Bad advance work?

As a field guy I am honor bound to hate advance people. This Romney event sounds like someone did not do some crowd/room management.

In all seriousness this is the headline that NO campaign ever wants to read and why advance work is so important.

"Small Crowd Greets Romney's Mich. Push"

There is no such thing as a small crowd. There is only bad advance work and rooms that are too large. This next part really hurts...

"(WARREN, Mich.) —Despite embracing Michigan as the heart of his bid to revive his campaign, Republican Mitt Romney was greeted by an anemic crowd Friday as he began his final push for votes in the crucial primary. No more than 150 people were on hand for his appearance at Macomb Community College's Center for Alternative Fuels, in a space set up for an audience twice that size. Romney delivered an unusually short, 13-minute address, breaking with recent practice and taking no questions from his audience."

So what is the big deal?

The pea brains in the press pool will immediately begin to infer all kinds of things that may or may not be true. "losing momentum", "sluggish start", "desperate", none of it is ever stuff you want associated with your campaign and some artful pipe and drape work can usually save a bad event.