In some ways I love Mitt Romney. Now, this isn’t about his campaign, well, at least not directly. Rather, it’s all about marketing and how we love and respond to a good story.
A day or so ago, one of Mitt’s advisers told the Telegraph: “We are part of an Anglo-Saxon heritage, and he (Mitt) feels that the special relationship is special. The White House didn’t fully appreciate the shared system we have.”
This, of course, comes on the heels of a campaign co-chair who said Obama didn’t understand the American system, “because he spent his early years in Hawaii smoking something, spent the next set of years in Indonesia, another set of years in Indonesia, and, frankly, when he came to the U.S. he worked as a community organizer, which is a socialized structure, and then got into politics in Chicago.” And then John Sununu finishes with a flourish, “And I wish the President would learn how to be an American.”
Mitt himself had to add his own two cents when he said that same day, “His (Obama’s) course is extremely foreign.”
He was talking about making America stronger, or so he says.
But as a guy who has spent his whole life talking in obliquetries, weasel words, round cornered answers and innuendo, I can tell you that I am very, very impressed with his team’s ability to play the race card without ever really getting caught doing it.
Now, some of you will say this is all coincidence. Sorry, but I live a life as a marketer and communicator. I know all about creating and controlling a story. You never come right out and say, “Hey Mr. Consumer/Voter, I’m going to start telling you a series of bald-faced lies to get you to buy/vote for the things I want you to buy/vote.”
Instead, I’m going to weave a whole bunch of thoughts into different story lines, knowing that the takeaways will be the sum of these stories, not the stories themselves. And, if I ever get caught, I will simply tell you that that’s not what I meant, that it was misinterpreted.
This is masterful story telling – it’s brilliant marketing. I have to give them that. After the Supreme Court upheld Obamacare, the Romney campaign went against the ropes in the polls. Time to pull out the old playbook on story telling. Ah, there it is: start pandering to people’s fears.
If you don’t believe me, read The Story Wars. It’s an amazing book. It is a tutorial on how to tell a story, or more important, how to control a story. We all love stories. We are hardwired to love them. And we particularly like myths as they teach us lessons.
The basics of a myth haven’t changed for tens of thousands of years. A good myth requires a couple things: a hero, a villain and some kind of obstacle to overcome. It’s Luke Skywalker subduing Darth Vader while fighting the demons of the dark side. It’s Indiana Jones besting the entire German army with nothing more than whip. Classic myths. Classic storytelling.
Mitt’s had a problem in his own myth making. He doesn’t have a really good villain. The economy isn’t in the toilet enough to be a villain. Someone killed off Bin Laden and Gaddafi, so we’re temporarily short on madmen to be afraid of, ObamaCare, another potential villain, was upheld by the nation’s highest court.
What to do, what to do. Fresh out of villains and no one is seeing Obama as the villan the Republicans need him to be. The answer: Make him one.
Again, classic, masterful storytelling. If you follow the news, you see that the birther issue is still around. This time it’s not Donald Trump, but Joe Arpaio, the headline grabbing sheriff in Arizona. He says his investigators have uncovered proof that Obama’s birth certificate is forged. Joe has a good story going there, but unfortunately it’s being clouded by the fact that he is currently under investigation himeself.
If I was counseling Whitey (my new name for Mitt, largely because I like obliquetries and they have an odd way of sticking in our minds), I would have to tell him to play the race card too.
This is, of course, the 21st Century. You can’t exactly look like a lynch mob these days. Even if you have a cross to bear and a burning desire to show your true feelings, you still have to be very discriminating about what you say, because, well, you don’t want anyone to accuse you of being a racist. As Whitey well knows, you can’t make a new watermelon from the rind, so you need to sow the seeds of discontent subtly, and obliquely.
You start by dropping a “misstatement” here or there. They are colored in your own particularly shade of the truth.
Let’s look at a simple example. First, I’m not saying Mitt is a white supremacist or has attended KKK meetings in Utah, but…
Great example, huh? I learned the “I’m not saying… but” technique from Glenn Beck, the undisputed master of storytelling and narrative. He gets the power of the story. So, it seems, does Whitey’s team. They are starting to tell the race story, little by little, bit by bit, trying to get supporters to fear the black man in the White House, along with every other immigrant who might have snuck across a border unnoticed.
President Lyndon Johnson was another master of story. He pigeon-holed Barry Goldwater in a single ad where a little girl was picking the leaves off a flower with the chilling words: “We must either love each other or we must die.” In a single spot, he portrayed Goldwater as a crazed warmonger who was going to kill your children. Freaking brilliant!
This nonsense we call an election has always been filled with weasel words, obliquetries and round cornered answers. Sure, we’re tired of them, we say we won’t vote for one person or the other, but in the end, we vote for the one with the best story. That is the black and white of elections, my friends… and once again it’s story time.
In the Emerald City, having nightmares (very oblique ones),
– Robb