England for Obama

There’s a fascinating and informative piece on the Huffington Post by author and political strategy expert George Lakoff.

After talking about ‘framing’ the issues - pointing out that the Obama anti-McCain/Palin ‘They’re no mavericks’ ad simply hammered home the idea of McCain/Palin being mavericks, instead of putting them on the defensive over another issue - the main thrust of Lakoff’s piece is the idea of what makes a successful election campaign, and why the Republicans are getting it right, and the Dems are getting it wrong:

“The [Democrat] campaign is facing bigger internal problems. Let’s start with the statement by Rick Davis, McCain’s campaign manager, that the campaign is ‘not about the issues’.

In 1980, Richard Wirthlin - Ronald Reagan’s chief strategist - made a fateful discovery. In his first poll he discovered that most people didn’t like Reagan’s positions on the issues, but nevertheless wanted to vote for Reagan. The reason, he figured out, is that voters vote for president not primarily on the issues, but on five other factors - “character” factors: Values; Authenticity; Communication and connection; Trust; and Identity. In the Reagan-Carter and Reagan-Mondale debates, Mondale and Carter were ahead on the issues and lost the debates, because the debates were not about the issues, but about those other five character factors. George W. Bush used the same observation in his two races. Gore and Kerry ran on the issues. Bush ran on those five factors.

In the 2008 nomination campaign, Hillary ran on the issues, while Obama ran on those five factors and won. McCain is now running a Reagan-Bush style character-based campaign on the Big Five factors. But Obama has switched to a campaign based “on the issues,” like Hillary, Gore, and Kerry. Obama has reality on his side. And the campaign is assuming that if you just tell people the truth, they will reason to the right conclusion. That’s false and they should know better…

Hillary played the policy wonk and lost. Barack ran on what his biography showed about his values; his willingness to say what he believed (authenticity); his ability to connect, communicate and build trust through his sincerity; and on the use of his biography to get voters to identify with him. The beauty of Obama’s nomination campaign, right through his acceptance speech at the convention, was his ability to frame realities through running on those five character factors. The campaign performed brilliantly. But post-Palin, the Obama-Biden campaign seems to have become the Gore-Kerry-Hillary campaign. They are running on 18th Century theory of Enlightenment reason: If you just tell people the facts, they will follow their self-interest and reason to the right conclusion…

In the nomination campaign, [Obama] used his personal narrative to communicate about the country’s needs. Obama needs to go back to being Obama.”

One hopes to god that the Democrat strategists will wake up to Lakoff’s advice. This isn’t just about Obama getting tough or angry, as many liberal commentators in America are begging him to do. This is about Obama and Biden connecting with the American people. McCain and Palin may have all the terrible policies in the world - but as Lakoff points out, conservatives “are folks who often vote against their economic self-interest and instead vote on their identity as conservatives”. So as long as they identify with McPalin, and hear Obiden talk about nothing but “the real issues”, they will vote Republican. Talking about the issues - and trusting that the voters are hearing what you’re saying about them - through the white noise of hockey moms/POW legends/’maverick’ personalities just isn’t working. It’s a sad truth, but it’s true.

And the thing is: in Barack Obama and Joe Biden, the Democrats actually do have two men full of character and charisma; two men with stories that many American people could relate to (just as they’re relating right now to Sarah Palin and John McCain - although quite how they can ‘relate’ to the latter beats me); two men whose concerns are the same as those working or disadvantaged Americans that they’ve spent much of their lives so far trying to help.

There’s a big reason for optimism here - for believing that, unlike in previous elections, the Dems aren’t going to blow it. Obama and Biden aren’t charmless Washington suits. They’re not dull policy wonks. They’re not Al Gore or John Kerry. But they and their strategists have got change tack, and quickly. They’ve got to inspire people again - as they did pre-Palin - to simply be Obama and Biden, to go on the offence and to stop playing defence*. And then they’ve got to think about breakfast.

*Note: to be said American-stylee, ie: OFFence and DEEEfence

Tags: Campaign, george lakoff, huffington post, Strategy

This entry was posted on Friday, September 12th, 2008 at 5:03 am and is filed under Opinion, Press Coverage, Strategy. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.