Amazingly, the guy who said this asked the New York Times to keep his name a secret.
”He brings you the entire kitchen sink, and says, ‘Look what I brought you, a kitchen sink. Let’s throw it at the guy.’ You have to have a grown-up around who says, ‘Well, I’m not sure we should throw the entire kitchen sink at the guy, but what an interesting brass spigot you found.’ ”
The “he” in question is Christopher Lyon, an opposition researcher perhaps most noted for claiming a NH politician’s wife was part of an “orgasm cult.” But our need for grown-ups has much wider relevance.
Any campaign can attract somebody who sees nothing wrong with tearing up opponents’ signs, disrupting their events, or even jamming their phones on Election Day.
So campaigns need experienced “grown-ups” to slow down such hotheads. The tragedy of Republicans under Karl Rove is that experienced politicians were afraid they would be fired if they stood in the way of dirty tricks, which had been admiringly re-christened “pushing the envelope.”
What the world needs now is fewer pushed envelopes and a lot more grown-ups.