Tactics and Strategy as applied to Political Campaigns

Phew!  A rather long post for a rather short post.  The post will be short because it is a recent thought with the respect to the kind of candidates in this presidential election.

Romney is better tactically.  The most recent debate in Tampa Florida illustrated this.  He gets an advantage because he prepares very well.  Gingrich doesn't prepare at all, according to sources.  He likes to "improvise like a jazz musician".  This confers an advantage to anyone who prepares and evidently Romney prepares.  According to some sources, Gingrich couldn't get the expected advantage that a good preparation could have given to him.

Gingrich, on the other hand, is better strategically.  He sees the Big Picture very well.  The nuts and bolts of the campaign is the problem.  Romney can raise money, prepare better, and thus execute better.  Gingrich, on the other hand, can write books and give lectures.  He can debate better, but he loses opportunities because he doesn't prepare well enough against a lesser opponent.  He can be supreme on the main points, but he falls down when he has to deal with the minutia.

Dick Morris, the pollster, said that Gingrich should have used his good poll numbers in the month before Iowa's caucuses, in order to raise money.  When he failed to do this, Romney ran the attack ads that ruined his surge.  Now that Gingrich has won S. Carolina, he has failed to exploit that victory because of Romney's response.  He changed tactics and prepared better for his debates.  He also went on the attack and forced Gingrich to get off message.  Although this doesn't mean Romney has the better grasp of the main issues, it does mean that he has a better grasp of winning an election.

Morris also said that a Romney victory will pretty much wrap it up for him.  That's two times that Gingrich had an opportunity to put Romney away and he failed.  That failure may have cost him the nomination.  According to Morris, the month of February favors Romney.  If Morris is right, Gingrich may not recover this time.  The
failure to exploit his victory in S. Carolina will be his downfall.  Although he has a fine grasp of history, and a good understanding of where we are as a country, it won't result in a victory.  The victory will go to the general who can win his battles.  Those battles have to be fought on the battlefield, not in a lecture hall, or in a book.

This is not a pleasant thought, and it may be incorrect.  But the indications at this writing do not appear to be good for Gingrich.