*Political campaign managers are a really weird breed. This Murphy guy is genuinely strange. I mean, he's odd even by generous James Carville and Mary Matalin standards.
*This would make a pretty good sci-fi novel about a campaign advisor if I hadn't already written a sci-fi novel about a campaign advisor.
http://www.weeklystandard.com/debriefing-mike-murphy/article/2001632
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"More seriously, Murphy suggests, "We turn into Paraguay. Which is probably an insult to Paraguay. Trump suing the attorney general because he tried to turn off the air-conditioning in the Rayburn building. It'll turn into a bad reality show. And all the crap you see in foreign countries where the parliament members are suing each other and everything turns into a big legitimacy fight. . . . We lose everything. The brand will be destroyed.
" "Then the problem becomes how are we the world's reserve currency anymore? We get away with a lot of shit because people think we have a stable system. But if your banker comes in one day wearing a diaper, speaking gibberish, you're going to pull your money out of that checking account. So that has a huge potential impact on our ability to protect our economic strength. We borrow a lot of f — ing money. Because people think the number one safest instrument in the world is the U.S. Treasury bond. And if we start making reality-show clowns in charge? Run on the American bank. You think the pissed-off steelworker in Akron has trouble now? Wait until we have a financial collapse and they take 25 percent off the dollar. He'll be serving hot dogs in an American restaurant in China."
"On Super Tuesday night (the first installment), the Right to Rise crew packs HMS Bounty, a neighborhood bar on Wilshire Boulevard, to watch election returns, as civilian bystanders now instead of participants. It's one of Murphy's favorite old-school dinosaur haunts, dark-wood-paneled and nautical-themed, with Patsy Cline and Dean Martin and Louis Prima on the jukebox. They filmed an episode of Mad Men here, and it feels like nothing would need to be changed to make it a period set.
"The bar sits across from what used to be the Ambassador Hotel, where Bobby Kennedy was shot. And a couple of Murphy's young crew mention that they're later heading out for Tex-Mex at El Coyote, which happens to be where Sharon Tate ate her last meal before getting slaughtered by the Manson Family. I mention to Murphy that between these and the Biggie Smalls assassination site, right outside his office window, death seems to be stalking these establishmentarians.
" "We call this 'The Voyage of the Damned Party,' " he cracks, as a waitress trips over my reporting bag, nearly becoming yet another casualty…."
