With Santorum gone, what does it mean?

Welcome back!
It's been a much longer time than usual since our last post. Laura and I have been on the road virtually every week doing seminars. In this past month we've been to Charleston SC (heaven!); Philadelphia, New York, and several other business-related jaunts have kept us insanely busy. In between, I've been mad at work on the final edits on the 2012-13 editions of our first two Communicate with Power pocket tips books. I received the first copy of Overcoming Panic and Fear: Risk and Crisis Communications today.

The Launch of 2012-13 Edition: 'Overcoming Panic and Fear: Risk and Crisis Communications'

The look on my face in this picture is one of R-E-L-I-E-F. It's been a long time coming and we will be shipping out the pocket tips to our clients starting tomorrow. It's packed with 150 pages of strategies, tactics and skills to communicate effectively about issues of risk, and in emergencies and crises. If you want to know more about it click on:  http://mcloughlinmedia.com/our--new-pocket-tips-s268.php or drop me an email at barry@mcloughlinmedia.com and we would be happy to tell you all about it.

How Does Mitt Romney Spell Relief?
Speaking of relief, I'm sure that Mitt Romney must be relieved now that Rick Santorum has pulled the plug on his campaign. Not because he feared losing to him, but by pulling out, he just saved Romney's campaign a ton of money and more negative ads firing at a fellow Republican.
What can Romney do to close the gap?
Leaving aside the 'Etch a Sketch' controversy generated by his communications aide [in which he said that Romney could wipe the policy slate clean in September], he does have to pivot cleanly over to the issues that will give him a shot at the Presidency in November. He has to remember that an incumbent President must be voted out of office as the electorate rarely votes in a new President. Think of Jimmy Carter vs. Ronald Reagan or George Walker Bush vs. Bill Clinton. Those were classic cases of voting out the incumbent.
So here is what Romney has to accomplish in the next seven months:
1. Don't try a Game Changer as John McCain did with Sarah Palin. [Great HBO movie by the way]. Besides the electorate can smell a desperate ploy and will run for the exits should Romney try one of those.
2. Pick a running mate who can help him - such as Florida's Senator Marco Rubio who could reach the Catholic and Latino voter more effectively than Romney; or a woman VP candidate such as South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley who would be critically important to help close the gender gap. The key today for a strong VP candidate is someone who can not only bring home their state's electoral college votes, but more importantly make a big dent in a much-needed demographic group.
3. Focus the ballot question on the President's handling of the economy. Avoid making it nasty and personal. Contrast in positive terms how he would fix the economy and getting it moving again - with jobs as the focus. As the economy improves, however, it will make it harder to tag President Obama with it.
4. Romney needs to re-define himself from being the Wall Street 'loves to fire people' guy into a person who will fight for the American workers and small-business owners. His difficulty in handling his own personal narrative and family wealth have helped define him as the 'voice of the 1%'.
5. Get rid of the over-rehearsed awkward efforts at connecting with people. He needs to convey a credible sense that he gets what real families are going through and reach them with a message that they care about.To this point, he has trouble doing that.
6. He needs to heal the very deep wounds of the primary season, pull them together and get them to work with enthusiasm for his victory. When you spend a year making huge negative ad buys on your fellow Republican candidates, that will be incredibly difficult. He needs to build on the base - not pander to it.
7. He has to run a great fall campaign, win the debate with Obama, improve his 'earned media' campaign and try to avoid the verbal gaffes that have plagued his nomination battle. A tall order to say the least!
Ultimately, Romney's challenges seem almost insurmountable, but as both he and Barack Obama know, seven months is a lifetime in politics.
The Canadian Government's F-35 Procurement Controversy
The Harper government has been struggling to put a controversy behind it concerning what it knew-and when it knew it -  about the real costs of the development and procurement of a fleet of fighter aircraft to replace the F-18 fleet which is getting closer to its 30 year life-span. The Opposition parties have tried to define the issue as 'mis-leading Parliament' while the government has tried to put the issue behind it by acting immediately to respond to the recommendations of the Auditor General. Who will win the 'battle of the issue'? It all depends on how engaged the public becomes and what they think of the whole matter. I commented on the public's perception of the issue on CTV's PowerPlay along with pollster Nik Nanos.
The NDP's New Leader Sets Out to Define Himself

