Discuss: Politico article on the Romney campaign

[Deleted]

It's too long to c&p the whole thing, but it's worth reading. Page 1 is below.

I'm sort of astonished that Wehner was told to write Romney's speech without ever speaking to him. If this is how Romney manages people, then...yikes.

www.politico.com/news/stories/0912/81280.html?hp=t1

Stuart Stevens, Mitt Romney’s top strategist, knew his candidate’s convention speech needed a memorable mix of loft and grace if he was going to bound out of Tampa with an authentic chance to win the presidency. So Stevens, bypassing the speechwriting staff at the campaign’s Boston headquarters, assigned the sensitive task of drafting it to Peter Wehner, a veteran of the last three Republican White Houses and one of the party’s smarter wordsmiths.

Not a word Wehner wrote was ever spoken.

Stevens junked the entire thing, setting off a chaotic, eight-day scramble that would produce an hour of prime-time problems for Romney, including Clint Eastwood’s meandering monologue to an empty chair.

Romney’s convention stumbles have provoked weeks of public griping and internal sniping about not only Romney but also his mercurial campaign muse, Stevens. Viewed warily by conservatives, known for his impulsiveness and described by a colleague as a “tortured artist,” Stevens has become the leading staff scapegoat for a campaign that suddenly is behind in a race that had been expected to stay neck and neck through Nov. 6.

This article is based on accounts from Romney aides, advisers and friends, most of whom refused to speak on the record because they were recounting private discussions and offering direct criticism of the candidate and his staff, Stevens in particular.

Stevens, in a lengthy interview Sunday afternoon, defended the campaign’s performance, refused to discuss internal conversations and insisted Romney is doing far better than the pundits portray. “Like all campaigns, we have good days and bad days. I’m happy to take responsibility for the bad days,” he said. “This is a tremendously talented team.”

To pin recent stumbles on Stevens would be to overlook Romney’s role in all this. As the man atop the enterprise — in effect, the CEO of a $1 billion start-up — Romney ultimately bears responsibility for the decisions he personally oversaw, such as the muffling of running mate Paul Ryan’s strict budget message and his own convention performance.

As the Tampa convention drew near, Wehner, now a “senior adviser” and blogger for the campaign, was laboring under an unusual constraint for the author of a high-stakes political speech. He was not invited to spend time with Romney, making it impossible to channel him fluently.

Nevertheless, Wehner came up with a draft he found pleasing, including the memorable line: “The incumbent president is trying to lower the expectations of our nation to the sorry level of his own achievement. He only wins if you settle.” It also included a reference to Afghanistan, which was jettisoned with the rest of his work.

Instead, eight days before the convention, at a time when a campaign usually would be done drafting and focused instead on practicing such a high-stakes speech, Stevens frantically contacted John McConnell and Matthew Scully, a speechwriting duo that had worked in George W. Bush’s campaign and White House. Stevens told them they would have to start from scratch on a new acceptance speech. Not only would they have only a few days to write it, but Romney would have little time to practice it.

McConnell and Scully, drawing on their experience writing for Vice President Dick Cheney, were racing to finish the convention speech for Romney’s running mate, Ryan (R-Wis.), the House Budget Committee chairman. It was the Wednesday before convention week. Ryan was to speak the following Wednesday, followed by Romney on Thursday.

[OscarQ]

I read this last night and this is the bit that stuck with me:

A Romney official explained: “Mitt is a sticker — he stays with you. He had a reputation at Bain for sticking with people. They made a bad investment, he hung with them. … None of this is going to be fixed. This is the organization, and this is who Mitt is betting on to win. There aren’t going to be further changes.”

Emphasis added.

I'm not a Mitt fan but that is not how you run a government or negotiate with other governments and organizations - flexibility is necessary. The ability to acknowledge you made a mistake, own it and move in another direction is key. This is not good IMO.

[smock]

The speechwriting thing sounds like a huge mess. It also explains the big oversight of not mentioning troops/Afghanistan, and not including enough specifics. I'm curious what was wrong with the earlier drafts that caused them to get thrown out. And I hadn't heard that Clint was given the chair only minutes before he spoke.

I'm also interested in the story on later pages about the disorganized campaign structure. We don't tend to hear much about the campaign staff unless things aren't looking good for the candidate (or when a candidate loses), so I'm wondering if this is a pre-emptive way to argue that if Romney loses, it wasn't because he was not conservative enough or too conservative or mormon or whatever, but rather that it was the fault of his campaign staff.

[casmgn]

Crazy

[IIOY]

I read this last night and found it very interesting because it reads like the type of postmortem you see after a failed campaign, rather than a mid-season article. I have no idea how much of this article is true and how much is gossip, but it seems to me that the fact that someone so high-profile in the campaign is already being thrown under the bus is not a good sign. The level of incompetence described is rather shocking, all things considered, although frankly we are seeing some of it play out with what I perceive to be a poorly-run campaign overall. I will be interested to see how/if the Romney camp responds.

[Deleted]

Sept 17, 2012 11:02:19 GMT -5 IIOY said:

The level of incompetence described is rather shocking, all things considered, although frankly we are seeing some of it play out with what I perceive to be a poorly-run campaign overall. I will be interested to see how/if the Romney camp responds.

Completely agree. To me, it's kind of like what was described in Game Change. Even if it's not all true, if even a third of it is true, it's shocking. If this is how you run a campaign, I really wonder how effectively you could run a country.

Between this and the Libya nonsense, I really think Romney is toast. He's really coming off as amazingly non-presidential for someone I thought fairly qualified.