What campaigns don’t want, they get the most of, which is unsolicited advice.
That doesn’t stop the advice from coming and it shouldn’t stop the candidate and the campaign from reading and considering the various bits of “strategery” headed their way. Here’s my first offering to Gov. Mitt Romney’s team.
There are 10 things that you should do if, as is expected, Romney does so well in January as to be the presumptive nominee in February.
* Realize, and really and truly internalize, that the campaign is a content-provider. It is the campaign’s job to fill up every talk show, every paper and every blog with the stories and quotes of the day. The Washington Examiner, Townhall.com, NationalReview.com and of course the entire MSM needs you to provide grist for the mill. If you don’t provide it, Team Obama will. This recognition leads to suggestions two through five.
* Schedule a regular (weekly?) briefing of your boss by Ambassador John Bolton, followed by a press availability, to focus the media on the dire state of affairs around the world that the president has allowed to develop. This will drive a day in the news cycle each week.
* Schedule the same sort of regular briefing and press availibility with your boss and General Peter Pace to focus the media on the need to rebuild our military, especially our Navy, and to prevent the cuts to the Marine Corps and Army proposed by the president.
* Ditto with House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan to focus the media on the need to get a grasp of the out-of-control Obama budget.
* Ditto with former Attorney General Michael Mukasey to focus the media on the courts, judicial selection and terrorism issues.
These steps fill the campaign with content while messaging the base and the country that Romney is serious about being prepared on day one to make the U-turns necessary to secure the country.
It suggests the nature of the future cabinet without committing the legally questionable act of naming names. There are other obvious briefers, but regular briefings and appearances by the candidates with known experts of certain views matters, a lot.
* Have your candidate take the trip in the spring that you will take in the winter of 2013 when he is the new president. Obviously he has promised that it will begin in Israel, but it should also include Great Britain, France, Germany, Poland and the Czech Republic (which should get a promise of the return of their missile defense systems), as well as Japan, Saudi Arabia and Mexico. It is 10 hard days of the road but great content and great messaging.
* Start the governor working on his acceptance speech, now. Solicit suggestions from the very best –Peggy Noonan, Peter Robinson, Clark Judge. There are phrases, themes and messages out there waiting to be discovered as perfect for the governor and the times.
*Start working the debate issue in public now, especially on format and moderator issues. The debate commission has again proposed the hackneyed town hall format. Veto it and demand one-on-ones with serious moderators. Push for genuinely fair hosts. This negotiation may be the key to the whole campaign, so treat it as such.
* Offer the candidate for one-on-ones with serious journalists and public intellectuals and offer a network the chance to film on the condition the interview be played in its entirety. Arthur Brooks, Charles Krauthammer, Dorothy Rabinowitz these are the sorts of interviews the governor should be seen giving, not just the usual fare of cable hosts, as popular as they might be.
* You cannot do enough talk radio, period. Its audience is the base. It is millions of potential small contributors. It is volunteers and energy and a sounding board. The candidate will make mistakes on air, but if he does a national show or a major market every day, those mistakes will get fewer and farther apart, and his connection with the base, and the listening independents, will grow.
Examiner Columnist Hugh Hewitt is a law professor at Chapman University Law School and a nationally syndicated radio talk show host who blogs daily at HughHewitt.com.
