When the drama of the first debate subsides on Tuesday evening, former President Donald Trump and Vice President Kamala Harris will hit the road on the presidential campaign’s home stretch.
If Trump’s debate performance is lackluster, he’ll have to stay focused to recover. Ironically, Trump’s past success in staging mass rallies with hourslong speeches and entertainment seems to have dulled his skills in basic campaign events such as factory tours and press conferences. Trump has struggled to deliver a clear and consistent message. In contrast, the Harris team is expert at consistent messaging. It shows every day on news broadcasts, press coverage, and video clips on social media. Harris’s events and rallies are staged for television coverage, and her message of change and optimism has been consistent.
To up its game quickly, the Trump team could benefit from the old-school tricks practiced by the Nixon, Reagan, and Bush campaign teams. It starts with disciplined scheduling of the candidate’s time, using the “Photo-Headline-Story method” pioneered by the Nixon White House.
Before Nixon scheduled an event, his aides provided a memo identifying what the photo, sometimes called the “trip photo,” would be, what headline would be generated, and what would be reported about the event. The purpose of the predictions wasn’t to be perfectly accurate. It was to focus staff planning.
To stage a photogenic event requires thinking about the locale, the backdrop, the people who will be in the picture, and the time of day in order to maximize the visual appeal. Especially in a campaign, that often means creating the picture through the actions taken by the principals in a chosen locale, such as the iconic shot of Ronald and Nancy Reagan walking among the graves of fallen U.S. soldiers for the 40th anniversary of the Normandy invasion.
In June 1984, Reagan was running for reelection. The White House and campaign staff saw the Normandy event as an opportunity to emphasize that Reagan’s defense buildup was designed to prevent another world war. Along with the economy’s resurgence, it was an important campaign theme.
I was on the Reagan White House advance team at the American Military Cemetery at Normandy and responsible for press arrangements to make sure we got that photo. Credit for identifying that location as our ideal “trip photo” goes to Michael K. Deaver, Reagan’s deputy chief of staff. Months before the anniversary celebration, Deaver spotted the cemetery as an ideal photo opportunity to get Reagan’s message across. That photo below ran on the front page in newspapers and magazines worldwide, and CBS carried Reagan’s visit to the cemetery on live television.
The headline element of the Photo-Headline-Story method identifies the theme the campaign wants to get across. The television equivalent to the headline is the candidate’s 30-second sound bite the campaign wants on the news.
Trump’s August press conference highlighting food inflation had a strong theme, but he stepped on it when he deviated from his message and told a reporter he felt “entitled to personal attacks” on Harris. Instead of a sound bite emphasizing the hardship families face paying for a shopping basket of groceries, news headlines and sound bites featured Trump sounding petulant and vengeful.
Speaking of shopping baskets, wouldn’t a pair of them have made a better photo than the groceries and posters showing prices scattered higgledy-piggledy on tabletops with no clear focal point for photographers? One shopping basket could be labeled “Trump 2020” and the other “Harris 2024,” with a bold graphic showing the cost of a cart full of groceries at the end of Trump’s first term in contrast to the price at the end of Biden’s and Harris’s first term.
Instead of the dozen or more prices and statistics on the graphics Trump used, voters would see two clear, easy-to-grasp dollar figures. There’s another lesson here: Economists like statistics, but ordinary people think in terms of how much money it costs to feed a family now compared to when Trump left office. Keep it simple!
The result of Trump’s news conference was a muddled message and no compelling visual to illustrate his point about food prices. Too many other recent Trump events suffer from similar flaws.
Deaver’s critical genius was realizing that a strong visual image could convey the story we wanted to reach voters even when a hostile press corps didn’t carry our message. Deaver believed the media could be critical of Reagan’s policies but if the accompanying visuals were strong, then Reagan’s message would still cut through to viewers. This was true even if Reagan’s coverage included only a very short sound bite. Deaver also believed that visual images had more impact and imprinted better in voters’ memories than words and numbers from speeches.
To win in November, the Trump team needs a crash course in old-school campaign planning. The candidate needs to stifle his feelings about Harris and focus on messages to win over undecided voters. In the Reagan White House, we learned the old-school tricks from the Nixon White House and campaign veterans. The Bush presidencies carried on this lineage.
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There is plenty of expertise for the Trump team to tap into, but it better move fast.
Time is short.
John B. Roberts II is a former political strategist and executive producer of The McLaughlin Group. He is the author of Reagan’s Cowboys: Inside the 1984 Campaign’s Secret Operation Against Geraldine Ferarro.