As the election looms, Anthony Painter asks what tips Labour might pick up from Barack Obama’s historic campaign
In common with other Labour activists, I have been dipping into David Plouffe’s book Audacity to Win as the verdicts cascade on Barack Obama’s first year. Plouffe was Obama’s campaign manager, so we are looking for the secret to his success. A fundamental question occurs when we consider the Obama campaign’s irresistible rise. Was the man or the movement more important to the Democrats’ capture of the White House?
This could easily be the opening question on a George Washington University political communication exam paper. But it is not just an academic question. It has crucial relevance to us in Britain as Labour grapples with how to win the forthcoming general election with the odds stacked against it and its leader – as they once seemed to be stacked against Obama.
If the answer to the question is that Obama the man was far more important than the Obama movement, then there are few lessons for Labour in particular or British politics in general. Either you have your own version of Barack Obama or you do not. To have a combination of his particular life story, his charm, charisma, celebrity and oratory is rare indeed and probably a one-off. Let’s stand back, admire and move on. There’s little for us here.
However, for those who emphasise the value of the movement as well as the man, while having a candidate of Obama’s calibre is clearly a great starting point, there are valuable pointers about organisation and campaigning. And this is why Plouffe’s campaign account is so important.
There is little doubt that Obama’s candidacy was a virtual godsend in the context of a presidential race where the alternatives included a preening adulterer, a maverick veteran who, on closer scrutiny, was more erratic than iconoclastic, a student of the old school of machine politics whose “inevitability” of success proved to be a charade, a former New York mayor who was a novice in terms of national politics, a charming former pastor who was woefully out of his depth and a coiffured New England moderate parading himself as a born-again evangelical right-winger.
In hindsight, to stand out among that lot was perhaps not the huge challenge it seemed when the Obama campaign was launched on a freezing cold day in February 2007 in front of the State House in Springfield, Illinois.
The issue now is not whether Obama captured the imagination of the United States and the world – clearly he did – it is whether events in the US have a relevance to our domestic politics beyond the extent we
are influenced by the way the Americans dominate global affairs.
A close reading of Plouffe’s book suggests there are three main areas to which we should pay close attention. First, the link between Obama the candidate and the Obama movement was the actual campaign. Disorganised, free-wheeling, accident prone and rickety in many respects at first, the campaign quickly found the right note and got itself on track.
Incredibly, Plouffe was initially nervous about the large-scale events which the campaign inspired. He soon came to see the value of mass audience involvement. The old community activist ethos of listen, define issues and then organise drives a different type of campaign – one that motivates foot soldiers while allowing them to gear the campaign to the specific needs of their own areas.
The campaign’s first objective must be to grow the organisation – in capacity and capability. Then it needs to address such factors as voter contact. If we accept that the Obama campaign got this right, then we should grant that Labour’s approach now risks putting the cart before the horse.
We need to remember that, in the US, the actual political process drags millions into the campaign. The sheer drama, the debates, the chance to participate in the election of the world’s most powerful person (or at least one of them) energise politics in a way that may be unique to America. But all this should remind us that politics matters and seems to matter more when there is a great deal at stake – as there is for Britain in 2010. Americans had to absorb a lot of politics in the marathon race for the presidency and they seemed to thrive on it. Perhaps we in this country should not be so coy.
Plouffe states that: “Everything in the campaign flowed through the prism of strategy.” This is a vital point. Plouffe would rather have one good strategy than eight bad ones. Hillary Clinton’s campaign had at least eight questionable ones, thanks to Mark Penn, a favourite pollster of former President Bill Clinton. Penn approached the battle for the Democrat nomination as a series of tactical engagements over message rather than an integrated effort. By contrast, Obama’s campaign had a central coherence around a simple proposition: “Change we can believe in”. It wasn’t perfect, but they stuck with it, organised around it and it worked.
Labour should take heed. The message must be clear – remember “New Labour, new Britain?” – determined and organised with the same coherence shown by the Obama team. The strategy and vision must be set out and the organisation must be robust and co-ordinated. If they are, anything can happen.
Barack Obama and his running mate, Joe Biden, won the live, televised debates. Such debates form a new and significant aspect of this year’s British election. If Gordon Brown can prevail in these, it could have a huge impact on polling day.
There are broader, longer-term lessons about the process of politics engaging voters and activists alike. There are different ways of thinking about how parties operate at national and local levels. By challenging the rules and methods of politics, new and successful forms of organisation can be established. Parties that fail to put their own ideas, policies, rhetoric and organisation to the test on a regular basis run the severe risk of stagnation. The process of change and renewal never ends. To believe otherwise is to put at the risk the chances for success in elections and then in government.
So Plouffe’s dramatic account has multiple lessons for Labour. He also demonstrates that political apparatchiks don’t need to resort to “kiss and tell” stories in order to write a gripping tale that lots of people want read. The dirty linen was washed behind closed doors. That’s worth bearing in mind, too.
Anthony Painter is the author of Barack Obama: The Movement for Change
