Is 2010 an Extension of 2008?
President Obama in his interview with George Stephanopoulos has said, “The same thing that swept Scott Brown into office swept me into office.” David Axelrod sounded a similar note in his telephone interview with Mike Allen, stating:
We’re FAMILIAR with the vote that was cast today: Some of the same sentiment that propelled [Brown's] campaign, propelled ours — the sense that this economy doesn’t work particularly well for middle class, working people … You overlay the fact that we’re in a recession — the deepest since the Great Depression — and people are understandably agitated.
I agree that there is a growing grassroots sentiment across America that sees Washington as far out of touch from the citizens our government is meant to represent. I also agree that this sentiment propelled Obama into office as it now has Scott Brown. But Obama is using an interesting tactic to inferentially associate himself with his own opposition. There should be no doubt that Scott Brown’s amazing run to the Senate was largely (but certainly not exclusively) fueled by national opposition to the President’s healthcare reform plan.
Amazing. But let’s give the President his due before we question why he would make such an association. Consider the book The Battle for America 2008 by Dan Balz and Hayes Johnson (HT: Mike Allen) who describe Sunday March 4, 2007. This was the date of the first political event involving Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama following each of their announcements to run for the White House. Balz and Johnson describe the prevailing political wisdom of that moment in time as follows:
Obama knows all too well that Clinton stands as the odds-on, even inevitable, winner of the nomination—and for good reason: She is the best known, has the most formidable political organization, the most money, the greatest expertise. She’s backed by a network that has helped win the White House twice, something no Democrat had accomplished since FDR, and can recruit almost anyone she wants. And everyone knows her name.
The prevailing wisdom had some good data at its disposal. At this point, the Obama campaign had no bank accounts, no credit cards, no motorcades, no staff, no donor lists, and no website. Even the plane leaving that first event was grounded with a dead battery. Undaunted by the bad omen, Obama calmly told his aides, “I guess this really is a grassroots campaign.” Indeed.
Against such long odds, where did candidate Obama find the confidence which permeated his speeches throughout his campaign? Could it be that he firmly believed that history was on his side? Or perhaps he believed he could control the narrative of Politics in 2008 by playing the part? Let us use only charitable judgments here and accept the Balz and Johnson account that the hopeful insight of Obama’s lead strategist, David Axelrod, was that now is the time. To wait to become more experienced is to risk never getting a shot. Axelrod was proven right. Obama was a better fit for the historical moment than Clinton, and his candidacy indeed had the potential to “spark a political movement and prevail against sizable odds.”
In being swept to office by seizing this moment, President Obama acknowledged that “the Internet served our campaign in unprecedented ways.” Undoubtedly, it was unprecedented for an America only two generations removed from segregation to vote a Black man into the Presidency. Amid this wonderful achievement, it is instructive to recall how Obama characterized our nation’s shortcomings and opportunities—certainly at arm’s length from the comments of Jeremiah Wright and Bill Ayers, but not completely at odds with them either.
The Internet amplified what the Obama campaign said about America to an audience that was ready to see certain longstanding structural barriers removed. But was racism and socioeconomic inequity the barrier, or was it something more? Again, let us make only charitable judgments at this point and recognize the good of having future generations come of age in this new cultural environment that is able to look back and see clearly that America has rejected the inherent hypocrisy of unjust political oppression—especially in the evil institution of slavery—and the self-evident truth that “all men are Created equal” that is enshrined in our founding documents.
Barack Obama shattered structural barriers that Martin Luther King, Jr. and others fought hard to chip away at over time. Following the steady gains of racial justice in America, Obama was able to burst on the scene with the right message at the right time. To deliver the message, he took full advantage of the Internet to reach beyond the traditional network of political potentates and insiders that stood poised to help send another Clinton into the White House. By using the web in innovative ways, the Obama campaign’s Internet operation raised unprecedented amounts of money. Half a billion of the $700 million dollars raised by the Obama campaign came from online donations.
