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!

Avid readers of this Blog will recall the numerous posts on the 2008 Presidential Election and in particular my observations about the success of Senator Barack Obama. From my vast ponderings on all things persuasion, I think that the Senator defies persuasion gravity and that he’ll fall to Earth any day now. (Make the same prediction long enough and it will probably come true, right?) I don’t think that Mr. Obama is a highly gifted speaker and does not compare favorably with greats like JFK, Ronald Reagan, Winston Churchill, FDR, and Martin Luther King, Jr., just to name several. So, why is Mr. Obama so rhetorically effective?

Today, reading Stephen Hayes opinion column in the Wall Street Journal, a light went off in my head. Let me quote a couple of key lines.

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.”

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?”

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.”

This illuminates in my mind an old and very effective conflict management tactic. You first begin with a statement of empathy and understanding that properly and correctly states the “other” side of an issue. You then glide into a rationale that describes an alternative position, then close with an action statement. Back in my professoring days I called this communication tactic, ERA, as a pun on the then hot issue, the Equal Rights Amendment (which tells you how old I am if I can pull that old chesnut out of the fire and remember when the nut had just fallen off the tree).

ERA: Empathy, Rationale, Action. A communication three step tactic. Empathy is about the other side. Rationale states a context. Action recommends a behavior.

What makes ERA so effective as a conflict management tactic is that first empathy statement. With a correct restatement of the other side, you disarm the emotional harm people usually feel in an argument. You tell them that you get it, you understand it, and you feel it, too. Empathy. From that goodwill, you then swing into the negotiation, but instead of immediately offering a counterproposal, you add that second step of the Rationale. You provide a context, a perspective, a point of view, a body of evidence, a recitation of history, that suggests alternatives are reasonable. Only then do you go to the third statement, action - here’s what I want.

Now, for a conflict management situation, you should see the power of ERA as a tactic. It typically lowers everyone’s temperature and keeps hot button emotional responding at a lower level. That’s great. Next, it keeps thoughtful, rational offers on the table and pushes a more mindful and realistic approach to the conflict. In virtually any interpersonal situation where there’s disagreement - dating and marriage, workplace, negotiation - ERA is a powerful and effective communication tactic.

Mr. Hayes observation that Obama is using this as a “rhetorical gimmick” opens my eyes to just how smart Mr. Obama is. He’s taking this interpersonal tactic and moving it into the arena of political oratory and argument. It also explains to me why I have been so persistent in my disconnect between what speaking skill I see in Obama (competence, but not greatness) and the obvious effect he’s having in the primaries (he’s winning against a proven machine and doing it in a unifying style that is hard to attack).

Senator Obama is not a great political speaker, but he is having the same kind of emotional and relational impact that great political speakers have. Obama has not yet and probably will not turn a phrase of enduring eloquence (”ask not” or “I have a dream” or “tear down this wall” or “blood, sweat, toil, and tears”) but will instead achieve his rhetorical effect through interpersonal communication tactics hidden in oratory.

Now, I don’t believe for a minute that Mr. Obama or his advisors would characterize the situation with the same terms as I’m using here. This is probably the way Mr. Obama has always thought and worked. It is both natural and evolved. In other words, he’s a smart guy who knew how to think and talk this way (natural) and modified that skill through experience (evolved). So, this isn’t some big secret the Obama camp’s been hiding and now, oops, the cat is out of the bag, the jig is up, and . . .

I see two interesting extensions to this observation. First, now you know how to attack Obama. Second, now you have a new political communication skill. I want to think on these two extension and post later on them.

In the meantime, you might be interested to see how other bloggers have responded to Hayes. His column generated a fair amount of thoughtful comment. ProteinWisdom focuses more on Obama’s content than the Hayes noted process. The DailyKos detects signs of intelligent life among Republicans. The Independent Liberal worries about the comparison to Reagan. RealClearPolitics uses the column to pivot on Hillary Clinton and note how badly she compares. And NeitherPropertyNorStyle notes that they, too, have perhaps been underestimating Mr. Obama’s rhetorical powers.

A lot to consider here. I’ll close with one of the Rules:

There’s a difference between persuasion, and smoke and mirrors; with persuasion the illusion persists.

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.

In an earlier post I noted an odd persuasion outcome. Pfizer, an evil pharma and master manipulator of the universe, was experiencing signficant sales declines. Given the reputation many people give to pharmas and their fabulous persuasion skills, I noted that it was therefore peculiar that Pfizer was having trouble. If you’re that good, how can sales decline so badly?

Yesterday, the Wall Street Journal ran a comprehensive story about the continuing pharma woes and not just Pfizer. If you don’t have a subscription, you won’t be able to read this story, so let me quote the lead paragraphs.

Big Pharma Faces Grim Prognosis

Over the next few years, the pharmaceutical business will hit a wall.

Some of the top-selling drugs in industry history will become history as patent protections expire, allowing generics to rush in at much-lower prices. Generic competition is expected to wipe $67 billion from top companies’ annual U.S. sales between 2007 and 2012 as more than three dozen drugs lose patent protection. That is roughly half of the companies’ combined 2007 U.S. sales . . .

