Barack Obama - How he will change our politics
I have been making a study of the political strategy of Barack Obama for the past two years. I have read his two books and have noted every article by journalists. I have just returned from a month in USA where I more closely observed his campaign. He has totally rewritten the strategy of successfully campaigning for elections.
In spite a racist attack because of his father being black, and a stupid campaign to try to paint him as a Muslim instead of being a committed Christian, and an accusation that his name is like that of Osama Bin Laden, he has grown strong in every election. Those attacks tell us more about the mental state of those making them than of Obama personally. His strategy will be studied in every forthcoming election.
An innovative strategy. Barack Obama in the earliest days when standing against the heavily cashed up Hilary Clinton, said, “We’re up against the most formidable team in 25 years, but we’ve got a plan, and we’ve got to have faith in it.” More than eleven months later, that faith has been rewarded.
The 2008 Presidential campaign has produced its share of surprises, but one of the most important is that a newcomer from Chicago put together by far the best political operation of either party. Obama’s campaign has been that rare, frictionless machine that runs with the energy of an insurgency and the efficiency of a corporation.
His team has lacked what his rivals’ have specialized in: there have been no staff shake-ups, no financial crises, no change in game plan and no visible strife. Even its campaign slogan — “Change we can believe in” — has remained the same. How did he do it? How did Obama become the first Democratic insurgent in a generation or more to knock off the party’s Establishment front-runner?
Facing an operation as formidable as Clinton’s, Obama says in an interview, “was liberating … What I’d felt was that we could try some things in a different way and build an organization that reflected my personality and what I thought the country was looking for. We didn’t have to unlearn a bunch of bad habits.”
Obama laid down three ruling principles for his future: run the campaign with respect; build it from the bottom up; and finally, no drama.
A political campaign run by youth. Obama’s Chicago headquarters made technology its running mate from the start. That wasn’t just for fund raising: in state after state, the campaign turned over its voter lists — normally a closely guarded crown jewel — to young volunteers, who used their own laptops and the unlimited night and weekend minutes of their cell-phone plans to contact every name and populate a political organization from the ground up.
Even Obama admits he did not expect the Internet to be such a good friend. “What I didn’t anticipate was how effectively we could use the Internet to harness that grassroots base, both on the financial side and the organizing side,” Obama says. “That, I think, was probably one of the biggest surprises of the campaign, just how powerfully our message merged with the social networking and the power of the Internet.”
A brave new party. People in Australia, not just America, are looking for change. They are tired of old men leading old campaigns on old issues. It is a new world and people want parties that are relevant to the issues of today.
American youth are in synchronization with Australian youth. Christian youth particularly, do not want the main political focus to be on abortion and homosexual marriage. They see justice issues are the key political issues for today. They want parties that espouse Christian faith to be committed to eliminating famine and poverty, to ending slavery especially in Africa, to eradicating HIV Aids, and taking seriously the problem of drought and climate change due to human activity.
Before the last Federal election, Kevin Rudd went to Washington DC to discuss with Sojourner’s Jim Wallis, author of “God’s Politics” and “The Great Awakening – Reviving faith and Politics in a Post-religious Right America.” How to stress the concerns of new evangelicals.
That means that while I have always been pro-life on the abortion issue, that is not now enough. We must be whole life. We must be concerned with the end of life, with euthanasia, that is why I have not only spoken about this but also set up a palliative care service to give meaning to the whole of life including the end of life; with the rights of the disabled, not only talking about their rights but setting up training services, care services, employment services so that the disabled enjoy the whole of life.
Many politicians speak about the needs of the unemployed, but I and my colleagues at Wesley Mission during my 27 years of leadership, set up skills training, employment counselling and job placement, so that the former Prime Minister said we had helped lower the unemployment rate in Australia, by over a quarter of a million by placing the unemployed into real jobs. Not just talk, but deeds to help- people enjoy the whole of life. That is the new evangelical creed.
That is why I do not just talk about the drought and the hurt facing our farmers, for I believe politicians should do more than just talk, and keep asking hurting people to come out and man polling booths for their election and fund election expenses. That is why I am led the Spirit Lifter convoy, going out to the driest and most depressing area of the South West of NSW, to join with the farmers to give them practical help and spiritual hope in such tough times. This is whole of life concern where-ever people are in need. Deeds not words make for whole life concern.
In 2008 Obama road tested a youth-oriented, technology-fueled organization and the model for many of the wins that followed. It was also a challenge to history. The iron rule has always been that US voters tended to look the same year in and year out: older people, conservative households, party stalwarts. At bottom, Obama built a new party in 2008. Voters under 30 participated at the same rates as voters over 65. That had never happened before.
