Obama and Romney: Taking the campaign one day at a time

For the staff working on the presidential campaigns it can become all about 'winning the day.' A good media moment for either President Barack Obama or Republican candidate Mitt Romney can fire up staffers, interns, and volunteers for the next day.

By Nancy Benac,?Associated Press / October 7, 2012

Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney, with his wife Ann at his side, waves from the front of his campaign bus as they arrive at a rally in St. Petersburg, Fla., October 5.

Brian Snyder/Reuters

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It can be something as small as positioning the candidate at just the right camera angle or as big as catching the opponent in a campaign-altering slip of the tongue.

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Every day, the ground troops of Team Obama and Team?Romney?set out in pursuit of a common goal: winning the day. Moment by moment, hour by hour, they scramble, maneuver and hustle to gain an inch here, a foot there on the opposition.

Driving it all is the belief that by stringing together enough small, daily victories, they can help their candidate win the one day that truly matters ? Nov. 6, Election Day.

If they lose the day on Monday, they will work harder to win it on Tuesday. If they lose on Tuesday, there's always Wednesday or Thursday. Until time runs out.

Each day opens with a mental push of the reset button.

When Obama underperformed in his first debate Wednesday night, his handlers worked all the harder the next morning ? in briefings, conference calls, television appearances, attack ads and more ? to frame?Romney's?debate narrative as dishonest. Republican rapid responders served up rejoinders in real time.

Winning the day becomes a state of mind that motivates but also has the potential to distract.

It's what fires up the volunteers, the interns, the media monitors, the cable TV guests, the road warriors, the press wranglers, the local party officials and all the others who make up the infrastructure of a presidential campaign and propel it through long, wearying months and even years.

"It helps you get up at 5 in the morning so that the doughnuts and coffee are ready when the volunteers come in at 6 or 7," says Paul Begala, a Democratic consultant who helped create the 24-hour war room for Bill Clinton's winning presidential campaign in 1992.

Campaign partisans scour every word from the opposition in search of openings to exploit. Most of that turns out to be wasted effort. But no one knows what one sentence could veer off-message and end up becoming a Moment that will reverberate in the political echo chamber.

"Any change in direction is something that we can grasp on to and then use to get into the news cycle and get into the narrative," says Republican National Committee spokesman Kirsten Kukowski, whose emails fly at all hours.

?The Democrats pounce on?Romney's?caught-on-tape comment that it's not his job to worry about the 47 percent of Americans who don't pay taxes. Tweets, email, press releases, YouTube clips fly.

Source: http://rss.csmonitor.com/~r/feeds/csm/~3/a_0G8xdc9Kw/Obama-and-Romney-Taking-the-campaign-one-day-at-a-time

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