Forwarding the Conversation

Is it possible for a candidate to run a campaign that both gets him/her elected AND provides a mandate from which to govern effectively? That is the question I will be tackling in the coming days.

Reframing the Purpose

What is the purpose of a political campaign? This isn’t a hard question to answer; quite clearly, the purpose of a campaign is to get a particular candidate elected to a particular office. If that candidate does not get elected to the office they seek, he or she does not get to serve. The idea of the political campaign is rather simple because in our system – when you run for office – you either win or lose.

The idea of the political campaign becomes more complicated when you dig deeper. How negative is too negative? What principles are you unwilling to compromise on, and are the costs of compromising on core principles? What type of tactics are you willing to resort to in order to win? These are just some of the questions each candidate should ask themselves before forming a campaign committee.

Some questions for you before proceeding: how would you answer the questions above? How would you like your elected officials to answer these questions?

I think that we can all agree that particular campaign rhetoric and tactics are damaging to our democratic process. Negative ads that resort to name-calling and the spread of rumors and half-truths are just a few examples. Campaign rallies where elected officials use demagoguery as a means to anger a group of people, or pit one person against another, are more examples of damaging campaign tactics. Policy proposals that are specifically designed to divide the electorate are more subtle, but equally as damaging. These campaign tactics are a reality in our system, and I’ve heard both friends and colleagues rail against them. As a former and current political operative, I can say that these tactics are employed because they are effective. When you are running a campaign that holds victory as its central focus, you will do whatever it takes to win.

My proposal is that we, as an electorate, hold our elected officials accountable by forcing them to run principled campaigns that focus on victory as a means to govern, rather than victory at the expense of governance. What I mean is that our current political system often rewards those who demagogue, divide, and conquer. As I discussed in a previous post, this puts the elected official in an electoral box. In essence, by pandering to the extremes of their party, they find compromise – once elected – an impossible task due to fear of being un-elected in the next campaign cycle.

Furthermore, candidates for public office should adopt a strategy where they run to govern. I believe that when candidates think about the dynamics of governance during the campaign, the paradigm shifts and many tactics that were once attractive become ineffective. While I was not present during John McCain’s first run for President, back in 200, I believe there is evidence that his campaign was run with governance in mind. The “Straight Talk Express” became the image that embodied his bid for President. He promised the American people that he would tell it to them straight, whether they wanted to hear it or not. That initial run thrust him into the national spotlight and gave him the platform to be the Republican Party’s nominee in 2008. While McCain’s strategy changed in the 2008 campaign, I think it is fair to say that his “Maverick” streak is what the American People found so attractive about him during and after the 2000 campaign. Therefore, I argue, that the American People actually crave this type of leadership.

The American People would rather see a candidate who can be trusted to stay true to themselves rather than someone who agrees with them on all the issues. Politics is a blood sport, and nobody is going to agree with you all the time. As a candidate it’s easy to resort back to the idea that “I can’t change anything unless I get elected,” but I would retort that some folks who get elected aren’t able to change anything because of the way they get elected. By focusing on the campaign as a means to effective governance, I believe that candidates will be forced to think about the consequences of their campaign’s actions on the electoral climate of the country.

Over the next weeks I will focus attention on drilling down into the campaign structure to highlight some ways that campaigns can be changed to incentivize more effective governance and a healthier democratic process.

Until next time… stay classy democracy

VOTE!!! It doesn’t matter who you vote for just go out to the polls and vote. Take a lawn chair, some magazines, a six pack of beer, a bottle of wine, a picnic basket, or whatever will make you happy. Get motivated by watching the video below! Also, if you don’t know where to vote go to www.maps.google.com/vote

Below is a guest post by a friend of mine named Ryan Alban. Ryan is currently a student at Webster University in St. Louis where he is the President of the College Republicans and involved with the One Campaign:

…The 2008 Presidential Election is less than 48 hours away and some of the same subjects are being discussed as have been in every previous election. One of those is “will the youth vote turn out?” Watch the video below and then read the questions posed and my response to them.

When did you first register to vote?

How old were you when you first (actually) voted?

Do you vote in every election or only during the presidential elections (every 4 years)?

What led you to vote for the first time? Why?

Is it a foregone conclusion that those youth who DO vote, will vote for Obama?

