The Truck Strikes

One of the many perks of being in Government is the ability to demonstrate your competence directly to voters. Rather than merely asking voters to trust them, incumbent Governments can point to successful policies as proof they deserve their jobs. It was this principle that guided Labour’s strategy of “getting on with the business of government” earlier in the year, and the raft of new policies such as KiwiRail that came with it. For the last 8 years Labour has made good use of the advantages of incumbency. Through solid handling of the Government, a number of their ministers have made very good reputations for themselves as a safe pair of hands, people voters can trust to lead the nation. Through capable handling of a number of departments, Justice Minister Annette King’s name has become almost synonymous with competency. Such an impressive track record makes Labour’s recent blunders all the more surprising.

The last few weeks should have been a great time for Labour. Nicky Hager made his traditional election year return to the headlines by breaking the story that National’s “positive, ambitious campaign” was being managed by Crosby Textor, an Australian public relations company famous for the use of gutter politics. The revelation that Lynton Crosby, a man once described as “The Karl Rove of Australian Politics” was behind the likeable centrist image John Key has been showing voters is a big blow to Key’s credibility. Not only that, but Hager’s story raised the possibility that Hager still has access to secret National communications. After the damage Hager did at the last elections with such information, the prospect of a repeat is a terrifying one for National. On top of this, the multinational banking company Merrill Lynch, which John Key used to work for, was busted with inside information that National was planning to open up competition on ACC, which would hand an estimated 200 million dollar profit to the insurance industry, but runs the risk of driving up premiums. This runs in the face of public comments Key had previously made. Labour spun it as yet another example of Key telling the public one thing while telling big business another. For Labour, it couldn’t have been a better week.

That is until the Truckers went on strike.

In an extraordinary display of political blindness, Annette King blindsided the Road Transport Forum with the news that Road User Charges for diesel vehicles would be increased, violating a promise from King’s department that the RTF would be given a one month notification period if any increases were to be made. The RTF responded by organising nationwide protests that brought rush hour traffic in the major centres to a standstill. For a Labour Government, traditionally the ally of the Union’s and their working class members, such a public falling out is a huge black eye. Even worse is the public perception that Annette King mishandled the issue, a huge blow to her credibility on top of the outrage earlier in the year when she appeared to blame a string of high profile murders on the full moon. The protests left the Government with egg on its face, and at a time when petrol prices are squeezing the wallets of voters, any misstep on transport is an open invitation to National to uncork one of its favourite attack lines: That the Government is out of touch with the hardships everyday New Zealander’s are facing. Why else would they raise the cost of driving at a time when so many voters are struggling to fill up their tanks?

Labour’s election year strategy has essentially been to consistently attack Key in the hope of damaging voter’s trust in him, while trying to remind voters how trust worthy they are through smooth governing and big policies. As it stands now, both parts of the plan are absolute disasters. The repeated smears against Key, on everything from misfiled election enrolments, to his years in the currency trading business, are having no effect on Key’s approval ratings. Despite all her efforts to run a tight ship, Clark’s Government has been marred by scandal after scandal, many of which have tarnished reputations her ministers have spent years cultivating. Trevor Mallard was disgraced b y his punch up in parliament and the Erin Leigh scandal. Annette King spent most of late last year being made to look like a fool in parliament by Bill English, as she defended the disastrous Electoral Finance Act, and has done nothing to turn her luck around this year. National seems only to have to sit back and watch Labour implode.

At a time when Labour needs to be doing it all can to convince voters they can be trusted with Government, they seem unable to do the jobs they were voted into.

Obama’s trust gamble.

Note: Another article written on the bus, so excuse grammer errors etc. Just an excercise in writing on the US elections, since I’ll be covering it them more indepth for Canta this year.

 

 

It would be easy, as many of Barack Obama’s Republican Opponents seem to have done, given Obama’s inexperience on the national level, to think of him as a lucky beginner, being given an easy ride to the nomination thanks to his charisma and a helpful political climate. The Republicans have been name dropping Jimmy Carter a lot, hoping to remind voters of what happened last time they elected a Democrat without the will to make the tough choices a president needs to make.

Yet in the last few weeks, Obama has shown himself not only to be a steely willed political operator, but a down-right ruthless candidate. Rather than the inexperienced junior senator he is often thought of as, Obama is showing signs he is an old style Chicago politician, possessing the tact, wits and balls to take on the fearsome Republican machine, and win.

The last few weeks have been marked by a number of risky decisions from Obama that have the potential to either win him the election, or undermine the strong messaging that has served him so well in the campaign so far.

The major two, the decision not to join John McCain for ten Town Hall debates, a venue in which McCain is far stronger and more experienced than Obama, and Obama’s decision to forsake Public financing. Both decisions fly in the face of earlier promises Obama had made. These broken promises have been jumped on by the Republican attack machine as a chance to undermine the branding of Obama as a new style of politician. How can Obama herald change in Washington when it’s business as usual for breaking promises?
These attacks are, barring some other Reverend Wright style scandal, the best avenue of attack John McCain and the Republicans have against Obama. If they can paint him as just another politician now, early in the campaign at a time when Obama is trying to introduce himself to a national audience as the candidate for change he was in the primaries, they can significantly undercut his appeal. Damaging the unique appeal Obama has as an agent of change is important as it will limit Obama’s appeal to independents, and possibly the “Reagan Democrat” voters who voted for Clinton in the primaries and are unsure about Obama.

