A failed president looks to make a hand-off to a lackluster candidate. The young brilliant upstart Barack Obama is only ahead by single digits. Why? At least part of the reason is this: John McCain knows how to control his message.
Controlling your message shows a kind of power. It sets off a chain reaction: control-power-trust-confidence, qualities Obama is looking to grow in the public's mind.
Now you might argue, with all McCain's gaffes and mistakes, he's far from being in control. But, review this passage from just this past Sunday. This Week's George Stephanopoulos has just asked McCain about an Iraq timetable:
McCain: "Look, I have always said, and I said then, it's the conditions on the ground. If Senator Obama had had his way, we'd have been out last March, and we'd been out in defeat and chaos, and probably had to come back again because of Iranian influence. It's conditions on the ground -- the way that the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff said, the way that General Petraeus has said -- conditions on the ground, so that the Iraqi government can have control, can have the sufficient security, so that we don't have to come back. Senator Obama said that if his date didn't work, we may have to come back." We're not coming home in victory. We're coming home in victory. "
First off, you can see that McCain contradicts himself, as in "We're not coming home in victory. We're coming home in victory. " McCain's even flat-out wrong, as John Amato from Crooks and Liars and the Young Turks have noted this week in the post, Gen. Petraeus is not the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Admittedly, McCain could have meant,
"the way that the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff said, the way that General Petraeus (also) has said."
But no matter. Controlling your message is not about accuracy. Besides, Stephanopoulos hardly calls McCain on any of these points.
Instead, McCain's creates a constellation of words that stick in your head. Watching the video, you'll see Stephanopoulos looks almost dizzy from the repeated and insisted thumping of McCain's words. In this way, McCain's messaging works. In the small passage above you pick up:
everything depends on conditions on the ground
coming home in victory
Obama may make us have to go back
(I'm sure you could find additional ideas as well.)
There are at least two principles at work here. Repetition and simplicity.
Repetition, as in repeating these phrases:
conditions on the ground (repeated 3x)
coming home in victory (repeated 2x)
Simplicity. By simplicity I mean short, clear phrases or ideas. These are simple ideas, like Julius Caesar, "I came, I saw, I conquered." McCain is almost poetic in his terseness:
I have always said ... and I said then
can have control ... can have the sufficient security
Obama said ... may have to come back
Here's another example of control, this time by actor and California Governor, Arnold Schwarzenegger, again on This Week. His thoughts on "flip-flopping":
The Terminator: "You can change your mind// I have changed my mind on things and there is nothing wrong with it// But I'd just say to the people, I'd say, 'Look, I once felt this way. Now I think this way,' end of story."
Schwarzenegger uses both repetition (change, changed) and simplicity (nothing wrong, end of story). Schwarzenegger only includes words he wants you to hear: change, nothing wrong, end of story. He controls his message. The tightness of his language evokes control.
The Left over-loves diffusion, it doesn't understand that people get lost in complications. This is what some call being too fancy pants for your own good. The failure of The New Yorker magazine cover a couple week's ago was a perfect example of this. The magazine was just being too clever for itself -- sending out too many messages -- unclearly -- and in total left the viewer confused.
But beneath that is something else. As linguist George Lakoff describes in his book, "The Political Mind," -- by "... ignoring the cognitive unconscious, not stating your deepest values... You will be ineffective." The New Yorker, like so many on the Left is unaware of its deepest values.
Which brings us to The Paris Hilton/Britney Spears attack ad -- one of McCain's latest commercials: it's been pooh-poohed for being silly. And honestly, it's a hard argument to make that being popular with the kids is a liability. And yet, advocates for Obama should think hard about the associations the McCain camp is trying to attach to Obama. In principle, I'd say you shouldn't allow your opponent to define you, in this case as/by celebrity, money, youth, foreign, oil. So what's underneath all that crap? That's where your deepest values are. Finding this, might be the brain muscle that needs flexing. And it's not enough to define or see yourself as not-celebrity, money, youth, foreign, oil. It has to be a solid, positive thing. This will take some thought.
And I know it's tempting to do an ad with an old man dozing off while a child lights a fire in the kitchen...