Barack Obama cannot win the General Election and he should not even win the nomination.

So, I’ve been arguing in this Blog for a year. According to my impeccable, unimpeachable, and unperturbable persuasion wisdom, he ain’t got It, with It being the persuasion skill and experience needed for winning in tight situations. He is just too young and inexperienced, more like Dan Quayle than John Kennedy in resume although more like JFK than Quayle in speechmaking.

Today I’ll give you another persuasion reason why Obama won’t win: All bad persuasion is sincere.

This is one of my persuasion rules and one of the most important. When your persuasion efforts come from the heart, authentically express your core beliefs, in other words, are a sincere manifestation of who you are, you’re telling me everything about yourself which is completely irrelevant in persuasion. I don’t care what you think. I care what the “other guy” thinks. Sincerity may attract, but it does not typically persuade and that’s a huge distinction.

As of this writing Obama is taking a lot of heat over the words and actions of his pastor, Reverend Jeremiah Wright. Much of the controversy revolves around race, theology, and politics. Hey, let’s have a quiet, calm discussion about color, God, and elections!

In the face of this controversy, when Obama has the eyes and ears of a lot of voters, what was his response: Sincerity. He told us what he believes and what he sees. I do not doubt for a moment the authenticity of his words. He really does believe it.

But, that’s not the point here. The point here is persuading people to vote for you. And, it appears to me that Senator Obama would rather be right than Presidential, he’d rather be right than wealthy or wise! (Right, a George M. Cohan 1937 musical). And in so doing he has wasted a huge persuasion moment.

Again, please keep the distinction between attraction and persuasion clear. I think that Obama’s sincere speech about race, religion, and politics makes him attractive as hell, but then he’s attracting people who are attracted to him. That’s not persuasion. That’s just walking in the room, taking a closeup, then walking towards everyone who swooned.

Persuasion is taking the measure of the “other guy” then using words to change the way that other guy thinks, feels, or acts. Obama’s speech was not persuasive, it was attractive. And it was attractive because he was sincere.

So, Senator Obama should be a beautiful loser.

Stay tuned!

Through the primary season Barack Obama is doing a nice impression of Ronald Reagan. Nobody could lay a glove on Reagan and Obama is proving as elusive. In the 1980s, critics called Reagan the Teflon Candidate, then Teflon President because criticisms never seemed to stick to him. Now, Mr. Obama appears to have studied at the foot of the great man and learned many things. The first lesson is this: If they can’t hit you, they can’t beat you.

So, why is Mr. Obama so elusive a target? And, more importantly, how do you hit him?

One answer to both questions emerges from an old line of communication theory related to leadership. Back in the 1950s, a couple of management professors, Tannenbaum and Schmidt, developed a model that had four types of LeaderComm: tell, sell, consult, and join. The four types refer to philosophy and style leaders may develop. The labels mean pretty much what a dead level decoding takes from it. Tell communication is direct, simple, power-based. Sell communication persuades from power as the leader motivates supports for a decision that is going to be made anyway. Consult communication holds the ultimate choice for the leader, but actively seeks input and support from followers. Finally, the Join occurs when the leader follows the followers in their choice and uses the leader positional resources to implement that choice. Clearly the four types vary on two dimensions: Dominance and Relationship.

You don’t have to watch the three leading contenders, Mr. Obama, Mrs. Clinton, and Mr. McCain, more than a few minutes to discern their natural LeaderComm styles. Both Clinton and McCain operate most frequently as Tells. Sure, they will use Sells or Consults, but when you close your eyes and think of them, you see and hear the Tell. By contrast, Mr. Obama is the grooving embodiment of the Consult style.

Just think about that contrast in styles for a minute.

Tell leaders come across as authoritarian, disciplined, power-oriented, dominating, strong, hierarchical. Consult leaders, by contrast, come across as relational, provisional, open, trusting, collaborative.

What happens, then, when Tells criticize Consults? That’s easy: Tells look mean, authoritarian, and traditional while Consults look assaulted, attacked, and aggrieved.

The reason this occurs is not because Tell attacks are wrong or even badly stated. It occurs because while the Tell attack aims at the Consult’s arguments, the Tell attack also unintentionally offends the Consult’s relational ties. Because the Consult style seeks and validates input from followers, Tells can never just attack the Consult’s competence or character without also attacking the Consult’s audience.

