by P. G. Abeles
The Professor was right. O. was easy to sell because people wanted to believe in the myth of O. But, Appelbaum considered, it was almost more than that. Appelbaum had seen the hungry look in people’s eyes when they looked at Okono; they were starving for him. This clean-cut, handsome guy with the photogenic young family, who spoke about his high ideals of fairness and service, was as irresistible as a drug.
Chapter Seven
Rockville, Maryland
IT WAS RAINING. Lacey Houghton turned the Lexus into the long, tree-lined driveway, just as violence erupted from the back seat over the ownership of some Bakugen transformer toys. Attack, wrestle, smack, silence, scream—she could almost time the sequence from initial struggle to final retribution. Mostly, the boys—eighteen months apart—got on famously. But between episodes of what her overworked pediatrician called ‘friendly cooperative play’ was plenty of testosterone-fueled territorialism.
A Labradoodle bounded out from the bushes, joyously racing the car up the winding drive. As she swerved to avoid him, her phone rang.
“Hi Honey—I’ll be late tonight.”
Hooray. She adored her husband, but in simplest terms his absence meant a quick dinner for the kids and early to bed. Maybe she’d order pizza.
“Don’t order pizza. We’ve got tons of stuff in the fridge, okay?”
“Hmmm,” she responded.
“That’s not an answer.”
“I’ll see what’s there. Gotta run, Lovey—we just got home.” He signed off, grumbling.
“Well, I’ll look,” she thought. But the honest truth was that her husband lost a lot of credibility on the whole leftovers issue because he was unwilling to concede anything was past saving—or indeed—(sell-by date to the contrary)—eating. Odds and ends of old salads, casseroles, and meat carcasses would be meticulously wrapped and saved, slated for some future combination, with no consideration of initial origin. This mostly happened on the weekends, with Sunday night dinner frequently devolving into a test of civility and endurance, and everyone ravenous and grumpy Monday morning.
Well, she laughed to herself, I suppose it gets them out of bed Monday morning. The fact that they practically came to blows (or tears) over who received the first serving of toast and eggs notwithstanding.
She entered the house to a ringing phone. As she struggled to carry mail, grocery bags, and backpacks into the kitchen, dodging the delighted dog, and a wet and annoyed cat, she made a grab for the phone. It was Connor. He’d been to the McCracken presidential campaign headquarters today and was calling with a report. The ever-optimistic Connor was subdued—a bad sign. “It’s very discouraging,” he said.
According to Connor, older volunteers were milling around headquarters waiting for some direction from 22-year-old “supervisors” more interested in flirting and making communal runs for their double cappuccino 2% foam lattes than actually getting down to the hard work of winning the election. As far as strategy, the McCracken campaign consistently catered to the lowest common denominator of risk. Twenty people were routinely included in top-level policy calls—conference calls that should have been limited to three or four. To others, the campaign manager seemed to endlessly seesaw between options and tactics. The intention was to be collaborative, to “think outside the box”—but the problem wasn’t the intention, it was the thinkers.
Surrounded by what the Okono campaign termed “concern trolls”—people endlessly terrified of offending one special interest group or another—the McCracken campaign lost all its spontaneity—all its mojo. The campaign was being run by superbly educated, shockingly self-satisfied… hacks. Fundamentally, these were not people looking for, or suited to, the adrenaline rush-rush unpredictability of a brass-knuckle political campaign. They wanted to work in the White House, even saw themselves arriving each morning with a wave to the marine at the gate, Starbucks in leather-gloved hand. It wasn’t simply that they had the wrong skill-set; they had the wrong mind-set. Connor was clearly frustrated: “No effort is being made to utilize the people that are coming in…you’ve got doctors and lawyers, small business people—why are they not networking them? Why is no one coordinating them?” There was no answer. The campaign was disorganized, dysfunctional.
On the state level, the recently graduated, with no business, sales or marketing experience were directing, not just more-experienced volunteers, but strategy. At the national level, the campaign employed pollsters and campaign veterans whose aggressive take-no-prisoners advice was fundamentally at odds with the concern troll culture. After all, why pay someone big bucks to advocate a slash-and-burn strategy—if you knew that neither the campaign or candidate would ever act on their advice? It was an idiotic way to run a campaign. The political brutes were despised, and ultimately ignored, by a supercilious senior staff, who claimed to be forging their own path, pirouetting on eggshells.
The problem was, even as this was all playing out, the momentum was starting to turn against them and they all knew it. Despite having started with an estimable lead in support and money, the McCracken campaign was now floundering, due to the combination of a savage media and an incompetent and arrogant staff.
And the two big primaries they’d been counting on to turn the tide in their favor—Michigan and Florida—were infamously cited by the Okono-loving Democratic National Committee for ‘rules violations’ in moving up the dates of their primaries. Most of the media gave reports of McCracken’s big wins in both states short shrift—if they covered them at all. It appeared to be bias on an historic scale, approaching journalistic malfeasance. McCracken supporters were left shaking their heads in amazement. That, of course, wasn’t even addressing the opposition.
