One thing I’ve been very focused on with Ben Carson is his relationship with Armstrong Williams. Williams has been out of the spotlight for a while, or at least not nearly as visible as he was a decade ago. But he’s a longtime conservative columnist. And he has a very close relationship with Carson, the details of which have been a bit obscure to me. A few months ago, the Post referred to him a man “who for decades has been Carson’s business manager and gatekeeper.” He’s now the “business manager” for Carson’s campaign, which got my attention since I’ve never seen a campaign, ever, that has a “business manager.”
With Carson’s at the center of the storm, Armstrong made an appearance this morning on MSNBC. I expected Williams, as Carson’s ultimate supporter, to be in full battle mode. But it was quite different. Given what I was expecting, at first it seemed like Williams was tossing Carson overboard. But it wasn’t that. What it was was that Williams was taking a dramatically different line than Carson has taken so far. Carson’s argued that basically all the scrutiny is unfair, outrageous and the result of media bias. Williams said basically every presidential frontrunner gets this level of scrutiny. He even said he’d warned Carson that he’d face this kind of scrutiny if he ran for office.
I don’t want to make too much of this. I expect Williams thinks that the current battle mode may be appealing to Carson’s core supporters but self-defeating with the larger electorate – an accurate analysis. As such, he’s trying to shift the dialog in a more helpful direction.
In any case, it bears watching. Williams seems as responsible as anyone for the Carson phenomenon.