Further realize that the blunt, simple, and brief communication style of Tells further works against effective attacks against Consults. Tells will focus on the fundamental issues from a power perspective – what’s the controlling legislation, what are the key facts on the ground, who’s in charge, who are the good guys and the bad guys, what’s the history – and ignore the relational element entirely because from a Tell’s perspective, relationships aren’t as important as the dumb policy statement made by the Consult.

Therefore: When Tells attack Consults they must show relational awareness first.

Let me demonstrate how to do this through the words of another writer. Stephen Hayes has already sharply observed a key Obama consult tactic. When I taught this tactic many, many years ago I called it ERA as both an easy mnemonic and a silly pun on a hot political issue of the day, the late and largely forgotten Equal Rights Amendment (and that tells you way too much about how old I am.) The ERA communication tactic is a three step dance. First, you offer an Empathy statement. Second, you pivot with a Rationale statement. Third, you get to the real point, your Action statement. Mr. Hayes has already provided a perfect illustration of this with Obama, so I’ll quote at length.

His rhetorical gimmick is simple. When he addresses a contentious issue, Mr. Obama almost always begins his answer with a respectful nod in the direction of the view he is rejecting — a line or two that suggests he understands or perhaps even sympathizes with the concerns of a conservative.

At Cornell College on Dec. 5, for example, a student asked Mr. Obama how his administration would view the Second Amendment. He replied: “There’s a Supreme Court case that’s going to be decided fairly soon about what the Second Amendment means. I taught Constitutional Law for 10 years, so I’ve got my opinion. And my opinion is that the Second Amendment is probably — it is an individual right and not just a right of the militia. That’s what I expect the Supreme Court to rule. I think that’s a fair reading of the text of the Constitution. And so I respect the right of lawful gun owners to hunt, fish, protect their families.” [This is the empathy statement, right?]

Then came the pivot:

“Like all rights, though, they are constrained and bound by the needs of the community . . . So when I look at Chicago and 34 Chicago public school students gunned down in a single school year, then I don’t think the Second Amendment prohibits us from taking action and making sure that, for example, ATF can share tracing information about illegal handguns that are used on the streets and track them to the gun dealers to find out — what are you doing?” [A nice statement of Rationale]

In conclusion: “There is a tradition of gun ownership in this country that can be respected that is not mutually exclusive with making sure that we are shutting down gun traffic that is killing kids on our streets. The argument I have with the NRA is not whether people have the right to bear arms. The problem is they believe any constraint or regulation whatsoever is something that they have to beat back. And I don’t think that’s how most lawful firearms owners think.” [The payoff – the desired Action]

Now, I can’t believe that anyone associated with the Obama campaign, indeed anyone in politics, has heard of my ERA idea. But, you don’t have to be a Rocket Scientist or have a doctorate in Communication to see how this ERA communication tactic is the marker of Consult LeaderComm. That first Empathy statement by design includes the “other guy” in a thoughtful, emotional way. “I feel your pain” is another variation on it. But what has this got to do with attacking Obama?

Tell leaders should employ ERA as a template for their attacks on Obama. They should use that Empathy statement to directly address Obama’s supporters in both a thoughtful and emotional way. Only after making those Empathy statements can the Tell leader (either Clinton or McCain) move to their Rationale and Action statements. Please realize that if Tell attacks do not address the relationship issues, attacks on Consult leaders will either backfire or be seriously weakened.

Further understand that ERA tactics in attacks mean that the attacks will require more time to deliver. Normally attacks are short and sweet, direct and jugular. You just look for the opening and jam it in. ERA style attacks, by contrast, will require considerably more thoughtfulness, planning, and setup.

Please realize that I am not saying that Tell leaders should never directly attack Consult leaders. Whether the attacks are direct statements against the competence or character of the opponent or longer ERA approaches should depend upon the issue at hand. When it appears that the Consult position does not have a strong relational element to it, then direct attacks should function as they always do. By contrast, when the Consult position does include that relational decision, Tell leaders must isolate the Consult leader from his followers before making the attack.

Rudy is out.

