1 Project title:
Analysing Barack Obama 2012 campaign and its historical consequences
Module: Marketing Politics
Bc. Štěpán Soukeník Visiting Erasmus Student
Department of Social Sciences, Loughborough University, 2012
Executive summary
In this project Barack Obama’s re-election campaign in 2012 is scrutinised. First, the political, economic, social and technological aspects before the elections are presented. Second, key stakeholders and their impact on the campaign are described. Third, Obama’s policy position-ing, imagery, promotion and place are analysed. Finally, the 2012 campaign is compared with the historical analogies.
The ‘Givens’
Several campaigns have been remembered due to the primacy or dominance in the use of new technologies. In 1952 the first TV ad in broadcasting was used in the campaign ‘Eisenhower answers America’ (Wood, 1990). Bill Clinton’s campaign in 1992 was the first to use the I n-ternet (Johnson, 2011). In 2008 Obama mastered the state-of-the-art social networks – Twitter with 112 000 followers, Facebook with more than two million fans and YouTube channel with tens of million viewers (Owyang, 2008; Johnson 2011). This year, Obama cleverly took advantage of the sheer rise of mobile technologies (BarackObama.com, 2012a; Busi-nessWeek, 2012).
The sequels of economic crisis which burst out in 2008 had a huge impact on policy rhetoric in 2012 campaign. Democrats had to strike back the verbal offensive from Romney’s team and they needed to persuade voters that their promises will be kept and they would not knock-out the American economy.
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vs. Federal Election Commission in 2010 (OpenSecrets.org, 2012a). They supported a candi-date with donations from companies, individuals and unions and also produced their own campaigns (InfoPlease.org, 2012). Nonetheless, they were not a direct part of campaigns, so they could afford to be extremely negative and rigorous. The major pro-Obama Super PAC was ‘Priorities USA Action’. It opposed pro-Romney Super PAC ‘Restore our Future’ which
gained the most profit of all Super PACs (OpenSecrets.org, 2012).
At the end of October 2012 the eastern coast of the USA was hit by hurricane Sandy. Many commentators discussed its impact on turnout and popular vote accumulation. For instance, Nate Silver, whose statistical predictions of the election results were almost precise, argued that the Sandy influence was uncertain (Silver, 2012). However, as to the exit polls by CBS News, 42 per cents of US citizens marked Obama’s response to the hurricane as the important factor when deciding who to vote for (Kamm, 2012). The key political specific was the role of swing states. As a presidential candidate needs 270 votes from the Electoral College, his main focus and campaign importance has to be given to the states comprising of Colorado, Florida, Ohio, Virginia, Nevada, North Carolina, New Hampshire, Iowa and Wisconsin (Politico.com, 2012a).
The image no. 1 (The Economist, 2012a)
The ‘Party organization’
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Obama’s key managerial team consisted of campaign manager Jim Messina, consultant David Axelrod and lead pollster Joel Benenson. Tens of the others created the whole campaign team. Jim Messina had already worked for Obama in 2008 campaign as the Chief of Staff. In Janu-ary 2011 he became a chief campaign manager of Obama’s re-election campaign (Green, 2012). David Axelrod played a role of senior consultant with a profound experience with elec-tion campaigns since managing the successful campaign for Congressman Paul Simon in 1984. Bill Clinton also played a particular role in the late campaign (p2012.org).
Many comments were written about Bill Clinton’s influence. He endorsed Obama in the TV spot called ‘He’s got it right’. Some called him ‘the Behind the Scene Strategist’ (Leibovich, 2012). ‘[…] President Obama’s got it right. We should invest in the middle class, education
and innovation […] and asking the wealthy to pay a little more. Sound familiar?’ (Time.com, 2012).
As Bill Clinton’s wife Hillary was beaten by Obama in her effort to become Democrat Party presidential candidate, many people argued about the relationship between Obama and Clin-ton. Terry McAuliffe, Clinton’s close friend, explained that Bill Clinton is ‘[…]chiefly
con-cerned with the direction of the country, not his relationship with anyone’ (Leibovich, 2012). In any case, Bill Clinton may have helped Obama’s re-election in the field of economics with
the reminder of his time of wealthy 90s.
The
‘Controllables’
Policy positioning
The negative rhetoric penetrated the campaign from policy vindication to the political adver-tising (LivingRoomCandidate.org, 2012). Obama’s slogan ‘FORWARD’ was used everywhere possible. With the connection of the word ‘BACKWARD’, Obama promoted and explained his
policy. He used six main topics of his policy issues: ‘Innovation, Taxes, Nation-Building at Home, Energy, Education and Health Care’ (BarackObama.com, 2012b). In the sub-sections of each issue, he argued for his policy and compared it with Mitt Romney’s quotes or issues. However, he cited the sources of the Romney’s quotes very shallow as we may see for in-stance in the ‘Economics’ section (BarackObama.com, 2012c).
