High Caliber Advocacy

‘WHEN I was growing up in Tennessee, we had a saying for something that was so outrageous nobody could believe it: ‘That dog don’t hunt,'” says Chris Cox, the chief lobbyist of the National Rifle Association. The old phrase came back to him a couple of years ago, as Cox was plotting the NRA’s strategy for 2004. “I knew the Democrats were going to go after the pro-gun vote, and I knew their efforts would be full of bald-faced lies. We had to figure out a way to expose them.”

So Cox visualized a dog that didn’t hunt. He came up with the concept of a French poodle with a pink ribbon in its exquisitely groomed fur, wearing a sweater bearing the name of the Democratic presidential candidate. Beneath this picture would be Cox’s boyhood aphorism. It was bound to be a clever ad, but then Democratic primary voters did something to turn it into a perfect one: They nominated John Kerry, the senator with puffed-up hair and “French” looks.

About the Author

John J. Miller

John J. Miller, a former national correspondent for National Review, is the director of the Dow Journalism Program at Hillsdale College. He is the author of A Gift of Freedom: How the John M. Olin Foundation Changed America.

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‘WHEN I was growing up in Tennessee, we had a saying for something that was so outrageous nobody could believe it: ‘That dog don’t hunt,'” says Chris Cox, the chief lobbyist of the National Rifle Association. The old phrase came back to him a couple of years ago, as Cox was plotting the NRA’s strategy for 2004. “I knew the Democrats were going to go after the pro-gun vote, and I knew their efforts would be full of bald-faced lies. We had to figure out a way to expose them.”

So Cox visualized a dog that didn’t hunt. He came up with the concept of a French poodle with a pink ribbon in its exquisitely groomed fur, wearing a sweater bearing the name of the Democratic presidential candidate. Beneath this picture would be Cox’s boyhood aphorism. It was bound to be a clever ad, but then Democratic primary voters did something to turn it into a perfect one: They nominated John Kerry, the senator with puffed-up hair and “French” looks.

About the Author

John J. Miller

John J. Miller, a former national correspondent for National Review, is the director of the Dow Journalism Program at Hillsdale College. He is the author of A Gift of Freedom: How the John M. Olin Foundation Changed America.