New Media and the Politics of Opposition
by John F. Kerr
President-elect Obama’s campaign is already being cited as a model of
efficiency and competence. But the grand strategy underlying the Democratic
playbook could easily have been lifted from a recent book by a Trinity
professor of political
science. Perhaps it was. And both political parties would agree with another
Trinity scholar that a national campaign without extensive support of the
latest electronic media is unthinkable.
Published last year, Running Against the Grain: How Opposition Presidents Win
the White House by associate professor David Crockett looks at the history of
opposition candidates, those presidential candidates whose political ideas are
out of sync with the prevailing political ethos. The advent of another
presidential campaign meant a string of public speaking engagements for
Crockett, the University’s point man for presidential politics, whose first
book, The Opposition Presidency: Leadership and the Constraints of History,
came out in 2002. A self-described army brat who lived all over the world but spent
13 formative years in the Washington, D.C. area, Crockett has been in demand on
the lecture circuit for the past three presidential elections.
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Presidential scholar David Crockett is troubled by the growing polarization of American politics and the resultant lack of collaboration. |
Crockett believes that presidential candidates are too often viewed like Olympic athletes, competing on a level playing field, with victory going to the more skilled competitor. The reality is more complex and more interesting. He prefers to look deeper into the historical context of the race to determine the chances of the candidates, especially if the politician is an “opposition candidate,” one who is running against the prevailing ideology of the country. He also studies the challenges of governing as an opposition president.
Crockett finds it useful to divide American political history into a series of political eras that tend to favor one party over an-other. We can consider the advantaged party as the governing party and the disadvantaged party as the opposition party.
The governing ideology dominates because it resonates more deeply with the electorate than the opposition party. It gen-erally defines the terms of political debate. For example, the New Deal era, lasting from 1932 until the election of Ronald Reagan, favored Democrats. That did not mean that Republicans never won. It just meant that they did not win as often and had a harder time doing it.
Crockett believes we may still be in the Reagan era and that a majority of American voters can be grouped together in a “robust center-right coalition.” That means the Democrats are the opposition party. Sometimes an opposition candidate like Bill Clinton is elected. This reflects the desire of Americans for a new manager working within the dominant political climate rather than a sea change in the ideology.
In the first chapter of his recent book, under the subtitle “A Model for Getting Elected,” Crockett proposed three keys for an opposition candidate victory. The first was to take advantage of a governing party in trouble. This was an easy one for the Democrats, with the Republicans stuck with a deeply unpopular president waging a miserably unpopular war. On top of that came the Wall Street meltdown and credit crisis, which promised economic distress for millions. Although the blame fairly fell on both parties, free market economics and de-regulation—issues normally associated with Republicans—sank into disrepute. And since the financial boondoggle occurred during the Bush administration’s watch, voters were inclined to place the blame on them.
The second key was to run a “blank slate” candidate. Obama fit the bill nicely. Crockett writes, “What is required…are candidates who hide or mask the central differences between the two parties rather than highlight them. Instead of boldly championing the core philosophy of the opposition party, the successful opposition candidates are politically ambiguous enough to be whatever the voters want them to be. In other words, instead of presenting a clear and staunchly ideological portrait to voters, the successful opposition candidate allows voters to write their own vision of the candidate in their minds.”
The third and final key was to run an indirect campaign. Crockett quotes another scholar who wrote, “The absence of great ideological issues is the basic quality of victorious opposition party campaigns.” This is related to key number two above. Although the candidate may discuss various issues, he must avoid a ‘great policy’ debate and “avoid direct frontal assaults on the core issues that divide the parties.”
Obama’s campaign hewed closely to this guidance. Thus the lack of executive experience and legislative achievements that invited Republican attacks also allowed voters to project onto him their own notions of an ideal candidate. And although arguably the most liberal member of the Senate, he largely avoided such hot-button issues as abortion, gun control, and homosexual marriage to focus on issues such as health care and energy independence.
With two wars and a full-blown economic crisis facing him, the new president faces more daunting challenges than any president since Franklin Roosevelt in 1932. Crockett says Obama could choose to govern as a new manager within the prevailing conservative climate. But if the political environment is still as politically conservative as Crockett thinks it is, Obama will encounter restraints if he tries to move too far to the left too fast. When President Clinton tried to push a markedly liberal agenda after being elected as a centrist, he was handed a crushing defeat in the mid-term elections. The fact that California voted overwhelmingly for Obama while at the same time passing a constitutional amendment banning gay marriage shows a strong preference for new leadership but not necessarily a rejection of traditional values.
But with a strong victory over McCain and added strength in both houses of Congress, Obama potentially could become a regime builder, a kind of new FDR. This would mark the start of a new political era in American life.
