Kevin Madden

To modernize, Kevin Madden argues, the GOP needs to reinvent itself as the ideas party.Politics: What projects are you working on for Glover Park Group right now?Madden: Well, essentially what I do here is run mini campaigns. Oftentimes people have issues that meet that nexus of politics and policy, and they want to get better at making their arguments to audiences on Capitol Hill, within the administration and the public, as well as other tailored audiences like trade magazines, the financial press, the political press. So I work with a lot of folks in the energy futures market. I’m actually working with some groups that you could consider progressive that are trying to build audiences in the center and center-right—like modernizing Foreign Assistance Network, which is probably more closely identified with Democrat constituencies.Politics: It’s a very different environment than the campaign trail.Madden: I’ll tell you one thing, the stress level is not as intense. I think when you’re in a campaign, it’s kind of like living near the airport. You know, everybody complains about the noise near an airport, and then when you move away all of a sudden you can’t sleep at night because it’s too quiet. That’s what it’s like on campaigns. The cadence of it all grows comforting. When it’s gone, all of a sudden you don’t know what to do with yourself.Politics: Speaking of the campaign trail, do you think Republicans in 2008 lost their message—or did they lose the message war?
Madden: We didn’t really have a message. I remember someone was asking about the 2008 campaign, and they said, “It seemed to me that the Republicans used this tactic in order to reach this group of voters.” I admonished
the questioner by saying, “Don’t confuse anything that we did on the campaign in 2008 with a strategy.”
If you boil the question down, the Republicans basically had to answer one fundamental question, and it was “Why us? Why should you, the voter, vote for us?” I did a little media training with some candidates this cycle, and when I asked them that question, I stumped them every time.Politics: Everybody and their brother is now offering Republicans advice about answering that question. How can the party renew its appeal to voters?
Madden: I try to answer questions about what do we do next with a very simple mantra: The Republican Party has to mod-ernize, not moderate. A lot of people say, “Well, do we have to change our policies to appeal to a wider sector of the electorate that is possibly becoming more progressive?” I still think fundamentally we’re a center-right country, but Republicans haven’t really modernized our message on issues. Like, for example, energy and the environment.
Compare our messaging to folks like Chevron, BP and ExxonMobil. Technically, these are the “bad guys”; this is Big Oil. And when you look at how they’ve engaged consumers—who for all intents and purposes are voters—they’ve talked about innovation, using technology so that people use less energy, so that therefore it’s cheaper and cleaner, therefore the environment is safer. And they’ve gone from marketing themselves as “Big Oil” to “energy companies.”
Then look at the Republican Party this past year. We have our vice presidential candidate standing in front of a group of 25,000 robocalled supporters chanting “drill baby drill,” and when they applaud we think we’ve found a message, and we didn’t. We just created a slogan. We’ve confused our message with a slogan that says nothing to that larger group of the big middle that cares about a comprehensive, innovative approach on a major policy issue.Politics: Jon Henke wrote recently on The Next Right website that the Republican Party needs to have a story line to motivate the grassroots.
Madden: Well, I think Jon and I are saying the same thing. The Republican Party has always flourished when it was a party of ideas and was closely associated with reform. You look at some of these surveys about what people like or don’t like about Republicans—we’re not even associated with ideas anymore. We have to convince the American public that we deserve the responsibility of governing again because we have ideas and we’re going to reform the way the country works.Politics: One of the strengths of Romney’s campaign was that he came across as someone open to innovative ideas. Who else fits that mold in the party right now?
Madden: I think Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal on Medicare and Social Security. Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty is a smart government guy, and he’s looking at how Republicans can reach middle class voters. I think obviously Romney on healthcare and the economy, on transforming the military. Some of the leaders in the party, too, like Eric Cantor, are particularly good at reaching some of the younger voters.Politics: Are these the people you think you’ll be seeing in 2012?
Madden: I think all talk about 2012 ought to cease at least until 2010. We have to worry about building our infrastructure, rebuilding our networks between the national party and the state parties, smashing these hierarchal institutions, and instead building a bottom-up movement of grassroots Republicans across the country. Then, focus on ideas. I think if we can fix these things, you’ll start to see people who are leaders on some of these ideas.Politics: Is there anything you think people can steal from the Romney campaign?
Madden: We did a very good job of not looking at just the room. Meaning that when Romney stepped into a room of 250 people, in years past the story ended there. But we built a really integrated communications apparatus so that the second that speech was over, we disseminated everything—the transcripts, the audio, the video—to our supporters. That was sort of new for campaigns.Politics: Okay, here’s my harder question. What single decision did you make that you wish you could take back and do over?
Madden: I think about this all the time. When John McCain lobbed the accusation that Gov. Romney had supported—quote—timetables for Iraq, we were in the middle of an economic debate. And we were winning the economic debate. And they laid bait all over a national security debate, over who was stronger on Iraq—areas that, with John McCain’s resume, he’s hard to beat. We took the bait, and we spent the last couple days in Florida off-message at a time where if we had won Florida, I think we would have been the nominee. I lie awake tapping my thumbs and counting the seconds wondering what would have happened.