The bard was right: past is prologue, or at least it is in US politics. After George W. Bush, was hammered by 19 points in the snows of New Hampshire in the first Republican primary of February 2000, we had no doubt our campaign was over. We knew we would be fired, so we started packing our bags. That’s when the future president turned to us and said: “I take full responsibility for this loss. Voters will watch how we handle this to see if we have what it takes.” We unpacked and continued, winning 40 of the next state contests, the nomination and the White House.
In the early summer of 2004, I was sitting in the offices of Mr Bush’s re-election campaign when I first saw photos of the abuses at Abu Ghraib prison. Once again I thought the campaign was over. Yet, dark as those days were, we realised that you can afford to lose a lot of news cycles in such a long campaign season. We kept our focus and stayed on strategy, which was, ironically, solely framed around national security.
Then in November of 2007 Rudy Giuliani was ahead in the polls by double digits; Fred Thompson was a close second; and the campaign of John McCain had spectacularly imploded. Yet within three months Senator McCain was romping home to the nomination.