The Clock is Running Out...
theclarksphere.com
September 04, 2003
But not for Clark. Dean told his followers "push that it is too late for Clark." And, dutifully, they have pushed this. There's a case to be made for it being "too late", so long as you are willing to ignore the facts on the ground. In this heavily accessed, and overwhelmingly favorable take on Dean it is clear that Dean's supporters clearly regard his willingness to walk out of the Democratic Party as being a positive, and his questionable pronouncements on human development as bold and radical ideas.
Conventional Wisdom is right, until it is very, very wrong. Conventional Wisdom, basically, predicts that big will be small, insider will be outsider - and that money power and entrenched interests will almost always win. Stands to reason right? Other than the occasional backlash, that's the way the world works, or at least used to work.
The conventional wisdom argues that it is too late, partially because the conventional wisdom supports other candidates who are threatened by a candidate which does not share gaping weaknesses. Conventional wisdom also is spending too much time acting like a Human Resource department: looking at resumes, rather than the facts on the ground. However, CW does have a case, which has been outlined here, about as well as anyplace.
The points it rests on are:
1. Money
CW loves money. Money is a tangible number that is hard to fake. Not that people don't fake it, but CW loves it even when it was faked, because faking money and getting away with it is almost as hard as making money in the first place.
However, money isn't an issue for Clark. First because he doesn't need to make huge media buys to get his face out there. Second, because he doesn't need to pay expensive political consultants. Third, because he is someone who has appeal up and down the economic spectrum - there are people like George Soros who are very interested in a Clark run. And they will put their money where there hopes are. There are already 1 million in pledges from before he is a candidate - and many people aren't pledging, they are just going to write the check.
2. Media
This is the most serious objection. Good national media teams are hard to come by, and while a good media team can seldom, by itself, win an election, it can certainly lose a few primaries. And for the want of a few primaries, nominations have been lost. John Edwards has gotten no traction with his ads, nor has John Kerry, nor did Kerry do himself a service by having what looked and felt like a hastily redone announcement speech.
However, there are two points to make here: first, there are media people out there, who while they are not currently active political media, or not political media but are experienced in image creation, who are very interested in Clark. Clark's pick for an image maker will surprise people, but it will be an absolutely logical choice.
As for the other campaign consultants, CW has to talk out of both sides of its mouth. First it has to say they are all spoken for, and then it has to say that they aren't very good. Which is the point: if they aren't very good, then their lack isn't very important. If the were, they wouldn't be working for guys who are running behind Al Sharpton. The people who are important, really important, are campaign mangers. I know a few of these people: one is a heavy Clark guy and is gearing up here in Massachussetts, where support for the favorite son is imploding, and the politicians can feel it, even as they dutifully trundle behind him - another is an experienced New Hampshire guy with a plan for winning or placing in New Hampshire. A plan that will work. These people are not all spoken for, because they tend to work from the gut, and pick people who they believe in on a gut level. And Clark is the kind of candidate who produces gut level loyalty, it is an essential quality of a military leader.
3. Intangibles
It used to be that "follwers on the ground" was the big question. With the shock that the Clark movement has produced, on the net and elsewhere, this rings hollow - and so, the retreat is that Clark lacks certain intangibles: "fire in the belly" or some other stand in for tabasco ladden rhetoric and anger.
2003 is the year of the angry Democrat. But already that anger is fading, not because Democrats aren't angry, but because most of the electorate isn't angry, per se. They are worried, upset, concerned, feel deceived and mislead - but they are not ready to go and burn Washington DC. While Buchanan's like about "Peasants with Pitchforks" brings a chuckle, it should be remembered that he was not the nominee, nor even a force in the party after that. Anger is only a good base when there is pervasive economic dislocation. Ours is not, and will not be allowed, to get to that point. The deficit this year is going to be 500 billion nominal - a number that I was stating back in February - and it will be of similar size next year.
A trillion dollars is a lot of money. And when the government dumps a trillion dollars on the economy, and devalues the currency, and runs a current account deficit that is headed for being the largest in history - that is a great deal of economic stimulus. Even if it is badly spent, the people whose wages it pays buy things, houses, cars, appliances, which boosts manufacturing demand and keeps the system limping along. The Democratic nominee is not going to face a country with a 7% unemployment rate - but one with a 5.2% unemployment rate, and a spiralling deficit, shrinking wages, and a rising cost of necessities such as gasoline. In short, there will be low nominal unemployment, but very high underemployment.
This is not an environment conducive to pure anger. Instead, it is an environment conducive to a rational case - and an appeal to higher motive which point to the future. There is a practical political reason for this: noble motives point forward, and when people are squeezed, they ask less "how am I doing?" but "how do I think I will be doing soon." Anger doesn't play as well as focused and reasoned critique, backed by a grasp of detail and a vision for how to attack the problem, rather than particular individuals.
And on this score, Clark has the intangibles: this is what he does. The Clark case makes basic political sense: things are not going to meltdown, but they are not going to bounce back, therefore we need a candidate who can make the kind of broad and systematic changes that will right our course and put us on the road to renewed growth and prosperity.
So, to answer CW: the money will be there, the key people will be there, and within two months of a Clark declaration, this will be obvious. As for the intangible question - anyone who has gone over to Digital Clark and watched the appearances knows he has the focused desire to get to where he is going, and that his record and his presence exude the ability to be disciplined in the pursuit of any goal he sets for himself.
In a year where the CW candidates - Kerry, Edwards, Graham and Lieberman - each touted in various CW outlets as "the only hope" - are gone or listing heavily to one side - perhaps its time to start applying common sense instead.
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Common sense says that the elements of winning a campaign are not money and consultants - but votes. Votes come from motivated people, and the candidate who can find ways of motivating people are the ones who, ultimately, will win. Gore, for whatever his strengths, could not motivate people well enough. There are only two candidates who, of themselves, motivate people: Dean and Clark. Therefore, in the end, one of these two men will be the nominee.
Common sense also looks at the man. And common sense realizes that Clark is not a politician who is too small who is trying to build himself up on the shoulders of a movement: but instead someone who is already larger than life, who is will rise to the occasion. This is a fundamentally different dynamic than Edwards, Graham and the rest: he already is big, even without a movement. What they have to spend millions of dollars on, he already is.
The Clock is running out, not on Clark, but on the old politics - simply because it is wasteful and inefficient. The old politics admits it needs a flock of handlers, a flying wing of media and consultants, months to eek out the people it needs, and then more months to inflate the candidate to the proper size, to be trundled down the campaign trail like the Bullwinkle balloon on the Macy's Thanksgiving Day parade.
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The time is also running out on Top Down - Top Down campaigns, Top Down media and Top Down thinking. For a long time people thought that "Bottom Up" would replace it, but this never seemed to work - because all to often the details did not add up to the whole. What is replacing it is the return of openness - Roundtrip from the Center - thinking. Instead of one area pushing all the others, instead of information being compressed and simply pushed in dead form - a dynamic and active tension.
This new model of thinking is pressuring old top down companies, and pressuring old top down models. From Microsoft to Oracle to Universal Music - they will admit their biggest competitor isn't one of the other players - who, after all, are entwined in the same realities of Top-Down production and cost - but open source, and open distribution, and open media. Now openness has entered the campaign realm, and the clock is ticking on its monopoly.
More in Part II
Posted by newberry at September 4, 2003 04:30 PM | TrackBack |
