Mitt Romney's campaign is the worst-run since ...

[SUSAN CRUSHBONE]

Well?

Personally, I'd say Dewey 1948.

[pbrower2a]

The closest analogue so far is Mike Dukakis as a challenger to the status quo who collapsed late after promising to solve economic distress through technocratic solutions. The others? Kerry promised more than he could deliver. Gore had a poor strategy in allocating resources in his campaign. Perot ran into the usual difficulties of a third-party candidate. Dole was clearly past prime as a politician. The elder Bush couldn't explain why he needed a second term. Mondale was a weak candidate. Carter was a failed President trying to get a restart. Ford had never run for a statewide office -- and it showed. McGovern could easily be cast as an extremist from Day I, much like Goldwater. Humphrey faced the master of saying one thing in San Francisco and the opposite in Lubbock (today that is far more difficult to get away with, and Humphrey would have probably won in the media climate that we now have). Nixon in 1960 was simply ugly in contrast to someone who looked like a matinee idol; appearance matters. Stevenson was (twice) a good analogue of Walter Mondale as someone that Party insiders liked but had little appeal outside those Party insiders. Face it -- he lost Massachusetts twice! Dewey thought that he had everything lined up in 1948 including all the 'right' people and political interests, and found to his dismay that such was not enough.

I recall a depiction of him in "Give 'Em Hell, Harry!" in which the actor portraying Harry Truman mocked what was to be the celebratory song of a Dewy victory:

"Congratulations, Tom Dewey!
You won by a landslide today!
Through thick and through thin,
We knew you would win/
'Cause who'd ever vote to let Truman stay in?

Congratulations, Tom Dewey!
Your Republican dreams have come true.
Here's a victory roar/
For President Number Thirty-Four..
The White House... is waiting for you!"

(riff of Hail to the Chief).

 
         

[True Federalist (진정한 연방 주의자)]

While Mitt has not run a good campaign (just a well-endowed one) it still hasn't made any blunder as inept as McCain's suspension of his campaign to head off to Washington to make it abundantly clear he had nothing to contribute towards the resolution of the financial crisis.

[© tweed]

why did you only list the losers?


I should have voted Perot '92, his campaign was a total zoo, Ed Rollins wrote about it

[True Federalist (진정한 연방 주의자)]

Tweed, when's the last time that the presidential campaign that was clearly worse run was the one that won the election?

[Vosem]

When's the last time that the presidential campaign that was clearly worse run was the one that won the election?

France 2012.

[Sasquatch]

Perot 1992

Who drops out of the race when they are leading in the national polls?

[Small Business Owner of Any Repute]

McCain 2008 was a disaster.

[Maxwell]

Dole 1996

[Grumpier Than Thou]

Write-in: Obama 2012

[King]

Dukakis at least had huge leads for awhile.  If anything, it was Bush's well run campaign that just made Dukakis' snafus more damaging.

Romney's campaign is the most purposeless since Stevenson 1956.

[Lief 🗽]

McCain's was worse run. Luckily for McCain, 1) He was personally likable and well-respected, 2) The media had a huge crush on him, and 3) He had allies in the party. Romney enjoys none of these advantages, so all his mistakes are magnified to an extent that McCain's were not.

[Brittain33]

Tweed, when's the last time that the presidential campaign that was clearly worse run was the one that won the election?

Bush 2000.

[King]

Tweed, when's the last time that the presidential campaign that was clearly worse run was the one that won the election?

Bush 2000.

No way.  Gore's campaign was atrocious.  A halfway charismatic Dem ticket would have landslided on Clinton's approvals.

[exopolitician]

Dole and McCain were pretty bad. But also...

Tweed, when's the last time that the presidential campaign that was clearly worse run was the one that won the election?

Bush 2000.

No way.  Gore's campaign was atrocious.  A halfway charismatic Dem ticket would have landslided on Clinton's approvals.

[Brittain33]

Tweed, when's the last time that the presidential campaign that was clearly worse run was the one that won the election?

Bush 2000.

No way.  Gore's campaign was atrocious.  A halfway charismatic Dem ticket would have landslided on Clinton's approvals.

I disagree. Gore was a rough candidate who lost a bunch of news cycles, yeah. But he ran a better campaign. Bush was leading him by big margins well before the election began and was expected to win easily. His campaign was over programmed and nearly crashed in NH. He survived the McCain challenge with the help of the party leadership, his base, and McCain's own uncertainty of who he was, but then Rove failed to match Gore's ground game and sent Bush to California and NJ the week before Election Day on a costly psy-ops move that failed. Having Cheney pick himself to be veep didn't help, either. If it weren't for his brother and Katharine Harris then Bush 2000 would have been one of the long line of worse-run campaigns that failed

[Brittain33]

Gore was a worse candidate than Bush. But he had a better campaign.

Dole and McCain were pretty bad. But also...

Tweed, when's the last time that the presidential campaign that was clearly worse run was the one that won the election?

Bush 2000.

No way.  Gore's campaign was atrocious.  A halfway charismatic Dem ticket would have landslided on Clinton's approvals.

[Lief 🗽]

Gore's get out the vote operation was so fantastic that it alone elevated the quality of his campaign. Bush was supposed to win semi-comfortably on election day.

[J. J.]

Reagan, 1980.

[King]

The climate is different and it won't be a landslide, but Alf Landon in 1936 also had a ton of problems coming up with a message to the American people.  His whole campaign was nothing but vague generalities like "the New Deal is too rough on business" and "on Social Security, I'd do something different."  He couldn't run on Republican policies in the general because they were still widely blamed for the nation's problems.  

Like Romney, he also only won the nomination because the rest of the field were never really serious options.

Reagan, 1980.

Switch to this please:



That way your constant Reagan bashing would at least make sense.

[ShamDam]

I feel like McCain's campaign was significantly worse, considering that McCain was a much stronger candidate than Romney and yet still managed to fail so hard. Granted, Mitt has more going for him in the general climate, but it seems to me that all of the blunders we have seen so far can be placed squarely on the candidate, not the campaign.

[SPC]

McCain set such a low bar that putting his campaign doesn't really do justice to how bad Romney's campaign is. Nonetheless, Romney hasn't suspended his campaign (yet) or put all his resources into a Likely Obama state (yet.)

[Fargobison]

McCain was worse. That said at least McCain had a decent campaign up until the last few months while the same can't be said for Mitt.

Romney should have gone a different direction with who was leading his campaign after the disaster that was the GOP primary, not sure how a guy that is as smart as he is didn't realize he needed to shake things up.

[SPC]

McCain was worse. That said at least McCain had a decent campaign up until the last few months while the same can't be said for Mitt.

Romney should have gone a different direction with who was leading his campaign after the disaster that was the GOP primary, not sure how a guy that is as smart as he is didn't realize he needed to shake things up.

Unlike his business career, he couldn't get a government bailout for his campaign when he made mistakes.