Romney campaign senior adviser Eric Fehrnstrom talks to reporters
after CNN Republican debate, Jacksonville, Fla., Jan. 26, 2012
One of the dangerous temptations of political journalism is to begin thinking that it’s your job to tell politicians what to do. Like any other citizen, you have the right to express your opinion, but your job is to report and explain what’s happening, not to decide what happens.
When I was a sports writer, I didn’t tell football coaches which play to call on third-and-nine. Whether the quarterback scored a touchdown or threw an interception, the outcome was not my responsibility. Of course, the analogy between covering sports and covering politics isn’t perfect: Football coaches can’t raise your taxes or start wars, and the fans in the bleachers don’t get to vote on the score of the game.
Yet I still try to resist the arrogant delusion that what I write about politics has any decisive influence. If I were running the show, things would be different, but nobody’s offered to pay me to run the show, so I try not to get wrapped up in that “make a difference” mentality for which Rush Limbaugh so often excoriates crusading liberal journalists.
All of this is a necessary preamble to linking my American Spectator column today about the Mitt Romney campaign:
Ruthless efficiency is the hallmark of a professional campaign operation. Watching Team Mitt in action during the primary season left no reason to doubt that, if sharp work by an experienced staff can make a difference, Romney’s operation will deliver a solid performance for Republicans. The question now, as the general election campaign gets fully under way, is whether Team Mitt will be good enough to beat the equally professional Obama operation. Among the skeptics is Philip Klein of the Washington Examiner, who last week criticized the Romney campaign for having “taken the bait, reacting to whatever Team Obama has decided to make an issue.” Klein cited three examples: Democratic operative Hilary Rosen’s attack on Ann Romney, a report that Obama had once admitted eating dog meat, and the administration’s “spike the football” celebration of the anniversary of the Navy SEAL raid that took out Osama bin Laden.
Republican reactions, Klein said, enabled those stories to “dominate the political headlines,” distracting from a steady drumbeat of negative economic news: “If the campaign is about bin Laden, identity politics and silly controversies about dogs, an Obama victory is a lot more likely. To seize control of the campaign, instead of merely being reactive, Romney has to put Obama on the defensive about his own record.”
Certainly this is good advice, although the pessimistic appraisal by Klein — an excellent journalist who spent many years as an American Spectator reporter — may overstate the extent to which the Romney campaign departed from its accustomed discipline. . . .
Please read the whole thing, and everybody try to calm down. We’ve still got six months to go before Election Day. There will be plenty enough time for Fear and Loathing between now and Nov. 6. The big headline on Memeorandum today is this:
Battleground Poll: Obama, Romney in dead heat
Whatever Team Mitt may have done wrong so far, it hasn’t been enough to damage their chances to beat Obama. Everybody knows Romney wasn’t my choice for the GOP nomination. Therefore, I can neither be blamed nor claim credit for whatever happens in this election. Most of our readers are in the same position: You resisted Romney as hard as you could, and now he’s the nominee anyway. So what do you do now?
Look: I’ve known the guys on Team Mitt pretty well for a couple of years now. When I went up to Massachusetts to cover the Scott Brown campaign in January 2010, one of the first campaign staffers I met was Eric Fehrnstrom, one of Romney’s top advisers. If Fehrnstrom and the rest of the Romney guys were good enough to beat a Democrat for Ted Kennedy’s seat, they deserve a certain amount of confidence now that it’s their job to beat Obama. Let ’em do their job.
If Team Mitt screws it up, that’s not our fault, but whatever they need from us, it’s probably not a lot of bitching and complaining. And my sense of the strategic situation is that Team Obama could be a lot weaker than they look. While it’s not my habit to invoke inspirational quotes from damned Yankees, I think this battle might pretty swiftly reach the crucial point where Da Tech Guy likes to quote Phil Sheridan: “Ride right through ’em, they’re demoralized as hell!”
