President Obama’s top re-election strategist said Monday that Mitt Romney and the Republican Party blew some golden opportunities during the just-completed presidential campaign.
White House Senior Advisor David Axelrod was perhaps most surprised that well-funded Republican super PACS didn’t attack the earlier when the Obama campaign didn’t yet have the resources it needed to adequately refute all the charges.
Axelrod, who was serving as a senior strategist for President Obama’s re-election campaign, also expressed surprise that GOP nominee Mitt Romney didn’t invest much more in ground operations and his decision to play narrowly to the party base in picking Rep. Paul Ryan as a running mate.
Offering a lengthy dissection of the campaign, Axelrod told a Chicago audience that he was “a bit surprised that super PACS which spent an unbelievable amount of money” didn’t hit television and radio with anti-Obama ads until May.
“Our air defenses weren’t ready,” he said during a public forum in the Performance Hall of the Logan Center for the Arts at the University of Chicago, alluding to his side’s early lack of resources. “They gave us a pass, for whatever reason.”
At the same time, he was surprised that a plausible, distinctly positive image of Romney as successful businessman was not central to Romney’s media strategy prior to late fall. In part, he ascribed that to Romney’s “Faustian bargain” to get the Republican nomination and tacking far to the right while also unleashing a barrage of mostly negative ads against GOP primary rivals.
The Obama camp assumed that Romney would offer that more upbeat aura in his ads after wrapping up the nomination.
“They never did that,” Axelrod said.
Axelrod personally figured former Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty or Sen. Rob Portman of Ohio would be Romney’s choice as vice president. Both moderate Republicans could have helped better sell the ticket to independent voters.
Axelrod’s comments to a large audience amounted to a post-mortem on his final political campaign and a segue to his career’s next chapter, overseeing the university’s new Institute of Politics.
He conceived the notion of a future rival to Harvard’s Kennedy School, among other institutions, with an accent on undergraduate education; pitched the concept to Chicago and Northwestern University; cut a deal with his alma mater, and has assembled a solid staff to execute the initial vision, including fellowship and internship programs.
The session itself touched a wide variety of topics, mostly involving the campaign and the state of American politics. It had its languid spots and one moment in which Axelrod came off as somewhat defensive, namely when asked about political consultants and negative ads “degrading the system,” as one student questioner put it.
While agreeing that the two campaigns were beneficiary of ads that degraded the political process, he cited just one, by a pro-Obama PAC and not approved by the campaign, as an example. Other anti-Romney ads that some observers felt were unfair were not mentioned.
“This was a very tough election,” he said. “And we had to make a case as well.”
He asserted that the earliest Obama ads in battleground states were distinctly positive. But, it became clear, that “if we allowed Romney to be the hazy, local Chamber of Commerce president” in his ads, “that was not in our interest.” A barrage of harsh anti-Romney ads ensued early and, many observers contend, did irreparable damage to Romney even before he officially was the GOP nominee.
As for the dramatic increase in super PAC dollars, he noted that Obama has underscored his own disagreement with the Supreme Court decision, known as Citizens United, which opened the floodgates.
But, at the same time, Axelrod said, “I would not advise the Democratic Party to lay down arms and get mowed over in the next campaign” by eschewing such support.
