The Elements of Persuasion

THE PAST IS PROLOGUE

I don’t usually comment on the debates. I don’t do play-by-play and in story terms these debates have basically been yawners.

But one moment from the VP Debate has stuck with me. Palin set it up early by conspicuously asking Biden, “Can I call you, Joe.” Then later when he brought up McCain’s record she pulled the trigger with “Say it ain’t so, Joe. There you go again, looking backwards.”

Biden’s reply when asked to respond by moderator Gwen Ifill, “Gwen, as you know, past is prologue,” seemed awfully academic to me given Palin’s down home diction. But now a video has come out that shows Biden may have been doing a little setting things up of his own.

This video is long – 13 minute - so it is preaching to the choir, but it seems to be designed to tell the Dem faithful what they need to know to pivot character attacks on Obama back to their strong point, the economy. Don't have 13 minutes? The trailer is only 30 seconds.

In McCain’s defense at least initially he seemed to learn his lesson from the Keating fiasco and he earned his reputation as driver of the “Straight Talk Express” by being open and honest about his mistakes with reporters. But now, in an analogous situation, he seems to be ducking even off the record interviews. Am I the only one that finds that strange?

THE MAYOR FROM MAYBERRY

Great stories always have an inherent symmetry. This is particularly true of those stories written by history.

At the beginning of the Bush Administration in 2002 John DiIulio, who had run President Bush’s Office of Faith Based Initiatives resigned and called Karl Rove’s minions “Mayberry Machiavellis.” For many the name stuck.

But among Mr. Rove’s most useful political skills is his ability to see the branding gems hidden inside many insults. Attack George W’s grammar and miraculously his syntax will become even more tortured. Then Neocon commentators will stress how “down home” and “mainstream” W’s wisdom really is, as if most folks didn’t actually pass the seventh grade and most “ranches” aren’t devoted to growing cattle but to producing an endless supply of scrub brush that needs to be telegenically cut.

So it is to be expected that the Mayberry theme of this White House might lead the Rovian Repubs to choose a down home Mayor from a backwoods little town even smaller than the mythical Mayberry for the role of VP.

And Sarah Palin, who got here training in front of the camera as a local sportscaster for KTUU-TV in Anchorage, is playing it for all it is worth. And more power to her. Her unique speaking style, so easy to imitate and so brilliantly parodied by Tina Fey, is a form of verbal branding that will make sure her 15 minutes of fame won’t run out who ever wins this election.

That her verbal style is a conscious decision – and so worthy of praise – can be seen if you listen to how she responded in debates when she ran for Governor of Alaska. The winks, nods, “aw shucks” and “I’ll get back to yas” just aren’t there.

To see how effective this type of verbal branding can be in building a heroic persona, listen to the Master, Andy Griffith in his classic storytelling routine "What It Was, Was Football." One problem for McCain: If Palin is playing wise and steady Sherrif Andy, who is playing the socially awkward, nervously erratic and occasionally irrationally angry role of Barney Fife?

VOTE EATING VILLAINS

Yes, Virginia, there are real villains in politics. In our book The Elements of Persuasion we stress not demonizing an antagonist. In the real world, as opposed to Hollywood, you should be careful using the V word. But there are times it fits. We are reaching one of those times.

I’m not talking about nasty attack ads. Those are often in the eye of the beholder. Your hero is my antagonist. Your scandalous lie is my biting social commentary. It’s an American tradition that goes back at least to the mercurial friendship and bitter hurt feelings of Jefferson and Adams. A little mud slinging keeps our democracy down to earth, and hurray for us for doing it. Americans are a scrappy bunch. That is one reason we’re such lovable galoots. But the desire to win can go too far.

If there is one thing all Americans should agree on it is that every citizen has a right the right, if not the duty, to vote. That is not a technical right granted by a benevolent State, it is an Inalienable Right made tangible by the sacrifices of our Founding Fathers and “watered by the blood of patriots” in every generation since. So organized voter suppression is truly villainous.

And what could be more villainous than a banker foreclosing on little Nell’s mortgage then twirling his metaphoric mustache as he has the sheriff tear up her ballot because she doesn’t live there anymore. According to the website The Michigan Messenger someone connected with Repubs is trying to do just this in battleground state of Michigan. The Messenger's post must have touched some nerve because a slander suit has been filed. TPM fact-checked to find out who was paying the attorney fees and got shined on by the shyster involved which is not a good sign.

If this is actually happening, shame on whichever party allows it.

Of course there are more sophisticated technical ways of denying – or enhancing - the vote (and both parties seem to do it). Check out HBO's Hacking Democracy - availabe on disk - a truly scary documentary. Perfect for your pre election Halloween Party.

MC CAIN SHOULD SAY NO

As I said in the last post both candidates should take a strong NO position on the suggested financial sector bail out for purely story reasons. Lets start with McCain.