From TV to Internet: A New Political Mentality
So we can see that the Internet has given the American grassroots the ability to make its voice known. But does Scott Brown follow the same grassroots voice that President Obama did? Only time will tell, of course, but I find it interesting to note that a major part of Obama’s pitch supporting healthcare reform was his assault on insurance companies and their ability to control the GOP. This is certainly a grassroots pitch, because if the grassroots is united about anything it is in opposition to special interests and political donors having a bigger voice in Washington than the voters.
But where is he going with this? Does anyone doubt that major special interests and political donors are as influential to the Democrats as to the Republicans? Some interests and donors are different—though some are the same, most notably those from the financial community—but politicians are highly dependent on OPM (Other People’s Money), even more than they are on votes. They only need votes on one big day, but they need money every day. Knowing this obvious fact, I find it hard to accept our President’s accusation against the hypocrisy of the GOP, as if his party is not guilty of the same thing.
But when I look at the actions taken by our President to increase the centralization of our economy in almost every way he could, it is clear that he is not following the same voice as that which I believe swept Scott Brown into power. The discerning reader should be quick to separate this President’s words from his deeds. It is disappointing in the extreme to see this gap, given the kind of positive role model he could be as a man of integrity. I am saddened that the Black community does not have leaders that do more than break the mold. I recall the timeless words of MLK, calling on all Americans to judge one another by the content of our character. In this world charged with political correctness and partisanship, one can hardly call out the lack of character by a public figure on the left without fear of major backlash, even if the case is clear.
The case should also be clear that we not feel hopeless or beholden about this environment. The ground is shifting beneath our feet in ways that are deeper than we have yet collectively realized. As Chris Anderson has expounded in his book The Long Tail, we have moved from an information environment of scarcity into one of great abundance. This is game changing for politics, especially if we the people seize the moment. 
The Long Tail is a mathematical concept of power distribution. This is a principle of disproportion where a given market sector or environment will predominantly favor and be shaped by a small set of choices (“hits” in the case of music or movies), while all the remaining voices or choices will have less influence in aggregate than the few choices at the top. Translate this into politics, and it is easy to see how favoritism strains representative democracy when voices or groups down the “long tail” do not have the same voice as those at the top (i.e., in the head of the curve).
As Anderson explains, the disruptive power of the Internet is that it levels the playing field dramatically by giving the power of free information distribution to all participants up and down the curve. In politics, for example, that means that the collective voice of the blogosphere can gain a large enough population of political information consumers to diminish the influence of the few voices who had exerted predominant control prior to the Internet. This, of course, has changed voting patterns and electoral outcomes in many ways. To understand the rising grassroots movement, one must understand the Long Tail effect at work here. The Internet has elevated the voice of citizens—the political grassroots—to directly engage the political process as never before to influence one another, the media, and electoral outcomes.
This is a tectonic shift. At the time of America’s founding, oral communication were supplemented by printed newspapers, books, and leaflets to constitute the political media ecology of the day. In the late 20th century, this media ecology expanded to include electronic media such as broadcast and cable television as well as talk radio. Most recently, interactive tools of information consumption and delivery have burst on the scene through the rise of blogs, podcasts, YouTube videos, Facebook, and the rest of the Web 2.0 world. These tools have altered power distribution in America’s political media ecology. Now, we see an American electorate with new habits of political data consumption and therefore a new outlook on politics as well.
These developments have a distinctly generational dimension. The role of the Internet in politics continues to grow across the board, but for young people it now serves as the leading source of political campaign news. This is a game-changing shift in and of itself. The first exposure to politics of our young people is now through the lens of the Internet, not television. The Internet, by its nature, is grassroots. As Don Tapscott and Anthony Williams highlight in their book Wikinomics: How Mass Collaboration Changes Everything, the mentality engendered by Internet use is structurally different from its predecessor. In the political media environment built around television and other non-interactive mass media, a winning communication styles involved “controlling the message.” The inherent structure of mass media as a closed, broadcast platform supported a political logic Tapscott and Williams describe as “plan and push.” This model favors centralization, while the structure of the Internet is “engage and co-create” and favors mass collaboration.
