Thank God For the Bush Pyramid
The Multilevel Marketing of the President by Matt Bai offers some great insight to the Bush grassroots campaign of 2004.
Although the article goes into extensive detail about the organizational structure of the campaign, what was most striking to me was that it highlighted a very important part of grassroots efforts – dedication to a cause. Bai writes:
“And even if the volunteers themselves exceed expectations, it's worth remembering that, unlike unions or City Halls, this new kind of machine has nothing tangible to offer to voters -- no jobs or wage increases. Bush's machine relies solely, in Mehlman's words, on ''love and belief in the importance of the president.'' No union boss would bank his future on that.”
For one thing, this excerpt describes my feelings as a volunteer during the campaign. While I’ll admit that I did not exceed expectations, I certainly remember being very proud to be part of something that is very good.
The organizational structure that Bai describes is really a good thing. A presidential campaign (last year’s in particular) is not necessarily the right time to get experimental and let your volunteers have free run at doing whatever they want. There has to be order; this helps to ensure that the online message is consistent with the offline message. The Bush campaign didn’t manage your own personal discussions, so I was fine with its rigid structure.
In fact, I think the structure made me more passionate about supporting the president. I had clear direction of what to do and what to talk about. It’s not that they didn’t let me think for myself. They just provided focus that directly related to all of the campaign coverage at the time.
6 Comments:
I believe that this is absolutely why Bush won. He simply had a more devoted, better located and a better organized volunteer force. The question I have is whether or not Democrats are capable of the same sort of effort. Democrats hate being a part of a nameless organization and all want to be individuals, both at the volunteer level and the party leadership level. If they still can't all get together on simple messaging how can they run an operation like Bush's? I fear that until they do, it will be an uphill battle to win elections.
Well, I can't agree with the "Thank God" part; I agree that Bush's operation was extremely impressive.
In response to jd: I believe that the Dean campaign was an example of a group of autonomous volunteers creating a sense of community that in many ways was stronger than a top-down strategy would have been - a great example was the pledges to meet trolls with campaign donation pledges, which virtually eliminated trolls.
Alas, the candidate himself needed more self control.
Passion and conviction are most important; a campaign can have the best targeting technolgy and actively go out and target those voters, but if your base just doesn't have the heart to go out there and get those votes....you've lost. I most definitely agree that this fact was fundamental in the Bush victory in 2004.
Shadow:
I agree that what Dean accomplished was impressive, and I repeatedly attended Dean meetings that took place long after his loss looking to recruit volunteers. But the quesiton isn't whether or not Dean accomplished something great, the question is whether or not what he accomplished was helpful in getting him elected President of the United States, and it wasn't. Not until Democrats approach a campaign in the organized and businesslike manner that the Republicans did, they will continually be caught twisting in the wind, wondering why they always lose.
Having worked on a statewide campaign in Ohio during the election, I am quick to point out the shortcomings of the Kerry campaign. It was a bit haphazard, a tad self-deceiving and more than little outplayed by its opponents. But, I have to say that the campaign did its best to have the "businesslike" control over the internal workings. Volunteers in Ohio for Kerry were well trained and passionate (for the cause if not for the candidate) from the get-go. This wasn't the Dems' biggest problem.
What killed Kerry and the Dems was the inefficiency of ten different organizations doing the same thing. People on the left were dumping resources, most importantly volunteer hours, into this race. Some canvassed for Kerry; others worked for MoveOn PAC; some went out for ACT, etc. Kerry had no means of centralizing it all like Bush did. The 70,000-odd votes that made the difference in Ohio can be directly attributed to the Bush team's efficiency. But one can equally blame the Democrats' split manpower.
The Bush Pyramid also made me passionate about his campaign. I really like how the campaign utilized corporate style techniques to reach their voters. Why not use corporate techniques?? If it works for Amway then it has to work for a campaign. A campaign is nothing more then selling a product, the candidate.
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