The Lessons of Obama

The dazzling success of Obama – from a little known state legislator to the presumptive nominee of the Democratic Party and the likely President of the country – all in the space of less than two years, has interesting lessons for developing countries who strive to create a functioning democracy and yet are mired in corruption, dynastic domination and identity politics.

There will be many a treatise that will be written on how Obama achieved this phenomenal feat, how he competed with, and then overwhelmed, the most powerful Democratic family in a generation—one that understood the power of money in politics and commanded a network of wealthy donors that has financed the Democratic Party for years and that had Bill Clinton, widely recognized as the premier politician of his generation, as the herald of his wife’s campaign. But there are essentially four major lessons that one can draw for aspiring politicians in other countries and they lie in how Obama articulated a clear vision for the future; decided to organize from the ground; eschewed identity politics and finally mobilized finance in a unique manner which also bodes well, in the long term, for improving governance and eliminating corruption.

Articulate a clear vision. Obama entered the race with a clear message of change- changing the political culture of Washington, changing the lobbyist dominated financial culture, and in moving towards a bipartisan political system that eschewed tit for tat politics and trivial diversions in favor of focusing on major problems facing the country. He set his eye on fundamentally changing the country for the future. Most politicians opt for some form of a vision statement; Obama however was clear, consistent and insistent on his message of change which resonated with the populace fed up with the Iraq war and with the sharply deteriorating economic situation.

Build from the bottom up. The second part of his approach was truly revolutionary. His campaign was predicated on building from the bottom up. In a certain sense he was obliged to take a different route – Hillary Clinton had already corralled the democratic establishment and donors in her corner even before Obama had started. But Obama truly set himself apart by his campaign’s use of the Internet to organize support from the ground roots. No other candidate in this or any other election has ever built a ground support network like Obama’s. In a short span of six months, his campaign used the internet to mobilize 750,000 active volunteers who would ring bells and turn out the votes in all the competing states. The premier element of his ground support was the concentration, in the initial stages, on the college campuses. The core of his support was the young people and the more highly educated voters. It is conventional wisdom in our countries that despite their blather neither of these two constituencies really turns out to vote on Election Day. The genius of Obama was to turn this conventional wisdom on its head and to really energize the young and the old and to convert their enthusiasm into active participation.

Eschew identity politics. A third element that again holds lessons for us was his obstinate refusal to play identity politics. Again part of it was realism – blacks after all represent only 15 % of the total population of the country. But his efforts went beyond this. He sought to present himself as a candidate whose color should not matter. He would not appeal to the African American voter so much so that in the early days Clinton enjoyed a lead in polls among the black voters over him. Indeed the African American establishment wondered if he was black enough to represent them. This refusal to play the race card served him well for a great part of the election cycle till it was introduced by his opponents in an attempt to marginalize him. But again the message from the candidate himself was clear – I am not a black candidate, I am candidate for the presidency who just happens to be black. And we need to focus not on the color of the skin but on the strength of character and clarity of the vision.

Create a new financing model. And finally the story of Osama’s success is also very much a story about money. It provided his initial credibility. It paid for his impressive campaign operation. Obama built a fund-raising machine quite unlike anything seen before in national politics. He developed a network of about 1.5 million donors that provided him with an enormous financial and organizational advantage. He married knowledge of technology with a community organizers understanding of citizen participation which was truly amazing. He build a machine that attracted and still attracts large and small donors alike, those who want to give money and those who want to raise it, veteran activists and first-time contributors, and—especially—anyone who is wired to anything: computer, cell phone, PDA.

The campaign did this by understanding how to use his internet Web site as an extension of the social-networking boom that has consumed Silicon Valley over the past few years. The purpose of social networking is to connect friends and share information, its animating idea being that people will do this more readily and comfortably when the information comes to them from a friend rather than from a newspaper or expert or similarly distant authority they don’t know and trust. The success of social-networking sites likes Face book and MySpace and, later, professional networking sites like Linked In testify to this approach. Thus the site, My.BarackObama.com, is a social-networking hub centered on the candidate and designed to give users a practically unlimited array of ways to participate in the campaign. You can register to vote or start your own affinity group, with a listserv for your friends. You can download an Obama news widget to stay current, or another one that scrolls Obama’s biography, with pictures, in an endless loop. You can click a “Make Calls” button, receive a list of phone numbers, and spread the good news to voters across the country, right there in your home. You can get text-message updates on your mobile phone and choose from among 12 Obama-themed ring tones, so that each time Mom calls you will hear Barack Obama cry “Yes we can!” and be reminded that Mom should register to vote, too.

The campaign tried to bring two principles to this campaign; one is lowering the barriers to entry and making it as easy as possible for folks who come to the Web site. The other is raising the expectation of what it means to be a supporter. It’s not enough to have a bumper sticker or donate five dollars to the campaign, supporters need to make some calls, and host an event. If you look at the messages the campaign sends to people over time, there’s a presumption that they will organize. The site has a suite of fund-raising tools. You can click on a button and make a donation, or you can sign up for the subscription model, as thousands already have, and donate a little every month. You can set up your own page, establish your target number, pound your friends into submission with e-mails to pony up, and watch your personal fund-raising “thermometer” rise. “The idea is to give them the tools and have them go out and do all this on their own.” Another striking thing is that most regional headquarters are entirely self-sufficient. Everything from the computers to the telephones to the doughnuts and coffee—even the building’s rent and utilities—is user-generated, arranged and paid for by local volunteers. No other campaign has put together anything that can match this level of self-sufficiency. This alchemy of social networking and the presidential race has given Obama claim to some of the most fabulous numbers in politics: 750,000 active volunteers, 8,000 affinity groups, and 30,000 events. But the most important number, and the clue to how Obama’s machine has transformed the contours of politics, is the number of people who have contributed to his campaign—particularly the flood of small donors. In February, the Obama campaign reported that 94 percent of their donations came in increments of $200 or less, versus 26 percent for Clinton and 13 percent for McCain. By March, the list of donors had grown to 1.5 million and the average donation was less than $ 100.

In a much broader sense, this approach truly represents a triumph of campaign-finance reform. He may not have gotten the money out of politics, as many proponents of reform may have wished, but he has realized the reformers’ other big goal of ending the system whereby a handful of rich donors control the political process and end up controlling the agenda. He has done this not by limiting money but by adding much, much more of it—democratizing the system by flooding it with so many new contributors that their combined effect dilutes the old guard to the point that it scarcely poses any threat.

A change in governance. This combination of technology and ethos may well win him not only the nomination but also the presidency. But it also clearly provides the potential of a major change of governance when in power. He could for example use the Web to transform governance just as he has transformed campaigning. His army of donors could be mobilized to lobby for major legislation with just a few keystrokes. By posting every piece of non-emergency legislation online for five days before he signs it so that Americans can comment, he can encourage much wider citizenry participation. He could create an internet based search engine for a public database of every federal dollar spent to subject it to public scrutiny. He could develop an online version of “online fireside chats” as president with the citizens. It becomes possible, for a moment at least, to imagine that it might change the political culture of Washington simply by overwhelming it. It could certainly promise, at its outer limits, a participatory democracy in which the opportunities for participation have been radically expanded.

Were some of these lessons applied in the developing countries, think of the changes it could bring? The dynastic leadership in these countries could be challenged by fresh leadership. The cutting of the nexus between big business and politicians for election money could have a major impact on curbing corruption. Transparency in governance could improve efficiency and accountability. And wider citizen participation could ensure the permanence of true democracy in the country.