How to rebuild the Liberal Democrats’ identity

[This is an edited and updated version of my speech to the consultative session on party strategy at the Liberal Democrat conference, 19 September 2010]

We Liberal Democrats need to think seriously about the party’s identity – but we need to understand how the voters see us, not about how we see ourselves.

Remember the Times-Populus polls we hear about year after year.  In 2007 and 2008, clear majorities saw the Liberal Democrats as being “made up of decent people but their policies probably don’t really add up” and “basically a protest vote party because they have no chance of ever winning”.  Many think that a vote for the Lib Dems was a wasted vote.

It’s not all bad, however. As Labour’s flame flickered and died, the Liberal Democrats were seen as the nicest, most empathetic party: “for ordinary people, not the best off”, the most honest and principled — as we’ve proved ourselves many times.  By the middle of the 2010 general election campaign, Nick Clegg was perceived as, by far the most honest leader and the one most in touch with ordinary people.

But the 2010 British Election Study has found that we didn’t win any of the arguments on the policy issues that mattered most to voters.  According to Ipsos-MORI, we weren’t seen to offer a credible team of leaders.

Then the coalition came.  Now the big story people hear from government ministers is that they are to fix the crippling deficit that Labour left behind.  By paying off our bills and living within our means, we will have fiscal redemption.   It’s little wonder the familiar Lib Dem messages have been crowded out.

So we – all of us - have to get back into the persuasion business and start telling people about the difference we are making in government on the issues that matter.  They’ll judge us on what we do, not on what we used to say.

No, that doesn’t mean being like the town cryer in the square – “hear ye, hear ye, here’s a big list of policies”.  And no, it doesn’t mean dusting down the old manifestos, leaflets and slogans of yesteryear and pretending that the last coalition never happened. I’ve never met a liberal who thinks who you can go back.

What I’m talking about is telling people stories about what Liberal Democrats in government are doing now, giving reality to our values.  Stories because that is the way people have communicated for thousands of years.  Stories about the difference Liberal Democrats are making – giving the specifics.  Most of all, stories about the people whose lives will be better as a result.

Here are two quick examples.  I can remember Nick Clegg, years ago, calling for more money to be focussed on the most disadvantaged pupils.  We worked up the idea and campaigned for the pupil premium at the election and now our ministers in government are making it a reality and thousands and in time millions of people will have a better start in life.

And we can’t forget the area where we have shown a strong commitment for decades, and reaped some political benefits: looking after the environment and tackling climate change.  Chris Huhne and Vince Cable have reaffirmed their joint commitment to building a low-carbon economy that will meet our ambitious climate-change targets, deliver energy security for all of us and help our economy to recover.  They are telling us how the Liberal Democrats government will do it.

So, let’s start telling people the stories.

Julia Gillard’s narrative failure reveals harsh political realities

 Today, Australia’s Labor prime minister, Julia Gillard, faces two possible futures.  One is awful beyond belief.  If the final counts in a couple of seats don’t go Labor’s way, and if Gillard fails to gather the assured support of enough Green and Independent MPs, her political career ends in disaster.  The other is a prolonged nightmare.  Gillard stays on as prime minister but with her government unstable and unsure, its legitimacy called into doubt.

 In June, just after she rolled Kevin Rudd and became prime minister, I wrote that Gillard would need to tell and embody a story that enabled Australian voters to develop (or to confirm) a sense of who they are; and that let them reframe their thoughts and plans for the future.

There was strong evidence that she could pull it off.  Julia Gillard started out with a good, strong brand, based on her undoubted competence and gift for plain speaking. 

But Gillard’s credibility suffered when she stumbled over the issues of asylum-seekers and deadlines for cutting emissions. Then, she was sandbagged by a series of damaging leaks from within her own party that depicted her as callous towards pensioners and young families.  After these disasters, and the fall-out over the ousting of Rudd, there were signs that the brand of the tough, smart and likeable leader was being eclipsed by a new one: Gillard the hard-bitten political opportunist.