Weakening Obama’s appeal to independents and unconvinced Democrat’s is important for McCain, as the Republican base vote is smaller now than it’s been in years. Due in part to unhappiness with President Bush (whose getting Nixon level approval ratings at the moment) and the aforementioned unhappiness with the nation’s direction, the numbers of voters who identify themselves as Republican is disastrously low (as low as 28 percent in some polls, compared with as high as 55% Democrat).

In terms of electoral map, current polling show McCain has very little chance of flipping any of the states (totalling 252 electoral votes, 270 are needed to win) that Kerry won in 2004, while Obama has 12 possible Bush states he could flip in November (some, like Ohio and Florida could win him the election on their own if he wins them while keeping the Kerry states). So McCain finds himself playing defence this election, not being able to afford to loose any of his states. To make sure Obama cannot win any of the vital battleground states, McCain needs to make sure that voters in those states don’t think of Obama as the messianic agent of change he was perceived as in the primaries. He also needs to steal a fair amount of the democrat base, as well as maintaining almost all the Republicans and getting a majority of the independent vote. It’s a hard ask, and that’s why anything Obama does, like publically breaking promises, that could damage his appeal as a new style politician need to be jumped on.

So why on earth would Obama endanger his successful brand, so vital to maintaining his appeal to the independents he will need to flip Bush states, just to avoid town hall debates and being publically funded?
Because the Chicago politician in Obama wants to make sure that when McCain pulls a knife, Obama can pull a gun.

In 2004, despite facing the Bush-Cheney fundraising monster, John Kerry decided to go in for public funding, limiting himself to an 85 million dollar spending cap. Kerry himself has said that this was the biggest mistake he made in the entire 2004 campaign. Bush also took public fundraising, yet parallel campaigns financed by Republican donors were able to spend extra money on Bush’s behalf, attacking Kerry and damaging his public persona. The most famous example of these attack groups was the “Swift Boat Veteran’s For Truth Group” which spent millions of dollars on TV ads lying about Kerry’s service in Vietnam. This led to the new political euphemism of “swift boating” as unfounded and untrue attacks on an opponent.
Yet despite their untruth, the swift boat attacks worked, Kerry just didn’t have the funds to respond properly to them, and as many as 25% of voters told pollsters that the swift boat ads affected they way they thought of Kerry, which in turn effected the way they voted. It didn’t matter that the adds weren’t true. Kerry maintains that if he was able to spend as much money as Bush’s parallel campaigns did, he would have been able to properly respond to the attacks.

It was these parallel campaigns that Obama cited as the reason for his decision not to take public financing. If Obama is to be believed, he faces a republican attack machine ready to assassinate his character with the same reckless disregard for truth that they showed against Kerry. If Obama limits himself to public financing, he and his supporters will be unable to defend themselves against the vicious Republican smears. So you see, he has to break his promise, because the Republican’s can’t be trusted.

The problem is, that excuse is bunk. John McCain, for all his economic similarities to Bush, has shown a remarkable dedication to running a campaign unmarred by the tactics Bush and Rove became infamous for.

Some say this was because he himself was a victim of Rove’s smears in his campaign against Bush in the 2000 Republican, where negative push polling accused him of fathering an illegitimate black child, when in reality his family had simply adopted an Indonesian child. For whatever reason, McCain has been far more restrained in his authorisation of parallel attack campaigns than bush ever was, even going as far as to reprimand one such campaign earlier in the year .It does have to be noted McCain isn’t dedicated to the extent it will cost him the election, he has hinted if he absolutely has to avoid defeat, he might give parallel campaigns a bit of a longer leash in going after Obama. Yet compared to Bush, McCain has shown remarkable and admirable restraint.

Even more import is the fact that many of the republican attack groups Obama is telling voters are behind his decision to break his promise on public financing simply do not exist yet. At the same stage in the 2004 campaign, the Swift Boat campaign was already well underway, and there were numerous groups pouring money into getting Bush elected. Politico has a great article up, linked at the bottom of this post, about the dearth of such groups this time, many of whom fear the wrath of McCain if they do go too far in attacking Obama. So Obama’s stated reason for breaking his promise is false. So what then was the real reason?

The real reason is that the Obama campaign is a fundraising titanic, shattering fundraising records during the Primaries, and if it can unite Clinton donors behind it in the general election, it will eclipse the McCain campaign in terms of money, especially if McCain limits himself to the 85 million dollar spending limit of public financing. Despite the HUGE fundraising advantage the RNC has over the DNC (nearly 60 Million to 4 million dollars on hand at the start of the campaign) Obama’s potential fundraising advantage in November could mean he is able to outspend McCain by as many as three times.

