John McCain will spend the coming week talking about the economy, but the Republican presidential candidate isn't expected to say anything new. Rather, he will repackage proposals he has already outlined -- ones the campaign fears nobody heard.I think they clearly had no choice but to "relaunch" the campaign. I'm just not sure much will change. For starters, they're going to spend the first week of the new campaign talking about the economy, the issue that is both most important to voters, but also where McCain's policies most closely mirror President Bush. There's a reason McCain prefers talking about terrorism; well, there's multiple reasons. But aside from not knowing much about the economy, it's the only issue on which voters trust McCain more than Obama. And McCain is not going to win over voters by repeating word for word Bush's reassurance: "The fundamentals of our economy remain strong."
The WSJ article also lays out the small but significant changes Steve Schmidt is bringing to the campaign in an attempt to control and refine their message. Unfortunately, the nature of the candidate is proving a hindrance to producing a slicker campaign. For starters, McCain is averse to set speeches, and is in his element when engaging voters in town hall style discussions. But voter questions are unscripted*, forfeiting a good deal of topic control. Schmidt has a plan here:
Now, most town halls will begin with a scripted speech wound around a topic of the day. Sen. McCain is then supposed to weave that topic through his answers and come back to it at the end.Given McCain's proven ability to steer every question towards terrorism (see this Fortune magazine article), I suppose it's plausible he could do the same for other issues.
* Schmidt is a veteran of the Bush campaigns, known, among other things, for their tightly scripted campaign events. Will Schmidt risk McCain's "straight talk" brand for tighter message control?
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