Mitt Romney and his top aides are building a strategy, partly by design and partly because of circumstance, around what they consider John McCain’s disastrously run campaign in 2008.
The strategy: whatever McCain did, do the opposite.
Many of the current strategy discussions are centered on not falling into the traps McCain did: looking wobbly as a leader and weak on the economy in the final weeks of the campaign. The private discussions include ruling out any vice presidential possibilities who could be seen as even remotely risky or unprepared; wrapping the entire campaign around economic issues, knowing this topic alone will swing undecided voters in the final days; and, slowly but steadily, building up Romney as a safe and competent alternative to President Barack Obama.
McCain, according to Romney advisers, blew it on all three scores. And of the three, the most conscious effort by Romney’s team to do things differently will be in the V.P. selection process. One Republican official familiar with the campaign’s thinking said it will be designed to produce a pick who is safe and, by design, unexciting – a deliberate anti-Palin. The prized pick, said this official: an “incredibly boring white guy.”
McCain’s effort has had a stylistic influence, too. McCain was spontaneous; Romney is rigid. McCain’s high command was improvisational; Romney’s Boston headquarters is disciplined. “McCain liked operating by the seat of his pants, which worked well for him and the press, but didn’t always work so well for the staff,” said a senior Republican operative close to both campaigns.
Steve Schmidt, a top official on the McCain campaign, acknowledged the need for Romney to do things differently, saying that every major decision in 2008 had been made “through the prism that we were running in the worst political environment any Republican presidential candidate had every faced – it was just horrific.”
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