One development that troubles Crockett is the growing polarization of American politics. In a recent interview in his book-lined office on the campus, he observed that the Congress is now more polarized than at any time since the Civil War. “In the 1940s, ’50s, and ’60s, there was a political spectrum in both parties,” he said. “This made it fairly easy to iron out differences and cooperate on legislation. The trend over the past few decades has been for liberal Republicans to become Democrats and conservative Democrats to become Republicans. Consequently, each party tends to view the other as just plain wrong and it has become much harder to collaborate.” Not surprisingly, Congress rates even lower in approval polls than President Bush.
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New media expert Aaron Delwiche warns of the dark side of the Internet—the ability to rapidly circulate disinformation and rumors. |
The parties may be polarized on politics, but they easily agree on the centrality to any campaign of the new electronic media, an area of interest to Aaron Delwiche, a communication professor at Trinity who studies new media, especially the Internet, “virtual communities,” and video games. He grew up in Cupertino, California, in the heart of Silicon Valley at the time personal computers were in their infancy. Both his parents were involved in the computer industry and as a high school student he used to hang out at Computers Plus, a computer store a few blocks from his house. It was owned by Mark Wozniak, the younger brother of Steve Wozniak, the co-founder of Apple Computers.
Delwiche notes the efficiency with which campaign money can be raised via the Internet. Even Ron Paul, although rating very low in the polls, was able to set a record of fund raising in one day via the Internet.
But Delwiche also sees a dark side of the Internet, the ability to rapidly circulate disinformation and rumors. These can be initiated or approved by a candidate but virtually impossible to trace back to him. Fortunately, the Internet also offers extensive fact-checking capabilities, and they got plenty of use in the election.
Snopes.com, also called the Urban Legends Reference Pages, is one of Delwiche’s favorite sites. Founded in 1995 by a California couple, the site is dedicated to exploring urban myths and validating or debunking them.
During a presidential election, rumors abound. A few weeks before election day, the Web site listed some 40 rumors about Obama, including that he was a radical Muslim who refused to recite the pledge of allegiance, that he was sworn into office on the Koran, that his campaign had been funded by Hugo Chavez, and that he had been endorsed by the Ku Klux Klan. Rumors about Sarah Palin included a list of books she purportedly tried to ban from the Wasilla public library. The list included such beloved classics as The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, The Catcher in the Rye, and To Kill a Mockingbird as well as two of Shakespeare’s plays. Most of the rumors about the candidates were proved groundless, including all of the preceding.
Obama’s Web site had a section devoted to checking out rumors. But when the rumors starting cascading, his campaign set up a separate Web site devoted to debunking them: StopTheSmear.com.
Both campaigns made heavy use of the Internet to build databases, recruit and organize volunteers, present their message, and solicit donations. Republicans spent heavily on “micro-targeting,” buying mailing lists for hunting magazines, snow mobile users, buyers of tires for SUVs, and others perceived to be likely Republican voters. But Obama’s use of text messaging gave him a technological edge, especially with young adults and Hispanics, both of whom overwhelmingly voted for him.
Delwiche spends a fair amount of time looking at various Web logs or “blogs.” He has a blog himself and requires his students to create one. He sees their chief value as building worldwide communities of interest.
With blogs so simple to create, it might seem that we have achieved the ultimate democratization of global communication on the Internet: anyone can write anything and be read by anyone, anywhere. But both professors agree that the phenomenon has not necessarily enhanced political discussion.
“Political blogs have not contributed to the common good,” says Crockett. “They’re just more people screaming in the echo chamber.”
Delwiche sees self-imposed isolation as the downside of the ability to form communities of interest. “We have the power to connect with people just like us, but we also have the power to filter out people who are different from us. And that’s what we’re seeing: people who only read blogs that reinforce their political views. I think both Fox News and MSNBC serve that function for the right and the left, respectively, but the blogs tend to do the same thing.”
“We’ve given so much power to individuals to shape their communications and the
messages they receive. They don’t have to be at home at 8 p.m. on Monday night
to watch their favorite television program. They can TiVo it. They can filter
to receive just the news headlines they want. And that, in a way, is really
encouraging. It means they can set their own agenda for receiving news rather
than relying on a handful of major media outlets. But there isn’t any
expectation now that we’re supposed to be in common spaces, to talk with people
we disagree with, which is at the core of democracy. If we stop talking and
listening to people we disagree with, then we wind up where we are right now. I
was one of those people who were always displeased with NBC, CBS, and ABC, and
how they presented things and what stories they thought important, but at least
there was a common focus you could argue about. Now, that’s gone.”
For further reading…
Crockett recommends The Politics Presidents Make: Leadership from John Adams to
George Bush by Stephen Skowronek (Belknap Press, 1993).
Delwiche recommends No Sense of Place: The Impact of Electronic Media on Social
Behavior by Joshua Meyrowitz (Oxford University Press, 1985); Smart Mobs: The
Next Social Revolution by Howard Rheingold (Basic Books, 2003); and Here Comes
Everybody: The Power of Organizing Without Organizations by Clay Shirky
(Penguin Press, 2008). His blog may be found at http://delwiche.livejournal.com/.