I was once interviewing to join a campaign when I heard a screaming fight break out between a deputy campaign manager and one of the senior consultants over which one needed more inbound lines on their respective office phones. (We had landlines then, and dinosaurs roamed the Earth.)
I sat, quietly appalled, while they proceeded to trash one another over the phone issue, the size of their offices and who neeeeeded more staff support. In the end, the campaign was a trainwreck for purely external reasons, but at the time I thought, “Holy hell…everyone is going to be able to see this from the outside and it’ll be a disaster.”
And sure enough, stories ran about the trainwreck. About tension and infighting. About a campaign off the rails and in deep trouble. About consultants and staff, sniping at one another to the detriment of the candidate.
But they didn’t matter one whit. The economy, the other candidate, the style and content of the message…all of those killed our guy, not the infighting of consultants or even the petty gaffes of the day.
Inside the Gang of 500 chattering-class universe of reporters, producers, political operators and so on, there is the firm, almost ontological, certitude that the machinations of the Big Show aren’t just a big thing…they’re the only thing.
Read more at Ricochet
