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Ed Rollins
AC360° Contributor
GOP Strategist, Former Huckabee National Campaign Chairman
We’re coming to the close of the longest and most costly presidential election in our history.
Whoever wins, this race will be historic. We will elect in a week either the first African-American president and the first Catholic vice president or the oldest man to be elected to a first term and the first woman vice president.
Another asterisk for the record books would be the election of the first president born in Hawaii or vice president raised in Alaska.
Fifty-six times Americans have gone to the polls to select our presidents. This is the first time two sitting U.S. senators are facing off against each other. It is the first time since 1928 a sitting president or vice president is not a candidate. But two presidents, the incumbent and his immediate predecessor, cast giant shadows over this election season.
The biggest shadow of course is that of President Bush. Our 43rd president’s goal in life was to surpass his father, 41, whom he admired but felt was weak.
Guided by his political guru, Karl Rove, it was Bush II’s ambition to make the Republican Party the majority party for decades to come. He and Karl wanted to create a political realignment that would marginalize Democrats for at least a generation and maybe more.
Editor’s Note: Ed Rollins, who served as political director for President Reagan, is a Republican strategist who was national chairman of former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee’s 2008 presidential campaign.
Ed Rollins
AC360° Contributor
GOP Strategist, Former Huckabee National Campaign Chairman
In the last presidential debate, Joe the Plumber took the place of Gen. David Petraeus as John McCain’s favorite “my friend.”
The previously obscure Joe was mentioned 21 times in the debate, and he and folks like him are the people McCain says he’s going to fight for during the rest of the campaign.
The McCain campaign is hoping the issues of taxes and fighting for the little guy can give McCain what the debate did not. He didn’t supply the knockout debate performance he needed. He threw some heavy punches, but few landed, and he didn’t follow up effectively.
Barack Obama was like the fleet-footed boxer who jabbed and moved deftly and avoided any damage on his march to victory. Though it was McCain’s best debate performance, it wasn’t enough to make the case that Obama is dangerously inexperienced and untested.
His case was further damaged when President Bush’s former secretary of state, Colin Powell, endorsed Obama on Sunday.
We all know Colin Powell. In addition to his work in the Bush administration, Powell is a retired four-star general, former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and former White House national security adviser.
He has been one of America’s most significant military leaders, and a statesman widely admired across the political spectrum over the last two decades — a man many thought could have been America’s first black president.
Editor’s Note: Ed Rollins, who served as political director for President Reagan, is a Republican strategist who was national chairman of former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee’s 2008 presidential campaign.
Ed Rollins
AC360° Contributor
GOP Strategist, Former Huckabee National Campaign Chairman
A campaign at war with itself cannot fight its opponent effectively.
We have seen two major campaigns this year that could be described as internally divided — Sen. Hillary Clinton’s losing primary campaign and now Sen. John McCain’s general election effort.
And while chaos and disarray reigned supreme in Sen. Barack Obama’s opponents’ campaigns, the steady, disciplined and strategically driven Obama campaign marches forward toward likely victory.
Clinton’s campaign had several different groups setting and implementing strategy. They include the first campaign team led by pollster Mark Penn, her loyalists from the White House days led by eventual campaign manager Maggie Williams and campaign chairman Terry McAuliffe, and a rump group led by her husband. Prior to this year and his efforts on his wife’s behalf, President Clinton was viewed as one of the best political strategists around.
All that brain power couldn’t come together and agree on a consistent strategy to beat a young inexperienced outsider. There will be second guessing and finger pointing for years to come.
We now see something similar in the McCain campaign. There have been at least three major managerial changes or overthrows in the past 18 months.
The first was the Rick Davis/John Weaver battle.
Editor’s note: Watch Ed Rollins tonight on AC360° with David Gergen and Paul Begala.
Ed Rollins
AC360° Contributor
GOP Strategist, Former Huckabee National Campaign Chairman
This race is starting to feel like the 1980 Reagan- Carter race. The country is desperate to change from the Bush policies as it was in 1980 from the Carter policies. Reagan won in an electoral landslide winning 44 states; 489 electoral votes and 50.7% of the vote in a three person race. (Carter got 41%). Equally important a switch of 12 Senators to the Republican side and 35 in the House allowed Reagan to get much of his agenda through in the first several months.
Obviously, this election isn’t over but McCain’s prospects dim by the day. If Sen. Obama wins it won’t be by the Reagan numbers but it could be an electoral landslide and well over 50% of the vote. He also is going to bring in a large number of new Democratic Senators and House members that could make this a re-aligning election.
A substantial lead in the polls, resources allowing Sen. Obama to out-buy Sen. McCain by a three to one margin on television, and a far more extensive get out the vote operation, all combined with a bad economy add up to a formula for victory for Sen. Obama.
I don’t underestimate John McCain and I admire his courage but overcoming a “mood for change”, more intent supporters, more television and a ground operation better than any modern campaign is an almost impossible task.
Editor’s note: Ed Rollins, who served as political director for President Reagan, is a Republican strategist who was national chairman of former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee’s 2008 presidential campaign.
Ed Rollins
GOP Strategist and Former Huckabee National Campaign Chairman
With four weeks to go till Election Day, the road ahead for John McCain is straight up the side of an ice-covered mountain.
But John McCain, the courageous, self-described maverick of the Senate, has been overcoming obstacles and surviving near-death experiences all his life.
Since announcing his exploratory committee five days after his party’s shellacking in the 2006 midterm elections, John McCain’s campaign has been a roller coaster of ups and downs.
