The Best Advice I Can Give You

Sometimes managing your boss is tough work.

This week Presidential Candidate Mike Huckabee abruptly dismissed the advice of his new strategist, Ed Rollins, when he pulled a negative ad campaign off the air. The press conference announcing the pulled ads generated incredulous gasps and laughter from reporters, and was dubbed a “campaign meltdown” by journalist Marc Cooper and other pundits.

The debacle began few weeks ago when Huckabee hired veteran politico Ed Rollins to advise his campaign. Mitt Romney has been running negative ads about Mike Huckabee, so predictably, Rollins advised that Huckabee run negative ads about Romney. Huckabee agreed, bought the ad time, distributed the ad, and called a press conference. A few hours before the press conference, however, Huckabee changed his mind and cancelled the ad campaign. Huckabee used the scheduled press conference to denounce negative campaigning and then played the ad for more than 150 reporters, guaranteeing that the public would still view the ads.

Huckabee’s criticism of negative advertising at his press event appeared disingenuous given that he had just recruited one of the toughest advocates for negative campaigning. Back in 1993 Rollins reportedly told a few dozen reporters that he had “paid off ministers in New Jersey to hold down the black vote” (NY Times Nov 14, 1993). Later Rollins denied that the pay-outs had actually happened. Rollins’ approach in the 2006 New York Senatorial campaign was described as “scorched-earth-tactics”, where he reportedly called into question a candidates wartime medals, Catholic views, and even the “legitimacy of his children”. Commenting on negative advertising in the 2004 Presidential campaign, Rollins said on MSNBC’s Hardball, “At the end of the day, this is not an intellectual debate, this is an emotional debate. And fear is a very important factor to a lot of Americans today.”

Huckabee’s comments about negative advertising were in stark contrast to Rollins wholehearted embrace of that strategy: “We often talk about changing the tone of politics and the direction of the way we elect our officials. And …sometimes we talk about it and then we end up doing the same things. And at some point we have to decide, can we change the kind of politics and the level of discourse. I’d like to believe we can, but its got to start somewhere, so it might as well start here and it might as well start with me. If you gain the whole world and lose your own soul, what does it profit you?”

Huckabee changed his mind about the ads just a few hours before a scheduled press conference. Huckabee and Rollins decided the press conference had to proceed, given the late notice, and told staff minutes before the press arrived about the switched strategies. It was a disorganized press event riddled with technical difficulties and a fuzzy message about why the candidate was both disavowing an ad and then playing it for national reporters.

The Huckabee campaign’s internal disarray is reminiscent of Howard Dean’s ride to the primaries four years ago. Joe Trippi provided some insight into the challenges of managing a boss in his book “The Revolution Will Not Be Televised”. In the book Trippi details painful internal disagreements about Dean’s insistence that his Gubernatorial papers be kept secret - by his own account, Trippi advised Dean to end the debacle by allowing public access to the files, but Dean refused. Trippi talks openly about his relationship with Dean in interviews, “I respect him a lot more than I liked him. I think he respected me a lot more than he liked me”.

Trippi and Rollins take very different approaches to politics. But one management approach they share seems to be that they are straightforward with their advice, even when it flies in the face of what their boss desires to hear. That approach has not made every campaign a successful experience. In fact, Trippi left the Dean campaign in an internal shakeup amidst accusations that his management skills were lagging. But both strategists have enjoyed long and distinguished careers. Ed Rollins reflected on this week’s Huckabee debacle in the Washington Post: “I reserve the opportunity to go back to my candidate every day and say, ‘I’ve been in this business a long time. I’ve been around the track. This is the best advice I can give you.’”