Old FURIOUS nads! by The One True b!X

In today’s Theo, there’s a profile of Brian Gard, the Gard in Gard & Gerber, the much-discussed local PR firm.

I’m going to skip all the way to end, because the piece concludes with Gard giving a rather choice example of precisely the sort of horseshit he and his company pull as a matter of deliberate routine.

“It is a misunderstanding of politics to think that this is supposed to be a balanced public debate,” he said. “My job isn’t to tell your story for you. . . . How many elections are decided by confused voters?”

Notice he is not apologizing. Gard objects to the notion that what he does undermines the democratic process or results in a less-educated electorate. If anything, he says, his efforts allows the process to work: Fair is foul and foul is fair. All the world’s a stage.

Notice how he phrases his comments as if he’s answering the question, “So, how do you feel about your critics, who say it’s your job to tell your opponents’ stories for them?”

Neither the opponents of the power brokers he represents, nor his critics (amongst whom, obviously, I count myself) have ever made that argument. He sets up a straw-man and then smacks it down, which is convenient for him, but has nothing whatsoever to do with the issues at hand.

It should go without saying that such a response is par for the course for Gard and his crew.

And as much as Gard “objects to the notion that what he does undermines the democratic process or results in a less-educated electorate” his behavior as a PR flack proves precisely the opposite. One need only look back to the “debate” over forming a local public utility district, where Gard’s approach to helping out Portland General Electric and Pacific Power was to gather a bunch of his own employees together with a bunch of utility lawyers, drown the “debate” in cash no one on the other side could possibly match, and improperly portray it as a grassroots citizen movement.

(You might note that it’s no coincidence that someone who thinks that burying a political debate in enough cash to drown out the arguments of the other side also is spearheading the attempt to kill publicly-financed campaigns in Portland.)

Here’s where Gard’s manipulation falls apart: In his zeal to make as much money for himself as possible (he “struck out on his own hoping to handle more corporate clients.” according to the article), he disdains the notion that the arena of public debate functions best for a democracy when all parties agree on certain meta-level issues.

One of those issues is that you honestly discuss the merits of opposing positions, not lie, distort, or deceive. You discuss the facts and the arguments, and you let the chips fall where they may.

Gard either does not believe this, or simply doesn’t give a shit.

Earlier on in the piece, Gard lauds his own liberal background (”protested the Vietnam War in grad school and keeps a photograph of Bobby Kennedy in his home”) as a way to dismiss the suggestion that he’s the local Karl Rove.

While even I wouldn’t argue that Gard is in the same league as, or as extreme as, Rove, you’ll notice the sleight of hand he pulls here: He suggests that the Rove comparison is about being a Republican — when in reality, it’s about being a manipulative confidence man. Neither end of the political spectrum has any shortage of those. So his so-called liberal credentials are irrelevant to the criticism.

But that’s what Gard does. He, like Rove, uses obfuscation and misdirection as the weapons of first resort. He, like Rove, subscribes to what might properly be termed the Malcom X school of political operatives: By any means necessary.