Some of the obstacles he has had to overcome were self-inflicted. Others were placed in his path by a commander in chief who is now tied for the lowest approval rating in history and will certainly break that record before leaving office next January 20.
Ed Rollins
GOP Strategist and Former Huckabee National Campaign Chairman
Wow what a week!
Having watched Congressional leaders and the White House deal behind closed doors all week, I now know why the country has been giving them some of the lowest approval ratings in history.
John McCain is a big gambler according to a lengthy story in Sunday’s New York Times. And certainly a roll of the dice is the best way to describe the last week. Congress is betting billions of our tax dollars that Wall Street — which lost much of its own and its investors’ money in bad bets — will do better with the government’s money.
Our “Swaggerer in Chief,” President Bush, who has strutted from crisis to crisis with utmost arrogance for two long terms, sheepishly arrived on primetime television to scare the daylights out of the very people he should be reassuring. I have never heard a president give a less reassuring speech.
It was definitely a “Chicken Little,” the-sky-is-falling performance with no explanation of why taxpayers must mortgage their kids’ futures to pay for this latest crisis to occur on his watch.
Editor’s note: On AC360° Thursday night, Anderson Cooper asked if it did any good for John McCain to suspend his campaign and go to Washington to help resolve the financial crisis. Here is what GOP Strategist Ed Rollins had to say.
Ed Rollins
GOP Strategist and Former Huckabee National Campaign Chairman
COOPER: Do you think it helped John McCain’s campaign?
ROLLINS: No, absolutely not.
And I would have said this ahead of the meeting. I think the bottom line is that — because this has happened in two weeks — these people represent Middle America. At least they think they do. And three weeks ago, four weeks ago, they weren’t about Wall Street. They weren’t about — they were about small-town America, worried about different things.
Now, all of a sudden, the world is coming to an end. The president gave — I have been around this business 40 years — the president gave the most doom-and-gloom speech I have ever heard in my life last night. If everybody didn’t rush to their bank and pull their money out today, I would be shocked.
And so, all of a sudden, they’re getting bombarded by little people out there, saying, what is this? Stick up for me.
COOPER: I have got to tell you, watching the president last night give that speech, it was like watching him in Jackson Square in New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina. I mean, he did not seem to be there.
ROLLINS: No, he wasn’t there.
COOPER: I mean, he was physically there, but I…
ROLLINS: No. It was not — it was not his words.
Editor’s Note: Ed Rollins, who served as political director for President Reagan, is a Republican strategist who was national chairman of former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee’s 2008 presidential campaign.
Ed Rollins
CNN Contributor
It seems like just yesterday when Sen. Barack Obama impressed our troops in Kuwait by shooting his flawless three-pointer into the basket without hitting the rim.
Two days later, he spoke to 200,000 Berliners. It looked like he could do no wrong and the campaign was only a formality on his way to inauguration day.
But it wasn’t yesterday. It was the third week in July, and that’s a lifetime ago in presidential politics.
Obama looked unbeatable then. He looked unbeatable the night of his acceptance speech before 85,000 cheering supporters. If victory went to the guy who could make the best speech or could win the schoolyard basketball game of “horse,” he was thought to be unstoppable.
Then his world stopped with Sen. John McCain’s shocking selection of Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin for the vice presidential nomination. And over the last two weeks, the governor of Alaska has deflected the arc of Obama’s campaign. She can match his pretty words. The outdoor game has changed from “horse” to “moose,” and only one candidate in this race has shot “moose.”
Editor’s note: Ed Rollins, who served as political director for President Reagan, is a Republican strategist who was national chairman of former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee’s 2008 presidential campaign.
Ed Rollins
CNN Contributor
Ten days ago, Sen. Joe Biden was the most brilliant vice presidential pick imaginable. He was going to add the experience and foreign policy credential that Sen. Barack Obama’s thin resume was missing.
The so-called expert commentators were arguing that blue-collar Joe was going to guarantee Pennsylvania (because he was born in Scranton) and other states and get Catholic voters because he is a pro-choice Catholic.
I guess they forgot that Joe didn’t do so well with Iowa Catholics (23 percent of the population) when he campaigned there for more than a year in the Democratic caucus race. But then getting less than 1 percent of the vote and coming in fifth place showed he didn’t do real well with any voter group in Iowa. Nor did he do well anywhere else, other than Delaware.
Then, after Sen. John McCain chose Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, people laughed and said Biden was going to wipe the floor with Palin in the vice presidential debate. Now, after her incredible convention speech, Biden is saying that he’s the underdog because he’s not a very good debater.
If Obama had done the smart thing, he would have picked Sen. Hillary Clinton for vice president. If he had, he would have united his party for sure and energized his base.
Editor’s note: John McCain shook up his top staff today, with a senior aide saying it would stop “errors in the campaign.” On AC360° Tuesday night, Ed Rollins, former manager of Mike Huckabee’s campaign, said McCain has made mistakes — and suggested the Republican change course. Here’s what he said:
Ed Rollins
GOP Strategist and Former Huckabee National Campaign Chairman
John McCain has to basically have empathy for ordinary people. He’s going to Colombia. He’s going to Mexico. He’s going to talk NAFTA. How does that relate to ordinary working people here? — that you’re trying to basically make sure that Colombians and Mexicans have jobs, as opposed to Americans have jobs?
The next 19 weeks, 18-and-a-half weeks, that we have left here, every single day, if I was running his campaign, I would be talking about jobs: How do you rebuild the infrastructure? What people want to know is: do you understand how much I’m hurting, and do you care, and are you going to try and make my life a priority? Keep reading
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