In October 2006, Mark Halperin and John F. Harris — two of the DC establishment’s most influential political reporters and some of the most plugged in guys in town — published their blueprint for electoral victory in the 2008 presidential election, The Way To Win.

For a book that doesn’t mention Barack Obama in the index, it’s needless to say that the two men got a few things wrong. This shouldn’t be surprising though, considering that they couldn’t get their pop culture references straight in their introduction:

Even in the context of contemporary politics, reputations are highly fluid. When we embarked on this project at the Little Rock library dedication in the wake of the 2004 election, many Republicans believed, and many Democrats feared, that the newly reelected president, through his political and policy victories, had shifted the balance of power in America in long-term ways — a realignment, in the parlance of political scientists. Demoralized Democrats, like the hapless pursuers of Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, gazed at Bush and wondered, “Who are those guys?”

But as IMDB helpfully reminds us, it was the other way around. Butch and Sundance were wondering that about their pursuers:

Butch Cassidy: Ah, you’re wasting your time. They can’t track us over rocks.
Sundance Kid: Tell them that.
Butch Cassidy: [after looking for himself] Who are those guys?

[about the trackers following them]
Butch Cassidy: I couldn’t do that. Could you do that? Why can they do it? Who are those guys?

In retrospect, Halperin and Harris’s referential slip makes sense. The trackers chasing Butch and Sundance were the best of the best, similarly to how Halperin and Harris described Bush and Rove. But soon after their book came out, on election day 2006, Rove’s “math” was proven wrong. It was then that conventional wisdom began moving towards the conclusion that George W. Bush will be remembered for his “epic political failure” rather than the “permanent Republican majority” of which Rove dreamed.

Sparklehorse - Getting It Wrong (buy)

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