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relations were the striking point of Romney counter-offensive and Obama’s vindication based on his previous attempts to restore diplomacy and good relations (Council on Foreign Rela-tions, 2012). In the first debate on domestic policy on October 3rd, 2012 at the University of Denver, Romney attacked Obama and won as to the majority of journalists and experts. Obama was a bit dubious and also presented some false arguments (FactCheck.com, 2012). However, Obama dominated in the following two debates and especially in the last one where Romney adopted Obama’s strategies and did not manage to oppose efficiently (CBS News, 2012).
Imagery
As to Nimmo and Mansfield, we can judge the candidate images comparing following attrib-utes: ‘honesty, integrity, intelligence, careful analysis in decision making, reasoned states-manship and leadership, firm issue stands and a willingness to consult with others’ (Nimmo and Mansfield, 1985; cited in Hacker, 2004, p. 32).
Obama has got several attributes which distinguish him from his opponents and which he in-deed masters. As the alumni of Harvard Law School, Obama proves his intelligence and lead-ership skills. His rhetoric used to be marked as excellent, though many journalists call him ‘professorial’ due to his rigid and austere style of speech (Politico.com, 2012b). Being the first African-American President of the USA brings him the support from the minorities, es-pecially the Latin and African communities. Coming back to the foreign policy part, he also proves a willingness to consult with others, even though he is often described as unflappable and reserved (Younge, 2010). Joe Biden has been the first vice-president from Delaware, which he had represented in the US Senate for 36 years (Palmer, 2009). Together with Obama they formed a core part of the election campaign.
The main part of campaign rhetoric was the slogan ‘FORWARD’ with the positioning ‘Four
more years’ set to vindicate the reasons for his continual presidency. ‘Four more years’ also became the most popular tweet ever (BarackObama.com, 2012d; The Telegraph, 2012b).
5 Promotions
President Obama officially started his re-election campaign on April 4th, 2011. He announced it on his Twitter channel. He sent the official email to his supporters and publicised a video spot in which many people advocated Obama’s re-election. The important part of the cam-paign start was that Obama’s team set up the headquarters in Chicago, to reach his grassroots supporters (Condon, 2011).
The 2012 presidential race was the most expensive in US history with estimated cost of 6 bil-lion dollars. In terms of Obama’s campaign, the so-called ‘Bundlers’ – well-connected dona-tors – played the significant role (Berr, 2012; OpenSecrets.com, 2012b). The major Obama’s donators were for instance Jeffrey Katzenberg from DreamWorks and Barry Meyer from Warner Brothers (OpenSecrets.com, 2012c).
Obama’s campaign team used several types of communication tone in TV ads. Both positive and negative spots were directed to TV and onto the official YouTube.com channel. Some of them were positive (e.g. ‘Challenges’), others negative (e.g. ‘Collapse’ and ‘Policy’ where
Obama opposed Romney’s policy) and the campaign team also took advantages of celebrity endorsements [Bill Clinton, Colin Powell, etc. (Youtube.com, 2012a)].
Same as in 2008, social networks and new media technologies served as the key campaign media types. Obama used his official website BarackObama.com to provide information from the campaign, bring the volunteers into the campaign and explain his policy and reasons to believe. Apart of the website, many social networks were used (Facebook, Twitter, Google+, Flickr, Instagram, Storify, Pinterest, Spotify, Tumblr and YouTube).
The code-name of Obama’s 2012 campaign was as to many commentators ‘Operation
Nar-whal’, because ‘[…] as an Arctic whale with a long spiral tusk[…] he merged information collected from pollsters, fundraisers, field workers and consumer databases as well as
social-media and mobile contacts with the main Democratic voter files in the swing states into a
single massive database’ (Thiessen, 2012) and the key word of the 2012 campaign to remem-ber was ‘Big Data’or the ‘Power of Data’ (Issenberg, 2012; Brancaccio, 2012).
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The image no. 3 (AdsOfTheWorld.com, 2012)
Obama’s speeches and quotes following hurricane Sandy had a huge promotional effect (Fell-er, 2012). We must not forget the Michelle Obama’s role in the campaign. President Obama’s wife campaigned actively for her husband and tried to boost his public image (Kantor, 2012).