The McCracken volunteers referred to the Okono campaign as the “Borg”—an allusion to the ruthlessly single-minded extra terrestrials from the Star Trek movies, whose ferocious discipline overwhelmed and then enveloped everything in their path. Everything animate in the Borg’s way was absorbed into their mass collective. McCracken supporters wrung their hands with dismay, but the simple truth was that a fawning media that never reported or apparently cared about Okono’s slim résumé and toxic personal and professional associations, and a campaign fueled by untrackable internet campaign contributions that had reached staggering proportions, left the McCracken volunteers little choice but to fight a rear guard action.
What was so disheartening for the McCracken volunteers was that they had by far the best candidate. Other candidates relied on teleprompters for even whistle stops. McCracken could speak extemporaneously for hours. People came to McCracken events because they wanted to hear her speak specifically to the issues. People were lured to Okono’s huge events with the promise of free food (or in the case of some college campuses, free concert tickets) to pack the place to the rafters. Okono only talked about the issues in the most general terms.
It didn’t matter. The whole thing was wonderfully self-perpetuating. The more the media reported large crowds for Okono, the more people came—fascinated to see what all the fuss was about. Elaborate stage sets with carefully branded faux-presidential symbolism convinced people of Okono’s qualifications visually in a way they would never have been persuaded intellectually. He’d never done much, true—but he looked the part. It was the ultimate mind-fuck. The guy looked “presidential”—therefore, people started to think he was qualified to be president…after all, to quote the old saw: he played one on TV.
Claire McCracken, on the other hand, was pretty extraordinary.
Throughout her life, she’d stood out among her peer group as a leader, as an intellect and as a worker. When she visited a small town in South Carolina or Michigan or North Dakota—wherever she was—she knew the local problems and issues. She appeared at mid-sized high school auditoriums, not cavernous sports arenas. The demographics of her constituency were working class people—these people were punching a clock, they couldn’t necessarily take the day off to attend a rally. The size of her crowds was respectable, but
not overwhelming.
She’d appear ‘onstage’, usually just a small platform in the middle of the room with a cordless microphone, a stool, and a bottle of water. Sometimes she carried a single index card with the name of the person introducing her. As much as forty-five minutes were devoted to answering questions from the floor, and people asked her everything. That was it: no stage and light show, no dramatic theatricals, no thumping backbeat of pop songs, just her speaking simply, directly, and matter-of-factly to the people she was asking to be her constituents.
It should have worked. For decades, the press had been lamenting the lack of “authenticity” in the political process. In every broadcast of the Sunday morning political shows, pundits lobbied wistfully for some bygone day when politics had been conducted without all the hype and handlers and hairdressers—real politics à la Lincoln v. Douglas—mano a mano. Politicians who would speak directly, straightforwardly, to the American people, without all the layers of spin-doctors, pollsters and consultants.
The local press who covered these events loved her. The national press eviscerated her. Where was the magic? Where was the sparkle? The wonky emphasis on Q & A devoted to local (to their mind) minutiae drove the national press to distraction (WTF? Who cares about the water quality in Roanoke, Virginia?). The campaign was lackluster, they reported, tired, bereft of new ideas, running on entitlement.
Whatever the reality was, it was irrelevant. If the national press reported something as being true, everybody believed them. When the McCracken campaign denied it, they were dismissed as flat-earth fantasists. So the McCracken campaign started stumbling over themselves to revamp, reinvent, and reinvigorate their campaign, in an attempt not to win the people, but to impress the press.
They were wasting their time. The press already had their preferred narrative (spoon-fed to them by the Okono campaign). McCracken wasn’t likeable enough, they were told. She was too polarizing, too political. Whether they were complicit, or just compliant, the press parroted the Okono talking points so perfectly they could have been working for the campaign. “It was over,” they said, shaking their heads, “for McCracken.”
With the pizza box carefully stowed in the garbage, and the kids washed and in bed, Lacey Houghton concentrated on what had become her real job in the last few months: organizing and coordinating a group of volunteer bloggers in 50 states. An early supporter of McCracken, she’d never done anything vaguely political before, but after realizing that the Okono campaign had paid bloggers to trash McCracken on the internet and build up phony grassroots support for Okono, she’d drafted a group of pals to leave online comments in local papers before primaries.
The Okono strategy was based on a controversial marketing practice called “astro-turfing” developed to an art form by Okono’s political mentor and consigliore, David Appelbaum. Whether it was creating, then building support for a municipal project or a breakfast cereal, the principle was the same. Few people realized that the recently opened downtown Chicago children’s museum had anything in common with Illinois’ new rising political star—but both were being marketed and sold in the same way—to the same unsuspecting populace, and by the same puppeteers.
It started simply enough: a client with a problem. In the case of the children’s museum, problem real estate the client was desperate to get off his books. But with problems came opportunities. And in real estate, opportunity means only one thing: money. So Appelbaum went to work. It was easy enough. It started small intentionally, under the radar. Seed local newspapers, radio stations, and internet sites with some seemingly unrelated buzz about the project. Throw some money to a community group (or create your own) that could garner some local PR with events and literature. Spur other advocacy groups, throw them some money, and encourage them to hold meetings. Invite the press.
