I don’t really want to pile on, but the question for me is: how does a major presidential candidate in the 21st century (and a guy who has been running for office now for seven straight years) screw this up so badly?
As a resident of Massachusetts, I watched Romney as governor, he wasn’t a disaster and I don’t think he ever displayed the level of incompetence that we’ve seen recently. So what’s going on?
I’ve been pondering this with various Massachusetts political analysts/friends over the past day, here’s what I see:
As governor, Romney’s staff was small and most decisions were made within a tight-knit group of advisers. He governed a state in which the Democrats held both houses of the legislature with overwhelming, veto-proof, majorities. Given the constraints, he took risks, often made quick judgments, and went straight to the cameras in an effort to get out ahead of slower, entrenched Democratic Party leadership. He also vetoed more than 800 bills — almost all of which were overturned.
He’s now been running for office for nearly seven straight years and he’s developed a campaign organization, and strategy that is similar to his governor’s staff with its emphasis on “efficiency,” streamlined decisionmaking, and quick response. He relies heavily on a small group of core political (not policy) advisors and his world is about rapid reaction, getting out in the lead, and staying ahead in instantaneous news cycles. Nuance and complexity don’t fit. Wonky candidates are seen as indecisive — Al Gore, John Kerry, and Michael Dukakis — and they lose. Every talking point is carefully crafted to resonate in the politico echo-chamber. Romney disdains Obama and the complexity of Obama’s policy because he’s spent the past four years creating fictions and simple caricatures.
But there are risks to this style of campaign — the message lacks depth and the process lacks checks.
This hasn’t been a problem on most domestic issues where Romney has experience and a certain comfort zone — he can pivot and fill in substantive gaps on policy when confronted by journalists or potential voters on the campaign trail. But the risks are exposed on foreign policy where he has no real experience to ground or contextualize the talking points and the simple caricatures he’s constructed. He still doesn’t have a weighty foreign policy expert traveling with him on a daily bais who can provide a check on the substantive side. His initial statement on the Libya events and the doubling down on that statement appear to have come without consultation with a wider group of foreign policy thinkers within the party. He and his campaign didn’t appear to contemplate that there might be uncertainty about the fast moving events. They didn’t appear to comprehend the complexity of the situation. They didn’t appear to understand the potential reaction to their rapid political response to a tragedy.
I don’t think Romney’s glaring mistake here was that he shot from the hip. I think it goes deeper. Here’s a guy (and a campaign) who is clearly thin on national security and foreign policy; a guy who has made a number of mistakes in the past two months — the fiasco of his highly touted foreign tour, the bizarre neglect of any mention of veterans or the war in Afghanistan in his acceptance speech, and now this. Yet, neither Romney nor his inner circle seem to have acknowledged their weakness — even to themselves. This is what I find most troubling — the inability to self-reflect, to acknowledge a mistake (even if the acknowledgment is purely internal) and to fix a glaring weakness. It’s a failure of the candidate, it’s a failure of his inner circle, it’s a failure of the campaign’s organizational structure, and it’s all too close to George W. Bush for my taste.
This morning, an elderly lady sitting next to me was eager to talk about the election when I told her that I was in graduate school for political science. While she seemed generally dismissive of Republicans in general and didn’t even know Rommey by name, she did comment on the ‘crisis’ (her term for the events in the Middle East) and said that “everyone is saying ‘what’s his face’ made a mistake, but then I saw the clip and he looked strong, presidential. I need to pay more attention.”
That was humbling and got me wondering how much of our own echo chamber is amplifying the perception of the mistake. Her decision was based on a first impression, of a talking point, while paying only partial attention, with incomplete and imperfect knowledge of foreign affairs. What appears to us as a major mistake, to average voters may seem like a neutral talking point, or perhaps even a strength. I don’t know how many voters are like my converstion partner from this morning (that seems to be a question for the pollsters). But the severity of Romney’s mistep need to be framed properly.
It sounds like you encountered the “Lowest Information Voter in the World.” I smell one of those “pics + text” we now call a “meme” (ugh).
FWIW, I agree that this isn’t a defining moment for Romney’s electoral prospects.
Tell me about it. But when I shared the story with a colleague in my program who is an Americanist and focuses on opinion and polling, he just laughed and commented that is about par for the course. He explained that it’s almost taken as given that voters behave that way. And that’s what really got me thinking about how much of this—or any so called gaff by either candidate—really “matters”. Perhaps it’s the aggregate perception that matters in the long run. But then, like you, I don’t think it’ll be that defining either.
Signals from elites matter. But we have known for 50 years that partisan ID is the most important thing–even if you’re an “independent” who merely “leans” one way or another.
Given that information, I can tell with some certainty who you’ll vote for months before you know.
Also agree that this probably isn’t going to decide the outcome and there’s plenty of time and ways in which we can see shifts. But like Dukakis with the goofy hat, Ford with the comment on Eastern Europe, and Al Gore with the sigh, candidate/campaign gaffes — defined in terms of really screwing up a couple of news cycles — can add up. We’ll see. The flip side also pose a risk for Obama — if the protests escalate and we see more violence, both the policy options and the political components will get tricky. Again, we’ll see. Re: the meme, I’m all for one with a cat.
You might just be in an echo chamber if you think the most important aspect of this week’s events are Romney’s reaction to them.
A bit of a non-sequitor, no?
I think you’re wrong about wonky candidates. Bill Clinton and Mr. Obama are both famously “wonky”. So, you can be wonky and win or be wonky and lose. Clearly there’s another variable.
Yes, wonky candidates can win. My point was that Romney and his staff don’t think they do/can. Hence, he’s never embraced or tried to convey details in his campaign.