Remember, this election is about America choosing its “hero-in-chief” We are looking for someone who can hold their ground in a difficult and dangerous world. In marketing terms it is about having a strong and sustainable brand.

The McCain campaign has been pushing two related brand concepts; 1). McCain is a maverick and 2) McCain “will fight for you”. Saying yes to this bailout seriously erodes both messages.

By definition a maverick does not run with the herd, and that goes double in the middle of a stampede. It looks like that is what Paulson is trying to get going. The Treasury Secretary probably sincerely believes that this is best way to save the situation, or it may just be that this is the way the Bush Whitehouse likes to market its proposals (it does seem eerily similar to how we got into Iraq and passed the Patriot Act) but that is the current administration’s story choice. For McCain to beat the bad rap that he is “McSame” he needs to separate himself from those choices. He needs to stand strong against the biggest special interest in Congress – the Financial Products Industry. If he doesn't his maverick brand is toast.

McCain also needs to say no to protect his only really effective brand slogan “I’ll fight for you.” You can’t go into a fight by giving up before it starts. And you won’t have much leverage to “hold the bad guys accountable” and “make them famous” if you give them a blank check and promise not to ask any hard questions for the next two years, and that is what this bailout does.

So McCain should just say “Thanks but no thanks” to the Treasury Secretary’s proposed 700 Billion dollar “bridge loan to nowhere.” His political survival depends on it.

If you don’t think a tsunami of populist anger is heading our way check out this ad I found on that bastion of socialist skullduggery – Market Watch. BTW last Friday was the 13^th Annual “Speak Like a Pirate Day” so in the spirit of better late than never – ARGHH!

MONEY TALKS

Not all stories are words. Some are told visually, some numerically. The right spreadsheet at the right time can speak volumes.

A headline like the one I woke up to in this Sundays L A Times:

“Bailout to reach $700,000,000,000”

(with every zero in there for emphasis) makes it crystal clear that the Market Meltdown will be sucking up all the story oxygen for a many news cycles to come.

So how can the McCain and Obama campaigns get ahead of the story and roll it into their candidate’s vision of the future? I’m not talking about political spin or partisan posturing. Any hint of that will probably prove fatal. I’m talking about how the candidates can use their points of view – the empathic connection they have been developing for months with the voters - to help us all get a handle on this problem. That’s what heroes do – they bring us together for the common good by giving us a common framework to solve our problems.

How should Obama and McCain do it? Interestingly enough both campaigns should follow the example of Nancy Reagan and “JUST SAY NO!”

The reasons why they should say no are different for each candidate because each candidates story is different but the fact that they should both end up saying the same thing – NO - gives me bipartisan hope.

In the next day or two I’ll go into details on the story implications for each candidates. But to get an overview of the situation I suggest you check out this interview Bill Moyers just did with Kevin Philips. Philips first major work – The Emerging Republican Majority - was done while he was working in the Nixon White house and laid out what became known as the Southern Strategy. Since then his analysis has crisscrossed back and forth over party lines. His book “Wealth and Democracy” is as good a macro analysis of the problems America now faces as I have ever read. In this interview Phillips makes it clear that current financial crisis is a bipartisan problem long in the making, with more than enough mud to go around if we want to start slinging. Hopefully we won’t.

To stay up on breaking news you might want to try out ‘The Big Picture” blogsite if you don’t use it already.

KATRINA WITH CASH

There is a real symmetry between what is happening right now on Wall Street and what happened in the 9^th Ward of New Orleans when Katrina struck. Both that hurricane and the financial down turn we are now in were acts of nature. Hurricane seasons brings nasty storms, and stocks go down as well as up. 

The job of a government agency – FEMA or the SEC – is to make sure that as few people as possible are hurt by the laws of physics. But if you are a committed Neocon and believe that if you can’t have less government you can at least make sure the government you do have will work less well, then the crooks and cronies you have manning the levies and policing the street when the shit inevitably hits the fan will be predictably incompetent. This isn’t a mistake. It is the result of doctrine.

According to Andrew Leonard at “How the World Works” John McCain is trying to get ahead of this story by calling for the firing of SEC head Christopher Cox. Aside from the slight “lets eat our own young” aspect to this, it is a good story move by McCain. A bad move would have been to say Cox was “doing a heck of a job.”

But Cox alone isn’t the real culprit. Over at “The Big Picture” Barry Ritholtz makes it clear that the real decisions that put us in this mess happened in 2004. So it now seems there might actually be a smoking gun here. Unfortunately for McCain if his suggestion to have a 9/11-style investigation of this mess were to actually take it looks like there would be plenty of GOP fingerprints on the pistol. 

If it is all seems too much of a bummer to bare believe me I understand, and so does Jon Stewart.  He’ll put it in perspective. 