This will be incredibly important in flipping states, as it will mean Obama can build organisations, advertise and campaign in states that McCain simply cannot afford to defend without moving vital resources from places like Florida and Ohio. States like Texas and Alaska (the formerly especially if Obama picks Bill Richardson as his VP) are traditionally strong Republic States the Democrats have a serious chance of competing in at this election.

The prospect of this is even more terrifying for the Republicans given the Obama campaigns plans to help out local politicians in states like this, especially those running for the Senate. If Obama’s volunteer base is also convincing voters to vote Democrat not just for President but for Senate in places like Texas, McCain faces the prospect that even if he can squeak out a victory in November, the Democrats will have such a strong hold on Congress and The Senate that any major policies he wants to push through will be neutered by a Democrat controlled legislature. And if Obama wins and the Democrat’s take the legislature the Republicans face losing all political power, leaving Obama free to push through anything he wants.

It is the prospect of such a potentially game changing financial advantage that Obama was really after when he turned down public financing. Why would he give up such an opportunity? Because he gave his word?
John Stewart earlier in the year said of the job of president that “If it goes well, they might carve your face into a mountain”. The message was, this job is not a joke, if you’re in the election, you’re in it to win. It’s a message that The Democratic Party has for too long failed to take to heart.

There is a time to make promises, and if there is ever a time to break them, it’s when given the opportunity to change the face of American Government and become the most powerful man on Earth. For Barack Obama, who has spent his entire adult life in pursuit of things like Universal HealthCare, the chance to do real good in Government is more important than keeping one promise.

The idea that it’s what you do in Government, not how you get there, seems more reminiscent of Richard Nixon than the inspirational figure Obama has painted himself as. Yet there was another Democrat president who believed in such an idea. A man who was willing even to get the mob to swing a state for him, to get the power to do things like end the Jim Crow Society and close the Missile Gap: John F Kennedy.

In all the comparisons to Kennedy that Obama gets, far too few remember than more than far before Kennedy was a symbol of hope to America, he was a hardnosed politician who knew you do what it takes to win. For all the criticism I’ve levelled at the New Zealand National party for sitting on Policy, you have to admire them for not taking any major risks, why would they want to throw away to treasury benches just to appease ideas of informed Democratic Choice. It’s the same principal with Obama. If you want to lead a country, especially one with interests as diverse and varied as America, you better damn sure be able to make hard choices.
What has been so interesting has been watching the Republican response to Obama’s decision not to take Public Financing.

The attacks, smartly enough, have been aimed at portraying him as an unscrupulous politician masquerading as Mr Smith. X said “he’s never made the chard choices that don’t benefit his political career”.  He couldn’t be more wrong, but risking his brand to go for the game changing financial advantage, Obama has shown he is indeed willing to take risks to get the job done.

Most frustratingly for the Republicans, has been the public response to Obama’s decision. For such a risky move, it hasn’t really damaged him in the polls. The website Real Clear Politics, which averages the poll results from various national polls, have Obama with over a 6 point lead at the moment. Polls taken after Obama risky decision and the ensuring attacks on his brand as the change candidate in key states such as Florida show Obama having taken no hit from his decision. While it has led to a somewhat harsher view of him in the media, the damage to his poll ratings seems to have been so miniscule it will not matter in the overall election. At this stage (and only at this stage, things like this do have a tendency to come back to haunt people at the worst possible time) Obama’s risky decision seems to have paid off.

But why? If the reason Obama gave for taken Public financing are not true, if the Republicans at this stage do not have the giant attack machine aimed squarely at his character, why does the public seem to accept that they do? In other words, If Obama’s reasoning does not reflect the truth of the situation, why do the public seem to believe it does?

The answer is that once again Obama has shown himself to have an incredibly astute understanding of branding, and how to manipulate the public’s perceptions of politicians.

The Republican brand has been described, even by its own party strategists as “toxic”. For too long, the negative, untrue and unfair political tactics of Karl Rover and his ilk have defined the campaigning style of the Republican Party. From Watergate, To Willie Horton, to Swift Boats, To Scooter Libby, to the Obama is a Muslim emails, the public firmly perceives that a republican attack machine exists. By repeatedly going negative, the Republican’s have branded themselves as the party of negative campaigning. That the public is so willing to believe they would do it again this election, even with a candidate who abhors such tactics, speaks to the damage done to the Republican Brand by people like Karl Rove. It’s gotten to the point where any legitimate criticism of Obama can be spun into the negative campaigning the Republican Party is now sadly known for.

In Barack Obama, The Republican’s now face an opponent blessed with charisma, devoted followers, a background political climate heavily favouring him, a media narrative that suits him, and a brand that can survive a little dishonesty. Worse than that they face an opponent who is willing to do whatever it takes to win, and is aiming for a victory that will leave him free to push through any agenda he likes.
And they face him at a time when the public believes they are not to be trusted.

Election 2008 is looking more and more like Obama’s to loose.

And so far, he has shown no signs he is stupid enough to do so.