All politicians have a narrative, but none get to write it.  That brutal reality was rammed home when Gillard’s campaign became overshadowed by a few dramas that reminded voters what they didn’t  like about Labor.  A lot of media attention was paid to Kevin Rudd, who eventually agreed to campaign for Labor.  Soon after, another ex-leader, Mark Latham, ambushed Gillard in a media scrum, challenging her about the way Labor had treated him in the past and over claims that Rudd was behind the leaks.  Later, Latham urged Australian voters, who are required by law to turn up to the polling booth on election day, to spoil their ballot papers.

All this was outside Gillard’s control.  Yet the Labor campaign may also have played up her political weak points.  When she assumed the leadership, the BBC’s Nick Bryant argued that Gillard’s brand was based around what he called her “Bungalow politics”, which identify the PM with “mainstream” Australia.  

By the end of July, commentators were slamming her over-controlled appearances, excessive use of marketing-speak and robotic presentation.  With her campaign failing to fire, Gillard promised that voters would see the “real Julia”.  Yet by polling day, the “real Julia” remained elusive.  This was a big failure. In The Political Brain, Drew Westen shows how voters’ feelings about candidates — or, in Australia, party leaders — are more important than their assessment of policy positions in deciding how they will vote.

Today, The Australian’s Kate Legge observed that:

Labor’s campaign accentuated [Gillard’s] solitariness in contrast to an opponent who wears several hats as father, husband, community volunteer. These roles helped flesh out a sense of Abbott.

Gillard’s candour about her atheism, her de facto relationship and personal choices that put children out of her reach was refreshing, but we didn’t see enough of the depth beneath her political skin.

… In the hundreds of campaign events and picture opportunities that both parties plot assiduously, Gillard’s army of one did not allow her extracurricular personality to break through.

Gillard was well placed to live the “Australian dream”.  Nick Bryant also wrote in July that the new PM could embody the myth – the narrative — of the “the Australian everyman” [sic]. 

From her pride at her immigrant “Ten Pound Pom” roots to her Western Bulldogs scarf, from her red-brick suburban bungalow to her Akubra hat, Julia Gillard is presenting a quintessentially Australian story - and therein lies much of her appeal.

Launching Labor’s campaign, Gillard stressed her values:  hard work,  “earning your keep” and the transformative power of education. 

Of course I learnt these values in my family home, I learnt them from my parents…

When my parents migrated to this country they didn’t come asking for a free ride, they came seeking a fair go, and they found it.

She then told a brief story about how both her parents had always worked hard.

All good stuff.  Yet it was tied to a policy programme that was cautious and a vision that was hazy.  Gillard stressed Labor’s fiscal credibility and plans for a nationwide broadband network, as well as education and health.   In the end, her promises added up to a continuation of the Rudd programme.

Such an incremental narrative can for do it a popular government, in benign times.  It can also work when a new leader has taken over from a popular leader whose vision was well established.  Bush I’s 1988 victory after eight years of Reagan is a good example.  None of these conditions applied and so Australian voters’ minds turned back to the government’s record and judged Labor accordingly.  But then Gillard was Rudd’s deputy and a key member of his government, meaning that she had little choice but to tread carefully in presenting her own story.   

The lack of choice that leaders have over the stories they can tell voters may be the real lesson from Julia Gillard’s grim experience.

Getting the Coalition Government’s political narrative

In its first 100 days in office, the Conservative-Liberal Democrat coalition government has launched a raft of substantial new policy initiatives, from NHS reform and academies to reorganising the police.  The “Big Society” has emerged as a major theme, alongside a drastic programme or decentralising political power.  Nick Clegg has big plans for political reform.  The speed with which the government is moving and the radicalism of its programme are both big themes of the media narrative about the coalition.  

The government has produced a lot of lists of speeches, policies and bills.  But so far they have told only one story.

They started in the very first paragraph of the coalition’s full programme for government, which declared that the Conservatives and Liberal Democrats had come together to work in the national interest.

“The national interest”: above party and sectional interests; policies that are good for all of us.  One of the most powerful frames in politics but, oddly, ministers hardly ever use it.

