It’s reboot time for Donald Trump’s campaign. Out is Corey Lewandowki’s brusque manner and encouragement of petty grudges. In is Paul Manafort’s efforts to set up a more professional operation. There’s perhaps even an opening for Ivanka Trump to soften her father’s image.
That’s the theory, at least. By any metric — general election polling, favorability ratings, fundraising, state organization, relations with senior Republicans, #NeverTrump’s sudden second wind — the Trump campaign could use a shakeup. Firing the campaign manager was a start, or at least a recognition by the candidate that something serious is wrong.
Lewandowski was said to be the leading proponent within the campaign of the “Let Trump be Trump.” When Manafort and company tried to warn Trump off his self-defeating attacks on “Mexican” Judge Gonzalo Curiel, Lewandowski reportedly egged him on and urged him not to apologize.
In a campaign beset by divisions and divisiveness, Lewandowski feuded with Manafort, the Republican National Committee, campaign spokeswoman Hope Hicks, young female Breitbart reporters, even Trump’s children and son-in-law.
But it’s worth wondering whether Trump 2.0 is really possible. Lewandowski claims Manafort has been in “operational control” of the campaign since April 7. Even if not, we don’t know for certain whether all the rumors about Lewandowski are true or the product of leaks from his enemies within the campaign — first seeking to engage him in a power struggle, then trying to deflect blame as Trump’s poll numbers have tanked.
What we do know is that the person who defines Trump’s campaign isn’t any of these aides or even his children. It’s Trump himself.
Every time Trump has found himself in a good position — when he regained his lead in Iowa, when he knocked Marco Rubio out of the presidential race, when he cleared the Republican field entirely, when he secured a majority of delegates, when he erased his national polling deficit with Hillary Clinton — has blown the race open again with a self-inflicted wound.
It’s so uncanny that it has given life to conspiracy theories that Trump doesn’t really want to win or is even a Clinton plant inside the Republican Party. There’s absolutely no evidence for this chatter, but a lot of proof for the notion that the businessman’s risk-taking can be self-destructive.
Whenever Trump would benefit from keeping the focus on his current political opponents, Clinton and the Democrats, he returns to hammering his Republican foes or bringing the spotlight back to himself.
That, even more than intraparty disagreements over foreign policy and Muslim immigration, elicited the negative GOP reaction to his speech following the Orlando terror attack. That is was led to the Curiel controversy.
Lewandowski’s firing itself illustrated this problem. It could have easily taken place on a summer weekend when few people were paying attention. Instead it was announced Monday morning, competing for headline space with the Obama administration’s decision to redact the Orlando shooter’s allegiance to radical Islam from transcripts of his 911 call — an issue that is tailor-made for Trump and reinforces his critique of political correctness, weak leadership, dishonest politicians and an internal Islamic threat.
Trump has similarly whiffed on past opportunities to really go after a weak jobs report or the unfavorable review of Clinton’s State Department email practices in a sustained way because he kept going back to the Trump University lawsuit or goofy Pocahontas’ tweets.
All this comes as Trump has begun a gentle pivot toward November. He has begun talking about the employment prospects of black and Hispanic workers, not just working-class whites. He has emphasized he wants to protect jobs for Americans of all backgrounds. He has begun giving more prepared speeches.
It all seems half-hearted and Trump has had trouble getting a skeptical media to pay attention. With more message discipline, he could potentially force them to. But he quickly returns to unfocused rants.
A larger problem for Trump is that much of what he does to inspire a loyal following among his base triggers a backlash from other voters. Those voters were sparse in the Republican primaries but are much more numerous in the general election.
In order for Trump to win in November, he needs to improve his favorability ratings with the electorate as a whole the way he did with Republicans. So far he hasn’t shown an ability to do that.
The good news for Trump is that his feints to the center or left don’t seem to have cost him in the least with his hardcore supporters. The bad news is his policy shifts have yet to capture any new supporters.
To the extent that Lewandowski is responsible for reinforcing any of the above problems with the campaign, his ouster will be an improvement. And it may reassure some wavering Republicans who are looking to see signs that Trump is getting serious about the fall campaign.
But the biggest problems with Trump’s presidential run are of his own making. They can’t be solved through a staffing change. They can only be fixed at the top.
Each time Trump has stumbled, he has come back stronger. But during the primaries, he had the advantage of being ahead. Now he is behind. During the primaries the news cycle reset every Tuesday with each new vote, win or lose. Now there will be only one vote in November, with no opportunity to correct mistakes.
The time for correction, if it’s going to happen, is now.