I registered to vote on the morning of my 18th birthday. My intermediate driver’s license expired, as I had received it 2 years earlier, and I had to head to the DMV to renew it and receive my full DL. When I got through the line, the clerk asked me if I would like to register to vote. With pride and without blinking, I answered yes. Of course…who wouldn’t want to register to vote? Not to mention, they already had my information and all I had to do was sign on the dotted line. The rest was taken care of for me.

Everyone says that your 16th, 18th, and 21st birthdays are the most important. When you turn 16, you can get your driver’s license. 18, buy cigarettes and pornography. 21, the last big blow out, you can head to the local bar and buy yourself a drink. These rites of passage have become ingrained in daily life. For me, 18 did not mean lung cancer or a hearty laugh with a good porno. My eighteenth birthday meant that I could proudly sign up for selective service and register to vote. I have voted in every election ever since. This year will be my FIRST presidential election, and I will head to the local precinct and wait in line all day if I have to. My voice will be heard. Who wouldn’t want theirs to be?

Year after year, the youth get riled up and active whether it is in a social movement or behind a candidate. Yet election after election, our numbers are dismal. As a young voter, I am appalled at our lack of participation. I urge you to share your story, and I urge you to vote on Tuesday.

Please share your responses.

Special Contribution:

Ryan, Age 20, St. Louis, Missouri

5 Friends Video is back… and remember… VOTE on November 4th. Click here to find out more information about your polling location and voting in your state.

Below you will find a PBS Frontline Special The Choice, which is an in-depth look at the backgrounds and rise of both Presidential candidates. It’s truly an incredible piece and everyone who plans on voting should watch this.

This week as Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson and Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke made their way to Capitol Hill to argue for the passage of their estimated 700 billion dollar package designed to stablize the financial markets what did we hear from our presidential candidates?

Who cares how many cars John McCain owns and what the hell does mum mean? We are in the midst of a financial crisis and all the campaigns can do is air negative ad after negative ad. Last week the Washington Post published a story titled “Recent Obama Ads More Negative Than Rival’s, Study Says.” The article goes on to explain that 77% of Obama’s ads were negative the week after the Republican National Convention while 56% of John McCain’s ads were negative. So, Obama airred more negative ads than John McCain. In total, 30 million dollars was spent between the two campaigns on ads with and it’s possible that almost 20 million of those dollars went to negative campaign advertisements. For me, it doesn’t matter who is airring more negative ads because a few weeks before the Democratic Convention it was the John McCain campaign who was tossing the bigger mud pies.

What matters right now is that in the midst of a financial crisis both campaigns have decided to pummel each other into the ground. At a time when America’s President is publicly taking a back-seat role to a member of his cabinet the only thing that the two men running for the highest office in the land can do is resort to petty attacks. America needs leadership and neither candidate is showing that they are capable of leading. This morning Obama made the statement that he may not even go to Washington to vote on the 700 billion dollar financial package if it looks like it’s a sure thing to pass. Senator Obama might not go to Washington to vote on what could be one of the most significant bills in United States history? What does that say about the way he will lead as President? John McCain has not yet committed to being in DC for the vote? What would it say to the country if neither Presidential candidate went to DC to vote on this bill?

At the same time that these ads are running Mayor Michael Bloomberg, Mayor of New York, went on Meet the Press to talk about the crisis. As I watched I found myself saying to myself “man, he sounds presidential.” After I finished watching I went online to watch the latest statements from both candidates and was dissapointed. Neither sounded like a President attempting to address a crisis, they sounded like fools trying to figure out how to fill a sound-bite without saying anything at all. Bloomberg projected an heir of calm detachment. He seemed confident and at ease with the questions and he didn’t sugarcoat the problem. 

As I watched Mayor Bloomberg I couldn’t help but wonder why can’t our Presidential candidates talk to us this way? Maybe that’s not what we, the public, is demanding or maybe it’s something else. All I know is that at the end of the day one candidate will win and be faced with cleaning up this mess. My sincere hope is that the performance goes better than the auditons.

Barack Obama “Honor” Ad

John McCain “Education” Ad

 
Barack Obama and John McCain approve of their respective ads and their campaigns have spent money to produce and air them in keys states. To me, these ads demonstrate what has become the motto of this campaign season “do whatever it takes.” In Obama’s ad he uses journalistic publications to refute unfair claims made by the McCain campaign. The paradox here is that Barack Obama is using a negative campaign ad to combat a flury of negative campaign ads from John McCain’s campaign. McCain’s negative ad misrepresents an Obama policy position. Both of these ads take this election cycle to a new low as Kven Karl Rove observes in the video below.

