One of the time-honored tricks of political professionals is “leaking” information to the press.  Many unnamed sources of certain high-level campaigns have used this method to position their campaign strategy in a positive light to a targeted audience, or get information out on their opposition.  More commonly “leaking” is used on your political opponents through an unnamed or independent source to shed light on the flaws of your opposition. 

This takes us to the question of leaking internal campaign strategy: good idea or bad?  Yesterday Politico did a piece on how Sen. Reid intends to “vaporize” his Republican opponent(s).  It’s no secret that Reid’s approval ratings are upside-down and the same survey has him losing outside the margin of error to every GOPer tested.  The Politico piece goes on to show how, per the campaign strategy of New Jersey Gov. Jon Corzine, hitting hard, fast and furious can drive up the negative ratings on the opposition and stymie any support for the Republican candidate, allowing Reid to define the eventual Republican to the public before that candidate can define one’s self.  While the strategy may be a sound one, the “leaking” of the strategy may be his downfall.

Reporters go to many means to deliver information from various sources, as that is their job.  But the “leaker” inside Reid’s camp just gave away the blueprint to how the campaign plans to attack his Republican opponents.  As a Republican, I thank the Reid team for delivering us their internal strategy. 

As a political strategist, I believe the strategic decisions of the campaign team need to stay internal.  You gain nothing by ”leaking” your campaign’s course of action. The job of the campaign team is to put out the best information to the public in the many arenas of paid and earned media.  Crafting the various messages, positive and negative, takes time, but pushing out the information in this day-in-age can be rapid.  It’s the campaign’s job to stay on message, work within the plan and deliver the messages timely and effectively; not to leak the strategy.

Tags: Campaign Strategy, Harry Reid

This entry was posted on Wednesday, October 21st, 2009 at 8:00 am and is filed under 2010 Elections, Issues, News Commentary, polling. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.