I was wrong. I predicted about a year ago that Mr. Giuliani and Mrs. Clinton would earn the nominations of their respective parties and that Mrs. Clinton would then win the general election. I based this prediction solely upon my intpretation of all the candidates persuasion skill as evidenced by their participation in prior elections. My claim is that the more elections you are involved with and the more often you’re on the winning team, then the better your persuasion skill.

As I analyzed the election experience of the candidates it seemed obvious to me that Mrs. Clinton is head and shoulders above the Democratic field even if a lot of her experience was merely being inside Bill Clinton’s campaigns. No one comes close to her campaigning background. On the Republican side, I dismissed John McCain’s considerable experience in campaigns because he had already lost the big one once before and that is a reliable kiss of death . . . except in the case of Mr. Ronald Reagan and I thought that Mr. McCain was no Ron Reagan. That left Mr. Giuliani as the Republican with the most campaign experience.

I think in retrospect that I broke my own rule of looking at the sheer amount of campaigns as a proxy for persuasion skill. Mr. McCain clearly has more of it than any other Republican candidate and always has. That primary loss to Mr. George W. Bush in 2000 made Mr. McCain a dead man walking in my estimation and that was incorrect.

In March of 2007 when I first thought about this rule of thumb for predicting election winners through persuasion skill, if I had stuck to a bare-faced application of the rule, I would have predicted Clinton and McCain. And, I’d be writing a different post today.

I’m not nearly as smart as I think I am, am I? I can’t even follow my own rules.

As I’ve noted much earlier, based on my forceful, relentless, and unique method of analysis, I’m predicting that Hillary Clinton and Rudy Giuliani will win the nominations of their respective parties and that Senator Clinton will win the general election. Until everyone in the race wakes up to this unavoidable persuasion truth, we continue the charade that these primaries actually matter. Sigh. Onward.

Currently, Clinton hammers away at her nearest competition, Barack Obama, and based on results in Nevada and New Hampshire, the attacks are working. The interesting persuasion question here is: What is Senator Obama’s method of defense? Here’s a quote from the New York Times that seems to be (from my general reading of many sources) the basic tactic.

Mr. Obama, asked in a brief interview whether his rivals had distracted him from making a positive case to voters, snapped: “Why would that rattle me? My suspicion is the other side must be rattled if they’re continually saying false things about us.”

The key phrase here is “saying false things.” Obama seems to think that when the Other Side makes arguments against you, the best persuasion response is to relabel those arguments as “false.” This has been a consistent line with Mr. Obama since Mrs. Clinton began to argumentatively dispute Obama’s issues and positions. When the Other Side makes a negative claim about me, respond by saying the negative claim is false.

As a persuasion expert extraordinaire, I must admit to being perplexed at this tactic. I’ve noted in the past with great embarassment, I did not attend Harvard or Law School, and maybe in my 30 year career as a persuasion maven, I missed the line of research that supports the “it’s false” line of defense against attacks. Nothing in my vast, deep, and complex reservoir of persuasion wisdom suggests, nay, whispers that when the Other Side is raising negative arguments about you that the best persuasion tactic is to, in essence, throw a yellow flag, and call the play, “false.” My sports metaphor is most apt in this instance as Mr. Obama seems to think that in politics there is an official referee and that he can play that role, too. Hey, that claim is out of bounds, 15 yard personal foul, play on.

Generally speaking the evidence strongly indicates that politics is like a knife fight - you know you are going to get cut, so just expect it and deal with it. The most common response is, therefore, cut back in response. (The theatrical sigh of unsophisticated observors about “going negative” is the mark of someone who’s never been in knife fight.)

The newest tactic is inoculation and you can read all about it. Basically, you use inoculation in advance of the knife fight and the anticipated cuts you’re going to receive. The tactic aims at reducing the damage or deflecting the attack. Perhaps the greatest example of inoculation comes from none other than former President Bill Clinton in 1992 and his infamous “woman problem,” then with Gennifer Flowers (how about that for a flashback?). Ms. Flowers let it be known privately that she was about to go public with allegations of an adulterous relationship with Candidate Bill Clinton early in the 1992 primaries. The Clinton campaign used this private knowledge to make a hasty appearance on the TV show, “60 Minutes,” literally the night before Ms. Flowers called her press conference. We know how it all worked out. Inoculation works.

