TJ Walker breaks down Scott Walker's 2015 campaign suspension. Walker gave a two-minute statement, took no questions, and framed his exit as helping the party stop Trump. TJ explains why that brief, unfiltered approach was strategically smart.
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Scott Walker's presidential campaign is over. How did he announce it and what did he do? Right. Late yesterday afternoon, Scott Walker announced he was dropping or technically suspending his presidential campaign. Really the same thing as ending his campaign. He did something a little bit controversial for a politician. I actually think it was pretty smart. What he did is he came out, he gave a two minute statement and he did not take questions. Now, normally a politician who tries to do that is vilified by the media. It causes bad relations, it makes them think the politician is hiding. They go out of their way to attack him and talk about the questions he didn't answer. Here's what's different. If you are a presidential candidate and you are dropping out of a race, you already know in advance, you're guaranteed that the media will have to cover the story. They simply have no choice. You're guaranteed coverage when you drop out. If you're a major candidate and were at one point high in the polls and at least some of the state, you're guaranteed massive amounts of coverage. So the question is, what quotes are they going to pull from you? If you hold a full traditional press conference, then you end up with things like Richard Nixon did in 1962 when he dropped out of the California gubernatorial race. And he said, well, you won't have Nixon to kick around anymore. And it became this quote that here we are still talking about making him look petty, insecure, mean spirited, selfish, self centered. And Governor Scott Walker, whatever his strengths and weaknesses are as a presidential candidate, at some point he figured that out or his advisors did. And that's why, again, I don't recommend it for most people, most of the time it can backfire, it can soil and ruin your relationships with media. But in this particular case, it makes sense because in all the media coverage I've seen of Scott Walker dropping out, they've either shown the entire video or they've pulled quotes right from the video. And his message came through. He's dropping out because he is doing it for the good of the party to stop Donald Trump. And he didn't mention Trump by name, but that was the clear message and that is in every single story. So it guaranteed that his message got into the story and he did it in a way that didn't sound defensive. Now, you can make the case sound a little arrogant that my leadership is now called upon to drop out for the good of the party. I'm willing to cut him some slack there. He announced he was dropping out essentially because he can't win and he thinks that if all the other candidates are low in the polls would drop out, then a strong Republican candidate could emerge to beat Donald Trump, whom he views as anathema and most of the party establishment views with utter contempt. So I think it was a brilliant strategy, but it has to be used sparingly. The other aspect is he's not counting on getting interview good interviews and media coverage from the national media anytime soon because he's dropping out of the race so he can recede. He doesn't have to worry about burning a few bridges or making reporters annoyed by not taking full questions. And the other smart thing was he made his statement really brief. It was only a couple of minutes. If he'd spoken for 15 minutes, then all the video and all the various news sites would have been sound bites here, sound bites there, cobbled together. But because it was only two minutes, most of the online news sources I checked ran the entire speech. So he had unfiltered message getting out to the world. So I do give Scott Walker credit for the way he ended his campaign.
