The Romney campaign needs to grow, not change

The Romney campaign, like all good campaigns, needs to find a way to use the best and brightest that the party has to offer, from state and local campaign volunteer walk-ons to stars such as Condi Rice, big-time veterans such as former Michigan governor John Engler and next-generation leaders such as Keith Hennessey at Stanford’s Hoover Institution, just to name a few. If you can’t think of a way to use good people, you aren’t thinking very well.

Campaigns are full of competing ambitions, dramas and fears of being layered by new personnel. Lee Atwater always said rather than screw people by excluding them during the campaign, save your powder to screw them after you have won the election. That way you can use what they have when you need it the most and keep the whining about being excluded to a minimum. And every campaign leader knows that candidates and candidates’ wives hate to hear accounts of someone being excluded and not put to work. They are right.