Perhaps I am running the risk of sounding like a broken record on this blog - but I think that there are some points that can still be teased out from continuing on the same subject. I have been talking for a few days now about the difference between the perpetual campaign and the real campaign.

One of my difficulties with popular media analysis of the presidential campaign is that it fails to distinguish between the two. This, I think, is a major obstacle in coming to an understanding of our electoral process. Namely, journalists and pundits fail to appreciate fully that, while candidates were busy doing stuff in the summer, there is a difference between the summer stuff and the fall stuff. In the fall, you begin to make your broad-based appeals to the voters.

The reason is quite simple: voters aren't paying attention in the summer, and so your (very expensive) advertisements will fall upon deaf ears. Oh sure - they might respond to your message in the short term. But, suppose you spend all of your advertising money in the summer, and your opponent spends all of his advertising money in the fall. Who are the voters going to vote for? Your opponent. So, you wait until the fall.

This has generally been the rule - with the exception of Mitt Romney. He spent in the summer - I believe - not because he thought he could win voters over for good. He spent because he knew media outlets would be conducting polls in the summer. If they saw him in first place in those states, they would put him in the top tier of candidates, which would guarantee him a viable spot in the fall.

Other candidates have not done this because they either did not have the money (Huckabee, for instance) - or they did not have to get their names out there (Giuliani and Clinton, for instance). These two candidates could, and should, wait until the fall.

The same goes with campaign visits. You do more visits in the fall than in the summer because - all together now! - that is when voters are paying attention.

This is precisely what Giuliani has done. And yet, we saw this article in the Politico yesterday:

Rudy Giuliani, whose presidential campaign strategy originally downplayed New Hampshire, is now making a major bid to win the Granite State primary.

The new push includes spending four days in the state this week, the culmination of an effort which had him more in New Hampshire in October than in any other traditional early state. [Snip]

Now, though, Giuliani is seeing some encouraging signs in New Hampshire and is responding with new commitments of time and money.

The fact that Giuliani is now advertising in New Hampshire, whereas in the summer he was not, is taken not as a sign that his campaign team recognizes that October is the time to advertise. It is, instead, taken as a sign that his team switched its strategy. Ditto the increased number of visits. This speaks to the point I am trying to make. You only draw this conclusion about Giuliani if you fail to see a difference between advertising in July and advertising in October, between visiting when the Yankees are still playing baseball and visiting after they have been eliminated.*

There are multiple problems with the Politico's thesis, beside the fact that it does not comport with Campaigns and Elections 101.

First, let us not forget this Giuliani radio ad, which debuted in September in New Hampshire:

MoveOn.org is the most powerful left-wing group in the country. They spent millions electing anti-war liberals. And publicly brag how the Democratic Party is theirs -- bought and paid for.

Why is MoveOn attacking Rudy Giuliani? Because he's their worst nightmare. They know Rudy is a Republican who can beat the Democrats. And they know, no matter what they say -- Rudy will never, ever back down.

This ad started airing while that CNN/WMUR poll - which showed Rudy down just 1 point - was being taken. Why is that important? This is the poll the Politico references as an explanation for Giuliani's shifting strategy! So, the advertisements caused the good poll numbers, which caused the advertisements.

Furthermore, from June 1 through August 31, Giuliani made eighteen campaign appearances in New Hampshire, twenty-six in Iowa, and six in South Carolina. By comparison, he made ten appearances in Florida, nine appearances in California, two in New York and one in New Jersey. His summer strategy emphasized the small, early states over the big, later ones by about 2:1. So, I guess the Politico's thesis is that Rudy had three campaign strategies in a single month. Around Labor Day, he still planned to play in small places like Iowa and New Hampshire. Then in early September, he shifted to the big state strategy - only to shift back in mid-September with his ad on the New Hampshire and Iowa radio waves.

Finally, just so we're clear about this up-tick in Rudy's numbers, the RCP average on June 11 had him at 17.7% in New Hampshire. Today he is at 21%. So, the Politico wants to argue that a 3.3% shift in his numbers induced a shift in the Giuliani campaign's whole primary strategy.

Oh, and it has one other problem - an explicit denial from Team Rudy:

While Giuliani aides say the moves do not reveal a major shift, his staff and supporters plainly have a new optimism about their prospects in the Granite State.

"I think you're on to something," quipped Mike DuHaime, Giuliani's campaign manager, acknowledging a "more aggressive" effort in the state since the end of the summer. [Snip]

"Everybody has mistakenly called our strategy a 'Feb. 5 strategy,' DuHaime said.

"We do have a long-term approach, but that doesn't mean it's all about Feb. 5."

He called the Giuliani plan a "mixture of both" the traditional early states and those on Feb. 5.

OK - so we have the logic of the political campaign dictating that a candidate like Giuliani amp up his pitch in the fall. We have an alternative explanation - the changed strategy theory - that makes no internal sense, that does not fit the facts, and paints the picture of a campaign team that is inconsistent (this is the same campaign team that has been run professionally and well for eight or so months). AND we have Giuliani's people telling us that the strategy has been that they were always going to amp up in the fall.

And yet the thesis of the story is: Giuliani changes strategy.

* - My wife was at NYU when Rudy was mayor, and so she knows a good deal about the way Hizzoner works. She has wondered whether Rudy can continue to campaign next fall if the Yankees make the World Series. I think she might be on to something there. What happens if Rudy skips out on campaign visits to swing states for the sake of Game Seven? What happens if the Yankees play an NL team from a swing state - like the Cardinals or the Pirates (hey...it could happen...the law of large numbers demands that the Bucs are gonna turn it around eventually)? A snarky baseball comment from Rudy could turn the whole election. Perhaps Republicans should get Rudy to sign a "No Yankees Pledge" instead of a "No Taxes Pledge."