In politics, as we know, there tend to be two main styles of campaigning: One is the transactional campaign, the other is the transformative campaign. Many of these ideas are lifted from the world of marketing and sales -- a fine discussion of those ideas in that particular context can be found here as it relates to non-profit marketing for those who want to look at these in another context.
The transformative campaign helps to set the narrative and provides a strategic vision. It works to build relationships and enlist the support of people over the long-term. The transactional campaign tends to be more focused on tactics, which can shift over the course of a campaign. The comparison here is probably more akin to a one-night stand where both parties have minimal investment beyond the single transaction. The underlying idea is “I will do this for you, if you vote for me”. The main danger here is that the purely transactional campaign can suffer from a lack of vision and a coherent narrative (see Romney, Mitt), which may prove to be fatal over a long campaign.
Join me over the jump . . .
The transformative campaign tends to be more about “us” working together to achieve some ambitious objective (e.g. a society that provides opportunity for all, a fairer society, etc).
Note that the transformative campaign will include transactional elements, but these tend to be in the context of a broader vision (e.g. the “fairer society” includes a goal of universal health care, regulation of the financial industry, an investment in education, a broader vision of civil rights including the right of all consenting adults to determine who it is that they want to marry without state interference). The purely transactional campaign, can provide flexibility in the event of election, as the candidate has promised everything and nothing, but for voters it can lead to mistrust -- especially if the various transactional promises start to come into contradiction.
Part of the challenge that Romney has had, is that is campaign has lacked a strategic vision. As best we can discern his main original argument was “Obama is a failure, everyone knows it,” and by default we should vote for him. He cloaks his campaign in vague platitudes which evoke little. Case in point: “Believe in America” (someone was paid for this?). OK, maybe the implication here is “I believe in America, the other guy doesn’t, vote for me”. Yet that’s a purely negative pitch. It doesn’t give the campaign direction or a coherent narrative. Maybe in the context of a GOP primary it was sufficient, but in the context of a general election, it hasn’t helped to set the table for Romney, or give his campaign direction.
Romney’s campaign has been almost entirely transactional, as we have seen, e.g. “20 percent tax cut for everyone, and for those who care about the deficit the cut will be deficit neutral, but I won’t pay for it by closing loopholes that are popular, never mind if the math adds up or not”. Then there’s the permanent elimination of taxes for overseas/offshore earnings. The elimination of the estate tax. There’s sale of federal lands to private interests. Perhaps Romney could have run on a narrative of “the rich will get richer”, but for obvious reasons he steered clear from that kind of honesty.
What has strikes me, however, is that Romney’s transactional campaign has broken down over the past month.
We have see this recently with his reversal on top of a reversal on the Affordable Care Act. Originally, Romney backed the plan as Governor. Then in the context of the GOP primary in 2012, it was “repeal Obamacare, is my first order of business”. But, unfortunately, in the context of a general election, it turns out that there are parts of the law that people like. So Romney’s position now seems to be “I want to keep the parts of the law that people like, but I will get rid of the less popular parts”. Presumably if public opinion changes again, he might also change his campaign promise, because he is not operating from any principled view. We have left the transactional campaign, and instead we have entered into the realm of bargaining. His campaign has devolved into a kind of business negotiation (and by this measure, not an especially persuasive one).
I don’t know if I’ve ever seen a campaign quite like this one.
For Romney the business negotiation approach may be a natural default. Instead of selling a vision or policies, it is now a negotiation over a range of policies in exchange for his vote. The problem with this negotiation is that credibility matters. In the context of a business negotiation, the credibility may not matter as much -- although it can help -- but in the context of a political campaign, credibility matters. People need to know where a candidate stands.
Aside from wanting to become elected, what is it that a candidate hopes to achieve if elected? Can we credibly believe the candidate’s commitment. What if those commitments shift on a daily basis in contradictory ways? What the heck are we to believe, other than this is a guy who doesn’t stand for anything and/or who doesn’t respect voters enough to honestly spell out his vision. If he’s hiding his priorities, why should we trust him.
With Romney, we don’t really know.
We don’t know what he stands for because he doesn’t have a coherent vision. His political career and professional career don’t provide a coherent narrative. And all that we’re left with is a business negotiation with a negotiating partner who simply isn’t trustworthy or credible. Business negotiations may work in a narrow realm, but in the political realm, I suspect this is the first and the last time that we see a candidate attempt to sell himself in this way. If it works, we might see this kind of campaign again. But Romney’s problem right now isn’t that people don’t “Believe in America”; it’s that they don’t believe him. A large part of the reason stems from a failure of vision and his approach with voters.
What are your thoughts on this? Does this sound plausible?