The last promotional activity to mention is the role of Super PACs and other online activities some of which were interlinked with Obama’s campaign team and some were not. Apart from the abovementioned pro-Obama Super PACs, the significant promotional activities were done for instance by microsite ‘Romney Economics’ (YouTube.com, 2012b) where Obama’s team
summarised the most negative facts and data of Romney’s previous governance in Massach u-setts with leading motto ‘47th out of 50 states in job creation’ (BarackObama.com, 2012e).
Place
The headquarters of Obama’s campaign team was set in Chicago and the most activity was
dedicated to the key swing states where the direct communication within road shows was made. However, the campaign in 2012 was done by thousands of volunteers who were con-nected via special part of Obama’s social network called ‘Dashboard’ (BarackObama.com,
2012f). Everyone wishing to cooperate on the campaign could sign up and be connected with campaign headquarters and other volunteers. The number of registered members on this site got over 2 million (Dickinson, 2012).
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— your hopes, your dreams and the challenges you face and the possibilities you imagine.’ (Bobnak, 2012). Obama’s team used the collected data and worked on the most precise targe t-ing they could make to persuade unconvinced voters and maintain good relations with the faithful supporters.
The historical consequences
When scrutinising Obama’s 2012 re-election campaign, we may observe many links to the history. There are four main circles of analogies described in this part – economic environ-ment, campaign tone, rhetoric and organisational perspective.
In 1936 incumbent Democratic president Franklin Delano Roosevelt opposed Republican Alf Landon. Roosevelt emphasised the New Deal Programme after the Great Depression in early 1930s. Here we can trace at least four similarities. The economic recession in late 2000s re-minds the situation in 1930s. Obama was an incumbent president before 2012 elections same as Roosevelt in 1936. Obama is also a member of Democratic Party (Matthews, 2011). Final-ly, in terms of the election success both Roosevelt and Obama won their re-elections.
Since Johnson vs. Goldwater campaign in 1964 with Daisy Girl TV ad, a mother of negative
advertising spots, negative campaigning has risen to a rigorous battle. The 2012 campaign was probably one of the most negative in US history as more than 75 per cents of ads were negative (LivingRoomCandidate, 2012). With 474 released ads (215 of them pro-Democratic) it is a significant number (Pringle, 2012). Nonetheless, there were also several positive spots. Well-known actor Morgan Freeman narrated the “Challenges” TV ad, saying: ‘Every presi-dent inherits challenges, few have faced so many. Four yea rs later our enemies have been
brought to justice […] there are still challenges to meet […] the last thing we should do is
turn back now.’ (YouTube.com, 2012c). The positive tone and impact on continuing the pres-idency reminds 1984 campaign between incumbent Ronald Reagan and his opponent Walter Mondale. Particularly it regards the TV ad ‘It is morning again in America’ (YouTube.com,
2006). Nevertheless, the spot ‘Challenges’ was more an exception in the strikes of negative attacks.
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(Morton, 2012) and others even to Nazis as the word ‘FORWARD’ in German translation was used by Hitler Young Troops as a marching tune (Hoft, 2012). Last but not least, we can link the 2012 campaign to 1996 Clinton vs. Dole presidential race with the comeback of the term ‘triangulation’ which was typical particularly for Clinton re-election campaign. ‘ Triangula-tion is a term popularized by Clinton adviser Dick Morris to describe a politician who stands
above traditional left-right divisions and co-opts the arguments of the opposition’ (Zelizer, 2012). Obama was similarly alleged by using triangulation several times (Frei, 2010).
As to the campaign organisation, the team consisted of some long-serving advisors. For in-stance, Rahm Emanuel served as a senior advisor to Bill Clinton and also during Obama’s 2008 campaign. In 2012 he switched to the leading Super PAC – Priorities USA Action – to help Obama from grassroots and lobbying perspective (Gillum, 2012). Last historical conse-quence from organisational perspective regards to the Bush vs. Kerry campaign in 2004 and the role of political action committees, interest groups and grassroots support. In 2004 the ‘527 group’ – special non-profit interest and advocacy groups – helped donate the campaign (OpenSecrets.org, 2012d). Similarly, Super PACs played a profound role in supporting presi-dential candidates in 2012 as was mentioned in the ‘Givens’ part of this project.
Conclusions
Obama’s 2012 re-election campaign was unique and remarkable because of four main aspects.
First, Obama’s team took advantage of data-mining and precise targeting trend called ‘Big Data’ which will certainly spread globally to the election campaigns in the next few years. Obama’s team had a huge database of data from social network analyses, online social behav-iour and lifestyle surveys. Second, the role of political action committees – so called Super PACs – played a profound role in campaign financing. The battle between pro-Obama ‘
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