It wonโt always be like this for Mitt Romney, but the presumptive Republicanย presidential nominee could hardly be happier about the way in which the generalย election season has begun.
For three consecutive weeks, President Obamaโs re-election campaign has beenย blown off its talking points by unnecessary blunders. First it was the hotย microphone bungle with Dmitry Medvedev and Obamaโs post-election โflexibilityโ on U.S. missile defense, then it was warning the Supreme Court not to take the โextraordinaryโ step of overturning Obamaโs health law and now itโs theย president having to personally denounce the blunder of a B-list Democraticย strategist who attacked Romneyโs wife, Ann.
The idea was that Obama would open the full-fledged general election with aย series of fusillades against Romney for his support of the House Republicanย budget overhaul plan, for what Vice President Joe Biden calls โthe war on womenโ over sexual and economic issues and culminating in a week of attacks on Romneyโsย massive personal wealth and tax rates.
It has been an article of faith on both the right and left since 2008 thatย Obama is an extraordinarily gifted politician and that his campaign organizationย is full of wizards of messaging and organization.
Even as Dana Milbank, a left-leaning columnist for the Washington Post, wasย panning Obama for the โgimmickryโ of his melodramatic attack on Romney for usingย the capital gains rate to pay a tax rate of less than 15 percent, Milbankย lamented the waste of Obamaโs โunrivaled political skill.โ
This is part of a set of beliefs that was encapsulated in the best-sellingย book by political journalists from New York magazine and MSNBC, โGame Change.โ The HBO movie about the book was mostly about 2008 GOP vice presidential nomineeย Sarah Palin, but the book is more of a paean to Obamaโs political skills and theย effectiveness of his campaign organization. The title seems to refer mostly toย Obama as the game-changing candidate in the arc of American political life.
Conservatives and liberals alike hew to this narrative. Even those whoย denounce the presidentโs policies in the strongest terms often marvel at hisย political skills and the nimbleness and efficacy of his never-endingย campaign.
No doubt, Obama is more politically skilled than most Democrats on theย national level since Bill Clinton and his campaign has been innovative andย audacious. But after watching the blunders of the last three weeks, theย narrative of Obama-the-invincible looks pretty much shot.
Obama, with months to prepare and tens of millions of dollars in the bank,ย badly muffed the opening round of the 2012 general election campaign.
In the 29 weeks to come, Mitt Romney will probably experience more days likeย the one Obama experienced yesterday as he and his campaign scuttled away fromย the comments made by erstwhile adviser Hilary Rosen on the Cable News Network.ย But on Thursday, it was Obamaโs turn in the dunking booth.
Rosen declared that Ann Romney had โnever worked a day in her life.โ A bigย no-no about a candidateโs spouse, particularly when that spouse has been aย stay-at-home mother of five who survived breast cancer, suffers from multipleย sclerosis and, most dangerously, is a very effective campaigner.
Rosen was trying to reinforce the same narrative that Obama and Biden haveย been hammering away at this week: the Romney family is too rich and too callousย to the concerns of ordinary Americans for Mr. Romney to deserve the presidency.ย Rosen was trying to reinforce the message Obama made the week before thatย staying at home is a โluxuryโ reserved for the wealthy. She blew it, and thenย twice compounded her error by trying to defend her stance. What is the point ofย a paid political operative who will not follow a politically expedientย course?
Rosen eventually saw (or was made to see) the folly of her path and abjectlyย apologized, but in the course of her ego trip managed to thoroughly ruin whatย was supposed to be the rising crescendo of Team Obamaโs attack on Romneyโsย wealth.
The plan was targeted to Tax Day and stirring resentments against Romneyโsย capital gains rate on his huge investment income and refusal, so far, to releaseย the more than two decades of tax returns demanded by the Obama campaign. Asย Obama and Biden released their 2011 tax returns today, the goal was to have theย Cable News Network and other establishment press outlets hounding Romney for theย release of his 1040s dating back to the 1980s and to have Rosen and her fellowย pundits blasting the former Massachusetts governor for not paying more in theย years from which we have already seen Romneyโs tax bill.
Rosen, as she fully demonstrated, is no big-time Democratic strategist. Sheย is on the periphery of Team Obama. Her dozens of visits to the White House andย multiple meetings with the president (though, as Press Secretary Jay Carneyย observed, there are multiple people in America named Hilary Rosen) were no doubtย not to shape strategy, but to receive it.
Even so, the president ended up wasting what were supposed to be a series ofย interviews with swing-state local television reporters by explaining that heย respected stay-at-home moms and that Ann Romney seemed like an admirable person.ย Obama wanted to be pumping up the pressure on Mitt Romney, not lauding his wife.ย Itโs not Obamaโs fault that Rosen was bad at her job, but his team seemed unableย to deal with what should have been a small matter.
How is it possible that a woman who makes her living from the largesse of theย Democratic Party needed nearly a full day to be convinced that defending aย position she took in a television debate with another Democratic strategist andย a Republican blogger was less important than the presidentโs re-election bid?ย One suspects that the campaigns of Bill Clinton in 1996 or George W. Bush inย 2004 would not have needed so much time to make that case to foot soldier.
That Rosen made her stumble in service of a gambit that the president himselfย was caused to say was โa gimmickโ makes the matter even more embarrassing.
But the previous two big blunders — being incautious with a whisperedย message for Vladimir Putin and inveighing against the Roberts Supreme Court — were not those of a peripheral strategist or his campaign team. They were hisย and his alone.
Romney is plenty gaffe-prone himself and his organization knows well the painย of days wasted on unforced errors. Any enjoyment Team Romney takes at watchingย the president endure the Rosen affair is surely tempered by the knowledge thatย the next seven months would bring plenty of similar days for the Republicanย nominee. The phrase โGov. Romney will you denounceโฆโ will not suffer fromย under-use this election cycle.
But having seen Team Obama and the president stumble through their springย offensive, the Romneyites can at least be happy to know that the political giftsย of the president and his team are far less than advertised.
