moved back to #2 man during the Big Game… lead by two touchdowns at halftime, lost the lead in a hurry during the fourth quarter, and then lead the team with 80 seconds to go and no timeouts down the field to set up a winning field goal. (Against the collective wisdom of the tv announcers, who councelled running the clock out and playing for overtime… transfer that lesson from sport punditry to political punditry. There were also plenty of sports writers who thought Bledsoe should start the game, and I suppose had the Patriots lost they would have felt themselves vindicated in that belief — whether or not they were right.) He then won the MVP award for the game, and went to Disneyland… a refreshing break from the previous year, where a man being charged with murder won the MVP Award, so Disneyland sent the winning team’s largely unremarkable quarterback to the their themepark. (The team went on to keep the alleged murderer, and cut the quarterback.)

But anyway, Bledsoe has that “Superbowl ring”… him having been on the Patriots payroll… but he didn’t actually win the thing.

Should Kerry win the election, Bob Shrum is now 1 and 7. Would he be celebrating, as he began when Florida was called for Gore?

I also wonder what would happen to the “political genius” tag of Karl Rove. Ever since the “Mission Accomplished” banner blew up in the Bush Campaign’s face, I’ve wondered if, indeed, Karl Rove has lost his mojo. And I’m beginning to wonder that anew, in light of the effect that keeping Bush away from anybody but his most agreeable yes-people had on the debate, and in light of the vanishing of the Swift Boat Veterans attack. (Was that thrown out too early? Did the Kilian Memos/ Dan Rather thing accidentally neutralize the attacks, the mind of the swing-voter thinking “Let’s just rate it a draw and move on to something else!”)

And if Bush loses the election… doesn’t Karl Rove’s status just… disappear into “he performed brilliantly in Texas”?

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