We entered the campaign, and exited it, in the right mind-set, with a unique mixture of idealism and pragmatism. We believed that Obama offered great promise as both a candidate and a potential president, the kind of promise that most of us had assumed we would never witness, much less be a part of. This optimism was married to a keen appreciation of just how narrow our pathway to success would be. The odds from the start said we would not win. So idealism kept us going, but pragmatism kept us grounded. Both were necessary to our success.
We began with the belief that we needed a clear message as well as a single strategy. The message would encapsulate the emotion and substance we were offering voters, and the strategy would outline our theory for how we would succeed. Both of these were established at the outset and inviolable. There was no guarantee our strategy would work, but we needed to commit to one path, not many, and base every decision on it. And on both message and strategy, we did not pay much attention to what those on the outside were saying, whether we were perceived at that moment as up or down. We had our own radar and metrics and did not change course or rethink our fundamentals when the chorus of critics demanded it.
Everything in the campaign flowed through the prism of strategy, which made decision making relatively uneventful, a must for any organization. Taking the suspense out of why you say yes or no improves productivity, understanding, and morale, and makes it easier to reach sound decisions for the right reasons. This methodology also allowed us to make decisions quickly. In the beginning we had no choice, but as we got established, we carried that approach forward. There was simply no time to dither and second-guess. We knew that we wouldn’t get all the calls right, and of course we didn’t. But when we were wrong, we avoided wallowing or extended recriminations.
Technology played a key role in our success. Reaching an audience involves more than just figuring out who your audience is; it also means knowing how to find them. Part of the reason our campaign was so successful is that we were able to identify early that many of the people we wanted to reach were spending more of their time on the Internet. We realized that a smart, and large, Internet presence was the best way to provide people with the opportunity and the tools to get involved in the campaign—they were already immersed in the world of technology and would be more likely to encounter us there. We met people where they lived, instead of forcing them to deviate from their habits or lifestyle to seek us out. Our early commitment to a digitally based platform paid huge dividends.
From the outset, we tried to figure out how to communicate with target voters with a fresh set of eyes. Established tactics, like press interviews, TV ads, and mail pieces, would of course be important parts of our arsenal. But we put a huge premium on direct digital communication, as well as on the power of human beings’ talking to human beings, online, on the phone, and at the door.
The principle underlying this was fairly simple: we live in a busy and fractured world in which people are bombarded with pleas for their attention. Given this, you have to try extra hard to reach them. You need to be everywhere. And for people you reach multiple times through different mediums, you need to make sure your message is consistent, so, for instance, they don’t see a TV ad on tax cuts, hear a radio ad on health care, and click on an Internet ad about energy all on the same day. Messaging needs to be aligned at every level: between offline and on-, principal and volunteer, phone and e-mail.
We tried to be on our target voters’ network TV, cable, satellite, and on-demand; on their radios; all over the Internet; in their mailboxes; on their landlines and their cell phones, if we could; at their doorsteps; and out in their communities. Balanced communications across all mediums is critical in any messaging effort today.
We measured our progress exclusively with our own yardstick. That takes discipline, but discipline without attention to the right metrics is meaningless. Whether it came to fund-raising, voter registration, our local press footprint, filling volunteer shifts, or ultimately reaching our vote goals, we had clear internal benchmarks that the campaign leadership used to measure our progress or lack thereof, and that all of our staff and volunteers could use to measure their own work. This is of chief importance—organizations tend to thrive when analysis of job performance is based on clear and incontrovertible standards. This way, any corrective action is based not on subjective measures but on clear, well-defined, objective ones.
Judging performance based on clear internal metrics leads to a healthy work environment, but it is just one part of a thoughtful and productive organizational culture. The culture established in the infancy of the Obama campaign carried us through for two years and had many other important facets. We placed a real premium on discretion and did not leak our internal discussions and business to the press or political community; we all felt that the mission was bigger than any of us individually; we tried to instill calmness, consistency, and clear rules of the road for employees; strong managers were hired and given great autonomy to reach strategic goals; and we were led by a candidate who each and every day quietly reinforced these principles, making any violation of them seem a betrayal of the cause.
We were a healthy organization, warts and all. There have been plenty of organizations that thrive, for a time at least, under leaders who yell and scream and fly off the handle and are propelled forward by a culture of intimidation and even fear. But I believe that, ultimately, organizations are collections of human beings. They will perform best and make their greatest achievements when there is clarity, calmness, conviction, and collegiality throughout the ranks.
Culture is about people. And the people of our campaign made this victory a reality. There is no more effective courier for a message than people who believe in it and have authentically embraced it. Our secret weapon, day in and day out, was our army of volunteers, real people who brought Obama’s message and ideas to their neighbors, co-workers, and fellow citizens, guided by our extraordinary staff. The bonds of trust between individuals who shared values, goals, or even just living space were far stronger than anything we might hope to have forged through more traditional tactics. In many ways, the delivery of our message and the execution of our electoral strategy were successfully carried on the backs of these bonds.
