Paul Waldman has an absolute must-read column over at TAP, I've long argued, both here and elsewhere, that there are few things more important than politics than narrative, and that without the right narrative, a realignment wouldn't be possible. But I'm not yet half the writer that Waldman is, so if I haven't been able convinced you, maybe he will.
For the record - and this will surprise no one who knows me - this was my favorite part of his piece:
As Obama tells it, the country is held hostage by a political class that sows partisan and cultural division, making solving problems ever more difficult, while the country yearns for a new day of unity. As the youngest candidate, the only post-boomer candidate, the only bi-racial candidate, and the one candidate with a preternatural ability to obtain the good will of those who disagree with him, he can bring all Americans together and lead us to a future built on hope.
Your own reaction to that story may be a quickening of the heartbeat, or a disgusted '"Give me a break.'" But there is no denying that many, many people are willing to sign on to it. And though he is careful not to say it himself, Obama''s story benefits greatly from how often other people say that he is a Man of Destiny. This is a story we know well, because we have read it and watched it so many times before. When Luke gazes out across the barren desert of Tatooine, the wind rustling in his hair as the twin suns set and the music swells, we know just what it means, even if he doesn''t know it yet. He is The One, he will defeat the forces of evil and save the galaxy. And from the beginning of Obama's career, people have been saying the same thing about him....Truly the stuff of a great epic, one whose end is inevitable. And the same kind of story was told about Bill Clinton not too long ago....
For a narrative to work, it must be believable, but it need not be realistic. That's a subtle difference, but it is a critical one. Virtually no one believes that Obama will rid the world of evil - I certainly don't, nor does anyone else I know - just as no one thought Clinton would bring peace and freedom to the galaxy. What they did believe, however, was that Clinton represented an inevitable change: old to new Dems, Greatest Generation to Baby Boomers, 20th to 21st century, and so on. All of those shifts were no doubt inevitable, but was there any reason to think that they were in some way tied to Clinton himself? Of course not. Clinton's narrative trick was to tell his story such that he personified those inevitable societal shifts. Their inevitability became his inevitability, forcing H.W. into a campaign narrative pitting the future against the past. And as Waldman explains, McCain is falling right into that same trap:
McCain told an interesting story when he ran for president in 2000: the system was corrupt, and with his unmatched courage, independence, and integrity, he would rid Washington of its blood-sucking influence peddlers. But in this campaign he has told no story at all. What is the problem McCain's presidency is supposed to solve? Why is he the only one who can solve it? These are the questions to which winning campaigns know and communicate the answers. McCain doesn't even seem to have thought about them.
And what he communicates about himself is tethered firmly to the past. As much as his Vietnam suffering and courage gives him a halo with the pundit class, the key moment in McCain's personal story happened forty years ago. It does not connect to anything the public wants out of their next president. And the more he talks about the present and the future, the worse he does. While last week he criticized Barack Obama by saying the Democrat's speeches are "singularly lacking in specifics," few candidates on either side have been as vague as John McCain. How many people could tell you just what it is McCain wants to do if he becomes president, apart from staying in Iraq for a really long time?And if he should find himself facing Obama, McCain will discover that his own weaknesses fit in neatly with the story Obama tells. Where Obama is young, dynamic and optimistic, McCain is old, subdued, and prone to telling voters that things are likely to get worse before they get better.
I realize that many Republicans think John McCain makes an ideal opponent for Obama, figuring that his strengths will highlight Obama's weaknesses. The problem, I think, is that the traits they see as Obama's weakness - youth, insufficient DC experience, etc - are all things that are at the very center of Obama's narrative. And that's precisely why McCain's lack of narrative will cripple his campaign. Without a narrative of his own, the framework Obama has constructed will dominate our national debate. McCain will be forced to argue from within the story that Obama has constructed for himself, placing him at an enormous disadvantage. You can already see it in their dueling victory speeches - McCain is answering Obama's story, not constructing one of his own.
Joseph Campbell once said, "If you want to change the world, change the metaphor." That's as true in politics as it is anywhere else. If you want to win the campaign, construct and control the metaphor. If you can change the way people speak about you, about your moment, and about themselves, you've won before even the first vote was cast. Clinton is getting crushed because she apparently never understood this very basic fact. From the looks of things, McCain is about to make the same mistake.
UPDATE: One other thought here....
It is not just that Obama was focused on narrative-building while the other candidates were looking elsewhere. It is also that Clinton's "elsewhere" was almost uniquely ill suited to the narrative Obama was constructing while she looking away.
Mark Penn, the Clintons' equivalent of Karl Rove, is a pollster famous for his supposed ability to slice and dice the electorate into tiny groups. Soccer moms, NASCAR dads - he'll help you define and own them. He's supposedly so good at it, in fact, that he's even written a book about it - Microtrends: The Small Forces Behind Tomorrow's Big Changes. In its own way, Penn's title is its own campaign narrative: think small, and eventually you will win big. Work hard, and eventually you will overcome. To Penn what matters isn't driving big, broad changes, but small, subtle ones. For him elections aren't about driving historic shifts in behavior, but instead are about picking up on small, subtle ones that have already occurred. In Penn's world, arguments are what matter, not narratives. Campaigns are reactive, not active. And you don't plan to win big by competing in all 50 states, but instead expect to win small by targeting small demographic groups in several key states.
Obama's campaign is premised on rejecting precisely this sort of thinking. For him it isn't about recognizing small, previously existing changes in society and using them to cobble together a coalition, but is instead about mobilizing the grass-roots to drive new change from the ground up. When Obama talks about "the smallness of our politics," micro-trend campaigning is part of what he means.
So while Penn and Clinton were focused on crafting a series of narrowly targeted arguments that would target our micro-trends, Obama was constructing a single, sweeping narrative that rooted our national problems in precisely the sort of arguments that the Clinton campaign was planning to make. While he was building a narrative, they were building an argument. In a micro-trend campaign I have no doubt Clinton would have won, but against someone deliberately attempting to construct a realignment? I'm sorry, but her approach just didn't stand a chance.
But it ain't over till its over. Who knows, maybe the Clinton people will read this, ditch the micro-trend approach, and mount the comeback of all political comebacks. I hope not, but... who knows.
If you want to change the world, change the metaphor....
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