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analysis: The world election Salman Tarik Kureshi
Senator McCain displayed poor judgement, vacillation and lack of leadership when the US economy proceeded to oblige Barack Obama by going into meltdown mode, thus putting a massive nail into the Republican Partys political coffin and providing the young senator from Illinois with the opportunity to demonstrate clear-headed leadership
Clearly, the recently concluded American presidential election created an exceptional degree of interest and excitement. Pundits drew parallels with the Kennedy-Nixon race of 1960. This writer has only the dimmest of memories of that long-ago campaign literally belonging to another century. There was no TV here and only a very few of us youngsters were privileged enough to be invited to view newsreels of the famous televised debate at a USIS screening room. There was also the cover of a humour magazine that showed Pakistan the most allied ally as one of the US states through which the candidates had to campaign.
The world then simply did not have the ubiquitous media of today, which can bring distant events into our living rooms as they happen. More important, the single, globalised planet of today had not yet come into existence. In todays world, the question of who is elected, selected or seizes power in even the most distant and obscure of countries has significance everywhere.
How much greater is the importance of political processes in a country that, by itself, generates close to forty percent of the entire planets wealth and deploys something approaching half of the worlds total military firepower. Add further the pervasive universality of American science, technology, literature, art, culture and academic vitality and one begins to sense the extraordinary significance of the term superpower.
Of course, what happens in an American election, any American election, is vitally important, everywhere in the world. The additional factors that generated especial interest in this particular election were twofold:
First, the controversial global role and aggressive, unilateralist postures adopted by the outgoing Bush administration had generated discomfort and unease around the world, even among staunch US allies.
Secondly, the extraordinary personage of Barack Obama as the principal opponent of Republican ideological bellicosity, that combined personal charisma with outstanding organisational abilities, caught the attention of people everywhere. No less important is President-elect Obamas personal biography, with its multiple cosmopolitan strands that make him truly something of a global personality.
Around the world, citizens of other countries voted in opinion polls. In an overwhelming majority of countries, other than the US, such polls ran in the range of 75 percent to 80 percent in favour of Obama. Pakistan, pro-Obama at 67 percent, was relatively less affected by Obamania than others. In only one country did Obama lose in the opinion polls Albania! It seems that, on the one side, the world was eager for an alternative to policies associated with George W Bush. And that alternative emerged as this cosmopolitan world citizen.
That both the US and the world were ready for someone like Obama was not enough. After all, the American Left has repeatedly offered the alternatives of Ralph Nader and the Reverend Jesse Jackson. And, on the Right, there have been the two Ross Perot campaigns. None of these dissident third-party attempts caught fire with disillusioned US voters.
The point is that Obama showed outstanding competence in the way he ran his own campaign. Coming from within the Democratic Party, he was no anti-Establishment iconoclast, but successfully used his partys massive organisational machine to project his programme of Change.
This is one of the key points about the Obama campaign. Not only was there a high level of political savvy but the sheer marketing abilities displayed by his campaign staffers should leave top multinational corporations in no doubt as to where to look for future recruits. The sheer size of the marketing budget, all raised from small campaign contributions, and the stunning climax, with a 30-minute infomercial running on all major networks, was itself awe-inspiring.
Mr Luqman Rehman, whose interesting e-mail was recently forwarded to me, will not, I trust, mind my quoting him at a little length:
Take a relatively unknown man. Younger than all of his opponents. Black. With a bad-sounding name. Consider his first opponent: the best-known woman in America, connected to one of the most successful politicians in history. Then consider his second opponent: a well-known war hero with a long, distinguished record as a US senator. It didnt matter. Barack Obama had a better marketing strategy than either of them: Change.
What word did Hillary Clinton own? First she tried experience. When she saw the progress Mr Obama was making, she shifted to Countdown to change. Then when the critics pointed out her me-too approach, she shifted to Solutions for America. What word is associated with Ms Clinton today? I dont know, do you?
Then theres John McCain. An Oct 26 cover story in The New York Times Magazine was titled The Making (and Remaking and Remaking) of the Candidate. The visual listed some of the labels the candidate was associated with: Conservative. Maverick. Hero. Straight talker. Commander. Bipartisan conciliator. Experienced leader. Patriot. Subhead: When a Campaign Cant Settle on a Central Narrative, Does It Imperil Its Protagonist?
Both Ms Clinton and Mr McCain focused their messages on I can do change better than my opponent can do change. Better never works in marketing. The only thing that works in marketing is different.
The Obama campaign has a lot to teach the advertising community.
Simplicity: About 70 percent of the population thinks the country is going in the wrong direction, hence Obamas focus on the word change. Why didnt talented politicians like Ms Clinton and John Edwards consider using this concept?