Right from that first press conference in the Downing Street rose garden, voters saw two people, David Cameron and Nick Clegg, uniting behind a common purpose.  They embody the coalition’s narrative by looking almost like characters in old, familiar movies.  The Guardian’s Marina Hyde was on to something when she compared the Cameron and Clegg partnership to a buddy movie -. Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid. Road to Morocco. Tango & Cash, Maverick and Iceman.

And the metaphor of the “civil partnership” has been used frequently to describe the government.

 Now for the plot of the story.  The Coalition Agreement said that tackling the UK’s record debts would be the new government’s most urgent task.  The chancellor, George Osborne, has since set a tough target - to have the deficit fixed by 2014-15.  Seismic spending cuts are on the way which, by the normal rules of politics, could well leave the Conservatives and Liberal Democrats sharing the same electoral tomb. 

Just as well the coalition’s story comes with a ready made villain.  By leaving behind a record budget deficit of 11% of GDP, and not explaining where or how they would make cuts, Labour hardly needed to audition for the part.  George Osborne has seized every opportunity to blame the previous Labour administration for the cuts that are now needed.  [Click here, here and here]    Cleaning up the last lot’s financial mess – a story that seems almost as old as democratic politics itself. 

Earlier this month, the energy and climate change secretary, Chris Huhne, pulled the story strands together, in his speech on Labour’s legacy.

It only took one party to create this mess.  Now our two parties – the Liberal Democrats and the Conservatives – have come together in the national interest to clear it up. Labour’s [leadership] candidates cannot go on pretending that the budget deficit doesn’t exist. It does and it is the single greatest challenge facing Britain.  They must take responsibility.  You cannot keep spending when the money dries up. Write cheques you know will bounce. Put party advantage before the national interest.

 But that’s not enough.  Any politician who is selling painful change has to tell stories that appeal to a bigger sense of morality. 

So the government has adopted a narrative that’s about good housekeeping: by paying off our bills and living within our means, we can enjoy fiscal redemption later on.  [Click here and here]

In his Bloomberg speech this week, Osborne set out his account – his story – of how the budgetary crisis came about.  He described the forthcoming spending review as “a crucial stepping stone on the way to recovery”.  The chancellor added that “the choices within that review will lay the foundations for future growth and for a fairer society”.

There was a new, clever twist to the narrative.  Osborne  denied that it was “progressive” to oppose the cuts, arguing that left-of-centre politicians in other countries agreed that fairness for future generations and job seekers could only be delivered once the nation’s finances were in order.

Osborne alluded to a few springboard stories but, like many British politicians, did not develop them fully.

In the US it was Bill Clinton and the New Democrats who made the case for balanced budgets and deficit control in the early 1990s. And during an economic recovery they eliminated the budget deficit and pushed ahead with deeply controversial welfare reform.

 

In Canada, [Liberals] Jean Chretien and Paul Martin took the necessary steps to bring their exploding deficit under control.

 

Or there is Goran Persson, the Swedish Social Democrat Prime Minister, who turned a 9% budget deficit into a 4% budget surplus.

And he touched on a more hypothetical type of morality story by simply asking:

… what is fair about forcing the next generation to pay for the debts of our generation?

The government’s narrative has at least two potential weaknesses.  First, the “happy ending” is not too clear and phrases like “future growth” and “a fairer society” have little emotional impact.

Second, there are powerful counter-stories.  As The Economist pithily summed it up last week:

Debate rages—not only in Britain—over whether it makes economic sense to tighten fiscal policy so much, so fast. And austerity plans may not be achievable without ripping vital public services to shreds.

But most people buy the coalition’s story, so far at least.  This week, a YouGov poll found that a majority of the public have confidence in the government’s ability to run the economy (55%) and there is widespread confidence in their ability to cut the deficit (62%).  Last month, YouGov found that 48% of people blamed the previous Labour government for the spending cuts while only 17% blamed the coalition government. 19% blamed both.

Now, here’s a tricky postscript.  What have stories about massive spending cuts and the morality of good housekeeping and fiscal redemption got to do with the Liberal Democrats’ narrative of “stopping the rot at the top” and our established brand as the most understanding and empathetic party, “for ordinary people, not the best off”?

More on that soon.

