I remember how I once asked a prospective client, who was an incumbent governor who wanted to run for higher office, how his upcoming campaign will be different from the previous ones. I could see in his face that he had never thought about it this way. While he had been thinking about his campaign for some time, he was basically envisioning it along the same lines as his past campaigns. And it’s understandable: if you have done something successfully, the inclination is to do it the same way again.

I nevertheless always tell my clients who run for re-election and particularly those who run for higher office that their next campaign has to be different from their last ones. It’s actually one of my first and important pieces of advice in particular for senior politicians. Great campaigns may well contain elements of previous great campaigns, but they should never be a simple rerun. The candidate in question has evolved, there will likely be a new opponent, media and technology have evolved, and most importantly, the electorate has evolved. If public opinion were static, people like me wouldn’t have a job.