Michael Shear makes an important point about Mitt Romney’s message in the past month: It’s been all over the place.  Instead of heeding advice from Republican wise owls like Ed Rogers, Romney has discarded his disciplined economic message and been talking about welfare, Medicare — courtesy of Paul Ryan — negative campaigning, foreign policy and Barack Obama’s supposed “war on religion.”

This is what strategists call “non-strategic” behavior.  Is it possible that Romney has polling that suggests his economic argument is running out of steam?  I doubt it. Frankly, I have no idea why the Romney campaign would dilute its “unique selling proposition” in  favor of diffusion. Shear speculates the shift may be the result of a renewed focus on exciting his base.  If so, that’s misguided.  The base wants to see Romney moving up and looking like a winner, not floundering with a message d’jour.

Romney’s advisers should see if they can buy a sign from the ’92 Clinton campaign on Ebay.  You know, the one that says, “It’s the economy….”

One rule of politics is to always go where you are welcome. This means the calendar and your message prioritize the issues on which you are credible and have an advantage. President Obama is personally admired, so he does well on light, non-news television. Look for him to do the late-night shows, "The View"-type formats and dozens, if not hundreds, of less-challenging local news interviews. The president should stay away from the likes of Chris Wallace, Neil Cavuto, Wolf Blitzer, Larry Kudlow or anything on CNBC, etc.

I have written before about the unique nature of political marketing and its negative impact on our democracy, and what I’ve said bears repeating as the negative ads pile up. Political advertising is the only form of marketing that consistently devalues its category. Candidates will practically do or say anything to get elected because unique to their sales challenge is the need to get 51 percent market share on a certain date. If you don’t, you not only lose, as people have pointed out, they also take your produce off the shelf.

Product marketing doesn't do this. Tide could attack Cheer to get a little market bump, but Cheer would respond, and soon nobody would be buying detergent because things would be, well, a little dirty. This is exactly the kind of market degradation that has made our politics so reviled by so many. The consequences are not limited to campaigns; they now impact our entire democracy. How can you govern without any semblance of trust? And how you can have any trust when candidates have won office in a way that has not only compromised their credibility but reinforced the cynicism that already infects democracy?

For those who believe the once-reasonable Mitt Romney has been body-snatched, it is worth reading this recent interview with him in Fortune magazine. In it, Romney lays out a strong critique of President Obama and a reasonably coherent top-line economic plan.

The interview plays to Romney's strength: He sounds like a pragmatic problem solver. The problem, of course, is that this interview is so at odds with his on-going courtship of the Tea Party and his overheated rhetoric about how Obama is destroying capitalism. More interviews like this one and he could be dangerous.

Vice President Biden’s latest gaffe shouldn’t sidetrack Republicans. Nothing Biden says will drive any votes or make a difference in this election. The GOP ticket will look small if they spend any time responding to the vice president. It didn’t have to come to this for the able Biden, who remains popular in Washington. Obama marginalized the formerly powerful chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee a long time ago, but that is for another post.

Yesterday’s “chains” comments  were typical. I couldn’t tell whether Biden was trying to act black or trying to act Southern. Surely blacks didn’t need to hear what Biden said in order to support Obama. The Obama campaign hopes that white Virginians don’t think that Biden was talking about them. Either way, it wasn’t funny or effective. When I saw the video clip, I winced for Joe Biden, not about what he said.

Mitt Romney’s selection of Paul Ryan as his running mate was Biden’s final push into the abyss of the irrelevant. Biden was the biggest loser when Ryan was selected. Who is the least relevant member of either ticket? Who will have the smallest crowds at campaign events, get the least TV coverage but have the longest toe-curling highlight reel of gaffes and bloopers? You get my point. So Biden has completed his descent into a clownish cliché. Former New York mayor Rudy Giuliani was a little harsh on the vice president when he said  that Biden wouldn’t be an effective president, but his sentiments are widely shared.

It remains to be seen if Ryan will be a game changer or even a net plus, but there is no doubt that voters will take him seriously in 2012; he will matter, and he has a future.

Note to readers:

Between now and the Republican National Convention I’ll be traveling to various points between California and Greece. The summer doldrums are here, and my posts could begin to reflect that, although I’m not 100 percent sure what a doldrum is. 

Anyway, I have spent the past three days in Santa Monica, Calif., at the beach with my kids. The bike path between Santa Monica and Venice Beach offers some of the best people-watching on the planet. I was hoping that my observations and conversations with assorted strangers would offer some fresh political insights, but so far none has revealed itself. It is a pretty eclectic group on the beach and on the piers in Santa Monica and Venice Beach, and I’m not sure that this crowd would make a relevant focus group for any particular aspect of the 2012 race. 

For example, my kids and I have worn University of Alabama football jerseys and T-shirts since we have been here, and not one person has nodded and uttered a friendly “Roll Tide.” I think there must be more foreigners here than I thought. More later . . . .