The reason why he succeeded is that he gave the young people of USA hope. The people are tired of leadership who have kept emphasising negative policies. For years they have stressed the fear of terrorism, the menace of illegal immigration, the peril of fanatical Islam, and the threat that the Christian way of life is being ended by secular humanism and militant religious persecution. The politics of fear has been successful in the past, but not now. Hope is in demand.
There is a whole generation of people who are looking for change and hope.
New fundraising laws. Before campaign-finance laws banned unregulated soft money from developers, small parties were disadvantaged. People are now suspicious of secret large scale donations and this is hampering the large parties. But a fundamental change Obama has brought to politics was that his campaign was built from the bottom up. Even fund raising, once the realm of the richest in politics, became a grassroots organizational tool of ordinary people with small donations.
At nearly every event this year, Team Obama set up little tabletop trinket shops, known as “chum stores” because all those little Obama-branded doodads aren’t only keepsakes; they are also bait. Every person who buys a button, tee shirt or hat is recorded as a campaign donor. But the real goal of the chum operations was building a list of workers, supporters and their e-mail addresses.
A similar innovation came in fund raising. Normally, it is only the big donors who get quality time with a candidate. But Obama devoted far more of his schedule to small-dollar events. “I was convinced that if you invited people to get engaged, if you weren’t trying to campaign like you were selling soap but instead said, ‘This is your campaign, you own it, and you can run with it,’ that people would respond and we could build a new electoral map.”
They relied on the grass roots and had clarity on that from the beginning. By contrast, the McCain and the Hilary Clinton campaigns, which started out with superior resources and the mantle of inevitability, were top-down operations in which decision-making rested with a small coterie of long-time aides.
No silly policies, no dramas. Every recent election has seen political leaders announcing little-discussed, poorly thought-out populist policies on the run. In the last Federal election campaign, Kevin Rudd was known for his “me too” announcements. Barack Obama has never been shy about comparing himself to Abraham Lincoln. He did so when he announced his candidacy at the Illinois state capitol, where both he and Lincoln served in the legislature. “The life of a tall, gangly, self-made Springfield lawyer tells us that a different future is possible,” Obama said. “He tells us that there is power in words … He tells us that there is power in hope.”
People have responded with great enthusiasm to that hope. In Germany, 200,000 people came out to listen to him because they too are seeking hope. The Government of Germany is that of the Christian Democratic Party which agrees with these same principles as I have espoused as essential for us in Australia. The essence is that Obama has given the people of America and other countries hope. This is not a time to be promoting fear among our citizens, anxiety among our aged people and disillusionment among young adults.
Catch the Church support. During the previous USA elections of Reagan, the Bushes, (father and son), and of Bill Clinton, it was believed that committed Christians would vote only for the Republican Party, not the Democratic Party. Obama set out to change that, and he has. His frequent God talk on the campaign trail and his latest proposal to expand aid to faith-based programs, make it obvious that Democrat Barack Obama is serious and aggressive when it comes to courting faith voters.
As Kevin Rudd sought the Church support, so has Barack Obama. Both Obama and McCain went to the Saddleback Church and were each interviewed for more than a hour by Pastor Rick Warren before 20,000 evangelicals. That was telecast in prime time, and I saw it repeated in full on three other occasions. Obama went out of his way to win the support of the evangelical churches.
Australian political parties constantly refused to go to the churches and ask for their support, until Kevin Rudd and John Howard did. They say that the churches will not support a political party. But now, in future, Australian political parties will challenge that assumption as did Barack Obama and go out of their way to consult church leadership and offer help in their ministries.
The Illinois senator not only challenged the long-held tacit alliance between evangelicals and the Republican Party, but is doing so with success because he has consulted with the churches. A significant number of evangelical voters are breaking away from the Republican Party to rally behind Obama, who speaks about a faith that cares for the poor and seeks to protect the environment.
The evangelical community has been misled by the Republican Party to support things they really shouldn’t have supported, including the group’s “blind support” for the Iraq war, launched on either mistaken or false pretenses. The evangelicals who are attracted to Obama are part of a new generation of faith voters where the issues of Darfur, global warming, poverty, and torture are considered as important, or at least nearly as important, as the traditional key issues of abortion and gay “marriage” when choosing the next president.
As a reminder of his commitment to faith-driven solutions to social problems, Obama announced his plans to expand President Bush’s faith-based programs if elected to the White House. Obama said his program would better reach smaller congregations, be a “critical part of my administration,” and proposed a $500 million per year program to provide summer learning to 1 million poor children through the resources of the churches. “The evangelical community seems to be sitting on the fence to a particular degree,” observed a professor at Georgetown University, “and that could open the door for Obama. If Obama can get only 30% of the evangelical vote in those crucial swing states, he’s absolutely golden.”
On the second Tuesday in November, the world will know. But these new approaches in Australia will take some courage, and some thinking beyond our selves. But it can happen, and Barack Obama is proof.
Rev The Hon. Dr Gordon Moyes, A.C., M.L.C.