WHEN HEROES FALL

As reported in the NYT Keith Olbermann and Chris Matthews have been replaced as MSNBC political anchors. From a hard-nosed business standpoint this is a very strange decision. MSNBC has been rising in the ratings because Olbermann and Mathew tell political stories – not just dryly report spin-meister prepared data points.

What's the difference? A political story has a defined point of view. That is, it is told by a hero who lets us know how they feel about the facts (stories are fact wrapped in emotion) . If the hero’s point of view agrees with mine, then I stay tuned to that channel. If not, I click my remote. It’s a free country.

Fox shot to the top of the cable news pack by recognizing that the idea of a purely impartial “objective” point of view was a paradigm whose time had long passed. Fox crossed the line by failing to report the facts accurately (famously the largest common factor among people who erroneously thought Iraq was behind 9/11 was that they got their news for Mr. Murdock’s organization) but it was on to something. When political tastes started to shift, people looked for a fresh set of news heroes. MSNBC’s stock began to rise because Olbermann was willing to say how he felt about the facts he was reporting on Iraq. The audience shared his outraged point of view - and so his audience grew. Mathews, for all his blow-hard faults, is clearly passionate about politics and tends to wear his heart on his sleeve. Both Olbermann and Mathews are powerful political story tellers and because of them  MSNBC could claim to be “THE PLACE FOR POLITICS”

But all that is gone now, and when in a few months MSNBC gradually leaks away the loyal viewers it spent years courting and sinks back beneath the waves becoming not a distinct brand but just one more cable news mash up it will be the lack of guts of its parent company NBC to stand up to a little heat from the Repub hit teams that will be to blame.

Once you loose brand loyalty it is very, very hard to get it back. If I were a shareholder in GE I would be very upset, because the NBC execs are clearly putting their political cowardice in front of my cash profits. And that doesn’t seem very American to me.

THE BOAT CIRCLES BACK FOR JOHN

There is a posting on YouTube that is stylistically very similar to the Swift Boat commercials run against John  Kerry, but probably more damning because it is focusing on what has just become fair game - McCain's temperament. What Philip Butler, himself a POW during Vietnam - and former Annapolis classmate of McCain's - is saying is important to hear if you are at all concerned with that famous 3:00 AM phone call moment. Check it out here.

I'm not endorsing this position - I wasn''t there and don't know Senator McCain personally -  BUT IT IS MUST SEE! If only because it demonstrates a basic law of politics - what goes around comes around.

NOW FOR SOMETHINGS COMPLETELY DIFFERENT

There has been a lot of discussion about John McCain’s VP pick. One of the best takes I’ve seen was by Winston Smith over at Philosoraptor. He wrote:

Ham Sandwich McCain's Actual Choice for Veep

John McCain has revealed that his apparent choice of Sarah Palin as his Vice Presidential running-mate was, as many observers predicted, a carefully-staged hoax. "Yeah, right," McCain campaign manager Rick Davis said of Palin, laughing with reporters. "As if! What do we look like, a bunch of complete lackwits? You guys will believe anything."

McCain's actual running mate will be a ham sandwich.

The sandwich, said by analysts to be "a little light on the ham," has never held any public office and is incapable of speech or rational thought. It is thought that the choice will solidify McCain's credentials as a "maverick."

"John McCain makes decisions with his gut," said Davis. "That's what Americans like, right?"

There is more and you can click over to it here. And thanks to Andrew Sullivan for the heads up.

And if like me you are a big Samantha Bee fan, here is her and Jon Stewart's take on it, also thanks to Mr. Sullivan: Completely worth the watch.

VILLAINS

Every story needs a Villain – an Antagonist that represents the obstacles the Hero must overcome. If you don’t have one, other story tellers will create one for you, and your story might get out of your control.

That is what has been happening with media coverage of the Dem convention. Because Obama has not clearly defined McCain as a living, breathing Antagonist - the personification of all that has gone wrong in the last eight years - pundits of all political stripes are free to choose Obama's antagonist for him. It might be the Pumas, it might be a petulant Bill, it might be disgruntled big spenders, but it is going to have to be somebody, because without an Antagonist there is no story, and story is the only way to fill hours and hours of airtime.

It is possible that the Obamistas have been cleverly laying back and Obama will come out swinging hard tonight. If that is the case Obama can’t waste time being bipartisan. He needs to get his knuckles dirty from the get go. We know he can float like a butterfly, now it is time for him to sting like a bee. He doesn’t need to attack McCain directly. What he needs to do is attack the Repub brand as a “failed extremist philosophy”. Bill Clinton and John Kerry laid the groundwork, but it is up to the nominee to start landing the hard body blows that will put McCain into the ropes.

You probably heard Bill’s speech. John Kerry’s was largely lost so that pundits could preen for the camera. It is definitely worth a listen. Check it out here.