Healthy Influence Blog

In my last post, I predicted that Hillary Clinton will earn the Democratic nomination and win the general election because she possesses superior and proven persuasion skills compared to all other candiates. While it would be possible to create an elaborate scientific demonstration here (define key terms, operationalize those definitions, quantify and analyze it all), for my purposes here, I think that just looking at candidates who get where they are using the concepts in the Primer and who follow the Rules is sufficient. The hardest trick in applying this style of analysis is keeping your own biases out it all. Chances are pretty good, for example, that if you are a lifelong Democratic voter, it is almost impossible for you to rate George W. Bush as more effective with persuasion than either Al Gore or John Kerry. Try to look at the campaigning effectiveness of the three men to control your understandable bias.

George W. Bush was inside his father’s failed 1980 primary run, then inside for the successful 1980, 1984, 1988 Vice-President and Presidential campaigns and inside with his father’s failed 1992 campaign. Bush then ran and won two consecutive Texas governor elections before making his 2000 run. That range of experience with Presidential campaign is priceless and gave him better overall persuasion skills compared to Gore or Kerry. Think about it.

Al Gore won four Congressional campaigns, then two Senate campaigns, and, most importantly, lost one bid for the Presidential nomination in 1988. He saw the two successful Clinton campaigns as the Vice Presidential candidate but was clearly not with the inner circle before he ran against Mr. Bush in 2000. While this is an impressive campaign resume, it is still clearly weaker than Mr. Bush’s, especially at the national level. It is this national level experience that I think is most telling about a candidate’s persuasion skill.

John Kerry’s campaign resume was considerably weaker than Mr. Gore’s. He was elected Senator in 1984, then re-elected in 1990, 1996, and 2002 before making his Presidential run in 2004. Prior to 2004, Kerry was never a serious contender for the nomination and had never had an insider role in a Presidential campaign. While he got close in terms of votes, from a persuasion perspective, he never had a chance.

Thus, if you use campaign experience as a rough proxy for “persuasion skill” it helps to mitigate the natural political bias you would have when evaluating politicians. And, you can do this kind of campaign comparison between Presidential nominees for as far back as you care to take it. The man with the better campaigning record (”persuasion skill”) is much more likely to win it all.

When you look at the political scene today, no one comes close to Hillary Clinton’s national experience. It is truly a case of Snow White and the Democratic Dwarves. Barack Obama captures attention and looks like the next New New Thing, but his campaign resume is just slightly stronger than a lot of active college kids going to elite universities. His Illinois Senate election is a triumph of unique circumstance where “third variables” played a huge role in success (much like the earlier Democrat charismatic, Bill Clinton - remember Ross Perot and that little thing called the End of the Cold War?).

I think that the accusation made against Hillary Clinton, that she is insincere, a politician on the make, is exactly indicative of her skill. Remember the rule, all bad persuasion is sincere! Mrs. Clinton is precisely insincere and that makes her deadly. She also knows another rule: It’s all about the other guy, stupid. If it moves you, she’ll use it no matter how painful it is for her. I would also cite her for another rule: Great persuaders can either be effective or famous, but not both. Hilary Clinton is decidedly not famous as a persuader. She’s perceived as wooden and manipulative and obvious. And yet here she is, the front runner. She’s Richard Nixon, reincarnated as a woman.

Am I the only one who sees these qualities in her?

Let me make some predictions that test my hypothesis.

1. Barack Obama will explode during the campaign and make an incredibly stupid move much like John Kerry’s inexplicable response to the Swift Boat attacks of 2004. That will come from campaign inexperience. Further, the Clinton campaign will lull Obama into saying and doing stupid things again much like the way Bush manipulated John Kerry into his famous, “I voted against it before I voted for it.” foolishness. This too will come from campaign inexperience.

2. The Clinton campaign will not make any serious mistakes. It won’t run out of money. It won’t have to explain itself for long periods of time. It will get brutally bad press coverage, but Clinton will not snap like Nixon at his “last” press conference. She will soldier on competently meaning that she won’t accidently kill her chances.

3. The Republican candidate will need a flawless campaign AND a “third variable” to win. Bill Clinton had Ross Perot (which took votes from Mr. Bush) and the End of the Cold War (which made Clinton’s foreign policy inexperience irrelevant). Remove either of these “third variables” and Bill Clinton is just another Michael Dukakis now teaching at a community college. Hillary Clinton is not going to need good luck like this, but the Republican will. The most likely “third variable” that would kill Hillary’s chances and aid the Republican is a serious third party candidate, probably from the anti-war left. If I was running a Republican campaign, I’d be doing everything I could to outrage the anti-war left of the Democrat party and provoke them into mounting a serious counter-campaign against Mrs. Clinton after she wins the nomination.

4. Clinton’s opponents will typically look a day late and a dollar short. Like General Eisenhower’s admonition, she’ll get there the first-est with the most-est.

5. Clinton’s campaign messages will drop nicely into a four step sequence: Who am I? What do I believe? What’s wrong with the other guy? Join me on that shining city on the hill. As identified in an excellent book on applied persuasion, “The Spot,” by Diamond and Bates, good campaigns move voters through four stages in sequence, Identity, Positions, Attacks, and Future. Both of Bill Clinton’s campaigns followed this sequence and are, for my money, the classic exemplers even better than Reagan’s campaigns. Mr. Bush’s campaigns struggled here, but had such poor competition from Gore and Kerry, respectively, that even a weak effort won the prize. Hillary Clinton is the “iron-butt” grind who masters the details.

I’ll post more from a persuasion perspective as the campaigns develop.