This presidential election will test the maxim that there's no such thing as bad publicity. The Republican candidate is operating on the theory that policy and issues don't matter. If the candidate can dominate the news cycle, meaning that he is the topic of more televised conversations than his opponent, he will win the election. He believes he's doing very well, and by his measure, he is. He dominates the national news every day and every night. He's all anyone can talk about. He's confident he can continue to dominate every news cycle between now and the election. Every voter in the country will have heard his name more than any other. No one has ever run a presidential campaign on that theory.
The reason the Republican candidate doesn't need to know any policy is because he only uses a single measure for his relative success or failure each day. If he's the lead story on a majority of national and cable newscasts, then he's won the day. He's quite right in saying that people will be writing books about his campaign. Critics of his methods miss the point. The more outrage they express, night after night, the more he believes he's winning.
The wager he's making is that the winner of the election will be the candidate who has the best ratings.
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