Now that the nomination is sewn up, and everyone is acting like they knew it all along, there has been the predictable flood of media pieces looking at Senator Obama's campaign and leadership style and asking (some in tones of bewilderment) how did he do it? Some examples out of many include Time's redoubtable Karen Tumulty, and Michael Powell in the NYT.
It's been fascinating to see how the media narrative is adjusting to a reality for which they were ill prepared. It's also fascinating and enormously encouraging to see the very direct realtionship between Barack's leadership style and the manner of his victory.
One of the interesting things about leadership is the extent to which it is one of those parts of life where traditional, instinctive ideas about how it should be done tend to be absolutely deadass wrong.
We all tend to assume that leadership is primarily about strength. We tend to fall back on the chimpanzee/alpha male model of dominance and agression as the main characteristics of successful leaders. In fact, as the people who study successful leaders keep telling us, that model really, seriously does not work. And yet it remains pervasive in our understanding of political behaviour and in media narratives about that behaviour.
The pervasivenes of that dominant/agressive model of leadership success can lead to remarkable blindness. Whilst we here at Kos, and many others, had done the math and declared Barack's victory a couple of months ago, the media narrative kept on seeing it as a fight and calling it as if it it were still up for grabs. Why? Because they needed to believe it was still a competition for dominance. I don't mean that they needed it to be that for commmercial reasons (although they did) but that they personally, emotionally needed to believe it was still a live competition, a fight. Because otherwise their mental model was wrong and that was just too confronting to deal with.
I'm particularly struck by this passage in Karen Tumulty's piece "Obama laid down three ruling principles for his future chief operating officer: Run the campaign with respect; build it from the bottom up; and finally, no drama". Two things are astonishing about this statement. The first is that those the three things are exactly the three things that have proven to be key to the organisation's success. The second is this: He said it on Jan 3 2007. January. 2007. Before he had started to build his organisation, 16 months before the victory that bore out his judgement. Ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls. That's what you call leadership.
The no drama rule is particularly telling. The Clintonian assumption that the value you get out of talented people outweighs the costs of clashing personalities has proven to be dead wrong. It contains two false assumptions. One is that talent and a get-along personal style are mutually exclusive and the other is that managing conflicting advisors is a productive use of a leader's time and a necessary characteristic of a strong leader. Obama ended up with more talented people, who also worked better and more productively, leaving him with more time and headspace to lead and campaign. A muliplicative double whammy.
The contrasts could hardly be sharper. As far as anyone can tell everyone at Obama HQ likes Plouffe and Axelrod. And they won. Whilst everyone at Hillary HQ would cheerfully (and I mean with a song in their hearts) see Mark Penn and other senior members from the campaign put in barrells at the bottom of the East River. And we're surpised they lost? Really?
In reporting with 20/20 hindsight on Barack's cool, deliberative leadership style the media still struggle to accept the reality of it, and it's importance to his victory. Most people, most of the time keep falling back on those traditional, instinctive ideas about leadership even when confronted with compelling evidence that there is a better way. Michael Powell's piece shows this tendency. Even as he rightly observes that Barack's leadership style and no drama rules made the victory possible, he keeps on looking for evidence of hidden temper and ruthless ambition.
I think we may expect that, even as they are confronted with the manifest evidence of his historic primary victory, the media and much of the political establishment will continue to misjudge and underestimate Barrack's leadership. This is all to the good, as it will help ensure that they keep on making the mistakes that will help him hand them their heads in November. Onward.