Consistency: Mr Obamas objective was not to communicate the fact that he was an agent of change. In todays environment, every politician running for the countrys highest office was presenting him or herself as an agent of change. What Mr Obama actually did was to repeat the change message over and over again, so that potential voters identified Mr Obama with the concept. In other words, he owns the change idea in voters minds.
Relevance: If youre losing the battle, shift the battlefield is an old military axiom that applies equally as well to marketing. By his relentless focus on change, Mr Obama shifted the political battlefield. He forced his opponents to devote much of their campaign time discussing changes they proposed for the country. And how their changes would differ from the changes that he proposed. All the talk about change distracted both Ms Clinton and Mr McCain from talking about their strengths: their track records, their experience and their relationships with world leaders.
So, there you have it: simplicity, consistency, relevance, a big budget, a perfect sense of timing and highly competent overall management.
On the other side was an over-aged war hero, deeply connected with the disastrous policies of the Bush administration. Worse, McCain who had an odd way of smiling at inappropriate times, flashing what looked more a rictus of death than a friendly grin tied himself to a completely inappropriate vice-presidential candidate, one who was certain to raise serious fears about her suitability as a successor to an aging, cancer-recovering possible president.
As if this was not bad enough, Senator McCain displayed poor judgement, vacillation and lack of leadership when the US economy proceeded to oblige Barack Obama by going into meltdown mode, thus putting a massive nail into the Republican Partys political coffin and providing the young senator from Illinois with the opportunity to demonstrate clear-headed leadership.
Given all this, the inevitable question is not How did Obama win? but How come his margin wasnt much higher? Please remember that the McCain-Palin duo received as much as 47 percent of the popular vote. To the mind of this commentator, this is an extraordinarily high percentage for a party that had created the kind of world and local disasters that lie to the record of the Republican Party led, as we have seen, by an aging, less-than-charismatic personality conducting a confused campaign.
What this implies is probably that the rest of the world and the US are still not on the same page. Perceptions are still seriously divergent. And this relates as much to Europe as to the so-called Islamic world. If such is the case, then can the US really be regarded as a World Leader? Perhaps it will take a Barack Hussein Obama to bring that about.
The writer is a marketing consultant based in Karachi. He is also a poet
http://www.thedailytimes.com.pk
Senator McCain displayed poor judgement, vacillation and lack of leadership when the US economy proceeded to oblige Barack Obama by going into meltdown mode, thus putting a massive nail into the Republican Partys political coffin and providing the young senator from Illinois with the opportunity to demonstrate clear-headed leadership
Clearly, the recently concluded American presidential election created an exceptional degree of interest and excitement. Pundits drew parallels with the Kennedy-Nixon race of 1960. This writer has only the dimmest of memories of that long-ago campaign literally belonging to another century. There was no TV here and only a very few of us youngsters were privileged enough to be invited to view newsreels of the famous televised debate at a USIS screening room. There was also the cover of a humour magazine that showed Pakistan the most allied ally as one of the US states through which the candidates had to campaign.
The world then simply did not have the ubiquitous media of today, which can bring distant events into our living rooms as they happen. More important, the single, globalised planet of today had not yet come into existence. In todays world, the question of who is elected, selected or seizes power in even the most distant and obscure of countries has significance everywhere.
How much greater is the importance of political processes in a country that, by itself, generates close to forty percent of the entire planets wealth and deploys something approaching half of the worlds total military firepower. Add further the pervasive universality of American science, technology, literature, art, culture and academic vitality and one begins to sense the extraordinary significance of the term superpower.
Of course, what happens in an American election, any American election, is vitally important, everywhere in the world. The additional factors that generated especial interest in this particular election were twofold:
First, the controversial global role and aggressive, unilateralist postures adopted by the outgoing Bush administration had generated discomfort and unease around the world, even among staunch US allies.
Secondly, the extraordinary personage of Barack Obama as the principal opponent of Republican ideological bellicosity, that combined personal charisma with outstanding organisational abilities, caught the attention of people everywhere. No less important is President-elect Obamas personal biography, with its multiple cosmopolitan strands that make him truly something of a global personality.
Around the world, citizens of other countries voted in opinion polls. In an overwhelming majority of countries, other than the US, such polls ran in the range of 75 percent to 80 percent in favour of Obama. Pakistan, pro-Obama at 67 percent, was relatively less affected by Obamania than others. In only one country did Obama lose in the opinion polls Albania! It seems that, on the one side, the world was eager for an alternative to policies associated with George W Bush. And that alternative emerged as this cosmopolitan world citizen.
