That’s a hard thing to admit for a PR guy.
No matter how many TV news cameras you dragged before him; no matter how many talking points he hit out of the park, his remarks would be left on the cutting room floor when the story ran, every single time. Handlers were dumbfounded, eventually deciding there must be some type of magic invisibility spray with which he was covering himself each morning, head-to-toe. I still half believe it. (RELATED: WILLIAM O’REILLY: The GOP’s 2024 Presidential Field Needs To Be Cleared. It Should Begin With Ron DeSantis)
It’s a terrible thing being deemed irrelevant by the press corps. Nothing’s more dispiriting. The news media ignores you; then reports that you can’t get any traction. Political donors see the lack of coverage, begin to pull back, then that gets reported instead of your campaign’s 27-point, goldstar plan to cure scabies, save the economy and revive America. Here’s all you get, and you better like it: “Also in the race is — candidate name — who’s just not going anywhere. Back to you in the studio, Shoshana.”
Which brings us to the poor bastards seeking to take down Donald Trump in next year’s Republican primary. Virtually none of them can buy themselves a decent interview today, unless they’re being asked to respond to whatever crazy thing Trump “Truthed” at four o’clock that morning. We saw it in 2016, and we’re seeing it again today. Cycle. Rinse. Repeat.
What can Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, South Carolina Sen. Tim Scott, former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley, former Vice President Mike Pence, former Arkansas Gov. Asa Hutchinson, former New Jersey Gov, Chris Christie, et al do to get some sustained media attention?
Not much is the honest answer.
If they attack Trump, as Christie is doing, they get a dollop of coverage, but burn any chance of reaching today’s GOP base. If they placate Trump, as most are doing, it’s a dog-bites-man story. Snoozeville. If they carefully craft a campaign narrative and begin rolling it out methodically, Trump gets indicted again, and it’s back to square one. He’s all anyone wants to talk about again. And again.
I briefly considered issuing a media advisory for my aforementioned candidate — the invisible one — announcing that he’d self-immolate at a news conference on the steps of New York City Hall. But before I could, someone actually did it in Central Park, a civilian not a politician, and not a single TV camera showed up. So that doesn’t work.
Hmmm…
The problem is worse in multi-candidate fields like we have now. There are only so many political reporters that can be assigned to a race, and the outlier candidates, meaning anyone besides Trump, just can’t break through. So non-Trump donors begin asking who else might be out there, like Virginia Governor Glenn Youngkin, and the field grows potentially larger. Vicious cycle.
I’ve never seen anyone more comfortably in the driver seat in a primary than Trump is right now, despite his myriad legal woes. Take what he just did to the August 23 debate in Milwaukee. In announcing that he won’t take part in the forum, Trump effectively killed it. Viewership will be a fraction of what it would have been if Trump were participating. And any perceived debate winners will be marginalized thusly: “We’ve seen that — candidate name — can parry with the also rans, but can he/she do it when Trump is on stage? And speaking of Trump…”
The cold, hard truth is that no one in this field has a realistic chance of challenging the Big Guy unless the field is winnowed down to two. Does anyone see that happening soon? I sure don’t.
If that somehow happens, though, here’s my advice: Whatever you do, stay away from that magical spray, and don’t be boring. Politics is now entertainment. Just look at You Know Who.
William F. B. O’Reilly is a Republican strategist from New York.
The views and opinions expressed in this commentary are those of the author and do not reflect the official position of the Daily Caller News Foundation.
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