British politicians should learn from the American primaries: authenticity wins votes
In the British version of the 2008 US election, Gordon Brown is Hillary Clinton: the less talented half of a tempestuous political marriage who attempts to make up for shortcomings with a Stakhanovite work ethic. David Cameron is Barack Obama: the supremely confident speaker who has risen to the top in record time and who is, to his critics, all froth and no latte. Indeed, if successful, Obama’s ascent will have been even more meteoric than Cameron’s (Cameron took just over four and a half years from entering national politics to become party leader).
To some, this comparison with British politics is absurd, proof of our infatuation with all things American. After all, the four candidates who triumphed in Iowa and New Hampshire are all exceptionally American figures: Obama offers the country a chance to overcome its founding sin and salve its partisan wounds; Mike Huckabee represents a Christian populism that is entirely absent in British politics; the spouse of a former Prime Minister running for the top job is inconceivable here; and no current British politician can match John McCain’s tale of heroic wartime service.
But this will not stop either Brown or Cameron trying desperately to draw lessons from America. Brownites will take a Hillary victory as evidence that however much voters flirt with a charismatic ‘change candidate’, what they really want is a hardened politician in charge in these troubled times. If Obama’s rhetoric of change sweeps Hillary away, the Cameron-inclined will see it as proof that the torch has passed to a new generation.
But these are not the lessons that either party should draw from the results in Iowa and New Hampshire. In fact the four winners in the two early contests all had one thing in common: in the crucial final 72 hours of the campaign they appeared the most authentic. On the eve of Iowa, Obama was not the rockstar candidate but an exhausted idealist with a broken voice, appealing for voters to stand up for change. Huckabee was a preacher appealing to his flock to put their vote where their values were. In New Hampshire, Hillary recovered because she let down her guard, displayed her emotional side and let her inner wonk run wild (her closing stump speech was 45 minutes long and stuffed with typically small-bore Clintonite measures such as a government blogging team) and because Obama with his huge crowds seemed distant and a touch too confident for voters’s tastes. On the stump in New Hampshire, McCain exuded authenticity — particularly in comparison with Mitt Romney, the former Massachusetts governor, who seemed to have a different set of sincerely held convictions every day. Romney, the longtime front-runner, only recovered in Michigan because he ran as who he truly is: a favourite son and problem-solver.
This demand for authenticity reflects the fact that voters now see through spin faster than ever before. Romney far outspent his Republican opponents in both Iowa and New Hampshire but even a barrage of TV advertising couldn’t shift, and perhaps reinforced, the electorate’s sense that it was being played. As test match batsmen become able to read a bowler as a series goes on, so voters have now endured enough spin-infused campaigns to begin to see through them.
Technology makes it harder for politicians to be chameleons. Those who try to reinvent themselves or shift their positions are almost instantly confronted with a video of them taking the opposite view. New Labour would have struggled if every hard-left statement by Blair, Brown, Blunkett, Straw and Cook had been readily available on YouTube.
Cameron should be worried by this yearning for authenticity. While his political evolution has not been anywhere near as dramatic as his critics make out, it is still hard for him to point to any time that he has risked his political career for a cause. (In part, this is because Cameron has repeatedly found himself to be pushing at open doors; few Tory strategists would have dared hope that his positions on marriage and welfare reform would turn out to be so popular both with voters and the press.) McCain has dragged his political career off life-support and turned himself into a leading Republican contender thanks largely to his long-standing position on Iraq (which many thought would cost him the presidency) which allows him to say, you can trust me to do the right thing whatever the consequences. Cameron cannot do that yet. Brown is trying to inch into that position by showing that he has the strength to make tough decisions on issues such as nuclear power. But this attempt is unlikely to resonate, as voters don’t see these decisions as being particularly bold or courageous.
Brown could have been the ‘authenticity candidate’, turning his presentational flaws to his advantage. But his clumsy fumbling with the idea of an early election and his disingenuousness over his reasons for not going to the country destroyed this priceless asset. The Westminster village’s interest in the American races isn’t going to diminish any time soon. The contests are set to become even more dramatic in the weeks ahead and the 2008 election will affect British politics on both a strategic and a tactical level. Whoever is sworn into office on 20 January 2009 will determine both how America approaches the world and whether popular affection and respect for America can be rebuilt in Britain following the Bush presidency. Revealingly, it is estimated that a plurality of Tory MPs lean towards Hillary Clinton who, as the right-wing Democrat, is seen as the safest option. But Tories should be careful what they wish for: if it is Clinton, Brown can expect an early invitation to the White House and — as long as he looks like he is in with a shot at the next election — several opportunities to burnish his statesman credentials.
A Clinton restoration is no certainty, though. The Obama campaign responded well to its defeat in New Hampshire; they prevented everything from falling apart, kept the blame game out of the press and prevented the Clinton ‘inevitability narrative’ from gaining traction with a series of well-timed endorsements. If Obama can win in South Carolina a week on Saturday, it will be game on. But the dogged professionalism of the Clinton campaign means that after his New Hampshire stumble, Obama won’t ease to victory. Many now expect the Obama–Clinton fight to go on beyond 5 February, when more than 20 states vote, because neither side has a motivation to back down until the result is certain. The Clintons won’t walk away from a fight and even the most idealistic Obama supporter isn’t naive enough to believe that the Clintons will be magnanimous in victory. The Republican race is even more scrambled following Romney’s win in Michigan. If McCain wins South Carolina this Saturday, he’s likely to be the Republican nominee. If he doesn’t, the race will be wide open with Rudy Giuliani coming right back into it. One thing is certain: this show is set to run and run. The longer these two contests remain so tight, the more speculation there will be that the nominees will not be decided until the party conventions themselves. This is the dream of every political junkie. It is still unlikely, but the script for this primary season might just be that good.
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