Narrativewatch: Sarah Palin releases ‘mom awakening’ political broadcast

Finding the key to Julia Gillard’s political narrative

Last week, the Australian Labor Party installed Julia Gillard as prime minister in the hope that she can win this year’s election.  “Reconnect with the voters” is the operative phrase.

Now the hard questions are coming.  Can she win?  What does Julia Gillard stand for?  As night follows day, the n-word – narrative – is starting to appear in the Australian media.

Michelle Grattan, veteran political correspondent for The Age, says that Gillard needs a narrative.

As she grapples with the three issues the government must neutralise - mining tax, asylum seekers and climate change - Julia Gillard has a broader challenge. She needs to fit her solutions into a story that defines, rather than confuses, her political identity.

Kevin Rudd’s popularity plunged when people became unsure about what he stood for. But now Gillard’s own narrative is becoming rather hard to follow.

Julia Gillard’s challenge is both easier and harder than it looks.  She already has a brand, a personal narrative.  “The Gillard narrative so far is one of a fresh face with talent in spades: the first female prime-minister-in-waiting,” political commentator Per Van Onselen wrote last week, just before Labor switched leaders.  Gillard projects authority with personality, says The Australian’s Paul Kelly.  Sid Astbury has called her “famously calm, never impetuous and never flustered …  Labor’s best parliamentary performer”. My friend Karin Sowada (who was a Democrats senator in the early 1990s) wrote last week that:

Julia Gillard is a formidable opponent – tough, smart, a clear communicator with a measured political judgement and manner of personal presentation which is confident and reassuring. The public quite like her and she reflects a common touch in her voice and manner.

So far, however, the well-chronicled story has been all about Julia Gillard and not about the Australian people, where they’ve been and where she wants to take them.  Margaret Thatcher stayed in power for so long because she was a brilliant teller of a story that was both easy to understand and resonated with the emotions and the deepest-held, shared values of most British people. 

If Julia Gillard wants to “reconnect” the Labor government with Australian voters, she too will need to tell a story that enables them to develop (or to confirm) a sense of who they are; and that enables people to reframe their thoughts and plans for the future.

Margaret Thatcher’s story was successful because she embodied her narrative. She came from the very ‘little England’ she so revered.  The grocer’s daughter from Grantham worked all hours. Her language and rhetoric often reflected Thatcher’s ‘black-and-white’, ‘us-and-them’ way of seeing the world.  So Gillard’s brand will be important too. 

Some people may be uncomfortable with the Thatcher lesson but it wasn’t a one-off.  The Hawke and Keating governments successfully deployed a narrative that was originally about the need national unity and reconciliation, in the face of a grave social and economic crisis. Over time, they told a story of transformation and renewal, based on giving Australia a strong and modern economy, so that it could face a tough, changing world.  The first story became a bridge to the second.  Bob Hawke embodied the narrative with his record as a solver of industrial disputes in his 1970s; his history as a folk hero and his very “Australianness” put him above party.  As treasurer and prime minister, Keating was strong and determined; above all, he delivered (with some accompanying blood and gore, rays and hail).  In their very different ways, and despite all their disagreements, both men were accomplished storytellers.

Like most senior politicians, Kevin Rudd has a strong personal brand – as a competent technocrat and, until recently, an election winner.  His policy wins were not insignificant.  But he failed to put them all together and tell a story that evoked his country’s values, archetypes and myths and painted a compelling picture of its future.

Julia Gillard will find it hard to rewrite the Labor government’s entire policy programme.  There’s very little time until the election and she was, after all, part of Rudd’s inner circle.  (Therein lies the opposition’s counter-story – this is no fresh face, they are saying).  And no politician ever won by just reeling off a list of policies.  No, her mission is to tell a story that is emotional and engaging, compelling and connecting, and to embody it.  If Gillard fails in this, Rudd’s fate will be hers also.

Cameron, Clegg show how stories can work- and how they can fail

Conservative leader, David Cameron, told a few anecdotes — stories — in Thursday’s TV debate.  Politicians are often told, by people like me, that stories are the best way to get their messages across.  But Cameron is being pilloried for telling stories. 

