THE US REPORT

Effective branding creates an image that lives far beyond conception. A perfect example of successful GOP branding is Theodore Roosevelt, our 26th president. (Photo from White House website.)Part 1 in an analysis of the 2008 General Election campaign

Since Barack Obama won the presidential election, and a number of new Democratic faces will soon head to the House and Senate, Republicans are doing some rather uncharacteristic navel gazing. From blogs to liberal newspapers, on message boards and via email discussions, GOP faithful are analyzing the down. A family member did more than that on election night. She was furious. Not at Obama. At the GOP.

“What’s wrong with them? I can’t believe this!” And like that. Being older, I offered wisdoms. “We can’t win every time. This is just not our time.” And then I added I thought it might be fun to run offense for a change. “The 2010 elections have already begun and so has the 2012 General Election,” I said.

Unfortunately the GOP is clueless.

Branding
For starters, GOP leaders and legislators are not branded as solidly as Democrats. There’s a benefit to elbowing one’s way onto the pro-Democratic networks—essentially every TV network except Fox News. But elbow you must and duel with the opposition you must because an election is not finite. It is infinite. It is daily. It is repeating one’s message and even more importantly, having a cohesive message. Ours is really very simple—less government. That is automatically a winner. You have to be an idiot to want more government and I don’t think Americans are idiots.

We have also had issues responding to media assassinations. Media is pro-Democrat. That’s an obstacle in itself, although it definitely can be overcome. You can’t skank off when there’s fire. When negative charges are levied, there must be a response even if you have to pay to get it heard. And it’s smarter to do the response before the charges are levied if you know what I mean.

Media Moxie
There is a very thin relationship between the GOP and media. This is nothing new. Media has loved Democrats for a very long time. The whole myth of Camelot, for instance, was woven by media. And very few in that industry will admit just how murky Camelot was and how inept our very inexperienced president was. A hard-core feminist could have a field day ranting about the Kennedy attitudes towards women and those attitudes were long enough they’re still grounds for commentary. Our last Democratic president had a wee problem with that sort of thing.

How does a myth endure despite evidence to the contrary? The King of Camelot, John F. Kennedy, admired Franklin Delano Roosevelt. Seymour M. Hersh reported in ‘The Dark Side of Camelot’ (1997) what Historian David Herbert Donald said about Kennedy—“he thought to be a great president you had to be a wartime president…I came away feeling that this is a young man who doesn’t understand history.” [pg. 255-56]

What happened in Vietnam proved Donald right. What happened with Cuba did the same—only after the Soviets declassified intelligence files did we learn they had shipped, according to Hersh, “…at least 134 nuclear warheads, and perhaps more into Cuba.” There were 42,000 Soviet troops stationed in Cuba, ensuring the warheads could be mounted if necessary. Kennedy’s Deputy Secretary of Defense Roswell Gilpatric told the Kennedy Library in 1970 he still didn’t think they were there. [355] He was wrong for the second time.

There was Kennedy the secretive, deceptive president and Kennedy the myth. There was Kennedy the womanizer and Kennedy the myth. The myth was created by careful, costly branding, by forging relationships with key media, by alliances within the entertainment world and by careful control of information. In addition, astute leverage of information for political purposes—having the goods on those you needed to “persuade”—that was a tactic JFK learned from his father and is ably employed in politics today. There is no more effective aggression than a carefully placed leak to media.

I’ve often thought many of the accusations leveled at Bush 43 actually fit JFK very well. Yet the Kennedy machine and the Democratic machine were savvy enough and strong enough to protect the Camelot myth even today. Only in the last decade have historians begun to approach Kennedy from a critical viewpoint rather than a pandering perspective. They are still trying to get all the papers from that administration released. Nobody has ever gained access to the tapes a number of  Kennedy’s circle, including his secretary, said he bugged the White House with.

Say the words ‘White House tapes” and people think of Nixon—branding.

Barack Obama is simply another length in the thread that stretches from Kennedy, Johnson, Carter and Clinton to the present. The brand is solid and I correctly predicted from the first time I saw Obama speak that the party was resurrecting the 60s. The timing was perfect. The strategy was flawless. The Camelot myth was the blueprint.

GOP leaders in Congress as well as within the party would do well to realize future campaigns are being waged at this very moment. That is the most important lesson we can take home from Obama’s victory, and it is a cornerstone in Democratic successes over the last 47 years. It’s all about the branding, the day-to-day never-ending process of finding a path to message the party’s chief actors into the minds—and more importantly the hearts—of voters. It’s like public relations with Main Street.

McCain didn’t so much fail in his bid for the presidency. He simply didn’t triumph. But more importantly while his brand was respected within political circles, Main Street had very little idea who McCain really is, although there was a great deal of respect for his military sacrifices. That was the first serious mistake on the part of the party. And that was followed by several more miscalculations that sparked a political downturn for the Grand Old Party.

The first strategic flaw for the GOP in the 2008 elections was absence of effective branding.