The Thompson Postmortem

This will be the first in a series of posts analyzing each of the Republican presidential candidates as they depart the race (or, in one case, somehow miraculously wind up with the nomination). I have asked some of the GOP’s brightest strategists to share their perspectives on what went wrong as candidates drop out, capping off with a tour-de-force “how they did it” post about the winner.

None of the strategists quoted in this series are affiliated with any Presidential campaign, and all will remain anonymous to get the benefit of their most candid insights. I’m doing this series of strategic debriefs not to bash the losers, but to glean lessons for our field in 2012 or ‘16.

First up is Fred Thompson, who left the race on Tuesday. Thompson entered the race in pole position and became the first candidate to drop out. It’s safe to say his candidacy failed to live up the hype. Why?

One strategist tells me Thompson lacked a central rational for running:

Fred Thompson’s failure to resonate with the GOP electorate comes down to a very fundamental problem: There was never a reason to vote for him. Ultimately, there has to be a reason for someone to run for president. Thompson never had a compelling reason to be president. Instead, he saw an opportunity to become president. Lacking a “fire-in-the-belly” reason to run for office leads one to campaign in a rather passive manner.

Another was short and sweet, tapping into the “laziness” meme: “He was lazy — not good for early states. So when conservatives tuned in, they sailed on the Huckabee ship instead.”

The Thompson people I know have been adamant about defending their guy from the “lazy” charge. (See Rich Galen’s column today for a perfect example.) In Thompson they genuinely saw a calm, substantive, almost Zen-like figure, reluctant to descend into the muck of Presidential politics. Though this self-image was certainly admirable, one GOP communications maven says that by trying to embrace that notion and make it his, Fred only made matters worse:

I know people trot out the thing about him not wanting to play the media’s game, but it seems to me that you can’t credibly run for one of the toughest jobs in the world if you cultivate (and I do mean cultivate) a reputation for laziness. Driving around a state fair in a golf cart, showing up late for all kinds of appearances, not spending anything near the amount of time other candidates are in early primary states… unfortunately, that kind of thing just doesn’t give off much confidence in someone’s ability to actually do the job in question, irrespective of how smart they might be, what good policies they might espouse, and what command they may have of information that’s fairly critical for a would-be president to possess.

Others go back to the summer and the well-known stories of Thompson staff bloodletting. Here’s what a source sympathetic to Fred but outside the campaign had to say:

Bottom line: the Thompson campaign did not have a clear chain of command and that resulted in a communications breakdown.

And:

The original campaign structure set out to be innovative in campaigning. The replacement structure tried to duplicate that, equating going on Leno and doing a video announcement with new and innovative. By the time the announcement rolled around, the campaign had descended into near inflexible bureaucracy — frequently pitting the candidate against his own campaign.

In the end, though, it comes down to this: Thompson is a terrible manager. He originally surrounded himself with good managers, but in establishing a campaign structure, those good managers were pushed out the door by worse managers, but better networkers.

My take: It’s difficult to disagree with the “lazy” and “fire in the belly” critiques. Voters don’t want someone maniacally obsessed with winning power, but they do expect intensity and focus. What some saw as substantive answers in the debates could easily be seen as rambling and overly Senatorial. Thompson supporters correctly point out that their man shares his laid-back style with fellow actor Ronald Reagan, but Reagan had moments like “I paid for this microphone!” Did Fred ever come close?

It’s a shame, because Thompson was a unique candidate shackled inside a cookie-cutter campaign. In this era of authenticity, communications and strategy people need to be prepared to sell the candidate as he actually is, no matter what that might be. If the goal was to showcase Thompson as substantive, then the remedy was to do two and three hour long town hall meetings. Instead, we had perfunctory campaigning that fatally undercut the substance argument.

I think the central lesson to be gleaned from the Thompson campaign is “trust your instincts.” When Thompson first teased us with running, his message was all about channeling conservative grassroots frustration. About listening to the grassroots who had been sold down the river on immigration and other issues, and taking dead aim at the enemies of conservatism, starting with Michael Moore and moving down the line. The great hope was that by deploying his sunny Hollywood persona with a dollop of conservative populism he would transcend the Giuliani/Romney/McCain lesser-of-evils fight. He promised us a different type of campaign that would use the Internet to end-run the liberal media.

This electrified the activist class and earned him virtually instantaneous frontrunner status. So what happens next? Everyone associated with the strategy that made Thompson the frontrunner is either fired or resigns, and is replaced by largely by conventional Washington insiders.

Though Thompson insiders warn it wasn’t that cut-and-dried, and that the original team did indeed have its share of greenhorns and duds, the point is that the original instinct was still the right one. The Fred Thompson from the Michael Moore video was the real deal, and post-September, he never showed up.

Thompson the candidate also never developed a message beyond that of being a checklist conservative. The problem is that people don’t vote for issues, they vote for the most compelling people. The wrong issue positions passionately felt beat the right ones rationally argued any day of the week. This is how an uneven, single-issue candidate like Huckabee could steal Thompson’s thunder so readily though Thompson was inarguably the better all-around conservative.

In his pre-candidacy, Thompson had a compelling argument about tackling the hard-to-fix issues like Social Security conventional politicians wouldn’t. Where was this during crunch time? Thompson’s message was more about covering all the bases rather than maxing out on the one or two issues that made him different from everyone else running.

Ultimately, the story of the Fred Thompson campaign will be one of authenticity and grassroots potential wasted on a cookie-cutter Washington campaign.

UPDATE: A reader sends in this very astute observation:

I think Fred’s biggest problem is that he was never a leader on any issue. He may have had the most conservative record overall but was seen as kind of average. Although he would be acceptable to social conservatives he was never outspoken like Huckabee was about abortion, gay marriage etc. His fiscal record was good but he could not compete with Romney as someone who understood the economy. He talked tough on security and the war but never led the charge while in the Senate to keep a strong military. So Fred’s real problem was that he never had his own base within the Republican party he just tried to chip some supporters away from the leaders.

That rings true, doesn’t it? Can anyone name an issue — even an obscure issue — on which Thompson led in his eight years in the U.S. Senate? Thompson may have been the best all-around conservative, but he couldn’t beat Giuliani/McCain on national security, Giuliani/Romney on the economy, or Huckabee on social issues, so he never stood out. Also, for those of you looking for proximate causes of demise, wasn’t Thompson’s refusal to embrace the Federal Marriage Amendment the tipping point which drove the FRC types and others into Huckabee’s camp? As I remember it, Huckabee got quite a bit of momentum out of that Values Voters straw poll.

Tagged: campaign postmortem fred thompson strategy

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