At the Senator THE PUNDITS PONDER
the campaign was over, to name three policies they were familiar with, from any of the political parties and, almost always, they come up with…nothing. Or, they get one policy from one party and two from another, but never three policies from any one Party let alone three from all of them. And these are people following campaigns and elections minute by minute, day by day. Unfortunately, process is easy to do. If I was to run through headlines from this election, daily headlines in the paper, and say what I learned and what the campaign was about… I learned who was ahead in the tracking, or the opin- ion poll or polls of the week, and I learned which candidate or which campaign staffer, somewhere, said something, stupid. That’s it.
RS: I think that there is a difference between what dominated the daily headlines, which I agree was process not policy and which is not new and has been the case in elections for as long as I can re- member, versus the ADD-like approach to cam- paigning and coverage that we saw during the election and in the modern Twitterverse campaign. One of the reasons why I think the overall messag- es were so unsuccessful at breaking through is that they couldn’t even stick to one process story and try to drive them for more than fifteen minutes.
RS: If you thought for example that contempt of Parliament was the big issue, or if you thought that Harper’s approach to media was the big issue, you have to actually drive the story so it has the oppor- tunity for average people to actually hear or read it, as opposed to it becoming white noise. So much of the stories that circulated day to day, minute by minute, the Facebook crap, just became such white noise because it moved on so quickly.
CR: That’s interesting, I would have to also say if you want to have a message that cuts through, it has to actually resonate, right?
RS: Yes, I’m not saying that was the only problem with this election campaign, but I think it was one of the challenges. We started this discussion with brand definition which is repetition, repetition, repetition. The message can be a process message. It doesn’t have to be a seventeen point plan to save the country. But, it needs to show that the Leader and Party are serious about it, mean it and, as said - it has to resonate. I think that in some ways the Twitter machine and other social media which be- came creatures of the campaign, created disincen- tives for the press to chase what people were talk- ing about in the moment, as opposed to what we
8 Campaigns & Elections | Canadian Edition wanted them to be talking about on election-day.
CR: It’s also about big messages, not small messages, so maybe one of the changes of this campaign that really cemented direction was the broad narra- tive and the broad message that was very powerful with voters. The day to day messages didn’t have as much resonance as we’ve seen in other campaigns, the typical signature policies and good ideas. When you think about each of the Parties’ positions en- tering the race, we already knew what they were proposing. The Prime Minister obviously had a message track about stability and about the econ- omy. Michael Ignatieff had a bucket of progressive social policies. Jack had...
RS: The same bucket.
CR: The same, a similar social development. I think people did understand those choices in terms of message, did they not?
MS: I do. I think that there were two things. One, I think the NDP and Conservatives actually knew who their voters were and what they were target- ing. So, they knew what they could and couldn’t sell. It wasn’t the messages that caused the break through, it was more complex. We can talk about it at another lunch here at the Senator. “The Liber- als”.
CR: The “Future of the Liberal Party” lunch.
RS: Oh, that would be a fantastic lunch, I really look forward to that. CR: I’ll buy, how about that?
RS: I don’t disagree Mark. I think there were choices. Two of the three parties offered choices that were plausible, winnable choices that were presented to the electorate, where the Liberal strat- egy was deeply flawed. In terms of “mobilization”, Mark why do you think mobilization mattered in this campaign and still matters in the election cam- paigns?
MS: It’s the choice of majority, right? A motivated and mobilized base turned out to vote. Does it always work? No. If you don’t think that an en- ergized, mobilized, properly run get-out-the-vote strategy and effort didn’t make a difference in win- ning different seats across the country, you’re com- pletely wrong. RS: Obviously without giving away any top-secret
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