How to kill a campaign

I'm at lunch yesterday, when our General Manager Allan Horlick says "Not to interrupt, but did you see this, Romney's suspending his campaign." Allan was in a great position he was staring directly at the TV screens. I had to crane my neck, and Mark Richer who was having lunch with us had to swivel around to take a look.

So what went wrong? The answer is always the same isn't it? I was reading the Post as they did the breakdown on the campaign breakdown. I felt like I read this story before, and I had. It wasn't that long ago really. A few months ago in fact. The Post did an analysis of the breakdown in the McCain campaign. The reporters had their hammer and nails at the ready, as they prepared his coffin, and wrote his political obituary. But McCain came storming back.

So what did those stories have in common? The answer is infighting. The McCain camp had two factions and they were fighting. Finally McCain fired a bunch of them, and suddenly he was off to the races. In the Romney story it's all about infighting. One group thinks the candidate should do this, another thinks the candidate should do that. This summer I read the book, "No Excuses." In it Bob Shrum talks about all the presidential campaigns he worked on. One of the themes that emerges is infighting.

So here is what I am fascinated with, if someone is running for President of the United States, how can we trust them to run our country if they can't figure out how messed up their campaign is? I guess in a way it's good that there is this infighting. If you think its bad in a campaign, it's got to be worse once you get to the White House. So as President you'd better be a good commander and chief, a great orator, but more importantly a great referee. McCain may not be conservative enough for some Republicans, but he's already proven he's a be a better referee than Romney. He stepped in and took care of the problems, and apparently that's why is campaign is still afloat.