There is a strange new tactic that has become surprisingly popular in recent months - the "campaign memo to interested parties." So far, Clinton, Obama, McCain, and now Romney have offered one up. This is what Romney had to say, via the Washington Post:

"Rudy Giuliani continues to lead the Republican field as he has since polling on the race began last year," writes (Romney campaign senior strategist Alex) Gage in a document dated July 20. "However, Giuliani's support began to ebb in February and has slipped 2-3 points per month since then."

As evidence, Gage points to a compilation of national polls done by Charles Franklin, a professor at the University of Wisconsin, that seems to show similar negative trend lines in national polls for both Giuliani and Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) (For what it's worth, the Giuliani operation pushed back hard on Franklin's comparison; "The Giuliani campaign is in a very strong position at this point and is clearly best-positioned to win the primary," director of strategy Brent Seaborn wrote in a direct rebuttal to Franklin's argument.) Even if you grant that Giuliani's slippage in national surveys has stabilized, Gage says, there is ample evidence in polling conducted in early voting states that it is Romney, not Hizzoner, who is in the best position.

Giuliani "is now trailing in four of the five key states that fall before Feb. 5," Gage writes. The memo goes on to note that the average of public polls conducted in June and July show Romney leading comfortably in Iowa and New Hampshire and more narrowly in Nevada. Former senator Fred Thompson (R-Tenn.) leads the way in South Carolina, while Giuliani is a strong first choice only in Florida.

Here's the problem with these memos. They are politicking disguised as analysis. The polls are not nearly meaningful enough to support the conclusions they draw. The race is fluid, and it is too early to make anything approaching such claims. Why? It is because voters - unlike political elites - are not yet paying enough attention to the political campaign. Their opinions are not really as stable and well-informed as so many pundits mistakenly take them to be. So, the answers they provide in polls are of little value for inferring what the election results will be.

In a strange way, though, I actually appreciate the Romney memo - for it gives me an opportunity to review an intuition I have had about him for a while.

Why is Romney gaining in the polls? Is it real strength, or is it something less than that? I think it could very well be the latter. I think it could be because he and he alone is flooding the airwaves with advertisements. Again, as I said, voters are not actively thinking about the election right now. They see all these Romney ads (at least in Iowa and New Hampshire) and he is placed in their minds. So - when they offer a response to a pollster, they answer "Romney." But this does not mean that they are true Romney supporters. After all, the other candidates have not yet begun the television advertising blitzes. This is not coincidental - if Giuliani et al. thought that the voters Romney "wins" in July will stay Romney voters through January, they would be on the airwaves as much, too!

I suspect that Romney knows that this support is not per se real. I think he has spent all of this money so that he can gain access to the media's "top tier." He's low nationwide (and he is not gaining; no real movement since April) - but he's leading in Iowa and New Hampshire. So the media treats him like a top-tier candidate. The strategy is to earn the support or estimation of the political elites who pay attention to presidential elections so early (but who fail to appreciate fully how a lead now means very little). This memo speaks exactly to this strategy.

On the one hand, I find it infuriating because Romney is simply trading off the general ignorance of political elites about average voters (the former think the latter are exactly like they - they know as much about politics, they pay as much attention, etc). When campaigns talk about presidential polls from Nevada in mid-July, 2007, they legitimize a form of political analysis that really is not legitimate.

On the other hand, there is a dash of brilliance to it that I cannot help but admire. Here's a question. Why is Romney the only top-tier candidate between the two parties who was not a legitimate celebrity before the campaign began? Of the seven top-tier candidates - Clinton, Obama, Edwards, McCain, Giuliani, Thompson, and Romney - the former Massachusetts governor is the only one who was not a bona fide star to begin with. How is it that Romney - and only Romney - is the non-celebrity to have broken into the top? A big reason has to do with his very well-conceived, well-executed campaign strategy, which - as I said - includes running up his numbers in Iowa and New Hampshire. This memo is the latest action in keeping with that strategy: he is looking to cultivate elite support as a prelude to his mass campaign (not to mention build name recognition, which is another function of this advertising). He seems to be doing a damned fine job of it.