According to the Leftfootforward blog, Cameron’s claims that Humberside Police had “five different police cars and that they were just about to buy a £73,000 Lexus” have been disputed by the police.  The Met has challenged Cameron’s jibes about “form-fillers” as misleading and out of context.

You might want to have a play with the David Cameron anecdote generator.  On a more serious note, Max Atkinson has asked whether all three leaders may have told too many anecdotes on Thursday night.

He may have a point.  But I think the real issue may be the sorts of stories they told.  The Australian consultancy Anecdote have suggested some tests for what makes stories have impact:

·      Clarity—you hear or read the story once and you get it. It’s simple, clear and has a good narrative structure (time markers, characters, begin-middle-end).

·      Emotional—it gets you in the gut. It doesn’t matter what emotion it evokes but impactful stories evoke at least one strong emotion.

·      Believable—it doesn’t sound like bullshit. Facts and figures help but not too many. Details help with real people’s names and specific dates and times.

·      Transport—it transports you to relive the experience. You can see, hear, touch, smell and taste the experience.

·      Surprising—it throws you a curve ball that you weren’t expecting.

·      Relevant—does it talk to the topic under investigation.

Cameron told an anecdote  about meeting a “40-year-old black man” who had served in the Navy “for 30 years” and agreed that immigration was “out of control”.  This may have been surprising but it wasn’t believable.  The man’s age and experience, as recounted by the Tory leader, didn’t add up.  Even more importantly, the accuracy of the story, like the police Lexus and the form fillers, has  been called into question.  The man in question has now disputed Cameron’s account and said that “Britain needs immigrants”. 

I for one didn’t get the relevance of the Lexus story at the time and it evoked no particular emotional response.

Of the Anecdote tests, “emotional” and “relevant” seem the most important in political debates.  When a politician uses an anecdote, it should help to express their overall narrative about what has gone wrong (and right) and their vision of the future.  The anecdote should illustrate or set up a specific solution, a way forward that fits into the politician or party’s overall image.  This is a political version of what Stephen Denning calls a springboard story.  Cameron kept failing to provide clear solutions, even with his “my mother was a magistrate in Newbury” anecdote.

Nick Clegg told at least one good political springboard story with his anecdote about how restorative justice has been used successfully in Sheffield, where he has his own constituency.  He explained how a Liberal Democrat solution has been tried somewhere and used stats to show that it has worked.  And it tied into his big narrative, this time about how the other parties keep talking tough on crime and keep failing to deliver.

One more reason that he triumphed.

Fear and loathing on the UK campaign trail

Wednesday’s Daily Telegraph framed the UK general election as “a battle between hope and fear”. 

You can guess which party they think matches each emotion.  But the election will come down to emotions – how voters feel about the parties, leaders, issues and candidates.

During the 2008 US presidential primaries, Newsweek’s Sharon Begley argued that “the debate about whether the electorate is guided by its head or its heart, by reason or emotion, is over.”  She went on to say: 

“When voters consider candidates’ positions, they are drawn to the candidate who assuages fear, inspires hope, instills pride or brings some other emotional dividend.”

Sharon Begley found most experts agreeing that fear and anxiety are the strongest emotions in terms of their ability to drive decisions in the voting booth.  The runner-up emotion was anger.

This week, Begley assesses the Democrats’ prospects in November in light of the healthcare reforms.  She draws on a new paper posted on the Web site of the journal Psychological Science.  Two researchers at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, have found that anxious voters are more likely to put real effort into searching out information about where candidates stand on the key issues and then vote for those they agree with most.  But angry voters rely more on vague, general information, with policy positions playing little part in their decisions.

Begley suggests that Democrat incumbents might tailor their messages according to whether voters are fearful (and therefore open to being swayed with more information about healthcare policy) or angry (in which case appeals to party or other generalities seem the best gambit).

That all sounds a little bit hopeful but for now, the more interesting question is, how does this theory play out in the UK?  The part that fear plays in the parties’ messaging is not hard to see.  The Conservatives play on fears that we might have five more years of Gordon Brown as PM.  Like all long term governments asking for another term, Labour’s real message is: you can’t risk a change to the Tories.  “We cannot cut our way to recovery-but we could cut our way to double-dip recession”, says Gordon Brown.  Labour’s ill-conceived “Gene Hunt” poster is another example.