That both the US and the world were ready for someone like Obama was not enough. After all, the American Left has repeatedly offered the alternatives of Ralph Nader and the Reverend Jesse Jackson. And, on the Right, there have been the two Ross Perot campaigns. None of these dissident third-party attempts caught fire with disillusioned US voters.
The point is that Obama showed outstanding competence in the way he ran his own campaign. Coming from within the Democratic Party, he was no anti-Establishment iconoclast, but successfully used his partys massive organisational machine to project his programme of Change.
This is one of the key points about the Obama campaign. Not only was there a high level of political savvy but the sheer marketing abilities displayed by his campaign staffers should leave top multinational corporations in no doubt as to where to look for future recruits. The sheer size of the marketing budget, all raised from small campaign contributions, and the stunning climax, with a 30-minute infomercial running on all major networks, was itself awe-inspiring.
Mr Luqman Rehman, whose interesting e-mail was recently forwarded to me, will not, I trust, mind my quoting him at a little length:
Take a relatively unknown man. Younger than all of his opponents. Black. With a bad-sounding name. Consider his first opponent: the best-known woman in America, connected to one of the most successful politicians in history. Then consider his second opponent: a well-known war hero with a long, distinguished record as a US senator. It didnt matter. Barack Obama had a better marketing strategy than either of them: Change.
What word did Hillary Clinton own? First she tried experience. When she saw the progress Mr Obama was making, she shifted to Countdown to change. Then when the critics pointed out her me-too approach, she shifted to Solutions for America. What word is associated with Ms Clinton today? I dont know, do you?
Then theres John McCain. An Oct 26 cover story in The New York Times Magazine was titled The Making (and Remaking and Remaking) of the Candidate. The visual listed some of the labels the candidate was associated with: Conservative. Maverick. Hero. Straight talker. Commander. Bipartisan conciliator. Experienced leader. Patriot. Subhead: When a Campaign Cant Settle on a Central Narrative, Does It Imperil Its Protagonist?
Both Ms Clinton and Mr McCain focused their messages on I can do change better than my opponent can do change. Better never works in marketing. The only thing that works in marketing is different.
The Obama campaign has a lot to teach the advertising community.
Simplicity: About 70 percent of the population thinks the country is going in the wrong direction, hence Obamas focus on the word change. Why didnt talented politicians like Ms Clinton and John Edwards consider using this concept?
Consistency: Mr Obamas objective was not to communicate the fact that he was an agent of change. In todays environment, every politician running for the countrys highest office was presenting him or herself as an agent of change. What Mr Obama actually did was to repeat the change message over and over again, so that potential voters identified Mr Obama with the concept. In other words, he owns the change idea in voters minds.
Relevance: If youre losing the battle, shift the battlefield is an old military axiom that applies equally as well to marketing. By his relentless focus on change, Mr Obama shifted the political battlefield. He forced his opponents to devote much of their campaign time discussing changes they proposed for the country. And how their changes would differ from the changes that he proposed. All the talk about change distracted both Ms Clinton and Mr McCain from talking about their strengths: their track records, their experience and their relationships with world leaders.
So, there you have it: simplicity, consistency, relevance, a big budget, a perfect sense of timing and highly competent overall management.
On the other side was an over-aged war hero, deeply connected with the disastrous policies of the Bush administration. Worse, McCain who had an odd way of smiling at inappropriate times, flashing what looked more a rictus of death than a friendly grin tied himself to a completely inappropriate vice-presidential candidate, one who was certain to raise serious fears about her suitability as a successor to an aging, cancer-recovering possible president.
As if this was not bad enough, Senator McCain displayed poor judgement, vacillation and lack of leadership when the US economy proceeded to oblige Barack Obama by going into meltdown mode, thus putting a massive nail into the Republican Partys political coffin and providing the young senator from Illinois with the opportunity to demonstrate clear-headed leadership.
Given all this, the inevitable question is not How did Obama win? but How come his margin wasnt much higher? Please remember that the McCain-Palin duo received as much as 47 percent of the popular vote. To the mind of this commentator, this is an extraordinarily high percentage for a party that had created the kind of world and local disasters that lie to the record of the Republican Party led, as we have seen, by an aging, less-than-charismatic personality conducting a confused campaign.
What this implies is probably that the rest of the world and the US are still not on the same page. Perceptions are still seriously divergent. And this relates as much to Europe as to the so-called Islamic world. If such is the case, then can the US really be regarded as a World Leader? Perhaps it will take a Barack Hussein Obama to bring that about.
The writer is a marketing consultant based in Karachi. He is also a poet
http://www.thedailytimes.com.pk
