A failed president looks to make a hand-off to a lackluster candidate. The young brilliant upstart Barack Obama is only ahead by single digits. Why? At least part of the reason is this: John McCain knows how to control his message.
Controlling your message shows a kind of power. It sets off a chain reaction: control-power-trust-confidence, qualities Obama is looking to grow in the public's mind.
Now you might argue, with all McCain's gaffes and mistakes, he's far from being in control. But, review this passage from just this past Sunday. This Week's George Stephanopoulos has just asked McCain about an Iraq timetable:
McCain: "Look, I have always said, and I said then, it's the conditions on the ground. If Senator Obama had had his way, we'd have been out last March, and we'd been out in defeat and chaos, and probably had to come back again because of Iranian influence. It's conditions on the ground -- the way that the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff said, the way that General Petraeus has said -- conditions on the ground, so that the Iraqi government can have control, can have the sufficient security, so that we don't have to come back. Senator Obama said that if his date didn't work, we may have to come back." We're not coming home in victory. We're coming home in victory. "
First off, you can see that McCain contradicts himself, as in "We're not coming home in victory. We're coming home in victory. " McCain's even flat-out wrong, as John Amato from Crooks and Liars and the Young Turks have noted this week in the post, Gen. Petraeus is not the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Admittedly, McCain could have meant,
"the way that the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff said, the way that General Petraeus (also) has said."
But no matter. Controlling your message is not about accuracy. Besides, Stephanopoulos hardly calls McCain on any of these points.
Instead, McCain's creates a constellation of words that stick in your head. Watching the video, you'll see Stephanopoulos looks almost dizzy from the repeated and insisted thumping of McCain's words. In this way, McCain's messaging works. In the small passage above you pick up:
everything depends on conditions on the ground
coming home in victory
Obama may make us have to go back
(I'm sure you could find additional ideas as well.)
There are at least two principles at work here. Repetition and simplicity.
Repetition, as in repeating these phrases:
conditions on the ground (repeated 3x)
coming home in victory (repeated 2x)
Simplicity. By simplicity I mean short, clear phrases or ideas. These are simple ideas, like Julius Caesar, "I came, I saw, I conquered." McCain is almost poetic in his terseness:
I have always said ... and I said then
can have control ... can have the sufficient security
Obama said ... may have to come back
Here's another example of control, this time by actor and California Governor, Arnold Schwarzenegger, again on This Week. His thoughts on "flip-flopping":
The Terminator: "You can change your mind// I have changed my mind on things and there is nothing wrong with it// But I'd just say to the people, I'd say, 'Look, I once felt this way. Now I think this way,' end of story."
Schwarzenegger uses both repetition (change, changed) and simplicity (nothing wrong, end of story). Schwarzenegger only includes words he wants you to hear: change, nothing wrong, end of story. He controls his message. The tightness of his language evokes control.
The Left over-loves diffusion, it doesn't understand that people get lost in complications. This is what some call being too fancy pants for your own good. The failure of The New Yorker magazine cover a couple week's ago was a perfect example of this. The magazine was just being too clever for itself -- sending out too many messages -- unclearly -- and in total left the viewer confused.
But beneath that is something else. As linguist George Lakoff describes in his book, "The Political Mind," -- by "... ignoring the cognitive unconscious, not stating your deepest values... You will be ineffective." The New Yorker, like so many on the Left is unaware of its deepest values.
Which brings us to The Paris Hilton/Britney Spears attack ad -- one of McCain's latest commercials: it's been pooh-poohed for being silly. And honestly, it's a hard argument to make that being popular with the kids is a liability. And yet, advocates for Obama should think hard about the associations the McCain camp is trying to attach to Obama. In principle, I'd say you shouldn't allow your opponent to define you, in this case as/by celebrity, money, youth, foreign, oil. So what's underneath all that crap? That's where your deepest values are. Finding this, might be the brain muscle that needs flexing. And it's not enough to define or see yourself as not-celebrity, money, youth, foreign, oil. It has to be a solid, positive thing. This will take some thought.