Last year, the accepted wisdom was that voters had written off Labour and it seemed that the Conservatives were on course for a handsome victory.   Since January, however, Labour’s poll ratings have recovered slightly, apparently because of a new sense of confidence about the economy.  The Conservatives’ ratings for economic competence have fallen.  Neither Labour nor the Tories has established a clear, stable lead as the best party to manage the economy (hence the rise of Vince Cable).  With the Amherst work in mind, we might interpret that as anxious, recession-bitten voters being more engaged that they were given credit for and giving the major parties a closer look, but still not being convinced. 

What about anger? The Tories’ greatest asset in this campaign is, surely, voters’  resentments after thirteen years of Labour.  The Liberal Democrats’ campaign narrative plays even more strongly to these emotions, inviting voters to cast “a plague on both their houses”.  But the party is too rational in its approach and, perhaps, too romantic about its policies and beliefs to base an entire campaign on anger.  The minor parties try to push the anger buttons even harder.  More likely, the really angry voters will simply switch off and stay home on polling day.

And let’s not discount the role of hope and optimism in UK election campaigns.  The Conservative campaign has looked more sure-footed since they switched to more optimistic messages, with the (less than honest) promises of tax cuts.  In 1978, the famous Saatchi and Saatchi poster declared that “Labour isn’t working.”  It also said, “Britain’s better off with the Conservatives”.   Here we are again.

Revealed: the Liberal Democrats’ campaign narrative

If you’re still trying to find the Liberal Democrats’ narrative for the general election, you can now see a large part of it.

Here’s Exhibit A: Vince Cable’s closing remarks in the Channel 4 Ask the Chancellors debate last Monday night.

“The Labour government led us into this mess … The Tories presided over two big recessions in office, they wasted most of the North Sea oil revenue, they sold off the family silver on the cheap.”

“Now they want to have another turn to get their noses in the trough and reward their rich backers. The Liberal Democrats are different. We got this crisis basically right. We are not beholden to either the super rich or militant unions.”

Neither Labour nor the Tories can be trusted.  They’ve both let us down for years and they’re both in the pocket of vested interests.

And here’s Exhibit B: the new guerilla marketing campaign for  “the Labservatives”, which accuses Labour and the Conservatives of being interchangeable, offering the same failed politics, more of the same

Both exhibits follow on from Nick’s conference speeches and the New Year’s message.  The Lib Dems are using the archetype of “stopping the rot at the top”, inviting voters to cast a plague on both their houses – “they’re just as bad as each other”.  This is the same narrative that the Liberals used in the 1960s and 1970s.  In the 1979 general election campaign, for instance, David Steel framed Labour and the Tories as “two Conservative parties”, one a failed government, the other a reactionary alternative. 

So, after all the angst about the Liberal Democrats’ need for a narrative, we’re replaying an old tune from the days of Jo Grimond, Jeremy Thorpe and David Steel.   And, as Max Atkinson has pointed out,  “they’re just as bad as each other” is the sort of “yah-boo” politics that Liberals and Liberal Democrats have always deplored.

That’s not quite the end of it though. These days, the party includes specific policies and issues in the story and makes it more positive. In 1997, the last time a government was on its way out, Paddy Ashdown told people that every vote the Lib Dems received, every seat the party won was a vote for real change. He told people what those changes were and looked and sounded like a man of action.

This time, Nick Clegg has his four reasons to vote for the Liberal Democrats.  They have a common theme, fairness, but so far, the linking story, or archetype, is harder to see.  And he still has to show how a third party could use greater political influence to turn those promises into a reality.  Otherwise, the story won’t have a happy ending.

Budget arguments show weaknesses in Labour, Tory narratives

As part of today’s budget coverage in The Times, Peter Riddell gives a good description of how  Labour and Conservatives differ on the economy and the arguments they use.

I think he gets it about right - Labour’s “safety first” vs. the Conservatives’ “time for a change”. 

