The Iowa Coup

Can you feel the heat? That's the flame emanating from thousands of political consultants across the country getting fired. The Conventional Wisdom is dead. Kaput. But let's not linger too much around its grave, because the death of the Conventional Wisdom is not the interesting part of the story--the interesting part of the story is what happens next.

The way campaigns operate has been relatively unchanged since 1960, when Television first entered the stage as the driving force in American politics. TV advertising, and the money required to run TV ads in major media markets became the sine qua non of campaigning. Campaign cash was more important than ever, because he who controlled the cash controlled the airwaves. That is starting to change, and political consultants and campaign managers across the country need to understand that if they do not adapt to these changes, their candidates are going to start losing to "amateurs" who are "broke."

The measure of a campaign is no more its long-venerated War Chest, but the power of the message and the strength of its grassroots efforts. Look at Iowa.

Barrack Obama (and Oprah) have raised quite a handsome War Chest, but has done so $20 at a time. He is the first candidate to have meaningfully brought young people into the campaign fundraising world, and has built a grassroots effort that beat back the Clinton juggernaut. Hillary Clinton had all but been anointed by the Press, the Conventional Wisdom, and the professional fundraisers as not only the Democratic nominee, but the inevitable Next President of the United States. Yet Iowa didn't even give her the consolation prize.

On the Republican side, nearly half of Iowa's voters selected candidates who had been given zero credibility from the Press and Pundits just 90 days ago: Mike Huckabee (who garnered 37% of the caucus voters) and Ron Paul (who garnered 10% of caucus voters). Ron Paul, an obscure libertarian Congressman from Texas, and the only Republican who voted against the Iraq War, has utilized the Internet to raise millions of dollars in the "Long Tail" (See Chris Anderson's Book, The Long Tail: How The Future of Business is Selling Less of More), with thousands of small contributors who simultaneously formed a passionate and energetic social community. Ron Paul gets Web 2.0--and the future of politics lies in many of the strategies employed by his campaign.

Mike Huckabee, the big winner in Iowa, routed Mitt Romney, who substantially underperformed in spite of millions in TV advertising, a massive staff, and a better organization than Huckabee's. Well, Romney and his team miscalculated a couple of things:

1. Thanks to the Internet, people know all the candidate's sins, pecadillos, shortcoming, gaffes, bad policies, checkered histories, etc., and as a result, they don't want another candidate (or special interest group) running ads informing them of such. "We know already, thanks."

Lesson: Negative campaigning is dead as a tactic.

2. Romney underestimated the power of free press, or as people in the business call it "earned media." Huckabee, primarily because his campaign was broke until about 45 days ago, had to earn media attention if he was to get any, and so he pulled some pretty impressive stunts. Chuck Norris was the bizarre grenade that got Huckabee the little bit of attention he needed to begin earning some press.

Lesson: Guerrilla Tacts work in politics.

3. Romney and his team underestimated the power of Huckabee's appeal to the evangelicals. Were there as many libertarians as evangelicals in Iowa, Ron Paul would have tied with Huckabee. Romney's scatter approach and "try to appeal to everybody" failed miserably.

Lesson: Always secure a super niche first. Then sell to everybody else.

4. Huckabee has more or less been devoid of catch phrases and sound bytes--the golden letters of campaigns prior to 2008. He hasn't tried to "control the message," because he knows he can't. Those days are long gone. Romney and his advisers must not have gotten the memo that people have started thinking for themselves (at least Caucus-goers in Iowa), and they won't be manipulated by "message development" anymore. Huckabee, in spite of some really really bad press (pardons, immigration, and economics--all of which were supposed to decimate him in a Republican primary) emerged victorious.

Lesson: Message manipulation and sound bytes are dead.

5. Lastly, Huckabee instinctively employed another essential element of a Web 2.0 framework in his campaign: transparency. There is no more genuine a candidate on either side of the aisle than Mike Huckabee. You can love him or hate him, but you can't accuse him of being fake. He is who he is, and he's relatively unapologetic about it. Yet he is good humored and honest, and most of the time a gentle person. Do not underestimate the power of "Realness" in this election. Mitt Romney is the polar opposite--he is fake and plastic, and most of the time appears completely disingenuous. Huckabee would annihilate Hillary and Edwards in a general election if this were the only thing that mattered--but it matters quite a lot; just ask Mitt Romney.

Lesson: To thine own self be true. People should love you (and vote for you) for who you are.

------

To the Conventional Wisdom and the Pundits--may you rest in peace.