The Obama campaign has made very skilled and rather honest use of social media and the Internet in general. That's been exciting to watch. It's been fun to watch. They .. almost ... get it.
In today's skeptical and information-rich world, the key is to provide all the information up front. To have conspicuous honestly.
Today I received the email below from the Obama campaign. It's a good email and tells you exactly what is going on. It describes an attack ad by the McCain campaign and the Obama camp's response. It also provides a link to watch the Obama response ad.
It just lacks one thing:
A link to the McCain ad.
Being a responsible voter, I wanted to see what I was responding to. The Obama campaign made me go looking for it.
Here's the McCain Ad:
Here's the Obama response:
Well, it doesn't appear to be on YouTube yet. So here's the link.
The issue here is, why not have these two videos side by side as a mini-debate? If McCain has a video that says something you disagree with, make a response video and provide them together. Don't talk at us, show us the dialog. Or a dialog at any rate.
In the end, give the voters the source material and not just your response.
Part of making American voters smarter is engaging them fully. The Obama campaign is certainly farther along with this than any preceding presidential campaign. They just have a little further to go to get to perfect.
Obama has a difficult balancing act for the next few months. He needs to avoid appearing like to be too much of a policy wonk and losing the motivational characteristics that have made Obama such a compelling candidate. Providing the information up front plays into the policy wonk persona and provides nothing but additional ammunition for detractors to pick at.
For the last 28 years we have had the same presidential race over and over: the policy wonk (Democrat) versus the affable and bumbling everyman (Republican). Since Reagan's first election this has been the story of each presidential race. Winners and losers are determined by how well each candidate plays their role. Examples: Bush I with the grocery scanner, Clinton's first election team talking about his remarkable grasp of all issues great and small (same with Carter), Bush II not knowing any foreign heads of state, Al Gore being Al Gore. Each is playing into the role for their party.
This cycle, Obama did not fit easily into the standard policy wonk persona ... more of a visionary/motivator persona. This is one reason why he is such a compelling candidate. It also makes him a hard target for the republican campaign strategists to attack. If the strategists can move him into the wonk-box (as they are trying to do), he becomes a known entity and the race becomes very predictable. Otherwise, he can keep the edge and hopefully break the wonk-everyman tradition and start a new type of presidential race. Maybe one where people have an opportunity to become engaged and fully informed.
Posted by: Kevin | 31 July 2008 at 19:08