I follow the American
political scene. I just don't write about it much. There are others
more consistently tuned in and far better. I leave it to them while I
post poems in my dotage. What follows is a brilliant "exegesis" about
Romney, the convention, and his relationship to party mandarins and
operatives. (If I knew how to do a specific permalink I'd do it.
Instead this is a cut and paste from nancynall.com, 8/31/12.):
This probably won’t be taken seriously by people who don’t already agree with me, but I think there is one serious point to take away from the convention dog-and-pony show.
As noted by many others, a presidential nominee only has full control over two events in the entire election: Who he chooses as his running mate and his convention. Everything else he believes or wants to do might have to be massaged, ignored or even changed to get votes and money from one group or another. But choosing (and announcing) the nominee and running the convention are all his.
I think there is a lot of evidence that in these moments a nominee gives a pretty good glimpse into how he’ll govern and lead if he wins. Look back to Obama for just one example. Watching Obama in the late primaries through the convention four years ago was nearly identical to how he’s operated as president for better and worse. (On the better side, a really smart staff with the lowest collective ego quotient I’ve ever seen in a campaign or administration. For worse, despite being really good at politics they hate to dirty their hands with it.) Bush 43 also showed a lot of his biggest strengths and flaws in the way he handled those decisions in 2000, as did Clinton in 1992.
So, with that in mind, it’s time to address something that people haven’t wanted to point out from the beginning of the campaign. Mitt Romney and his team are fucking awful at running for president. They’re barely competent on a good day and they make so many awful unforced errors.
This convention was a disaster. They invited a lot of unnecessary damage to the GOP in this election and beyond by bum rushing the Paul delegates. That’s the closest thing the GOP has to a viable youth movement and the Romney team threw them out because they played the game too well. The nominee always has final approval on the speeches given by the defeated candidates, but Romney’s team asserted no control and allowed everyone to talk about themselves for twenty minutes before mentioning Romney as a literal afterthought. There was no control of messaging at any point, and no control of the behavior of the delegates coming down from the top. What do you think Karl Rove would have done if the peanut incident happened at a convention he was running? It wouldn’t have just been the offenders thrown out. Whoever was responsible for that delegation would have been turned into a greasy stain on the convention floor – and every state leader would have known it before they landed in Tampa.
And then, at ten pm EST last night when the networks picked up the convention and the audience tripled, Mitt Romney began his introduction to the American people with an Oscar-caliber performance of Clint Eastwood impersonating Grandpa Effing Simpson. Then came Marco Rubio to talk about himself for twenty minutes, and finally Romney himself.
Probably only one person in four who was watching Romney’s acceptance speech was watching on the cable news channels or PBS before ten to see Romney’s introduction video. That is political malpractice on par with the Florida freak who injected cement into people’s asses and called it plastic surgery. Every candidate since Reagan in 1984 has used these meticulously crafted videos as the real introduction of the nominee. Know why? It fucking works. People like watching movies more than seeing someone give a speech and the campaign can use all of the soft focus and takes it needs to get the message right. Video, then – maybe – a brief introduction by someone who won’t outshine the candidate, then the acceptance speech. This is so simple and obvious, yet Romney and his team screwed it up beyond all recognition.
It’s not just that the Romney campaign team is in over its head. They are, and so deeply they can’t even see the top of the ocean. But the bigger problem is that despite months of miscues and mistakes no one has lost their job. And even despite a lot of experience people in GOP politics saying they’ve got major problems with the candidate and the people running the campaign, Romney continues to run the same way he ran in February and even in 2008, and with all of the same top people.
There is a strong correlation between how Romney is running his campaign and the way a bad CEO runs a company. You don’t have to follow business very long to find a company that gets into serious trouble because the CEO had bad staff and either didn’t have the vision to see what was really happening or a deep knowledge about the company or business. Draw your own connections between, say, Dan Ackerson’s travails at GM and Romney’s campaign problems.
But there’s a political precedent that deserves more attention. Romney has captured control of the Republican party this year, but he’s always run as an outsider to it. He’s never seriously tried to win over the party bosses and the conservative movement leaders. He’s come in with the conceit that if anyone wants to ride, they need to get on board with him. This isn’t a merger to Romney, it’s a takeover.
And in this way, the candidate of my lifetime that reminds me most of Mitt Romney is…Jimmy Carter. Carter had to run a brutal contest against the Democratic establishment to win the nomination in 1976 and his team was almost entirely composed of people who had not worked on other federal campaigns. Carter also had Romney-esque arrogance towards his party’s leaders after winning the nomination. The rift never healed and worse, Carter went into office really believing that the Democratic-controlled Congress should act like subsidiaries of his White House. It ruined any chance he had at a successful presidency.