And I know it's tempting to do an ad with an old man dozing off while a child lights a fire in the kitchen...
ABC News' Bret Hovell reports that M c Cain senior aide Nicole Wallace says of this web ad, “It was a communication to our supporters, and was a kind of a bookend to a week that we thought was very successful. Our intention to use a little bit of humor. I think campaigns can be mind-numbingly boring and brutal without a little bit of humor, so we’re proud to use a little bit of humor at the end of the week, especially on a Friday... "
This is some deliberate NLP.
So what is the association John McCain’s making when he says the words “We’re coming home in victory?” Who doesn’t want to be a winner? It’s clear he means if you vote for him you can be a winner. Who wouldn’t respond to that?
So what’s Obama’s message? “Change we can believe in”, “Yes we can?” This message worked in the Primary, but it is falling flat on the general population that sees a change no matter who wins in November. It’s time for a new, more visceral message. I think Obama can come up with one.
Here’s a hint. The Germans had lost WWI, and were ravaged by the Great Depression. Along came Adolf who called them Arians and told them they were the super race. If he hadn’t done that it’s unlikely he would have been able to make himself dictator and we would have escaped WWII.
Rove started this psychological war. His ideas boil down to: lie all you want. You are a presidential candidate, so a) there's lots of people who won't believe that you are lying, b) the people who call out the lies wouldn't vote for you anyway.
It's become totally crazy. Whispers from the left hit the general public and immediately the attack machine goes into full gear, accusing the other party of the crime of the accuser: McCain does about 50 flip-flops on his positions, accuses Obama of flip-flopping; McCain's ideas on war suck - keep doing it for no reason - yet accuse Obama of being weak on foreign policy; McCain wants to drill pointlessly, and then accuses Obama of causing high gas prices. There are other examples.
Should we stoop this low? I think it amounts to saying: people won't listen, so let's manipulate them. It's evil. I don't know a way out of this quagmire, but the attack machine must be stopped somehow. My solution was to create a website and write, but that's not very effective since the only ones reading it probably already agree with me.
The problem is simply saying the right "coded" messages may not be enough this time. There is significant mistrust among "Movement Conservatives" regarding McCain. They don't think he's a dependable "social agenda warrior." Then there are the independent voters who are simply confused by the code: they are looking for ideas and solutions, not red meat.
My theory regarding Obama's small lead is simply that the "Bradley/Wilder Effect" is already "baked in" the current poll numbers. The Primary gave voters the green light to say they are uncomfortable voting for Obama because of culture or race bias.
McCain still has to make the sell. There are very serious conditions in the economy, and independent voters want assurances that some plausable solution is being crafted. McCain can't credibly sell anything but "the free market" with even fewer restrictions. And if that is all he's selling, enough of those voters will either stay home or reluctantly vote for "The Black Guy."
Some of their message is getting through but his move to the right makes him untrustworthy.
Obama needs to aggressively take on the conservative ideology that has underpinned Bush's failed Presidency and will underpin McCain's.
People aren't looking for a "healer" or a "uniter" as much as they are looking for someone who will pursue policies that will improve their standard and quality of living. So forget this "new politics" garbage and get aggressive in promoting progressive change.
McCain's drill everywhere policy won't work, but it's simple and people can understand it.
The old axiom was that Presidential elections only start after the last game of the World Series. This year we have the Beijing Olympics then the Playoffs and then the Series itself before the last of the independents and undecideds finally address who they'll support--or if they'll vote at all. The talking heads and political cyberworld will agonize over the wording of platforms, the implications of VP picks, fund raising figures, registration drives, 527 ads, perceived gaffes and the polling results for Reagan Democrats in the bellwether counties of Michigan and Ohio while most of the actual swing voters focus on medal counts, beer, back-to-school sales and RBI's until Sunday, October 26 (assuming the Series ends in four games).