This distinction reveals the major difference between Obama and Brown and the wings of the grassroots that swept each into power. Obama represents that side of the grassroots that is cool with centralization, while Brown hails from the conservative side that is wary of such centralization. Both sides of the grassroots are America. But what is interesting to me is the way the Internet favors mass collaboration, which to me is more a conservative phenomenon that removes the need for big government, big money donors, and opaque political parties to run the political game. In other words, mass collaboration via the web cuts out the middle man.
Yet, Obama is quick to denounce the Supreme Court decision allowing unbridled corporate campaign contributions, while Mitch McConnell offered some bogus-sounding, backpedaling explanation to Greta Van Susteren of his support for the SCOTUS decision based on giving every corporation an equal voice even if it does not own a media arm to amplify its voice. It’s hard to know what anyone really believes or stands for anymore.
We are in very interesting times. My counsel is that wise political engagement means listening to every political voice charitably, but knowing there was some “plan and push” decision-making standing behind most every word they say. The stakes are too high for the big donors, and the amount of money contributed to these politicians certainly did not come without expectations that we simply do not know about. I am not saying we should distrust every politician, but I am saying we cannot fully trust any politician.
And the stakes are too high for us, too. The future economic stability of the world our children inhabit is largely being decided by politicians now, rather than the taxpayers or the free markets. Choose for yourself whether you engage or let the planners push our their agenda. It could be that they are choosing to use whatever words may suit them to win over just enough voters to keep citizen accountability at bay, diabolical calculus though it may be.
But the mentality shift here means we now have all we need to fact check these politicians and hold them much more accountable, perhaps enough to stem the tide of this massive economic centralization and destabilization. Bear in mind that President Obama openly allows a major gap to remain between his words and deeds—and he is always on the camera. What do we think obscure politicians throughout Congress are doing?
Look again at the Long Tail and know where our representatives have been getting their biggest “hits.” The great challenge for us is one of self-controlled ownership or self-organization. Engagement is a far superior strategy than trusting the next new political hope, while remaining passive like TV viewers as the political world of the future gets determined before our faces.
I believe the grassroots movement that swept Scott Brown into office was less about Scott Brown and more about the American people finding their voice, picking a hill to defend, and engaging the fight against a bad healthcare bill and government overreach overall. But the test is now that the crisis of that bill is over. Can the grassroots sustain itself without much of a centralized capability and without that charismatic leader we have come to depend on so much?
Game-Changing Opportunity
The game changing opportunity here comes when you realize the changes produced by the Internet’s engage and co-create structure along with the Long Tail shift to information abundance. We can awaken as citizens and take control of this seismic political shift looming. It is one that cannot be easily resisted—at least not without some major planning and pushing of bureaucracy, government growth, and economic centralization. Ironic that this is just what we see taking place in Washington today—at a breakneck pace. It’s as if the planners and pushers know the end is nigh for their model of central governance.
Do you see that too, or am I just crazy?
We are now seeing why 2010 will be such a decisive year in politics. The American people now have a sense of urgency and a path forward to create a much more representative model of self-government under our Constitution, a model that recognizes the great civil rights gains of recent generations while also extending that unique form of American liberty and egalitarian meritocracy which has, from the very beginning, revolted against the hierarchical—even monarchical—structures of Western aristocracy and colonialism that had prevailed in Europe before the American Revolution.
These plan and push structures are still at work in the world, and many in the grassroots know it. Because TV is also plan and push, it is easy to see that many in the political firmament will never take the grassroots seriously, will never call them other than far right, and will never recognize the real hope for change and lasting reform that stands poised to reconfigure America around the primacy of the citizen, not the donor, in Washington.
Get ready for a battle royale. Indeed, in the spirit of engage and co-create, I am now calling on my many skeptic friends to engage and co-create with we the people, not leaving it to our representatives in either party to take the driver’s seat in American democracy. Why settle for sweeping new politicians unexpectedly into office, when we can sweep aside this crooks, vultures, and hangers-on that run and fund the two political parties?
