Can Campaigns Recover From Mistakes?

The following started as a comment on a thread over at Anonymous Is A Woman, but I felt the need to also post it here and briefly expand upon it.

As much as we would like to see candidates we support run perfection campaigns, they are going to make mistakes every now and then. Unfortunately, that is just how it works. Just because a campaign makes a mistake, however, doesn’t me that the race is over. In my humble opinion, it simply comes down to how big the mistake is and how the campaign responds.

There has been some talk throughout the blogosphere (see here and here), however, which would seem to suggest that Janet Oleszek’s campaign is somehow ruined because Ben Tribbett found a video on YouTube that wasn’t a finished product. This was obviously a mistake and I’m sure Janet’s campaign was upset that an “early edition” of the video had been uploaded to YouTube. In this particular case, however, the mistake wasn’t that big of a deal.

Yes, the “early edition” of the video could have been a lot smoother. As a result, I imagine a few people might have viewed the video and thought the campaign looked unprofessional. At the same time, though, many viewers probably just enjoyed the fact that the video was produced at all. Furthermore, even Tribbett (who has repeatedly trashed Oleszek’s campaign team) admits that much of the content of the first video was stuff voters would like to hear. So while Janet’s supporters might have wished the “early edition” video was much more polished, I don’t think anyone can really complain about a campaign talking about things voters like to hear.

Since I didn’t believe the original mistake wasn’t that big of a deal, I would next look at the campaign’s response to the video’s “early edition” being released. This is what I truly believe is the most important part – how the campaign team was able to function while facing some scrutiny. After all, there have been quite a few people who have argued that George Allen might have won reelection if his campaign had responded better to be captured on tape calling S.R. Sidarth “macaca.”

So how did the campaign respond, you ask.

After Janet’s campaign realized that the “early edition” of the video had been released, they quickly took it down. No more than three days later (the early edition was taken down on the 7th and I saw the new version up on the 10th), the campaign put up the finish video. In this situation, I think most people would agree that their reaction was a fairly appropriate one. This is especially the case when you consider that the final video came while they were still receiving praise from the grand opening of their campaign headquarters on Saturday. So, well down on that account.

As far as the public response to the “new video” goes, I noticed that the campaign had put up the video on Monday and decided to post it on my site. Since then, I have received a number of emails about how people are quite pleased with the commercial. The sentiment expressed in the emails suggest that people enjoy seeing a combination of both the “average joe” and highly respected law makers such as Jim Webb discussing why Janet will make an excellent member of the Virginia Senate. Furthermore, it is worth noting that if people liked it enough to email me (a person who isn’t on Janet’s staff) to say how much they liked the video, then it’s safe to say that the Oleszek campaign got its message across.

All in all, would we have liked the “new version” to have been the first one released? Yes but, unlike what some people would like you to believe, it is FAR from a campaign ruining mistake. Based upon the quick response of Janet’s campaign and the positive response it has received from some people, one might even say that the release of the “early edition” simply inspired more people to talk about the commercial and watch the “new video” when it was finally uploaded.