First, let me again note as I did in the earlier post, I am not gloating about this economic disaster. Lots of families are going to face some difficult challenges because of this and that’s bad. I would prefer that it didn’t happen.

The larger point, however, is how can this occur? A 50% decline in sales among some of the greatest persuasion manipulators this side of the tobacco companies?

My argument is that Big Pharmas are not and never were strong persuasion agents. That is, they were not particularly good at using words to change the way people think, feel, or behave. They were great at research, distribution, and, most importantly, patents. As the WSJ story makes clear, now that patents are expiring and generics can flood the market, the Big Pharmas will deflate.

I would also argue that the vaunted image of the tobacco companies as persuasion masters (past and present) is also overblown. Hey, how good does your message have to be when the product is also addictive? Merely giving away the product for free is sufficient to create later sales and that requires no persuasion skill.

The same reasoning applies with Pharmas. When no one else has that Pill, you don’t need a Genuine Expert like me to devise persuasion strategy and tactics. Just publicize it and make sure it is available for distribution and you’re rich.

Quick recap:

1. Nope, no gloating here; failure is bad and it hurts and I don’t take any pleasure in it.

2. Don’t confuse success with persuasion skill. Simply because They are Smooth Talkers who make a lot of money, you shouldn’t assume They acquired that money because they are Smooth Talkers.

3. Remember the Rules. Power corrupts persuasion. Pharmas (and Big Tobacco) had a lot of Power (patents, addiction) and achieved their success through that Power even if they also did some Persuasion, too.

Finally, if you’re a Pharma person reading this, good luck to you. Stay optimistic. You have a lot of skill, just keep after it.

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.

People who demonstrate more effective persuasion skills are more likely to get nominated for the Presidency and then more likely to win the general election. Don’t think about their public speaking skills; that’s just a small part of persuasion skill. Think about the people they attract as staffers and campaigners and volunteers and donors. Think about how they run strong campaigns with good finishes. It seems rather obvious, but persuasion is a crucial skill here particularly as manifest in campaigning.

Thinking only about the proven persuasion record of the various people announced or likely to announce, it is clear to me that Hillary Clinton and Rudy Giuliani are head and shoulders above their competitors in each party. I predict that each will earn the nomination of their respective party, barring, of course, some unforeseeable bolt from the blue (cancer recurs with Mr. Giuliani, for example).

Clinton played a major role in all of her husband’s elections and thus saw first hand how to run winning Presidential elections. She knows what it takes to persuade and influence people to get a nomination. She also has won two Senate elections which proves she knows how to make the final decision in campaigns and come out the winner. No one on the Democratic side comes close to her range of persuasion success.

Giuliani has won several NY city elections with campaigns that he clearly designed and directed. He has worked on several winning Presidential campaigns, but not within an inner circle of advisors. No one on the Republican side comes close to the range of his persuasion success. Mr. McCain seems to be the current alternative, but he has proven that he knows how to lose the primaries and the only person to lose a nomination then comeback to win a later one (and the general election) is Ronald Reagan and he lost the first nomination against a sitting President seeking election (Gerald Ford).

If this persuasion analysis holds true and Clinton and Giuliani are nominated, I’d predict that Mrs. Clinton would win the general election. Her first hand experience with successful Presidential campaigns gives her the decided advantage over all Republicans, including Mr. Giuliani.

Think about it. Consider this list of nominees since World War II and the characteristics of the ultimate winner. Consider the past campaigning experience of each man. Persuasion skill is typically decisive in the ultimate winner.

2004: Bush versus Kerry

2000: Bush versus Gore

1996: Clinton versus Dole

1992: Clinton versus Bush

1988: Bush versus Dukakis

1984: Reagan versus Mondale

1980: Reagan versus Carter

1976: Carter versus Ford

1972: Nixon versus McGovern

1968: Nixon versus Humphrey

1964: Johnson versus Goldwater

1960: Kennedy versus Nixon

1956: Eisenhower versus Stevenson

1952: Eisenhower versus Stevenson

1948: Truman versus Dewey

Thus, a persuasion analysis suggests that Hillary Clinton is a lock to be nominated President and to win.

Katy at Sway, Inc. contacted me about conducting surveys of people taking online courses for their use of various social media Internet sites. I took the survey myself - which they should probably throw out because of my Biblical age and painful lack of experience with MySpace - and it looks legit. You don’t have to provide your email address so unless the folks at SurveyMonkey who are running the survey have invented some new nefarious spam tactic, you might want to give it a try. I am not involved with Sway or SurveyMonkey (although I like both company names) and receive no professional or consulting benefit from your participation. Katy did promise that she would send me a “reward” but if you’ve read the Primer, you know just how ambiguous that term can be. My mom used to reward me with her famous “German chocolate cake” that tasted like a cross between boiled cabbage and a Hershey bar left in back seat of the car. I’ll keep you posted on Katy’s reward.

Here’s the survey link.

And, Mom, I really love your German chocolate cake. Really. It doesn’t taste anything like cabbage. I was just making a joke to appear hip and groovy for the kids. But, next time I’m back home, let’s just get a Joan Murphy cheeseburger instead.