The rule of politics is 'define yourself before your opponents do' and no party has been better at that than the Conservative Party under Prime Minister Stephen Harper. Thanks to the successful 2011 election campaign led by the late Jack Layton, the NDP has found itself the Official Opposition with the Liberals under interim leader (and former NDP Premier) Bob Rae filling the void during the NDP leadership race as the 'real' Opposition.
So the NDP have leapt quickly to define Thomas Mulcair (now known as 'Tom') - their new leader - by launching a series of television ads. I appeared on Tuesday night on CTV's PowerPlay with Don Martin and former NDP Communications Director Brad Lavigne to discuss their effectiveness. My conclusion was that it wasn't a bad start but it needs to be better executed and he needs to show he can connect with voters.
Remembering Mike Wallace

And finally, the passing of Mike Wallace, a true broadcasting legend, was noted by many news outlets this week. Wallace was a one-of-a-kind news man whose sixty year career - including four decades on 60 Minutes - made a very powerful contribution to news and current affairs. I couldn't help but think of the times that Laura and I would see him on Main Street of Vineyard Haven - usually he had just finished a tennis match or was lining up for a coffee in the deli.

The first time we had met him was at a talk he gave in Edgartown at the Old Whaling Church in which he recapped his career - complete with terrific video clips from 60 Minutes. I asked him, "if a CEO were about to be interviewed by you, what would you advise?" I'll never forget his answer: "I would advise that person to get media training. You know, there are people who specialize in that? I spend my whole career interviewing so it's not a level playing field."
Afterwards, Laura and I came up and I sheepishly introduced myself as a media trainer and we had a chuckle and a nice chat about that. Laura brought up a recent situation with him about a government agency that had refused to speak with him about a controversial issue. She wanted to know how he felt about their refusal to talk to him - in which they had ultimately ordered him off the property?
"We always had a great relationship and they had received great coverage from us over the years", he told her, just shaking his head, genuinely mystified at their treatment of him. That strategy not only failed to get the Agency's message out, it effectively shut their message out of the program totally. He revealed that he had been a Communications Officer in the Navy and knew that their refusal to cooperate made his item one-sided and he didn't understand how media relations professionals would not realize that.

His warmth and charisma were powerful to behold - on television and in person and, although he has had many imitators, he was a true original.

Until next time.....

The Discipline of Politics

Welcome back!
It's been a month since we last got together.  It's been an insane travel period - with seminars from Toronto to Newfoundland to Alberta to Los Angeles and Washington in the last few days.

 I managed to sneak in an interview while in Washington on Don Martin's PowerPlay on CTV. In that segment, I joined pollster Nik Nanos to talk about the Conservative Government's handling of the 'Robocalls' controversy [in which a number of identified Liberal supporters in several ridings were called by someone purporting to be from Elections Canada on election day and told that their polling locations had been changed].
 My essential point there is that the Harper government has to keep their cool on the allegations, let Elections Canada do its work, and if individuals have violated the law, there is a legal system that takes care of those things. In the Strategic Communications class that Laura and I teach in the Riddell Graduate Program class at Carleton, our students have been given an assignment this week focused on how to handle that issue. We're looking forward to reading their strategies.
The government needs to get back to the issue that Canadians care about...and one that Republican candidates need to remember... "It's the Economy Stupid!" [Even though it was Democrat James Carville's slogan for Bill Clinton's 1992 campaign, it is even more relevant today for all governments and Parties.]
 Romney Inches (Painfully) Towards the Nomination
The Republican primaries grind on, with Super Tuesday underscoring the difficulty Mitt Romney is facing as he inches towards the nomination. With six wins chalked up on Super Tuesday to Rick Santorum's three wins, you'd think he would be able to breathe easier. But nooooo!
Romney managed to squeeze out a crucial win in Ohio. If he had lost that - combined with his losses to Santorum in Tennessee, Oklahoma and South Dakota, the tide would have begun to turn. What's keeping him in the lead is his (or his Super PAC's) ability to outspend his rivals 4-to1 or 5-to-1 in ad buys denouncing Rick and Newt. It's the classic strategy known as "you may not love me but I hope you'll hate my enemy just a little more."
 Ducking the Limbaugh Fall Out
Poor Mitt is so shaky in his relationship with the deeply Conservative wing of the Party that he couldn't bring himself to rebuke Rush Limbaugh for his verbal assault on Sandra Fluke, a 30 year old Georgetown University law student in her testimony to a Congressional panel. A golden moment to define his character and he ducked - merely saying that he would have used "different words". Rush lost his hearing several years ago (and now only seems to listen to himself) while Romney seems to be tone deaf. Having had candidates who share that trait, I recognize it well. For some reason they can't hear themselves the way the audience hears them. It's a real deficit in politics as not every comment can be cleared before they're said. So one relies on the candidates own abilities to edit themselves as they go.
Romney should take a page from Massachusetts Republican Senator Scott Brown who  tweeted that Limbaugh's remarks were "reprehensible". These golden moments to define one's character only show up occasionally and candidates have to recognize them for what they are - a chance to show some character.
Santorum Hangs in There...in Spite of Himself
Which brings me to Rick Santorum. He has certainly exceeded all expectations as his candidacy took off in January but he has hurt himself since then with damaging comments, such as his Michigan debate where he admitted that his support for George W. Bush's 'No Child Left Behind' was because ' sometimes in politics you have to take one for the team". Also his characterization of JFK's 'separation of Church and State' speech - that it made him "want to puke" was over the top. Although he later recanted  it on the Laura Ingraham show, his immediate defense of it on network television cemented the error. There is a place for nuance in politics but that was not a shining example of it. He's got to figure that some of those unforced errors took him completely off-message on the economy - which lost him Michigan and later, Ohio.

