Obama

One of the many ways to understand Obama’s win is through the competing metaphors of soccer and football.

Successful soccer teams are 11 semi-autonomous players working for a shared goal. Each player has a defined position, and there are limited set plays, but the game itself is fluid. Defenders attack, attackers cover gaps in the goal, midfielders connect and create, and flashes of individual creativity and a commitment to team create success. The coach sets a general approach, establishes strategies, and makes substitutions (limited to three over the course of the 90 minute game, 18 players are allowed to dress for international matches), but is otherwise confined to a small rectangle on the sidelines from which he can scream. As often as not, coaches sit on the bench and just watch, taking notes and talking to assistants.

Football, of course, is very different. A team of senior advisors on the sidelines communicate with the coach, who tells the on-field quarterback what to do, and the quarterback directs individual forays. On defense it’s the defensive captain and defensive coordinator who tell people where to go. Massive substitutions and specialists are brought in for individual plays. NFL teams are allowed to dress 47 players for every game. Football happens one play at a time in strictly ordered ways.

Political campaigns usually look more like football than soccer. The campaign manager (coach) gathers information from a host of experts (assistant coaches, the guy in the skybox sending down pictures), directs the candidate what to do next (quarterback getting the plays), executes, and repeats. Staffs are parachuted in and out depending on the situation (special teams and players for specific plays). And at the end of a grinding campaign season (game, football season), one candidate (team) wins.

Soccer doesn’t allow for that, the game doesn’t stop so players can huddle and talk about what comes next. Players often do expected things (a well executed overlapping run is a thing of beauty) but they don’t have to – indeed, it is in doing the unexpected that that game is won or lost. Good coaches gather talent who share the coaches approach and set them loose. This is what David Axelrod and David Plouffe did in the Obama campaign. They got people who shared a view of how campaigns should be run and let them do what they did best. Volunteers weren’t told what to say, they were asked what they wanted to say and encouraged to share that. Volunteer bloggers were told to write what they wanted to where they wanted to. The point was to get Obama elected; how that happened was up to the staffer or volunteer. It was an organic organization of semi-autonomous people working the best way they knew how for a shared goal.

As an aside it is worth noting that football players rarely smile, but soccer players often beam as they play the game.

One reason Barack Obama won was because he allowed voters to project their identities onto him. For liberals, he was a liberal. For African-Americans he was African-American. For the children of immigrants his was the immigrant story. He was a community organizer, law professor, committed advocate and cool analyst. Barack Obama did not ask us to support him for who he was, but rather invited us to support him for who we want our president to be.

This is an important lesson for advocates.

Advocates come to their issues for a specific reason or reasons – they oppose the death penalty because it is morally wrong and oppose media consolidation because it undermines democracy. There are, of course, other reasons to support or oppose an issue; one can believe the death penalty is morally appropriate in some circumstances but that the strain it puts on the judicial system isn’t worth it, and that media consolidation has no effect in the quality of democracy but is bad for small businesses. But advocates often miss these other arguments, or worse dismiss them. As a result victories are harder to come by.

A former colleague tells an anecdote about an effort to prevent the expansion of an airport runway. One effect of the expansion would be the endangerment of a rare frog and another would be increased traffic. Supporters of the plan pointed to economic growth. The advocates were drawn into the debate by the frog. The argument became frogs versus growth. Anti-expansion advocates didn’t want to talk about traffic – they wanted to talk about frogs. Sure, traffic would get worse (possibly much worse), and sure that would be bad, but really what mattered were frogs. This approach, of course, ensured almost certain defeat. It’s like rock/paper/scissors – growth beats frogs, traffic beats growth – but the advocates kept throwing frogs. Advocates didn’t allow potential supporters to agree with them.

Smart advocates focus on the goal – electing a candidate, preventing the expansion of an airport – and find ways to allow the greatest number of people to agree with that goal for whatever reasons they want. Barack Obama didn’t care if you voted for him because he was taller than McCain, because Sarah Palin cut you off in traffic once, or because you conducted a detailed analysis of the candidate’s health care policies; he just wanted your vote. One reason the death penalty is contracting is because advocates (finally) let people oppose capital punishment because it doesn’t work as well as because it’s morally wrong. In my friend’s story, the runway was built because advocates only wanted to talk about frogs.