The ideology is 180 degrees different, but I see a lot of the same method and personality in Mitt Romney. If he beats Obama the only common thread holding Romney, the GOP and the conservative movement together now will be gone. They will turn on each other and the fight between Romney’s WH, Eric Cantor’s Congress, and Dick Armey’s K-Street operations for who is really in charge will be on.
baldheadeddork said on August 31, 2012 at 5:59 pm
Long weekend, long post. This probably won’t be taken seriously by people who don’t already agree with me, but I think there is one serious point to take away from the convention dog-and-pony show.
As noted by many others, a presidential nominee only has full control over two events in the entire election: Who he chooses as his running mate and his convention. Everything else he believes or wants to do might have to be massaged, ignored or even changed to get votes and money from one group or another. But choosing (and announcing) the nominee and running the convention are all his.
I think there is a lot of evidence that in these moments a nominee gives a pretty good glimpse into how he’ll govern and lead if he wins. Look back to Obama for just one example. Watching Obama in the late primaries through the convention four years ago was nearly identical to how he’s operated as president for better and worse. (On the better side, a really smart staff with the lowest collective ego quotient I’ve ever seen in a campaign or administration. For worse, despite being really good at politics they hate to dirty their hands with it.) Bush 43 also showed a lot of his biggest strengths and flaws in the way he handled those decisions in 2000, as did Clinton in 1992.
So, with that in mind, it’s time to address something that people haven’t wanted to point out from the beginning of the campaign. Mitt Romney and his team are fucking awful at running for president. They’re barely competent on a good day and they make so many awful unforced errors.
This convention was a disaster. They invited a lot of unnecessary damage to the GOP in this election and beyond by bum rushing the Paul delegates. That’s the closest thing the GOP has to a viable youth movement and the Romney team threw them out because they played the game too well. The nominee always has final approval on the speeches given by the defeated candidates, but Romney’s team asserted no control and allowed everyone to talk about themselves for twenty minutes before mentioning Romney as a literal afterthought. There was no control of messaging at any point, and no control of the behavior of the delegates coming down from the top. What do you think Karl Rove would have done if the peanut incident happened at a convention he was running? It wouldn’t have just been the offenders thrown out. Whoever was responsible for that delegation would have been turned into a greasy stain on the convention floor – and every state leader would have known it before they landed in Tampa.
And then, at ten pm EST last night when the networks picked up the convention and the audience tripled, Mitt Romney began his introduction to the American people with an Oscar-caliber performance of Clint Eastwood impersonating Grandpa Effing Simpson. Then came Marco Rubio to talk about himself for twenty minutes, and finally Romney himself.
Probably only one person in four who was watching Romney’s acceptance speech was watching on the cable news channels or PBS before ten to see Romney’s introduction video. That is political malpractice on par with the Florida freak who injected cement into people’s asses and called it plastic surgery. Every candidate since Reagan in 1984 has used these meticulously crafted videos as the real introduction of the nominee. Know why? It fucking works. People like watching movies more than seeing someone give a speech and the campaign can use all of the soft focus and takes it needs to get the message right. Video, then – maybe – a brief introduction by someone who won’t outshine the candidate, then the acceptance speech. This is so simple and obvious, yet Romney and his team screwed it up beyond all recognition.
It’s not just that the Romney campaign team is in over its head. They are, and so deeply they can’t even see the top of the ocean. But the bigger problem is that despite months of miscues and mistakes no one has lost their job. And even despite a lot of experience people in GOP politics saying they’ve got major problems with the candidate and the people running the campaign, Romney continues to run the same way he ran in February and even in 2008, and with all of the same top people.
There is a strong correlation between how Romney is running his campaign and the way a bad CEO runs a company. You don’t have to follow business very long to find a company that gets into serious trouble because the CEO had bad staff and either didn’t have the vision to see what was really happening or a deep knowledge about the company or business. Draw your own connections between, say, Dan Ackerson’s travails at GM and Romney’s campaign problems.
But there’s a political precedent that deserves more attention. Romney has captured control of the Republican party this year, but he’s always run as an outsider to it. He’s never seriously tried to win over the party bosses and the conservative movement leaders. He’s come in with the conceit that if anyone wants to ride, they need to get on board with him. This isn’t a merger to Romney, it’s a takeover.
And in this way, the candidate of my lifetime that reminds me most of Mitt Romney is…Jimmy Carter. Carter had to run a brutal contest against the Democratic establishment to win the nomination in 1976 and his team was almost entirely composed of people who had not worked on other federal campaigns. Carter also had Romney-esque arrogance towards his party’s leaders after winning the nomination. The rift never healed and worse, Carter went into office really believing that the Democratic-controlled Congress should act like subsidiaries of his White House. It ruined any chance he had at a successful presidency.
The ideology is 180 degrees different, but I see a lot of the same method and personality in Mitt Romney. If he beats Obama the only common thread holding Romney, the GOP and the conservative movement together now will be gone. They will turn on each other and the fight between Romney’s WH, Eric Cantor’s Congress, and Dick Armey’s K-Street operations for who is really in charge will be on.