The difference between winning and losing candidates? All other things being equal, it's 'discipline'.

Until next time.....

Happy New Year!

Welcome to 2012!
As we say goodbye to a convulsive 2011, we could end up with an even stranger 2012 -at least in the world of politics. President Santorum?! Really? Although still in the 'unlikely' category, Rick Santorum's surging Presidential campaign was given a rocket boost as a result of his Iowa caucuses performance last night. Whoever has said that "my vote doesn't count" should look at those 8 votes that separated Romney from second-place finisher Santorum.
What happened in Iowa and what does it mean?
1. Santorum ran a high-road 'retail' campaign - visiting all 99 precincts across the state, while Romney focused on the main media markets and a massive advertising buy. In Iowa, that matters. They want to see and meet the candidates.
2. Santorum exceeded voter expectations, while Romney barely met them.  Bachman, Perry, Cain and, finally, Gingrich were the 'flavor of the month' candidates set to take down Mitt Romney but each fell to earth as their negatives weighed down their positives. Iowa caucuses' voters decided in the final days that Santorum - who had a clean personal storyline, communicated a humble and sincere personality, and whose conservative social values reflected theirs more than Romney's - fit the bill. Romney initially had signaled that he was not going to focus on Iowa, but changed his mind in the final weeks - ramping up his attacks on Gingrich and his 'robo-calls' and began to predict victory. The result was that even though he won by 8 votes, he barely met expectations.
3. Ron Paul is not going away. The Libertarian Congressman's voters are deeply devoted to him and his respectable third-place showing will serve him well in New Hampshire next week. Although he has apparently ruled out a third-party candidacy, don't bet the mortgage on it.
4. Rick Perry and Michele Bachmann's campaigns are dead in the water. Iowa's results made that abundantly clear. Perry flying home to Texas to 'reassess' his campaign speaks volumes for the reality check that Iowa gave him. Although Michele Bachmann's 5% result was devastating, her speech indicates she still wants to fight. However, that appears to be a fantasy after last night, and she may well be figuring out her best bargaining chip to leverage to be on the Republican ticket.
5. Gingrich will hang in as long as he can - if only to deny Romney the nomination. Notice the nice things he said about Santorum? His bitterness towards Romney and his negative ads seems to have given him fuel for the fire. But he will have to stop the slide from his late November peak if he's going to stay in the race past South Carolina.
6. Although it's still Romney's to lose, the Iowan results do reinforce that he he has a ceiling on his vote that he will have to raise. The Republicans are increasingly looking for a candidate that can beat Obama in November, so Romney must continue to win - yes even by 8 votes - in order to build that perception of winnability. John McCain's endorsement this week in New Hampshire will attempt to cement that perception. They aren't ever going to love him; but they need to respect him. 

Finally, whoever is going to win the Republican nomination must keep front and center, the ultimate November ballot box question will be 'who can I trust to get the economy moving again?'

Until next time......