[digg-reddit-me]I don’t quite buy the idea that you can judge a candidate by how well they run a campaign – after all, Karl Rove and President George W. Bush ran great campaigns.\u00a0 As The Onion appropriately explained in a headline: “2004 Reelection Campaign Better Planned Than Iraq Invasion.”<\/p>\n
But especially in a race between three candidates for whom their campaign is the biggest thing each person has run, it gives some useful insight.\u00a0 Overall, I think campaigns show something – although they do not force candidates to demonstrate all the leadership qualities that are most essential to effective leadership.<\/p>\n
Given this, the contrast between Mr. McCain – whose campaign went bankrupt when he was in the lead, and finally gained traction when he was, once again, the insurgent, and faltered again once he regained the lead – Ms. Clinton, whose is now trying to portray herself as the underdog getting delegates on a “shoestring budget” of over $130 million, and who didn’t plan to campaign past February 5th, going so far as to avoid opening up offices in the states holding primaries after that date – to Mr. Obama whose campaign has been masterful, thorough, and well-managed.<\/p>\n
Here’s Andrew Sullivan making the point<\/a> about Mr. Obama:<\/p>\n Then his strategy was meticulous organization – and you saw that in Iowa, as well as yesterday’s caucus states. Everything he told me has been followed through. And the attention to detail – from the Alaska caucus to the Nevada cooks – has been striking…<\/p>\n How did the candidates deal with this? The vastly more experienced and nerves-of-steel Clinton clearly went through some wild mood-swings. Obama gave an appearance at least of preternatural coolness under fire, a steady message that others came to mimic, and a level of oratory that still stuns this longtime debater. In the middle of this very hot zone, he exhibit a coolness and steeliness that is a mark of presidential timber. He played tough – but he didn’t play nasty. Keeping the high road in a contest like this – without ever playing the race card or the victim card – is an achievement. Building a movement on top of that is more impressive still. So far, he has combined Romney’s money with Clinton’s organizational skills and Ron Paul’s grass-roots enthusiasm. No other campaign has brought so many dimensions into play.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n Compare this to Ms. Clinton – whose organization arrived months after Mr. Obama’s in many states, who has been out-organized, out-campaigned, and out-thought.\u00a0 Now, over a month-and-a-half after her loss in Iowa that should have demonstrated the power of Mr. Obama’s campaign, Ms. Clinton was not able to gather a full slate of delegates to run in the final primary in Pennsylvania, despite the fact that her vocal supporter, the governor, extended the time<\/a> she had to get delegates by a week.\u00a0 Last week, Ms. Clinton’s campaign was 20 delegates short in Pennsylvania.\u00a0 After a week, she is only down “10 or 11”.\u00a0 Keep in mind also that Pennsylvania is one of three states that is considered essential for Ms. Clinton to stop Mr. Obama’s momentum – along with Texas and Ohio.<\/p>\n As John Baer of the Philadelphia Daily News observed:<\/p>\n For a national campaign stressing competence, experience, “ready day one,” one might expect a full slate in what could be a key state.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n Indeed.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" [digg-reddit-me]I don’t quite buy the idea that you can judge a candidate by how well they run a campaign – after all, Karl Rove and President George W. Bush ran great campaigns.\u00a0 As The Onion appropriately explained in a headline: “2004 Reelection Campaign Better Planned Than Iraq Invasion.” But especially in a race between three […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[22,6,4,43],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-263","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-election-2008","category-obama","category-politics","category-the-clintons"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p8qcx-4f","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/2parse.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/263","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/2parse.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/2parse.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/2parse.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/2parse.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=263"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/2parse.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/263\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/2parse.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=263"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/2parse.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=263"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/2parse.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=263"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}