And because these bonds are ultimately very fragile sinews, the trust contained within them cannot be abused. It took something special and true for people to put in the effort, day after day, at great personal and financial sacrifice. Yes, they believed in Obama’s policy agenda and leadership abilities, and they thought the country needed to go in a fundamentally different direction. But all those factors led to votes, not historic levels of activism. The bond between the candidate and his supporters was intense and based on authenticity. Time strengthened it. Supporters knew in their hearts and in their guts that he treasured and respected their involvement and leadership in their local communities, and in the campaign. It was not his campaign—it was their campaign. That kind of loyalty and inspiration cannot be manufactured. Without it, we would have had a great webpage and social networking site, flashy but lacking humanity. Barack Obama and his supporters created something powerful and real, the likes of which we may not see for a very long time (with the exception of 2012, I hope).
I left the campaign extraordinarily confident about the future of the country, because of the talent and drive of the young men and women who made our victory possible. Certainly, we would not have won the primary or the general without a surging youth turnout in any number of states, Iowa most importantly. But their impact on the election goes beyond casting ballots. Most of our staff was under thirty, many of them under twenty-five, as were a sizable chunk of our most active volunteers. As I witnessed, sometimes in awe, their performance and desire to look beyond themselves and contribute to a better world (and they have a distinctly global outlook) it gave me extreme comfort to know that in the not so distant future they will be taking the reins and leading our companies, campaigns, and institutions. For my genera
tion, the rocking chair beckons—these kids are that good. I can’t wait to experience their leadership and vision in the years to come.
We started our campaign with the firm but risky belief that we could radically expand the electorate and that we could count on our grassroots supporters to execute our plan. This strategy proved wildly successful. Yes, we won states like Indiana, North Carolina, and Virginia because of that expansion. But you have to go a bit deeper into the numbers to understand just how effective that strategy was. If you consider only the people who voted in the Bush-Kerry election four years earlier, according to national exit polls, Obama beat McCain by a very small margin, 50-49 percent. In the 2004 election, Bush beat Kerry 51-47 percent among those same voters. A five-point swing is a big deal in itself, and it underlines Obama’s appeal to traditional independent and even Republican voters.
But leaving it in the hands of only those voters would have produced another nail-biter election, which potentially could have been lost to a more strategic opponent. The reason we won comfortably, with the highest vote percentage for a Democrat since LBJ, was that among people voting for the first time in a presidential election—or for the first time in a long time—we won by a shocking 71-27 percent. Younger voters turned out in huge numbers. African American voters turned out at roughly the same rate as white voters for the first time in the country’s history. The share of the electorate over sixty-five actually dropped between 2004 and 2008, not because fewer older voters turned out but because younger ones showed up in droves.
We—most importantly the candidate himself—refused to accept the electorate as it was. We thought we could make it younger and more diverse, and that’s exactly what we did. That beautiful map of the 2008 vote, with Obama blue in some very unusual places, like Indiana and North Carolina, is a testament to our belief that we could reach the Holy Grail of politics. We tried to shoot high but remained grounded in a hard analysis of what would truly be possible.
President Obama is that way. He’s not terribly interested in the same old arguments and debates or conventional reasons why things can’t be done. He pushes and challenges, but he also doesn’t want to tilt at windmills. Wiping the slate clean, looking at things differently—as we did in both the primary and the general—and deciding on a course based on sound analysis and research is an Obama hallmark, one that I believe will serve the country well.
Of course, when you do this, the cynics and purveyors of conventional wisdom howl in protest. In Washington, many focus more on what can’t be done than on what can be. One of the president’s great strengths, and therefore his organization’s strength, is his discipline: once a course has been set, he is determined not to let a chorus of critics alter that game plan. I saw this commitment over and over again in the campaign when it came to message and strategy, and I can see it coming into play now as the White House tackles the hard work of stabilizing the economy, passing health insurance reform, and creating an energy revolution in America.
His efforts will be graded daily by the pundits, and polls will be thrown around as evidence of progress or setbacks, but he will keep the ship steady, focused on achieving an end result that will improve the lives of Americans. Without this discipline and long-range focus, change would be impossible to bring about in Washington, a city where every bump, real or imagined, is treated as a permanent setback. The president does not view his work and progress on these imperatives through the lens of daily political scorekeeping. He stays focused on whether his day-to-day work, most of which will never appear in the news, is leading toward the desired result.
As I write this, Washington is in a state of high agitation about health care. Some suggest that reform efforts are in deep trouble and question whether President Obama has bitten off too much, is too conciliatory, or is not conciliatory enough. It is a familiar dynamic from the campaign, akin to those moments when the press put us in the penalty box.