This morning I did what is almost certainly my last turn as a guest on XM Radio’s P.O.T.U.S. ’08. While listeners might not have loved hearing Aristotelian analysis of Senator Obama’s infomercial at 7:45 this morning, I had a lot of fun talking about it. POTUS is the only radio program I have ever been on that encourages guests to use complete sentences and present complicated ideas. P.O.T.U.S. is well worth a listen.

Aristotle offers one way into last night’s 30-minute commercial for Barack Obama. In the speech Obama balances logos (facts) and pathos (emotion) and builds his ethos (credibility, perceived quality of his character). This last element, persuading voters that he is “presidential”, that he is a man of strength and prudence, was arguably the most important.

But that’s only one way to look at the speech. Another way, that I did not discuss this morning, is through the balancing of idealism and realism. Scholars have noted that successful persuasive efforts often mix appeals to soaring ideals with nearly mind-numbing details.

The appeals to idealism – hope, justice, honor, freedom, and so forth – provide a reason for us to care. They draw us into an Important Story that compels us to want to act. But on their own, they’re empty.

Appeals to realism, details, are the stuff of policy. They’re the wonk-speak, the strings of numbers and bullet-points of a plan. They tell us the person doing the speaking knows what they’re talking about. The content of details matters less than their existence – that Senator Obama claims his health care plan will save the average family $2,500 rather than $2,300 or $2,800 isn’t the point, the point is that there is a credible-sounding number next to his claim. Realism on its own is dull and uninspiring. Candidates who list plans or sound like technocrats don’t give us a reason to care.

It is when the two types of appeals are combined that they have the most power. And this is what Senator Obama did in his infomercial. He started with amber waves of grain, talked about the American dream and showed kids waving flags. Then he listed policies. Then back to pictures of families and towns, then back to the list. One then the other and back again over the course of 27 minutes. This construction gave his vision grounding and his details life.

Smart advocates use the same approach. Policy proposals that speak to higher ideals and have specific, doable steps to get there can be powerful. Too often advocates are either all Vision or all wonk. The best advocacy campaigns use both – they use the vision to get and keep the attention of policymakers and activists, and use the wonkiness to make the vision real and get policymakers to act. The best campaigns know that success relies on selling both the sizzle and steak.

Something is persuasive, wrote Aristotle in The Rhetoric “because there is somebody whom it persuades.” (Book I, Chapter 2; in the Penguin Classic translation by H.C. Lawson-Tancred this is “Persuasiveness is persuasiveness for an individual”). For Aristotle, persuasion relies on three types of proofs - ethos, pathos and logos; appeals to the character of the speaker, appeals to emotion and appeals to logic.

Senators McCain and Obama need to persuade two audiences: their respective bases and the group of swing voters in the middle. These audiences sometimes need to hear different things from a candidate. Going into the conventions Senator McCain had a lot of ethos with the swing voters, he was seen as a trustworthy man of character. He didn’t generate a lot of pathos, and he didn’t have much ethos with some conservatives (something Palin helped solve, at least for the base – possibly at the risk of the swings). Senator Obama has tons of pathos which brought along the base and tempted the middle – but for many he has fallen short on ethos. This is an argument that McCain (and now Palin) have been making for a while, that Obama is may talk good but he doesn't have the substantive chops to lead the nation.

Presidential campaigns are not decided by logos. When we vote for a president we are not voting on the specific facts of a case. Aside from a relative handful of single-issue voters, Americans vote on an approach to facts rather than on facts themselves – we vote on a point of view on the role of government and on discussions of America’s place in the world.

Recently Obama has been trying to increase his ethos by speaking to smaller crowds, going into policy detail and so forth. He has also been attacking McCain’s ethos, asserting he will do anything to get elected. Obama is telling voters that McCain was once trustworthy but is no longer.

Which brings us to Friday’s debate.

McCain needs to demonstrate some pathos, he has to stir voters without Palin at his side. Primarily he needs to focus on ethos. He has to demonstrate that he can be trusted in trying times, that he “gets” most Americans - and he needs to do so in ways that speak to both the base and swing voters, a tricky task. He also needs to keep attacking Obama’s ethos, making the case that at some base level Americans can’t trust Obama.

Obama has to do the same. He needs to demonstrate that he is a man of character who can be trusted and to go after McCain’s ethos, arguing that McCain will say anything to get elected. At the same time he needs to tamper down the pathos, he needs to recognize that a debate is an intimate setting and not an arena – that he will be in our living rooms having a conversation, not on stage having a concert.