Before the advent of the shot-clock in college basketball, it was possible to use the Four-Corners Offense to run out the clock when your team had the lead. Essentially, the point guard would bring the ball up the middle and the other four players would form a spread-out square. Then they would play a game of keep-away, making little effort to score and forcing the other team to commit a foul in order to get the ball back.
Because the Obama campaign secured an insurmountable lead in pledged delegates very early in the primaries, they used a variety of the four-corners offense. Knowing that the game was won short of some kind of epic meltdown, they engaged in a low-risk strategy. It was no longer critical that they win states so long as they minimized the loss of delegates. They didn’t need to take any risks to knock Clinton out because there was really no way she could overcome their lead if they just protected the ball. Their fundraising prowess was such that they didn’t worry about the cost of an extended campaign, and they took advantage of the opportunity to organize in late primary states like North Carolina and Indiana. This paid off on election day.
The general election was different. In the general, all the votes (aside from absentees and mail-ins) were cast on one day. The Obama Team did work hard to lock in a lead among early voters, but they couldn’t build up in an insurmountable lead; they had to win on election day. To some degree, the habits they learned during the primaries didn’t serve them well in the general. They weren’t as strong at fighting the daily news cycle as they were in out-strategizing the other side. Fortunately, McCain was a terrible campaigner, Palin was a huge drag, and David Plouffe was a brilliant ground-game tactician.
Because the Obama Team won a strong victory over McCain, they didn’t properly assess their weaknesses, which led to problems in the first year of the administration.
Press secretary Robert Gibbs said the White House team struggled in 2009 to adapt to a political environment that demanded daily communication battles. “We have to adjust in many ways to the fact that in the campaign we always took the long view,” he said. “This is an environment that calls for sharper communication.”
Taking the long-view is especially important for the Executive Branch because it leads to good policy. But governing doesn’t allow for situations where you build up insurmountable leads. There is no final score or ultimate victory. You can’t play keep-away or remain above the fray. If you sit back and let the opponent score points on you, eventually they will start whittling down your political capital.
The Obama campaign was the best campaign in history. But it did have some weaknesses and it did develop some bad habits. Fortunately, they are aware of this now and I think we’ll see a better performance going forward.
I have been saying this since the early days of 2009.
Note: This isn’t an I told you so, this is a “damn right!” kind of response.
Good analysis.
But in a campaign, you also don’t leak your intentions. Leaking information is a self-defeating communication strategy on a whole lot of levels.
Hopefully, the White House will return to a strategy of no leaks and no drama. And at the same time be a little more transparent about what they are up to so there is a clear re-establishment of trust.
Interesting. I agree.
But Obama’s supporters learned bad habits also. The one that sticks out most was their demonization of Clinton for playing to win. They were blind to the up-side of putting Obama through the paces and made her no-holds=barred approach out to be morally detestable, when in fact her fight is what we as Democrats need to become comfortable with.
All through the primary, I kept thinking two things: The competence of Obama’s campaign outweighs his inexperience and I wish Democrats would fight like Clinton for issues the way they fight for their careers.
But we spent last election season applauding Obama for acting like the favorite when he was winning, blaming Clinton for acting like the underdog when she was losing, and using the idea of 11-dimensional-chess to rationalize obvious mistakes.
I think this is wrong. What was the upside? The story itself was that because Clinton didn’t give up Obama took the opportunity to organized but specifically didn’t change his game plan. In fact, if Clinton HAD conceded when she lost any realistic chance at victory, it would have put him against McCain a lot earlier and he wouldn’t have been able to ignore the news cycles longer, so he would have had to learn to respond to them much quicker.
So in fact, because Clinton wouldn’t give up, Obama wasn’t able to learn that he needs to win the news cycles as well as the long game against the Republicans.
It would have been better if Clinton had been in contention right up to the convention, but it would have been worse if Obama didn’t have to defend against her campaign’s attacks for the months that she stayed in the race. At the time, no one was complaining that Clinton was letting Obama off too easily.
Obama’s failure to learn that he’s needed to win news cycles is his own. We all knew that we were electing someone woefully inexperienced. We decided that his positives outweighed his negatives. But we would be the foolish ones if we keep glossing over the consequences of his instances of poor judgment.
Obama’s supporters attacked Clinton relentlessly and sometimes unfairly during the campaign, allowing Obama to stay above the fray. He’s generalized that strategy, using Congress as his surrogates to hash out HCR while he goes about his business calmly. That’s a temperament more suited to a Supreme Court justice than a President. I hope he’s questioning that now.
Actually, he learned from Clinton’s failure. Dictating to Congress what they will and won’t do is a recipe for disaster – Clinton proved that in spades. A totally hands-off approach has moved the ball further down the field than their dictatorial approach; although it hasn’t yet passed it’s not dead in the water with the presidents’ own partisans in Congress actively working to defeat his plan.
As to temperament, I’ll take a professorial temperament over one that lends itself to Old South-style allusions – as I’ve said many times, for that the Clintons’ political capital with me can be measured in Confederate dollars. They can rot in hell as far as I’m concerned – Obama finds them useful so I’m OK with him pimping them for what they can do for him, but once their usefulness has been expended then they can go straight to Arkansas.
Except report after report had Congress begging the president to tell them what to do. Maybe in 1994 it was that way with all the old guard, but the media narrative is oriented towards the president and the total rubber-stamp nature of the republicans and fecklessness of the dems has combined to create a congress that is conceptually incapable of performing its job. They are much more comfortable following the president and require a lot of hand holding.
He did tell them: pass something and it’ll be worked out in conference. What he didn’t do is give the opposition a hard-and-fast position to target and misrepresent, that way if he had to move then it couldn’t be portrayed as a compromise of his core principles. He can assert what he wants just before final passage, i.e. conference, to get what he actually wants passed. It’s been a far from perfect process, to be sure, but it’s not Clinton’s approach to things and that is an unqualified good thing.
Except that process leaves his supporters in a lerch. And they don’t know what to say when calling their Congresscritter’s office.
Sorry, I don’t get how the obsession with “bipartisanship” is trying to play keep-away. Maybe it’s closer to a strategy too focused on winning the championship at the end of the season and not enough on making every play work toward that goal.
I like rehashing old campaigns as much as the next person, and I like basketball more than most.
So if we’re using college basketball analogies, I’d argue the Obama campaign was more like Pete Carril’s Princeton teams on offense—patient, deliberate, running through all the options, taking what the defense gives, with occasional killer backdoor cuts for easy layups. (I guess in this analogy the backdoor cuts are the caucus state victories, and maybe speeches like the Philadelphia one on race after the Rev. Wright controversy.)
On defense the Obama campaign was more like John Wooden’s UCLA teams with their 2-2-1 zone press. In this analogy the ability to raise money to fund advertising and field operations for all the Super Tuesday states, and to put pressure on McCain in states like Florida, North Carolina, Indiana, and even Arizona are the full court press. The press doesn’t force the other side to make mistakes every time down the court, but it does put your team in position to take advantage of those mistakes as the other side wears down from the constant pressure.
The Obama presidency was very successful in its first few months at pressing the Republicans all over the court, as it were. It’s only when health care became the sole issue (and that issue got stuck in the Senate Finance Committee for months) that Republicans were able to (partially) regain their footing.
Hopefully Gibbs’ statement, the return of operatives like Plouffe, the pushback on counterterrorism by Brennan, on the filibuster by Biden, on health care by Obama with the Feb. 25 summit, are elements of a broader strategy to pressure Congressional Republicans to defend their unpopular positions (and pressure Congressional Democrats to fight for their more popular positions on a range of issues).