“The differences are also about the role of government. Mr Darling is arguing for a benevolent and activist State helping people and businesses. For Mr Cameron, it is not just about cutting the State, but also changing it, “unleashing enterprise” and radical welfare and school reform.”

But these statements are not, in themselves, political narratives.  They make assertions but do not recount events or changes.  They do not have characters, although Labour’s view, as summarised by Riddell, makes a start.  The statements are not especially memorable.  They are not emotional.  Most importantly, we still don’t know “what happens next” - how the stories end - because the major parties have told us next to nothing about how they will balance the budget over the course of the next parliament.  As Bill Clinton always says, elections are about the future, not the past.

This is surely why neither Labour nor the Conservatives have established a clear ascendancy as the best manager of the economy, the top concern of voters.  After 13 years in office, including the worst recession in generations, Labour does not seem kind or benevolent.  Gordon Brown’s lack of popularity and failure to connect with voters does not help them. He does not embody the narrative that Labour wants. These counter-stories overwhelm Labour’s attempts to get messages across. And voters are still not receiving clear, substantive messages from the Conservatives about what they would do if they win, the positive alternative they offer.  

The Liberal Democrats do better on the fiscal detail and their story has strong, plausible characters - the old parties who are both as bad as each other.  But warnings of  “wasted votes” are, as always, a powerful counter-story.  And the Lib Dems can’t finish the story with a happy ending, so long as the politics of a hung parliament are so unpredictble and intractable.

It’s going to be a fascinating campaign.

Obama’s lost year and the secrets of political storytelling

The New Yorker of 15 March has a fascinating article by George Packer, called “Obama’s lost year”. Packer traverses the political and strategic mistakes that the president has made, the opportunities he has lost over the past twelve months.  [Sorry – there’s no hyperlink to the full article unless you’re a paying subscriber]

Inevitably, one of the issues that Packer discusses is Obama’s failure to craft a narrative and tell the American people a story about what he is doing, and why he is doing it. 

“Phrasemaking, throughlines, frameworks and narratives simply aren’t the stuff of the Obama press office.”

 Packer draws some important contrasts between Obama and Ronald Reagan, another president who ran into big economic and political problems in his first year.  In so doing, Packer shows us what makes a political narrative work. 

“Reagan could recover from battlefield setbacks because he was fighting a larger war.  His talent for phrasemaking and anecdote derived from having a strong world view: unlike Obama, he began with a set of ideas and found the evidence to match them and the words to dramatize them.”

The article goes on to quote the leading Democratic political consultant, Paul Begala:

“[Reagan’s] point of departure was always philosophical.  He explained how the world works.  Roosevelt did the same thing.”  [emphasis added]

 Reagan blamed the nation’s woes on “decades of tax and tax and spend and spend”.

 Later in the article, top Democratic pollster Geff Garin develops the same point and shows the crucial role that characters – heroes and villains –play in political stories.

“Reagan had a kind of robust narrative with real explanatory power for people.  He had a political narrative that told people what he was doing and what the Democrats were doing: a narrative which is available to Obama: Jimmy Carter left the country in a mass, we’re making changes that are painful now but if we stay the course they’ll succeed, and why would anyone want to go back?”  [emphasis added]

 Notice also how Reagan’s story offered two alternative endings, one good, one bad, and left people to work the rest out for themselves.

 During the last presidential election campaign, I wrote a lot on my blog about Obama’s gifts as a teller of stories.  In fact, I unpretentiously named him the political storyteller of the year for 2008.  But Packer is correct: as president, he has not rendered the country’s story in a way that is memorable and convincing.  To quote Paul Begala:  “[Obama] doesn’t situate it in a philosophy.”

 No, a political narrative is not the same thing as an ideology.  But the experiences of Reagan and Obama show that a successful narrative must be based firmly on a coherent set of ideas.  As Packer puts it:

“To be an effective communicator, a President needs a strong world view, a fundamental vision of why things are and the way they ought to be, which can be simplified into a few key ideas and images – in short, an ideology.  For Obama and his advisers, there is no worse pejorative.”

 The narrative, the story is the most powerful tool that a politician has to explain those ideas, convey the images and make them real to people.