Everybody Gets a Mulligan
I have never been a good golfer, so mulligans and I are good friends. Luckily, my role in a round of golf is to bring the cigars and jokes, while the other players bring the actually game. Unfortunately, politics doesn’t work that way. A big mistake can totally derail a political campaign, so can a lot of little mistakes. So I am offering up some friendly bi-partisan advice for Republican U.S. Senate candidate Richard Mourdock and Democratic Gubernatorial candidate John Gregg, please try to the mistakes down to the bear minimum.
You may have seen that the Mourdock camp recorded a youtube clip of the Treasurer’s reactions to the possible outcomes to the Supreme Court ruling expected next week on the constitutionality of the President’s health care plan. There’s nothing wrong with recording, but there is something wrong when all five get posted. And from what my reliable sources tell me, that mistake can’t be blamed on an intern. They were taken down in five minutes, but on the Internet, a minute is basically a lifetime.
John Gregg’s big error of the week was a little less visible. His campaign just hired their third communications director in three months. Throw in the fact the lost of political veteran Tim Jeffers earlier this week and any effort to put out a consistent message gets muddled. An example, on the one hand talk about bi-partisanship at your state convention speech and the need to reach across the aisle to those” Lugar Republicans” and in the same speech spending time beating up on the most prominent Lugar Republican of all, Mitch Daniels.
Now are either of these the end of the world for either camp, not at all. And between now and November, each side will probably hit a home run or two, or at least a ground rule double. In the meanwhile though, the goal of any campaign should be to keep the mistakes down to a bear minimum. Little mistakes can eventually lead to big mistakes and big mistakes lead to losing in November.
