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February 25, 2012 06:38 PM UTC

"You've Made Your Last Advance"

  • 14 Comments
  • by: Colorado Pols



Photo by Byron York, via Twitter

The Washington Post reported yesterday afternoon, you’ve by now seen the photos:

[Mitt] Romney’s policy address to the Detroit Economic Club was a chance to claim momentum for his candidacy for the Republican presidential nomination, but the optics of his highly anticipated event may have undercut his message.

The candidate, who was born and raised in the Detroit suburbs, spoke to more than 1,000 suited-up business leaders who bought tickets to sit in folding chairs at the 30-yard line of an empty football stadium.

Romney began by telling his captive lunchtime audience: “This is not exciting and barn-burning, but it’s important.” And indeed, his audience’s polite applause was buried by the silence that filled Ford Field, where some 65,000 blue stadium seats sat empty…

Folks, possibly the most important of all of the many rules governing the planning and organizing of political events, traditionally known as “advance work” in the business and its practitioners as “advance men,” is to never, ever book a venue for your candidate’s appearance if you can’t fill it to capacity. If you only expect a thousand people, a room that can barely hold that thousand people is infinitely preferable to one that seats ten thousand people, because the larger venue will make your crowd look small no matter how objectively “big” it might be.

And of course, as soon as we start comparing crowd photos, somebody’s going to pull out photos of all those truly packed stadiums to see Barack Obama in 2008, and, well, you can get pretty easily why this just isn’t a good road for Mitt Romney to head down.

Honestly, it’s one of the oldest dirty tricks in politics–we’re not saying this was done intentionally, but as soon as we read this story, we were reminded of one of the greatest political pranksters in American history. From the biography of Dick Tuck, among our personal heroes:

In 1950, Tuck was a G.I. Bill student at University of California at Santa Barbara and a part-time worker for Congresswoman Helen Gahagan Douglas in her U. S. Senate campaign against Congressman Richard Nixon. Tuck says an absent-minded UCSB professor asked him to do the advance work for an upcoming campaign speech by Nixon at the University. Tuck was all too willing. He hired the biggest hall, scheduled the slowest day, and neglected all the usual efforts at public awareness. On the big day, attendance was sparse. Tuck provided a lengthy introduction. The event was a total bust. On his way out, Nixon stopped the car and called Tuck over to ask his name. It would be the first of many times he would hear “Dick Tuck.”

“Dick Tuck,” Nixon told him, “You’ve made your last advance.”

It makes you wonder, doesn’t it? Perhaps somebody in Romney’s campaign needs to read their history books; or maybe one of them is reading their history after all…

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14 thoughts on ““You’ve Made Your Last Advance””

  1. Romney’s campaign (real sharp people there) are blaming the Secret Service for preventing the event to be held in the atrium of Ford Field. Yeah, right.

    The advance publicity here had been that Romney was holding his event IN the stadium for at about one week.  

  3. GOP candidates don’t get Michigan (and manufacturing)

    At a forum on innovation in Washington earlier this month, the chief executives of GE, Dow Chemical and Boeing mentioned tax policy, but they also pointed out the importance of immigration, education (especially in science, technology, engineering and math), attracting foreign direct investment, and the cut-and-invest policies in the deficit commission report.  They also stressed the importance of learning from Germany and its interplay of universities, research centers, firms, and workers.

    Yet Romney talked lower taxes and reduced regulation. That’s looking at the past rather than the future. Romney’s policy prescriptions are not pro-business. At least not for businesses working to thrive in the future.

    Question for ArapaGOP – why do the Republican candidates not understand what manufacturing businesses need?

    1. lower taxes and lower regulation.  Here, one size fits all !  Nothing innovative or new, or dynamic.  Its lazy, kind of like just phoning it in.

  4. …the bigger story is to compare the size of the crowds that the Prez drew in 2008 at the same point in the campaign:

    http://thinkprogress.org/polit…

    Mittens is starting to fade, and with the other Clowncar riders tripping over each other, it’s really starting to look like a brokered convention with the GOP…

  5. But you’d think his campaign hires would have a clue. Apparently not.  Is it also their idea to now have Mittens remind everyone of his SNL ready riff on why he loves Michigan by constantly repeating the line about the trees being the right height?

    Thanks to recent US political history’s most tone deaf candidate and campaign, the past couple of months series of headline, take home messages has been; doesn’t care about the very poor, 400K in extra income is “not much”, a 10K bet is just penny ante  stuff, likes certain height in trees and “inland” lakes, lousy dog owner, wife has two Cadillac luxury SUV’s base priced at about 35K each, and this picture of a tiny gathering in a huge empty stadium. And those are just the ones that immediately come to mind. Are all his campaign operatives Dem moles or what?

    After all,  hardly anyone ever really liked him and his entire claim to inevitability rested on electability.  He no longer polls any better against Obama than Santorum does so the majority of GOP voters who never liked him much must be asking themselves why they have to support him for practical reasons?  

    Meanwhile, contrary to ArapG’s fevered fantasies, Dems are no longer nearly as worried about the prospect of a Mittens candidacy as they once were and have new general election ready ammo being handed to them every day.  Can’t wait to hear ArapG’s pathetic spin on why the steady pile up of gaffes aren’t even gaffes at all.

    2. . . . you’d think his campaign hires would have a clue.

      Isn’t this the same RMoney that used to employ ArapaBOT?   (Jesus, I’ve seen some diary comments from David that made more sense than that.)  ;~)

    3. In my opinion my fellow Democrats are not nearly worried enough about Mitt Romney. When, as I expect, he wins the Republican nomination, it will be a testament to the power of unlimited slush funds a.k.a. Super PACs. The President faces a severe battle, not because of anything lefties like me criticize him for, but because he is going to be outspent by all the groups not officially part of the campaign. If Santorum wins or even keeps it close… well then my worst fears are incorrect and Obama will pull this one out because money does not matter as much as I think. If Mitt Romney wins I expect to be crying in my beer come November.

      If big money can push a uninspiring candidate like Sen. Bennett over the finish line, it can even rescue Romney.

      2. Think of it more like childbirth.  We still need to push like crazy to get to get it done but we are now seeing conditions in which we have a very good chance of seeing it through to a successful conclusion.

        What I’m seeing isn’t Dems taking anything for granted.  I’m seeing Dems with something to get enthusiastic about erasing the enthusiasm gap of a few months back and replacing the doldrums with a will to get in there and really push.  

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