Mark Halperin presents a list of 22, mostly inane, suggestions as to “What Smart Republican Strategists Think Should Be on John McCain’s To-Do List.”
It’s certainly true that the McCain campaign needs to be “about the American people and what is best for their lives” and that this requires going beyond foreign policy and McCain’s biography. And, yes, his television ads need much work. Most of the other advice is either platitude, contradictory, or both.
Yes, it’s true that “staying on message” is important. One can’t simultaneously have one guy dictating the whole show, grow the staff with non-loyalists, hire consultants that fundamentally disagree with you on core issues, and end all divisions in the campaign. Nor can one simultaneously be an automaton who never strays from the daily talking points while cultivating the respect of the pundit class. Similarly, one can either lead people or simply tell them what they want to hear (which is how I read “Speak to what concerns voters, don’t tell voters what their concerns should be”). And one can either follow a list of suggestions about how to pretend to be someone completely other than you are or “Protect the McCain Brand at all costs.”
One wonders if these are the same “Republican strategists” Daniel Libit wrote about recently?
