The News & TeleGraff

Rove's Rules

Karl Rove's op-ed in the Wall Street Journal today, "The New Rules of Politics," outlines what he sees as the new rules of politics—three of the four "new rules" he cites specifically apply to "The First Campaign."

The first two:

- Television ads don't matter as much as they used to. Going on the air with the earliest and most ads doesn't count for nearly as much as it once did. Campaigning this time has been so intense, long and geared toward retail politics that people -- especially in the early states -- form opinions that are difficult to alter by early and voluminous advertising. Mr. Romney, who spent $2.4 million on TV ads in Iowa beginning last February, found that out.

Voters are discounting advertising. They may be blocking out ads, relying more on personal exposure, information from social networks, alternative information sources like talk radio and the Internet, and local media coverage. By Feb. 5, when it costs $16 million to burn one television spot in every state that's voting, it's simply too expensive to be on air everywhere at once.

The 20th century's closing decades saw the rise of the TV ad man as the most potent operator in presidential campaigns. The 21st century's opening decade is seeing the rise of the communications director and press spokesman as the more important figures on a campaign staff. It is the age of the Internet, cable TV, YouTube, multiple news cycles in one day, and the need for really instantaneous response. Ads and ad makers are still vital -- but not nearly as much as they were just a few years ago.

- Technology allows a candidate to raise money quickly and inexpensively. The Internet dramatically shortens the gap between political success and raising money. Under the old regime, members of the finance committee would start calling a few days after a successful debate and FedEx'ing the checks. Mail pieces might hit 10 days later. Fundraising required events with weeks of advance notice. Today, if you do well in a debate on Tuesday night you can begin raising large sums of money Wednesday morning. Effective fundraising can be a mouse-click away.

The latter rule concerning technology and fundraising was something I actually blogged about earlier this month, predicting that Barack Obama would see a tidal wave of money pour in. After his blow-out South Carolina victory last weekend, Obama was actually raising $400,000 an hour.

Karl Rove's third applicable rule—"the big bounce is gone"—actually is a central tenet of "The First Campaign": The new playing field, driven and reshaped by technology at every turn, leaves a frontrunner vulnerable right up until Election Day. It's impossible to build the dominance a leader was able to build thanks to the technological innovations of online fundraising and the splintering of the once-closely held media monopoly.

This is really turning out to be a fascinating race. Who knows what'll happen next Tuesday?

A Tidal Wave Ahead?

[cross posted from TechPresident.com]

Colin mentioned yesterday one of my favorite stories out of my new book on technology and politics in the 2008 cycle, “The First Campaign,” how snail mail possibly cost Gary Hart the 1984 election. With snail mail, the time from when a person mailed a check to a campaign to when the money was available to use often took more than ten days. In 1984, Hart pulled a stunning upset over former Vice President Walter Mondale in the New Hampshire primary, but he found himself hard-pressed to cash in on the results and the new-found momentum because of the lag time in collecting money. Tens of thousands of dollars poured into Hart’s offices around the country in the wake of his surprise Granite State victory, but it wasn’t fast enough to overcome the superior financing of Mondale’s juggernaut. Hart ended up being forced out of the race because of money shortages, even as the money continued to pour in—just not quickly enough to finance the campaign.

In 2000, John Emerson, Hart’s California 1984 campaign manager lamented to the Los Angeles Times, the challenges of raising money for a fast-moving campaign in the age of paper checks and snail mail. “For people to do that they had to know who I was, find my address, get a stamp, write the check, which I then had to deposit. Can you imagine how much more there would have been if all they had to do was go to a Gary Hart web site?”

Contrast that with the playing field by 2000. In the ten days after his upset in the New Hampshire primary, McCain raised $2.2 million online—money that just one cycle before might not have arrived in time to help an upstart insurgent take on a powerful frontrunner. In the end, the money couldn’t save McCain but could this year be different?

