Paul announced that we would continue to meet on Wednesdays at 2:15 until we find a new time for the summer.
The main topic for today’s session was the major narratives for each campaign in the general election. We can expect some trial balloons and feints to get the other campaign to react.
The primary narrative of the Romney campaign is likely to be that “Obama is a nice guy but in over his head. The economy is the issue. Anything else that the Obama campaign brings up is a mere distraction from his record on the economy.” This narrative has a good chance of working if the economy does not improve dramatically and the Romney campaign can keep the media from being distracted. It appears that Romney’s strategy will be to pre-empt Obama pronouncements and then follow-up after the event. It could become tricky determining when to pre-empt and follow-up and when to avoid the issue so it does not become a distraction. The Republican super-PACs will be able to respond to issues Romney doesn’t want to address by himself. That Romney needs some practice with this narrative and strategy as he wasn’t prepared to answer whether he would support Rubio’s version of the Dream Act with Rubio on the stage with him. Romney’s immediate challenge is to introduce himself to the American public in a positive light before the Obama campaign can define him.
The primary narrative of Obama will be that “Romney represents the people who are becoming rich playing by different rules than the rest of us have to follow. He is out of touch with the typical American. You know he likes to fire people.” There will be an effort to define Romney before the Romney campaign can define him. There may be attempts to Swift-Boat Romney through activities at Bain Capital. There appears to be a debate in the campaign whether to paint Romney as a flip-flopper or a severe conservative. Currently the severe-conservative message is the one they are playing. It may be a trap set for Romney. When he tries to soften his conservative stands, then the Obama campaign can claim flip-flop. Obama is obviously trying to energize the students by enjoining the student-loan issue. Obama will also try to retain his current advantage with the Latino community with Spanish-language ads. This narrative is unlikely to be successful if it can’t incorporate a positive message about the Obama record. Well, it’s not as bad as it could be is unlikely to be a winning strategy.
We then turned our attention to the media which has a major role in defining the terms of the election process. A small ad buy that captures the attention of the media, like the Swift-Boat veterans ad in 2004, can be replayed on the free media many times more than the original buy. There will be the themes of leadership versus being out-of-touch which could be a double-edged sword for both candidates. We had a spirited debate as to who gets the credit, the President or the Governor if they are in opposite parties, in states where the state outperforms the national economy. Likewise, who gets the blame when the state economy lags behind the federal recovery? One point of view was that credit or blame depends on effective messaging within a state. The other view that the economy is generally a Presidential issue if there is no gubernatorial election occurring at the same time. How the media treats any issue, however, is critical to its interpretation by the electorate.
Some other topics discussed included the major changes in tracking polls from day to day. Both Gallup and Rasmussen three-day averages can vary as much five points from one day to the next. Gallup is a not likely voter poll while Rasmussen is. It was pointed out that most polls have weighted averages based on the daily sampling. We also mentioned the importance of the scandals such as GSA and Secret Service in the election. We agreed that single scandals in and of themselves probably have little effect, but if associated with a lack of leadership, government waste and/or an out-of-control Washington, Romney will receive some benefit.
Back to the narratives described above, some game-changers for this election could be those that reinforce the opposition narrative (“see Gore exaggerates everything” in 2000) or goes against a campaign’s personal narrative (Carter not coming across as a nice guy at times in 1980).
Next week we will be looking more carefully at the Electoral College.
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