Enlist some local educators to talk about the importance of the project for “the children of our city” (Who could be against building a museum for children?). Question the lack of resources being given to children in “underserved and underrepresented” districts. Subtly introduce the question of racism: why were inner city children not being given the same access and opportunities as the white children in the suburbs? Ignore all the evidence and statistics that showed that socio-economics drives attendance. Attendees would still be suburban children regardless of where the museum was built.
It didn’t take long before City Hall pricked up its ear; the State Assembly, then the governor’s office would be behind it. The pragmatists would argue that the children in the city would be better served by staffing the libraries, cleaning up and fixing the schools, buying the promised books and athletic equipment. But even as they raised them, their objections were drowned out. They had already lost. They didn’t realize that they were standing in the way of new, sexy, progress. The momentum was all the other way. If they got obstreperous, their commitment to the community would be questioned. They would back down.
The end result? Some worthless and unsalable inner-city property inhabited by drug addicts and the indigent, and riddled with gang warfare, was generously “gifted” to the city—among much publicity and fanfare—for an enormous tax write-off by one of the largest and most corrupt developers in Illinois. With a new multi-million dollar municipal project under way, the adjoining lots became not just commercially viable, but very valuable.
After the first drawings were approved, the city discovered it would need—well,—more land! Additional space would be required for a parking garage and gift shop, property purchased from the developer at newly inflated prices. More property was sold for some cute, slick eateries. And more again for a few in-and-out retail stores selling books and jeans and the quasi-English, multi-flavored, fruity smelling body lotions beloved by teenage girls. Pizza slice shops and upscale lard-laden boutique ice cream retailers discovered the central plaza with its Jeffersonian arches, brick sidewalks, and tinkling fountain created the perfect urban ambiance and resting place for weary shoppers. They were happy to rent the “cuteable” narrow restored townhouse storefronts for exorbitant sums.
Between sales and rental income (why sell a cash cow?), the property generated hundreds of millions in profits for the developer. A developer, not coincidentally, whose hands were never seen on a $13 million dollar investment—money paid to Appelbaum’s company, that the developer would later write off as “community reinvestment.”
The city had rehabilitated and reclaimed part of the inner city and created a new and beautiful cultural attraction that looked fantastic in the city’s glossy tourism brochures. Gentrification was happening (albeit more slowly than optimistically prognosticated by city planners). And if the mostly poor, mostly black, mostly elderly inhabitants of the neighborhood could no longer afford to stay? Well, some of them, at least, owned their homes and could sell for a profit. All very tidy and profitable…a victimless crime.
Except, perhaps, for how the money wasn’t used, and the necessary social services which the city was forced to cut as it approached record deficits.
What made astro-turfing so effective for the Okono campaign was that it was so subtle. At first glance, the on-line comments had seemed innocent enough, as if they might actually have been left by authentic Okono supporters. But the Okono bloggers were too arrogant, too sure of their strategy passing undetected. And, like most arrogant people, they got lazy. They began not just leaving the same comments—paper to paper and state-to-state—they were actually using the same user names.
The other striking thing about the Okono campaign’s bloggers’ online politicking was their remarkable sameness—in virtually every case they were not pro-Okono, they were anti-McCracken. The attacks were never focused on the policies she advocated or even on her résumé—they were personal attacks—on her looks, her laugh, her family, her person. The McCracken supporters who came to their candidate’s online aid were immediately (and strangely) vilified by the Okono bullies as “shills” and “campaign workers”—in an unintentio
nal revelatory projection and “tell” of their own activities. If a McCracken supporter persisted, the Okono supporters would hunt her down online and expose her personal information on the public forums. “Are you the Leslie Webber that lives at 395 Williams Avenue in Newton, Massachusetts?” they would ask online. “How is your son enjoying the new PlayStation you bought him on Amazon?”
It was creepy. The implied protective anonymity of the internet instantly dissolved. The McCracken supporters—mostly women and older people (and security conscious to start with)—were immediately intimidated, which was, after all, precisely what the Okono supporters had intended all along. Some McCracken supporters tried to fight back—but the Okono supporters with the wanton maliciousness of a mob, made punch-drunk and fearless with their own power, “flamed” any blog comments in support of McCracken—effectively ending her supporter’s ability to participate in the online discussion.
Isolated, and believing themselves alone—many of the McCracken supporters had eventually given up. Okono had trained community activists using Saul Alinsky’s Rules for Radicals as his guide. The first objective was to single out and personalize the attack (“Pick the target, freeze it, personalize it, and polarize it. Cut off the support network and isolate the target from sympathy. Go after people, not institutions. People hurt faster than institutions.” Rule #12). By going after McCracken supporters one-by-one all over the Internet, the Okono campaign followed a coordinated strategy to isolate her supporters so that they would not coordinate, volunteer, or give money.
It took months for the McCracken supporters to realize that this was no spontaneous outpouring of grassroots support; what they were facing was a coordinated, orchestrated assault. But by then, many feared it was probably too late to regain the momentum, anyway. It was axiomatic that winning political campaigns was all about momentum.