Politics & Power Quote by Susan Estrich

Estrich is doing two things at once: quietly flexing insider credibility and delivering a backhanded indictment of the Democratic response in the post-2004 hangover. The opener, "Most people don't know who Ken Mehlman is", is less a lament than a setup. She’s reminding readers that power in American politics is often exercised by people whose names never trend, then using that obscurity as proof of competence: Mehlman isn’t a brand, he’s a mechanic.

The contrast with "obviously" is a small jab of media cynicism. Chairmanship is "obvious" only to political junkies; to everyone else, party infrastructure is invisible until Election Day. By elevating "nuts and bolts", Estrich shifts the frame from ideology and cable-news charisma to the unglamorous work that actually moves votes: lists, donors, message discipline, local committees, turnout operations. It’s the political equivalent of praising the stage crew while the lead actor preens.

The Howard Dean reference is pointed because Dean, in that moment, was becoming a symbol of Democratic reinvention and grassroots energy. Estrich isn’t rejecting that energy; she’s warning that energy without assembly becomes performance. The subtext is that Democrats risk confusing movement aesthetics with organizational power, while Republicans, under Mehlman, are rebuilding the machine where it counts.

Context matters: this is the era when parties were professionalizing data, targeting, and field operations. Estrich’s intent is to argue that the future belongs less to the loudest messenger than to whoever quietly builds the system that makes messaging stick.