John Edwards has already reported he raised a million dollars online since Iowa, the fastest the campaign has ever raised that kind of money, and while we haven’t seen numbers out of Obama yet, it’s a safe bet he’s seeing money flow in online faster than normal too.

Assuming Obama and McCain win big tonight, we could see a tidal wave of online fundraising in the coming days. Even before Iowa, Obama stayed competitive with Hillary’s fundraising juggernaut thanks in large part to small dollar contributions; a surge of donations in coming days might enable him to start putting nails in her political coffin. He’s off tomorrow to a high-dollar fundraising event in New York City, Hillary’s home turf, but I have to imagine that with her aura of inevitability punctured and proof that Obama can, in fact, win, the surge of online money could be the real big money story of the next week. How many people will be inspired tonight by the dawning reality of an Obama presidency to contribute $25, 50, or $100?

Meanwhile McCain, whose fundraising in recent months has been lackluster at best, needs a serious infusion of cash if he’s to pivot from New Hampshire into the expensive national primary schedule ahead. Ron Paul has proven twice with his one-day “money bombs” just how much money is there if a candidate can tap into the right fervor. Could McCain, whose $5.5 million haul in the third quarter was less than the single day Ron Paul “money-bomb” of $6.2 in December, realistically expect to see an equivalent amount of money arrive in his campaign’s accounts in the next week? The answer appears to be yes, given how successful he was in 2000 in a much less-wired society.

The campaign that begins tomorrow, with expensive states like Florida and South Carolina coming before the “Tsunami Tuesday” of February 5th, will require millions in staff, direct mail, and television advertising. Even if McCain’s campaign is nearly broke tonight (we don’t actually know what kind of financial shape it’s in, except that he’s lagged far behind Ron Paul, Guiliani, and Romney in cash), an inspiring victory could lead the Arizona senator to wake up tomorrow morning and find millions of dollars pouring in. Unlike 1984 for Hart and 2000 for McCain, could online money be the savior of John McCain’s once-again-insurgent campaign tonight?

Podcast Me!

I've been doing a lot of speeches and radio interviews as part of the launch of "The First Campaign" and wanted to pass along some of the various podcasts in case you were interested:

• Just before the Iowa caucuses I spent a full hour on the Diane Rehm Show talking about technology and politics. It was perhaps the most fun interview I've done yet, since the callers were really good and the conversation moved along so quickly.

• Later that afternoon, I was on NPR's Marketplace to talk about the online fundraising haul that might great the winners of the caucus. That was a particularly amusing interview, as it was done remotely by Kai Ryssdal, who I listen to probably three nights a week—and here he was in my headset talking to me personally!

• I spoke at the Carnegie Council in New York last month, where we had a great conversation again on tech/politics. You can also watch that speech on C-SPAN's Book TV. Earlier that day, I did live the Leonard Lopate Show on WNYC.

Lastly, it's not a podcast but I did an interview with Popular Mechanics for their segment "Geek the Vote" about tech issues and the elections.

Iowa

First, a moment to brag that I called it right today that Huckabee and Obama would win Iowa. The only visual proof is this screenshot from Facebook:

Beyond that, though, I was just talking with an Obama organizer in Iowa who said: "I'm here with our precinct field captains and these are people who haven't changed the world in a long time and they're really excited tonight."

It's a huge win for Obama. There's no other way to spin it.

More Reviews

A few more reviews of "The First Campaign" have trickled in recently:

The Christian Science Monitor liked the book: "'The First Campaign' is a graceful book, and an important one. It's a success born of perspective: Graff gets enough distance to sketch the landscape— with all its moving parts—while remaining firmly embroiled in the fight."

One of Vermont's biggest columnists devoted a huge hunk of space to the book, and Micah Sifry over at TechPresident.com named "The First Campaign" one of his favorite political books of the year.

My favorite review, of course, remains the New York Post's, which hated the book and closed with a line almost as classic as "astonishingly young": "If Graff is a guide to the future, America is in more trouble than he thinks."

YES!