hubbub

Annals of Communications: Clinton's Hubcap Strategy

Annals of Communications -- How Public Officials Communicate, and What Everyone Can Learn From Them

If you grew up in a 60's inner-city neighborhood -- I did -- you're probably familiar with the pitch.  A few tough kids knock on your apartment door and ask if you need hubcaps.  You say "no, I don't need hubcaps," and they answer, "um -- I think you do, mister.  Go look out the window."

I was reminded of the hubcap business this week when trying to make sense of the Clinton campaign's incessant attacks on Barack Obama's integrity, readiness, and most important of all, electability.  The real power of the hubcap pitch is that it is based on a simple but timeless economic principle:  scarcity.  Like the hubcap pitch, the campaign to cripple Obama creates a real scarcity in the Democratic primary -- if Obama is destroyed, the party's superdelegates will have no choice but to go with the only candidate left standing.   

But the resemblance doesn't end just there.  Like the hubcap pitch, the Clinton campaign against Obama is a clever act of misdirection that distracts the buyer (the voter) from the fact that a crime has been committed by the seller.   Might makes right in the ghetto, and perhaps that's true of intra-party politics, too.  The buzz is that there are many superdelegates who are way impressed with the Clinton campaign's ruthlessness and determination to win.   And I have to say, I am impressed, too.  But only in a way that a tenement dweller might feel when he realizes he's been mugged in the most clever of ways.  Impressed, but really pissed off, too. 

For many Democrats who support Obama, it may be very hard to get over that anger, even if the party elders do.  This is something that the elders will need to worry about, because the market for hubcaps may not be that great in November.   

Clinton/Post-Iowa: The Poverty of Mope

For me, the most remarkable thing about the Clinton-Obama battle since Iowa is the emerging study in contrasts. 

The Clinton campaign, as one Chicago writer has noted, admittedly has gone to the dark side and is now waging a negative campaign against her opponent.  In the meantime -- as many  Americans will soon learn (it's the cover story in Newsweek) Obama's campaign philosophy is a studied and  deliberate rejection of negative campaigning.   It's an approach that invites his supporters and critics to end dirty-politics-as-usual -- the political campaign equivalent of non-violent resistance.  As history has shown,  that approach works beautifully when the practitioner understands that resistance is not only a shield, but also a sword.   The more your opponents attack you, the better you look because you have called attention to the cheap weapons they are using.

But it begs the question:  doesn't negative campaigning work, regardless of the harm done to the attacker's reputation?  No doubt, negative campaigns do work -- sometimes.  But there are three things that make Clinton's attack on Obama very risky. 

First, you need to consider Obama's core base of voters.  As many journalists covering the campaign have noted, Obama's crowd is largely an educated, sophisticated crowd -- folks who are savvy enough to question or discount the argument in negative campaigns, or reject the tactic outright.   For a shocking dose of evidence of that phenomenon, see Frank Luntz's "focus group" on Fox (yes, the same Frank Luntz that has helped many a Republican to frame a tough campaign against a Democrat).   Second, while Clinton's attack has been Obama's alleged inconsistencies, one thing that he has done fairly consistently(no one is perfect) is to refrain from negative campaigning.  He's disciplined about resistance, and it's part of his brand.  What about Clinton's brand?  As John Edwards gamely noted during the New Hampshire debate, Clinton appears to have gone negative only after slipping in the polls.  The negative campaigning does not become her -- it's not the true Hillary -- and it looks desperate.

But there's a bigger reason why this particular negative campaign might not work.   Obama has struck a chord with citizens from different political persuasions.  While the New Hampshire debate neatly framed the Obama/Clinton contest as one between change and experience, the frame simplifies to the point it obscures the reality of Obama's appeal.  There are specific contours to the kind change that Obama is talking about:  the coming together of folks who have been long divided on sectarian issues, but are all in agreement that the U.S. must look at things fresh and perhaps rethink the divides that have made politics so ineffective and, yes, ugly.  And it's not enough for Clinton to say that she too is "for change."  The coalition that Obama is talking about is a different idea, and as more and more people who are telling the story (e.g., Andrew Sullivan, on the right) and participating in the story (e.g., Bill Bradley, on the left) agree, Obama might be unusually -- if not just surprisingly -- well suited to do something with this idea.  That's a tough thing to compete with even if it is naive, as Clinton complains.  My guess is that Clinton will continue to struggle unless she comes up with a compelling, competing idea of her own.

See also:  Katie Paine.

How Does the Iowa Caucus Work?

Ever wonder about this?  The New York Times has a great little video.

New York Times: Huckabee Thanks the Bloggers

A nice follow-up to yesterday's post:

Mr. Huckabee had a rough time yesterday at the hands of the media when he announced he was canceling a negative ad against Mitt Romney and then showed the ad to the assembled reporters, who burst out laughing. Today, he turned the tables. He noted that the mainstream media might be “filing a bad story” right now, and if the bloggers were relying on the same wireless system at the hotel, they might be “clogging up the lines” and preventing them from filing.

If that’s the case, “thank you,” he said. “You’re doing the Lord’s work.”

Talk about motivation ....

Social Media and Campaign 2008: Mr. Huckabee Pulls a Beer Ape

I was having breakfast this morning when I came upon this interesting news item, syndicated in The San Jose Mercury News:

HUCKABEE UNVEILS AD ONLY TO DISAVOW IT

by Michael D. Shear and Perry Bacon Jr.

Washington Post Staff Writers
Tuesday, January 1, 2008; Page A01

Former Arkansas governor Mike Huckabee took an unorthodox gamble in his bid for the presidency Monday, unveiling an attack ad against Republican rival Mitt Romney and then immediately pledging not to run it in the hopes of appealing to the better nature of Iowa voters.

Flanked by posters his campaign produced to question Romney's credibility, Huckabee decried gutter politics in America but then directed the attention of scores of reporters and television cameras to a movie screen, where he played the 30-second hit piece on Romney's honesty and record.

"I pulled the ad. I do not want it to be run at all," he said. But within minutes, the ad was being played on national television and had been posted on blogs and other Web sites -- without costing his campaign a penny.

***

Sound familiar?  You may recall the mostly funny Anheuser Busch campaign in the fall of 2006, where the beer company produced an ad so crude that it was "forced" to pull the ad.  The commercial featured an 80s'-style  pool party with a scantily clad ape cavorting with scantily clad women.   The whole thing was a ruse, of course.  Anheuser Busch never aired the original commercial -- but the joke was not quite known before the commercial was viewed widely thoughout the Internet.  The Beer Ape commercial was one of the most popular YouTube videos in November 2006.

I had coffee not too long ago with Robert Scoble, where one of the topics of conversation was the 2008 Presidential campaign.  Robert noted how many of the campaigns have hired some of the smartest social-media strategists and also noted that they have the resources to do some interesting things.  We'll all learn from their experiences this year, he concluded.  He is right -- but my guess is that we'll be learning not only from their successes.  Too early to tell if Huckabee's Beer Ape moment was a smart idea or a flub.  But I can't help but wonder if the Huckabee campaign team clearly thought through the implications.  The Beer Ape may have worked for Anheuser Busch, a company that perhaps could use a dose of hip cynicism to bolster its brand among younger people.  But for a presidential candidate who is trying  to create a brand based on trust -- note that his anti-Romney ad attacks his opponent for being dishonest -- Mr. Huckabee's Beer Ape seems disingenuous, if not just primitive.