Strategists as Stars
By ADAM NAGOURNEY
New York Times
WASHINGTON
AFTER John McCain discovered that his campaign was nearly broke — at a time when he was already hemorrhaging in public opinion polls — he did what presidential candidates in trouble always seem to do: he forced out his top consultants.
The unmistakable message of this bloodletting was that Mr. McCain’s woes were not caused by Mr. McCain, or his opponents, or being out of sync with the times, but rather the bad work by his blue-chip stable of advisers. Terry Nelson, his campaign manager, and John Weaver, his senior adviser, walked out the door Tuesday morning, and, with a new team in charge, Mr. McCain headed for New Hampshire to try to resuscitate his campaign.
But this shakeup raises a question that has hovered over American campaigns in the 25 years since the rise of the celebrity political consultant: Are these advisers really as important as they would like us, and their clients, to think? Have they ever been?
There is little doubt that consultants — a catchall describing strategists, pollsters, ad makers, managers and media advisers — are an integral part of defining who the candidate is and presenting the candidate’s ideas to the public. This goes from critical decisions like settling on the phrase that defines a candidacy (President Bush as the “compassionate conservative,” for example) to whipping up a quick response to a crisis, or even determining the official color of campaign bumper stickers.
But consultants are not the candidate. And for all the attention paid to them, they rarely, if ever, determine whether a candidate wins the election. Mr. McCain is not the first flailing presidential candidate to dump a few consultants. Bob Dole, who was running in the Republican primaries, left two of them on a airport tarmac in Jacksonville, Fla., in 1988. But the upheaval probably says more about Mr. McCain’s state of mind than about his prospects of being the next president.
(Continued here.)
New York Times
WASHINGTON
AFTER John McCain discovered that his campaign was nearly broke — at a time when he was already hemorrhaging in public opinion polls — he did what presidential candidates in trouble always seem to do: he forced out his top consultants.
The unmistakable message of this bloodletting was that Mr. McCain’s woes were not caused by Mr. McCain, or his opponents, or being out of sync with the times, but rather the bad work by his blue-chip stable of advisers. Terry Nelson, his campaign manager, and John Weaver, his senior adviser, walked out the door Tuesday morning, and, with a new team in charge, Mr. McCain headed for New Hampshire to try to resuscitate his campaign.
But this shakeup raises a question that has hovered over American campaigns in the 25 years since the rise of the celebrity political consultant: Are these advisers really as important as they would like us, and their clients, to think? Have they ever been?
There is little doubt that consultants — a catchall describing strategists, pollsters, ad makers, managers and media advisers — are an integral part of defining who the candidate is and presenting the candidate’s ideas to the public. This goes from critical decisions like settling on the phrase that defines a candidacy (President Bush as the “compassionate conservative,” for example) to whipping up a quick response to a crisis, or even determining the official color of campaign bumper stickers.
But consultants are not the candidate. And for all the attention paid to them, they rarely, if ever, determine whether a candidate wins the election. Mr. McCain is not the first flailing presidential candidate to dump a few consultants. Bob Dole, who was running in the Republican primaries, left two of them on a airport tarmac in Jacksonville, Fla., in 1988. But the upheaval probably says more about Mr. McCain’s state of mind than about his prospects of being the next president.
(Continued here.)
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