In sitting down to write this I feel like every other political observer who says “stop the negative attack ads” because they are eating away at the essential fibers of our democracy. The bottom-line is that, as someone who has worked a number of campaigns, negative campaigning is effective in doing two things 1) solidifying a base 2) suppressing voter turnout. Both of these candidates are coming out swinging hoping to get their base in line, keep the other party’s people at home, and convince a few key swing voters to vote for them.

At the end of the day the negative tone of the campaign undermines the core messages of both candidates. John McCain is running as a maverick who will reach across party-lines to “shake up Washington.” Barack Obama is running a a post-partisan figure who doesn’t see people in terms of Democrat and Republican he sees people as Americans (also note that John McCain has also used this line). What is alarming to me in all of this is that it seems that, particularly the John McCain campaign, neither candidate cares that much about running a campaign with a focus on governing.

When I set out to complete a project I take a look at the desired outcomes. I do that by imagining what it will be like to have fulfilled all of my commitments. From there I work backwards to the present, outlining along the way each step that must be completed. The way that I see it, presidential campaigns should also function this way. Candidate should in a”place of success” having fulfilled all of their commitments at eight years as President and work backwards from there. My belief is that if campaigns were planned this way that they would not take on the vitriolic tenor that is currently the norm in presidential elections. Again, to restate my assertion, if campaigns worked backwards from what the candidate wanted to accomplish while in offce then campaigns would look 100% different. I believe that the negative tone of campaigns further reinforces partisan ideologies and identifications, which in turn leads people to feel alienated from one another when they put on their political hat. This idea is similar to what happens when a happy, loving, family sits down for a large family dinner and starts talking about politics. I’ve heard countless stories from friends about family dinners that have gone awry because of disagreements about politics. My opinion is that the reason for this phenomenon is the way in which we run our campaigns. The Democratic and Republican parties air ads that demonize the other side both during election seasons and during off-years. Organizations like MoveOn and the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth  have made people cynical about the process and have played off of emotions as opposed to policy. We use wedge issues like abortion, immigration, and gay marriage to play people against each other. Campaigns take on a “do whatever it takes” strategy and when they get elected they have to govern.

The problem with running campaigns this way is that it creates a more polarized electorate. Elected representatives are responsible to those who elect them and if the electorate is more polarized then it means that the representative will have to appeal to that base in order to get re-elected. This turns into a cycle of pandering and negativity that becomes difficult to break. This campaign season could have been the time where we asked people to put country over party. This could have been an election about issues, about qualifications, about who will do a better job governing, NOT a slug fest over who said what, when, and how.  Because of the tone the two presidential campaigns we have lost an opportunity to create a stronger, more vibrant, collaborative democracy. We will all hear over the coming 49 days that we need to put country before party and we will also hear a lot of hateful and negative accusations being thrown across both sides of the aisle. One thing though is clear to me: slogans and promises of America first are hollow because you need to back up your words with actions. Neither candidate is doing what it takes to truly put country overy party. 

Maybe if the two candidates had truly laid out a comprehensive strategy for governing both would have seen the impact that their campaigns can have on the political system. While we don’t know who will be sworn in on January, 20 2009 we do know that the political climate will not change much from the last eight years.

The next video is the full interview with Karl Rove. It really drives the point home.

*Note: These word clouds take all of the text from the candidate’s speeches and give greater prominence to words that appear more frequently in the text. You can tweak your clouds with different fonts, layouts, and color schemes. Please visit Wordle if you are interested in learning more or creating your own.       

Barack Obama Convention Speech       

John McCain Convention Speech        

Joe Biden Convention Speech                                 

Sarah Palin Convention Speech

What do these word clouds say to you? What do they say about the folks who gave these speeches? What do these word clouds say about our political process? What do these word clouds say about our political parties?

Here is an excerpt from a townhall meeting that Senator McCain attended recently. He appears to be insinuating that he would not be opposed to reinstituting the draft. The idea is a little bit scary for someone who is under the age of 26. What do you think, are there circumstances where we reinstitute the draft?

The fact that people respond to brute force and taglines over nuance, reason, and reflection MADDENS me. If we are to forward the conversation together we must be willing to engage in a dialogue that is informed by common commitments and a willingness to act in tandom. What we cannot do is stick to slogans, taglines, and talking points that have no meaning. Both Presidential campaigns are guilty of the latter, though there is a significant difference. This difference was highlighted at Rick Warren’s Faith Form last week.