"The View from the Sidelines"

This article originally appeared in the October 7 edition of The Weekly Standard.Written by Fred Barnes

When you’ve been involved in presidential politics as long as Charlie Black, things get pretty simple. A good candidate is one who can communicate and isn’t mistake-prone. News coverage matters as much as ever. “The basic things don’t change,” he says.

Black believes there’s a regular pattern to the way Republican presidential campaigns unfold. “The natural flow of the race narrows the field to two candidates after the first few primaries,” he told me. This pits a mainstream Republican against an outsider, and the mainstream candidate always wins the nomination.

When Black told me this, I wasn’t so sure. Then I checked every race starting with 1976, when Black worked for his first presidential candidate as Ronald Reagan’s Midwest coordinator. Black was right. Here’s the list, starting in 1976: Ford, Reagan, Reagan, Bush, Bush, Dole, W. Bush, W. Bush, McCain, Romney.

Once the narrowing occurs this cycle, Black suspects the mainstream candidate will be Jeb Bush, Marco Rubio, or John Kasich. The outsider will come from the group of nonpoliticians—Donald Trump, Ben Carson, Carly Fiorina. If it’s Trump, he’ll lose, Black says, because he can’t get to 50 percent. His negatives are simply too high.

To reach the one-on-one stage, a candidate has to win at least one early state. “If you don’t win one of the first four—in 2016, maybe one of the first five—you’re not going to be competitive,” Black says. Press coverage vanishes and money gets scarce.

Black, 68, who has worked for Republican candidates in the past 10 races as a top strategist, hasn’t signed up with anyone seeking the 2016 nomination. “I have six personal friends running,” he says. “It’s easier to sit in the bleachers and watch than run against any friend.” The six are Bush, Rubio, Kasich, Fiorina, Lindsey Graham, and Trump. Black adds that while he counts Trump as a friend, “I’m not for him.”

His career as strategist has had twists and turns. He was national political director for Reagan in 1980, got fired on the day of the New Hampshire primary along with campaign boss John Sears, then returned to work for Reagan’s reelection in 1984. “By then, I’d made up with all the guys who got us fired.”

In 1988, he advised Jack Kemp. Once Kemp dropped out, he joined the elder Bush’s campaign and worked for him again in 1992 as the senior outside consultant. In 1996, Black was Phil Gramm’s strategist. Gramm, like Kemp, was positioned to be the top conservative candidate. But he was “ambushed” by Pat Buchanan, much as Kemp had been outflanked on the right by Pat Robertson. In 2000 and 2004, Black helped the younger Bush.

Black was one of John McCain’s only strategists in 2008 with presidential campaign experience. And McCain happens to be one of his favorite candidates. Four years later, he advised Mitt Romney. “I didn’t have much impact on that campaign.”

Nationally televised debates are events about which Black has especially strong views. Candidates shouldn’t say anything they haven’t “thought through and rehearsed .  .  . no matter what the questions.” And their advisers should be able to anticipate most of the questions.

Debates, even early ones, now “weed people out,” he says. When Rick Perry was excluded from the top-tier Republican debate, he was doomed. Scott Walker’s fundraising dried up after weak performances in two GOP debates. Debates forced them out of the race.

Hillary Clinton, in contrast, was well prepared and sharp in last week’s Democratic debate. She even had “a good demeanor, which she obviously rehearsed,” Black says. But he expects whatever Clinton gained from her performance will be fleeting.

“She’s not likable,” he says. “She’s not a good speaker. She doesn’t have an issue. .  .  . Voters in both parties realize the economy is not good. If I were her, I’d run against Obama.” In the debate, she inched away from him on a few policies. But asked how she differs from Obama, she said she’d be the first woman president. “She can’t talk her way out of anything,” Black says. “Bill could.”

In Black’s view, there are only three Republicans with a reasonable chance of winning the White House in 2016—Bush, Rubio, Kasich. A major reason: They are not anti-immigrant. Black believes the GOP nominee must cut into Democratic dominance of the Hispanic vote. Romney failed to. Bush, Rubio, and Kasich can appeal to Hispanics, he says.

Four names are on Black’s list of best presidential candidates. “I used to call Bill Clinton the great communicator, even more than Reagan,” he says. His speeches were expressed “in terms people understood.” His attacks on opponents included humor. “He didn’t look mean,” Black says. And when Clinton got in trouble, “people wanted to forgive him.”

The best, he says, was Reagan, partly because “he was not lazy. He never gave a speech” without thoroughly going over it. He was disciplined. He knew the value of repetition. He “had confidence in what he was going to do.”

Black says he learned from spending time with Reagan in private sessions how smart he was. In 1979, Reagan predicted the Soviets would lose the Cold War because America “would beat them economically,” Black says. Nobody else “even thought that.” Reagan was right.

John McCain and the elder George Bush were exceptional candidates, in Black’s opinion. McCain won the GOP nomination on the strength of his mastery of town hall meetings. “Bush 41 really got on his game,” Black says. Democrat Mike Dukakis succumbed to Bush’s attack. “He had a lot of liberal views and he wouldn’t hedge on them. That was the key to our coming back from 17 points down.”

Black is a skeptic about one of the new phenomena in presidential races—super-PACs. He prefers candidates to “spend the money and be accountable for ads. The super-PACs aren’t accountable.” In the summer of 2012, the folks who ran the super-PAC backing Romney “didn’t spend the money” to counter a wave of vicious Obama ads. Romney was left unprotected. “I never understood that,” Black says.