First, a little perspective that comes from my own history as a presidential campaign staffer. I've been on the inside of five presidential campaigns. My closest experience to what the Obama team is going through right now was being the national constituencies director for Clinton in Little Rock in 1992- lots of similar dynamics to this race.
- A young Democratic candidate with little foreign policy experience that voters had a lot of questions about
- An older Republican candidate extremely well-known to voters
- We were favored in the election, but there was a lot of nervousness on Democrats' part
- Clinton, like Obama, had not been the candidate of the DC establishment, and was generally not well-known to them
- There were lots of rumors swirling around about both candidates' beliefs and personal histories
One of the things I remember most about that campaign was how much advice we got. Even at times where everything was going well (and there was no time in that post-convention general election campaign where we weren't at least six points ahead in the polls, so we were doing pretty well in general), there was not a single day where I didn't get at least half a dozen calls giving me urgent words of advice and being told that if I didn't take it, the campaign was in mortal danger. Some of this advice was blatantly self-interested, of course, and some was comical to the point of self-parody. The head of a Lithuanian-American group called to tell me that if I didn't set up a one-on-one meeting with Clinton, that he would deliver the election to Bush (I didn't, but somehow we survived). Much of the advice, though, came from smart people and actually was quite good. If it was message advice, I would move it to Carville and Stephanopoulos; if it was targeting or field advice, I would move it to the appropriate state directors or field staff; if it was fundraising advice, I'd get it to the finance staff; and if it was related to a specific constituency, I would deal with it myself or give it to one of my staffers. And if the advice made sense, and didn't contradict our bigger strategy, we would run with it.
The problem was (a) much of the advice we were getting was directly contradictory to each other and/or to our overall campaign strategy, and (b) I was getting an average of more than 200 calls a day, was spending 8 to 10 hours a day in meetings, was looking at new polling reports, focus group transcripts, voter registration numbers and other forms of new data every day. And we didn't even have e-mail in those days- given the level of e-mail traffic I get as a quite out-of-the-way consultant, if I were a campaign staffer today, I'd probably be getting more than 1,000 e-mails a day. And here's the other thing- I wasn't famous. I was just one of those under-the-radar staffers. The staffers appearing every day on talk shows and in the NYTimes were getting far more deluged than I.
This is the reality of a senior staffer in a Presidential campaign, so I feel some genuine sympathy when these folks appear to be distant or arrogant, when they don't return calls or e-mails from old friends and smart people who want to help.
The other thing to keep reminding yourself is that Presidential campaigns are not monoliths. On the inside, people are shouting and arguing and compromising and cajoling, dividing into factions on one strategy decision and re-forming into new factions on the next. And it's a constantly changing dynamic as to which folks have the most weight on the key decisions.
I say all this not to excuse some of the arrogance people feel coming from the Obama campaign, but to give you a sense of what the reality inside actually is. Here are some thoughts about what all this means:
- If you have e-mailed someone you know on the inside, and they haven't gotten back to you for a long time, you shouldn't automatically assume they are an asshole (although I'm not saying they aren't one). In fact, you should keep e-mailing them your ideas because they might be getting through and might find their way into an ad or speech sometime down the road.
- There are good people inside the campaign who may be open to your views. The best way to influence the process is to keep getting real information to the staffers you know- poll numbers, demographic data, political trends in your state, conversations with opinion leaders, etc.- that can bolster their arguments inside the campaign. And do the same with non-staffers you know that might have some influence with the campaign.
- Senior staffers are too busy to read blogs, so your blog post won't get read by anyone but the blogger liaison staff. If you are making an argument that you want to obtain influence inside the campaign, e-mail the text directly to everyone you know inside the campaign, and everyone you know who talks to the campaign.
- Another thing to note: the official line campaigns always have when criticized on their strategy is that we have a campaign plan we are sticking to, and if we listened to the chattering classes we wouldn't be winning. That is always the official line, and they say it for a couple of reasons. The first is that campaigns really do have an overall strategic vision, and if they changed it every time they got criticism or suggestions they would be completely rudderless within 24 hours. The second is that even when things are going wrong, it is necessary for campaigns to project confidence. However, that doesn't mean that (a) campaigns don't get off course, and don't need help, or that (b) many people inside campaigns don't know that they need to change.
My advice to everyone on the outside is to keep banging away, but be aware of the pressures folks on the inside are under, and the culture they are living in.
My advice to everyone on the inside is to stay open to the good ideas out here, to be less sensitive to criticism, and to stop being so damn cautious in how you approach this campaign.
And if everyone on both sides just follows my advice, we'll all just get along great (okay, well, maybe not, but WTF, it's worth a try). |
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