Yet, Senator Obama appears to have superior persuasion knowledge and the “it’s false” defense. I wonder if he picked it up while watching “Cops” on TV. Doesn’t it seem that most of the suspects try to use the “it’s false” defense?

Past the bad kidding here, this looks like the response of an unexperienced, untrained, and unschooled persuader. Mr. Obama has been noted as a compelling speaker, but he clearly lacks basic persuasion skill. He orates effectively, but he can’t take a punch very well. Stated another, old fashioned way (with a tip of the hat to Aristotle) Senator Obama is good at ceremonial speaking, but not at political speaking.

I’m probably more than a little biased here because of my predictions, so take this with a grain of salt and a little patience.  If Mr. Obama doesn’t come up with some besides “Hillary is lying about me and so is her husband” then he should be giving a speech something like Fred Thompson did today.  And if Obama defies persuasion gravity (and my expert prognostication) and wins, well then, maybe I’m applying to Harvard.  Go Crimson!  Rah! Rah! Rah!

Ardent and devoted readers of this blog know that I’ve picked Mrs. Clinton and Mr. Giuliani as the likely nominees with Mrs. Clinton winning the general election. Using only my unique and peculiar skills as a persuasion theorist, researcher, and practitioner, I carefully evaluate all candidates’ campaigning background and solely on the basis of campaigning experience I make predictions. Clinton and Giuliani have the most successful experience of all the candidates, so that’s why I’m picking them.

Now, Mr. Mike Huckabee is running strong in the polls and in media coverage. I had not seriously considered him on March 25, 2007 when I did my first post on Presidential politics. Since he’s playing well right now, let’s amend my earlier analysis.

As a concrete proxy for assessing candidate persuasion skill I look at campaign experience. The argument is simple: You’re a better persuader if you’ve been involved in more winning elections. By this logic neither Mr. Al Gore nor Mr. John Kerry had a chance against Mr. George W. Bush and if you look back on presidential campaigns at least since FDR, it’s apparent to me at least that this proxy is a great indicator of likely success.

Mr. Huckabee is running strong right now, but I predict that he will not win either the general election or the nomination and probably won’t be a serious candidate going into the convention (”serious” meaning likely to win the nomination, not just a nice guys with some delegates). His campaign vita is seriously deficient (although not as thin as Mr. Barack Obama’s whose continued success defies Healthy Influence gravity).

Mr. Huckabee has won three regular statewide elections in Arkansas. That’s it. He was elected lieutenant governor in a special election, then elected in a regular election. While lieutenant governnor he ascended to the governor’s office due to corruption charges against Mr. Guy Tucker. Two years later, Mr. Huckabee was elected governor in a regular election, then re-elected four years later. It is important to note that Mr. Huckabee got his offices (either lieutenant governor or governor) through unusual circumstances the first time for each office (a special election or ascension through constitutional means). After he had the office, he then won an election.

That strikes me as thin persuasion experience.

Please realize here that I’m not taking any position on any candidates positions, just looking at the resume for indications of persuasion skill. Like Mr. Obama, Mr. Huckabee is clearly less experienced than several other candidates and is therefore more likely to fail.

In my first posts on the 2008 Presidential election, my persuasion analysis predicted that Hillary Clinton and Rudy Giuliani would earn the nominations of their parties and that Hillary Clinton would ultimately win the election.  You can scroll down the Blog to find those posts and my reasons.  We’re now getting first results in the “money elections” or how successful candidates are in fund raising.

As I predicted, Hillary Clinton won this race, raising $26 million in the first quarter of 2007. Am I a smart guy or what?

Not completely.

Barack Obama raised $24 milllion and while my prediction wins the race, it is only by a nose and in the first lap.  You’ll recall my persuasion disdain for Mr. Obama and his razor thin persuasion resume.  Okay, he’ll burst into flames any minute now.  I still think that Mrs. Clinton is darn nearly invincible as a campaigner, but this has got to be too close for her comfort.

On the Republican side, it appears that Mr. Giuliani raised $10 million or so and that Mr. Mitt Romney, whom I didn’t even consider in my first posts, raised almost as much as Mrs. Clinton.  So, how smart am I really?

After one clear heat, my Democratic prediction is holding, but precariously while my Republican prediction is on the mat after one punch.  It will be interesting to see how Mr. Giuliani recovers and how Mr. Romney exploits an advantage.

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.