Trump’s Old-School Campaign Tricks

If Trump fails to shine in the debates, he will need to stay focused to pull himself together. Ironically, Trump’s success in organizing mass rallies with hours-long speeches and entertainment seems to have blunted his skills at grassroots campaign events like factory tours and press conferences. Trump struggles to deliver a clear, coherent message. Harris’s team, by contrast, is adept at consistent messaging. They show it every day in newscasts, in the press, and in video clips on social media. Harris’ events and rallies are staged for television coverage, and her message of change and optimism is consistent.

To quickly improve its game, the Trump team could take advantage of old tricks practiced by the Nixon, Reagan and Bush campaigns. It starts with rigorously managing the candidate’s speaking time, using the “photo-headline-article method” pioneered by the Nixon White House.

Before Nixon planned an event, his aides would give him a memo specifying what the photo, sometimes called a “trip shot,” would be, what the title would be, and what would be reported about the event. The purpose of these predictions was not to be perfectly accurate, but to focus the staff’s planning.

Planning a photogenic event involves thinking about the location, the setting, the people in the photo, and the time of day to maximize visual appeal. Especially in a campaign setting, this often means creating the image through the actions of the actors in a chosen location, such as the iconic shot of Ronald and Nancy Reagan walking among the graves of fallen American soldiers on the 40th anniversary of the Normandy landings.

In June 1984, Reagan was running for re-election. The White House and his campaign saw the Normandy event as an opportunity to emphasize that Reagan’s defense buildup was aimed at preventing another world war. With the economy recovering, this was an important campaign theme.

I was a member of the Reagan White House preparatory team at the Normandy American War Cemetery and was responsible for preparing for the press so that we could get this photo. Credit for identifying this location as our ideal “travel photo” goes to Michael K. Deaver, Reagan’s deputy chief of staff. Months before the anniversary celebration, Deaver spotted the cemetery as an ideal opportunity to get Reagan’s message out. The photo below made headlines in newspapers and magazines around the world, and CBS televised Reagan’s visit to the cemetery live.

The title element of the Photo-Title-Article method identifies the issue the campaign wants to get across. The television equivalent of the title is the 30-second clip of the candidate that the campaign wants to feature on the news.

Trump’s August press conference, which highlighted rising food prices, had a strong theme, but he overused it by straying from his message and telling a reporter that he felt “entitled to make personal attacks” on Harris. Instead of a segment highlighting the struggles families face to pay for a grocery store, the headlines and excerpts in the newspapers presented Trump with an angry, vindictive tone.

Speaking of shopping carts, wouldn’t a pair of carts have made a better photo than the groceries and price signs scattered haphazardly across tables with no clear focal point for photographers? One cart 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, contrasted with the price at the end of Biden and Harris’ first terms.

Instead of the dozen prices and statistics on the charts Trump used, voters would see two clear, easy-to-understand dollar figures. There’s another lesson to be learned from all this: Economists love statistics, but ordinary people think in terms of how much money it costs to feed a family today versus when Trump left office. Keep it simple!

Trump’s press conference ended with a muddled message and a lack of compelling visuals to illustrate his point about food prices. Too many other recent Trump events suffer from similar flaws.

Deaver’s critical genius was that a strong visual image could convey the story we wanted to tell voters, even if a hostile press did not convey our message. Deaver believed that the media could criticize Reagan’s policies, but if the accompanying images were strong, Reagan’s message would still reach 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 stuck in voters’ memories than the words and numbers in speeches.

To win in November, the Trump team must take a crash course in old-school campaign planning. The candidate must suppress his feelings about Harris and focus on messages designed to win over swing voters. Under Reagan, we learned the old tricks from the Nixon White House and campaign veterans. The Bush presidencies continued that tradition.

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The Trump team has a wealth of expertise to draw on, but it had better act quickly.

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 Covert Operation Against Geraldine Ferarro