OK, but doesn’t it matter how close the fundamentals are? Let’s take the three most recent presidential elections as examples. In Bush-Gore, the fundamentals were very close and the election historically so. That means that every decision that either of the campaigns made could be credited/blamed with the result. Cheney’s debate performance, Gore’s decision not to use Clinton, and obviously anything in Florida all could be credibly cited by pundits as resulting in the Bush Presidency. Of course, when everything makes a difference, the argument quickly devolves to absurdity.

In the Obama-McCain race, the fundamentals predicted a Democratic victory and indeed Obama won handily. Here, almost no tactical decision in the campaign made a difference. Even the Palin nomination, which certainly hurt McCain can’t be blamed for his loss. In elections like this one, I think your point is completely correct, pundits need something to talk about, but it is all blather as none of the events during the campaign made a difference. Only something incredibly significant (a terrorist attack, a major scandal) could have altered the result. This also seems to apply to Kanye-Kris.

In between these two cases is the Bush-Kerry race, which is where Obama-Romney seems to fall. The fundamentals are ambiguous here, I tend to think they favor Obama (slightly improving economy, incumbency, solid personal approval ratings) but a reasonable argument could be made that they favor Romney (particularly the unemployment rate). In a situation like that, admittedly most tactical decisions like the Bain campaign will not change the result but it is conceivable that some will make a difference. For example, while you note that Swift Boating may not have made a difference, I’m willing to bet that the “flip-flop” campaign the Bush folks waged did (abetted by Kerry’s “I voted for the $88 billion before I voted against it.”)

The problem of course is that pundits who get paid to overemphasize small details will treat every tactical decision like the campaign is Bush-Gore, when that was a once-in-a-lifetime contest. Still that doesn’t mean that the campaigns aren’t making some decisions that aren’t important and may affect the final result.

(One final thought . . . even if tactical decisions don’t affect the final result, they may affect the final margin and that could affect close Congressional races. Small consolation to the loser of the presidential race to be sure but not meaningless, especially to the winner)

Blaming the manager seems to be the same thing in my mind…