But this is where the president’s long-term outlook and inner calm will serve the cause of health insurance reform and, therefore, the country, well. He is a chess player in a town full of checkers players. His eyes will remain focused only on the goal, and he will measure progress and make adjustments based on that, not on the current amount of hyperventilation going on in the political press.
It concerns me—and this is strictly a personal observation—that some quarters of the Democratic Party seem to worry that the effort it will take to pass health insurance reform, and then energy reform, could do damage to the party, because some recent polls have shown a not insignificant amount of unease among voters. In my view, this is looking three yards downfield instead of thirty. In the long run, the economy will be healed, and growing; landmark health insurance reform that has languished in Washington for seventy years will have been passed; and we will have done the hard work required to make us the worldwide leader in new energy and green jobs for generations to come. But to make that happen, we need to lay the groundwork now.
I hope Republicans will assist in these efforts. Only a few helped to push through the stimulus package, which I believe will come to be seen as an important cornerstone in our economic recovery. When the smoke clears, the Democrats will have a remarkable record of leadership that moved the country forward and will consequently have great political appeal. Contrast that with the Washington Republicans, who will likely have played little role, with the exception of a few principled individuals. And let’s not forget that the economic policies they still embrace played a large role in creating this crisis.
When their fearmongering on health care proves to be just that—when reform passes and voters still have their choice of doctors, care remains un-rationed, and Sarah Palin’s death panels have killed only her political prospects—the Republicans in Washington will truly be exposed as the emperors with no clothes. They will have zero credibility. They are putting all their rotten eggs into one basket, using misinformation and outright lies to try to deny the president a victory.
This is the wrong approach for our country and a clear example of the Washington mentality that has prevented us from solving big challenges. But I believe it is also bad politics and at some point in the future will be seen as political malpractice. If the Republicans have little contribution to show when it comes to digging the country out of our greatest economic threat since the Great Depression or solving big issues like health care and energy, it could be a long, long road back to viability. They are already in bad shape with younger and Latino voters and will face only further damage when their overheated criticism on health care is proved to be demonstrably false.
I sincerely hope more in the Washington GOP decide to meet the moment by setting aside their misinformation campaigns and by working with the president and Democrats in Congress to find solutions that will benefit all Americans. But if they insist on treading their current path—a high-risk strategy of opposing everything and proposing nothing—they will pay an electoral price that, from my perspective, they will richly deserve.
Our belief in people did not end on November 4. As the president-elect said in his victory speech that night, “This victory alone is not the change we seek—it is only the chance for us to make that change. And that cannot happen if we go back to the way things were. It cannot happen without you. So let us summon a new spirit of patriotism; of service and responsibility where each of us resolves to pitch in and work harder and look after not only ourselves but each other.”
When I talked to him on the phone the morning my daughter was born, he made clear his belief in the power of people not just to win an election but to change a country. “I know you’re disappearing for a while to change diapers and play Mr. Dad,” he said to me, “but just make sure you find time to help figure out how to keep our supporters involved. I don’t think we can succeed without them.” As I listened to him, I could hear Candidate Obama morph smoothly into President Obama. “We need to make sure they’re pushing from the grass roots on Washington and helping
to spread what we’re trying to do in their local communities. And at the very least, we have to give them the opportunity to stay involved and in touch. They gave their heart and soul to us. This shouldn’t feel like a transactional relationship, because that’s not what it was. I want them along for the ride the next eight years, helping us deliver on all we talked about in the campaign.”
His desire for a continued dialogue with the more than thirteen million people who signed up for the campaign led to the formation of a new group called Organizing for America (OFA). Run by Mitch Stewart and housed in the DNC, OFA ensures that the president can stay in touch with his millions of volunteers and supporters, communicating directly through the Internet and encouraging them to rally support and educate people in their local communities on what he is trying to accomplish on the economy, health care, energy, and other issues.
People talking to people, block by block, town by town, was an idea that Barack Obama believed in strongly as a candidate and still does as the president. The power of this interpersonal dialogue was never properly appreciated by our opponents or by the press and political community. But those quiet conversations, which took place in every corner of America, helped us win the election and will help the president succeed with his goals. In the end, they are far more important than the bickering politicians and pundits in the news media who get such outsize attention in our culture today. Of course this effort will not rival the campaign in size, intensity, or scope. But having millions of Americans absorbing ideas and message, understanding them, and sharing them—and having thousands on any given day organize conversations in their communities to show and build support for them—is an asset few presidents, if any, have enjoyed. This will be another piece of bringing about change to a city, Washington, that seems to abhor it.
The Audacity to Win: The Inside Story and Lessons of Barack Obama's Historic Victory Page 50