If you wanna win, you gotta learn how to play Head Games

I bet y'all didn't know that you could learn a lot about how to succeed in politics by listening to classic rock.

It's true. On a related note, you can also learn a lot by listening to Foreigner.

See what I did there? Poor Foreigner...they tried so hard.

But I digress...let me turn back to the subject at hand.

Head Games.

Remember when Clint Eastwood stood up at the GOP convention and made it culturally acceptable to acknowledge what, heretofore, had only been spoken of on right wing blogs and talk radio: namely that our so-called president was an empty chair?

Of course you do. It was awesome.

Well, remember what our soon-to-be ex-president's immediate response to Eastwood was? He manned-up and asserted his Alpha-male dominance in the most Beta-male way possible: he sent out a tweet. Of the back of his head. In a chair with a label on it, kinda like the labels your mom may have put in your underwear before sending you off to summer camp to be beat up by the kids who noticed you had labels in your underwear.

Here's that tweet. (Warning, links to the president's twitter feed). "This seat's taken." Oh meeeee-owwwwwww.

Oh, the chortles that Team Barry must have had over that tweet. I'm sure Axelrod and Plouffe were high-fiving each other over this devastatingly macho rejoinder to being called out by one of the Great American Iconic Tough Guys.

Fast forward a couple of months though. Guess who has a new ad out? Why...it's the soon to be 45th President of the United States, Mitt Romney.

And guess what image is used to frame the opening scene. That's right: the tweet that Team Barry sent out.

I'm embedding the ad..check it for yourself:

Now the content of the ad is awesome, and it makes for a great "closing argument." You should e-mail it around to all your friends to make sure it's seen. But I want to talk about it for another reason.

I want to talk about it because it's a punking on a national scale.

Over the weekend, I discussed this ad on Twitter with @dawinship. I pointed out the use of the tweet, and Doug suggested it was an Easter Egg planted by Team Romney to appeal to those of us who obsess over this kind of stuff.

He's partially right. But it's also something else: it's a direct shot by Team Romney across Team Barry's bow. It's Team Romney saying: "No matter what you try in this campaign, Mr. President, we can and will use it to defeat you. No matter what assets you think you have, we can and will make them our own."

It's basically the Romney Campaign telling the Obama folks "All your base are belong to us."

It's ballsy and it's brassy, and you can be certain that the folks in Chicago noticed its inclusion. And you can also be certain that, for a team with a candidate who CAN NOT TAKE RIDICULE, it's in their heads.

It's the kind of stuff that a winning campaign does. And it reminded me of a great story I wanted to share.

One of my dearest friends relayed a story to me about a GOP campaign on which he once worked. The GOP candidate discovered that his Dem opponent was receiving laundered campaign contributions from a labor union with mob ties. The GOP campaign decided to make the Democrat's use of "mob money" an issue in the closing days.

The GOP candidate decided to call a morning press conference in which all the sordid details were to be exposed. The evening before the presser, the GOP campaign manager did something interesting.

He asked one of the volunteers to deliver a package to the Dem campaign team.

The package consisted of one manila envelope. And inside the envelope? A video-cassette of the movie "The Godfather".

The day of the press conference, another video gets sent over. This time it was "Goodfellas".

For one week following the press conference, at the end of every day the GOP campaign manager sent a mafia themed movie over to the Dem Campiagn manager.

Why?

Mind games. Taunting. Living rent-free inside the oppositions head. It conveys a tactical advantage, and it's important. Oh, and by the way, the GOP'er won a close race too.

It's like Foreigner said "if you want to win you gotta learn to play Head Games."

If you dig classic rock and roll, or even Foreigner, feel free to follow me on Twitter. I'm @jackmcoldcuts.

posted by Jack M. at 11:37 AM

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