At the Senator THE PUNDITS PONDER
The notion that if during a debate you just
swing wildly and punch the other guy one time on one issue, is going to change everything isn’t true. It rarely, rarely happens. Stephane Dion, according to polls, won the English debate in the 2008 cam- paign. Look where he ended up.
MS: Yes. We can all point to the examples where the debate has made the difference. The problem is, we can only point to rare and exceptional examples.
RS: Because they’re so exceptional.
MS: Yes. I think the best advice told to every can- didate is to try and get out of the debate alive. Ev- eryone now is so well-coached and well-prepared, usually. Unlike Jim Morrison, people do get out here alive.
RS: It’s boxers playing rope-a-dope; let’s just cut the other guy and get out of here and hope he, maybe, falls down before the tenth round.
CR: Myth four: Half debunked. Knock outs during a debate rarely happen and its not a good strategy to be focused on the knockout punch. Debates still matter, but the plan should be to just get out alive.
Myth #5 – The Volunteers are Gone. CR: That brings us to an interesting point Spiro was making about the culture of volunteers and the be- lief that campaigns are now about telephones, TV ads, and mail. So this means that the days of partic- ipatory democracy and volunteering on campaigns are dead.
MS: Completely disagree. The truth is, everyone knows that it’s harder and harder to reach voters through the mechanisms that we were using just a while ago, like telephones and television. Televi- sion marketing is very, very fragmented, and fewer and fewer people are answering their phones given Call Display and the Do Not Call Registry. It’s hard to connect the voters via a phone. Face to face contact is back in vogue. Door- to-door campaigning works and all campaigns should refocus attention to it and double up their efforts. In order to do door-to-door campaigning, you need to recruit volunteers. Lots of them. We spent an awful lot of time in the last decade or so telling people no to worry about volunteers, just concentrate on doing the phone and voter contact things properly. That’s been a huge mistake. I tell any campaign today if they’re asking me for advice,
8 Campaigns & Elections | Canadian Edition
it’s, “Focus first and foremost on your volunteers and you don’t need a political professional to do that. You need someone who’s good with people. If they are good with people they can be effective with volunteers. You also need someone who un- derstands how to recruit and manage people and personalities. Focus on these things, and you’re go- ing to have a successful campaign.”
CR: Especially with new technologies, you can de- centralize the use of volunteers and allow them to do things on their own time. I would argue that there are more creative ways to engage volunteers today than there ever have been. They’re still valuable for the campaign. It drives me mad when I hear about political parties or local campaigns that have decided they don’t need volunteers because enough money has been raised to buy calling services and mail ser- vices - so there is no need to have volunteers do this work. The really successful local politicians are the ones who have core, army, of volunteers, and not just for the thirty-six days during the writ - but throughout the year so that constant efforts can be made to connect with voters.
MS: Your neighbor picking up the phone or knock- ing on your door and saying, “Have you met so and so, she’s our candidate for x” has a much bigger impact than any television ad or piece of mail that we’re ever going to deliver during a campaign.
RS: Agree. Myth #5 – The Volunteers are Gone. Debunked. The more volunteers the better.
Myth #6 - The Obama Factor CR: I think that anyone who’s worked on a po- litical campaign with a party, candidate or cause in the last three years, has had their client say to them, “I want Obama. I want to motivate youth in a new way so that they turn out like they never have before. I want to campaign that is an open brand that everyone’s excited about and takes on and contributes their part, and all of those cyni- cal political strategies and tactics of telephone and ads matter less than how much people believe and how much people turn out to do those things. I want the Obama campaign.” Is the Obama factor a myth?
MS: Obama has the greatest mass movement of volunteers I’ve ever seen. He raised an unbelievable amount of money. He ran a fantastic social media campaign. He ran a fantastic election campaign soup-to-nuts, but the myth of Obama is that all of this made a difference in voter turn out.
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