Ed Gillespie (Gage Skidmore/Wikimedia Commons)
One of the unreported stories of this cycle is how awful the Romney campaign operation is at driving a message and setting the agenda on matters of policy and selling the candidate as a suitable alternative to President Obama.
A great deal of the problem is Mitt Romney himself. He's just not a very good politician. He's gaffe prone. He's got a terrible presence. No sense of timing. He isn't likeable. He's a serially obvious liar, moreso than what one expects in a politician. He's milquetoast. I think it's obvious to all that if Romney were not up against a nincompoop and a has-been, he'd get creamed by a real heavyweight politician of even average ability. Like John McCain.
The campaign operation itself, however, seems to be equally stumblebum. You'll note how they've managed to consistently failed to amplify the candidate's message even when he sticks to the script. Or the way they've bungled the primary campaign by allowing Rick Santorum, a used-up big time loser with no money and no organization to give them a run for their money. Or the way they step on their own candidate by leaking to the press how weak a performer Romney is. Or having the campaign manager end up giving the nation a metaphor for the candidate in the form of a child's toy from the 1960s. Or, and this is big, how they've failed to build any significant amount of ground organization for the general election during the primary process despite the candidate traveling around the country for six years.
I was once of the opinion that this bunch was ready for a seriously contested general election, but now I know for sure that they are not. Today's announcement that Ed Gillespie is going to be running things from now on is a big tell.
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The Romney Campaign is trying to spin this hire with statements like this:
The addition of Gillespie, a well-regarded operative with deep congressional, campaign and White House experience, comes amid some grumbling from Republican insiders that Romney has an overly insular campaign. The gripe is that Boston’s senior staff, filled with veterans of Romney’s last presidential run, has been too resistant to including outside voices.
Gillespie is not displacing anyone in Romney’s orbit but augmenting a campaign that was purposefully kept lean during the primary. The strategist is close to campaign manager Matt Rhoades and political director Rich Beeson from their days at the RNC and worked with Romney message gurus Stuart Stevens and Russ Schriefer on President George W. Bush’s campaigns.
You'd think that the people Romney has had in place since 2008 now have enough experience to get him elected, but apparently Romney is having doubts in their abilities. Rightly so. They're no longer up against Rick Santorum and his nutcase freakshow campaign manager Ajay Bruno. Or Newt Gingrich and his
blonde helmet wife. Now they face a real presidential campaign operation of the first order and a candidate in Barack Obama of supreme and proven ability. The Romney campaign brought in Gillespie to do the job they themselves can't.
So far, all we have seen from the Romney campaign is that they can conduct air war against their opponents. They can do negative ads hard and heavy. What they haven't demonstrated an ability to do is sell the candidate or the candidate's policies. Perhaps there is something Gillespie can do to fix this, but he won't be able to do it alone. Romney is going to have to be a much, much better candidate and his staff has to get on the ball before the stories of campaign disarray begin.
Any time a challenger is trying to unseat the sitting party from the White House, he has got to make the case for why he would be better than what folks have already have. If he can't, they'll just leave the incumbent in place and stick with the devil they know. Even if they aren't well pleased with the incumbent. That's how voters are. Ask John Kerry. The Romney campaign doesn't seem to understand some of the basic rules of messaging at the presidential level.
To sum up, Romney's campaign so far has only managed to deliver up a weak frontrunner with high negatives and who has fallen behind in swing states everywhere. That's after blowing through almost $100 million of Mitt Romney's war chest. That's not a record of success. That's a shoddy operation.
I suspect stories of campaign infighting are soon to come if Romney finds himself unable to move the polls in his favor.