Almost exactly 20 years ago, Al Gore announced that his new campaign chairman would be Bill Daley, who replaced former congressman Tony Coelho, who replaced former White House aide Craig Smith. “It used to be we couldn’t stay on message for a week,” a senior Gore aide was quoted as saying.

It didn’t matter. The vice president went on to lose to George W. Bush, even while winning the popular vote.

President Trump’s decision Wednesday to replace his campaign manager, Brad Parscale, with longtime operative Bill Stepien is the latest reminder that such strategists are expendable--and often sacrificed when things aren’t going well. Parscale, whose expertise is in digital operations, will stay on in that role.

TRUMP REPLACES CAMPAIGN MANAGER BRAD PARSCALE, AS POLLS SHOW BIDEN AHEAD

Trump aides have been insisting for weeks that Parscale was not in trouble, but with the president sinking in the polls and the campaign struggling in the midst of a pandemic, he clearly was.

The move amounts to a public admission that the campaign needs to shift gears, despite Trump’s upbeat talk. You don’t dump the team leader when things are going swimmingly well.

The president likes to dismiss polls--a new Wall Street Journal/NBC survey has him trailing Joe Biden by 11 points, and Quinnipiac has him down 15--but they’re hardly cause for celebration. In fact, 50 percent of those questioned in the Journal poll say there is no chance they will vote for him.

Trump, whose administration has been marked by high turnover (four chiefs of staff, four national security advisers, four press secretaries) is accustomed to shake-ups. Trump went through a similar scenario in 2016, when he fired Corey Lewandowski, who brought him to the brink of the nomination, in favor of Paul Manafort, who wound up in prison. It wasn’t until August that he tapped Kellyanne Conway, who righted the campaign and got him past the finish line.

Yet the reality is that Donald Trump is the de facto campaign chairman, and Jared Kushner is the day-to-day manager. If Trump has been less than disciplined, or his handling of the pandemic isn’t inspiring confidence, that’s not likely to change just because Stepien, who had been deputy campaign manager, is nominally in charge.

The Washington Post reports that “Kushner had to protect Parscale, a close ally whom he is viewed to control, but he is also seen as being close with Stepien.”

Parscale had become something of a rock star, leading to this understated observation in the New York Times: “Mr. Stepien maintains a low profile, which Mr. Trump prefers, and something Mr. Pascale did not do.” There is only one star in the Trump presidency. (See Fauci, Anthony.)

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Also, “the president at times berated Mr. Parscale over real and perceived transgressions, sometimes screaming at him and once threatening to sue him.” What’s more, he sometimes took calls from beside his pool in Florida (including during a quarantine period) rather than work at the Northern Virginia headquarters.

The beginning of the end for Parscale was when he allowed expectations for the Tulsa rally to spin out of control, creating an embarrassment when Covid-19 produced a low turnout.

The promotion caps a comeback for Stepien, who managed both of Chris Christie’s campaigns for New Jersey governor. Christie fired Stepien six years ago for a “lack of judgment” in the wake of the Bridgegate scandal, signaling that he had lost confidence in his inner circle. Stepien was a hardball player who tried to reward the governor’s friends and punish his enemies, during the period that other aides engineered the closing of several George Washington Bridge lanes. Stepien also worked in the presidential campaigns of Rudy Giuliani and John McCain before playing a role in Trump’s 2016 effort.

In the coming days, we’ll be reading stories about Stepien making his mark, perhaps bringing in new people, perhaps testing new campaign themes. A successful presidential campaign needs sharp and savvy staffers. But with 72 percent of people in that Journal poll saying the country is on the wrong track, it’s ultimately up to the incumbent to turn things around.