How to Win a Presidential Election

What can be said about the battle for the oval office this year? To republicans it will be remembered as a reunification of a broken party. To democrats it will be remembered as an election dividing a united party. To the American people it will be remembered as a toss up between two candidates with both their own unique pros and their own thickly air-brushed flaws. To the American media it will be remembered as the election that gave us numerous episodes of mocking comedy and scathing criticism about outrageous statements and actions. To the politicians involved it will be remembered as the election that involved countless political makeovers and scandals, not to mention the myriad accusations and damning attacks fired in fierce volleys across no-man's-land.

One paragraph down and we've only managed to touch on some generalisations. Digging deeper into this issue requires us to ask two questions. Firstly, how can one win a Presidential election? And secondly how have candidates performed in this feat so far? Taking the race that we've seen so far in retrospect, we can derive four things "to do and not to do" in an election and weigh our two questions against these.

1. Appeal to mainstream America as much as possible!

Successful candidates are those who can get mainstream America on their side. Candidates such as Ron Paul and Mike Gravel didn't last long in this election because of their extreme libertarian beliefs that were rebuked by the majority of Americans. Their conviction to their cause was admirable, and the publicity resulting from their campaigns would no doubt have been beneficial, but realistically they had no shot at success relying on a minority support base.

We all saw the cancerous damage inflicted upon Barack Obama's campaign when he was associated with the incendiary statements of his former pastor Jeremiah Wright. The statements amounted to a damnation of America and presented radical criticism of white Americans. The affect this had on Obama's influence with mainstream America could have been crippling had it not been for some major damage control enacted immediately.

Further to the issue of religion, mainstream America has a very sizeable overlap with evangelical America. This reality gave Mike Huckabee - a former Southern Baptist minister - an advantage, and Mitt Romney - a Mormon - a major disadvantage. Even though Mormonism is a Christian denomination, it is nonetheless a more discreet belief system than that held by Huckabee and the majority of evangelicals. Being a secular democracy, religion should have nothing to do with politics in America. Realistically, however, it does play a big part, meaning politicians who can display a genuinely Christian set of beliefs will hold an advantage.

2. It's all about balance.

This point overlaps slightly with appealing to mainstream America, in that voters are influenced by things such as race and gender. Now that the race has come down to two nominees vying for Bush's job, the importance of balancing tokenism has been very obvious. The easiest example of this comes in the form of the vice-presidential nominees. When Barack Obama was named the democratic nominee for President, his opponent John McCain wasted no time in criticising him for his flaws.

Obama was hit hard for his relative lack of experience in foreign policy. His relative youth and lack of experience in federal politics were also seen as threats to his campaign, and there was much hesitation among some Americans as to whether they would be ready for a black President. In order to balance out his campaign, Obama needed a VP who would fill the void in foreign policy, Washington experience, age, and indeed race. Another area would have been gender, though this was probably seen less necessary after being endorsed by Oprah Winfrey. The clear choice was Joe Biden, an older, white Senator from Delaware with a foreign policy record to be reckoned with. He has years of experience in Washington, and serves to add an extra kicker for the Obama ticket.

On the flipside, the republicans have also done well in balancing out their campaign. In the case of this election, John McCain became the presumptive nominee some months before there was a clear winner on the democrat side. Because of this, his campaign somewhat stagnated behind the limelight of the fierce tussle between Obama and Clinton. McCain's first major problem was that his dormant campaign would be at a major disadvantage to Obama's because of the lack of momentum and media attention that he suffered relative to his opponent, who was riding a wave of popular opinion and headlining on a regular basis.

Despite a long record of Washington experience and an impressive war record in Vietnam, McCain takes heavy flak for his advanced age and dwindling credibility in a fast-paced, technologically savvy world. Balance in the McCain camp, therefore, had to come in the form of someone who could not only revitalise the campaign and steal the limelight from the democrats, but someone youthful and in-touch with the modern day American. The person had to be someone unique, someone out-of-the-blue, someone who could match Obama's energetic calls for change, and personify it to a better degree than their wary old running mate McCain.

Cue Sarah Palin, the Governor of Alaska. She's young, she's beautiful, she's a Washington outsider, and she's energetic. McCain's choice for his VP was, in the short term, a perfect way to resurrect a presidential campaign. Much like Obama-Biden, Palin completes McCain, filling areas that were previously empty.

3. Understand the power of the media.

The American Media has a way of making big issues seem small, and making small issues seem big. For this reason, candidates have to realise that a single headline can make or break a campaign, that a televised debate can help or harm approval ratings, and that the media has an impeccable way of scrutinising every iota of a candidate's movements. Because of this, candidates must be 100% honest 100% of the time. Contradictions and lies will not be tolerated by a free media, and will result in a vicious attack that could in many cases be career-ending.

A case in point would be Hillary Clinton's comments about landing under fire in a visit to the Baltic States; comments which upon scrolling through video archives the media found to be blatant lies. Political commentators and voters tore her apart for her fabrication of a cheap story, and she was put in an obviously compromising position.

Within the media are your political savvy commentators. These men and women have unimaginable power at their disposal when praising or criticising politicians in the wake of an election. Speeches, comments, demeanour, body language, attitude, and political record are scrutinised and discussed in forums with million-viewer audiences. When John McCain gave a pre-rebuttal speech in Kenner, Louisiana in response to Obama clinching the democratic nomination, political commentators ripped him to shreds for the oratorical disaster that he delivered. The McCain speech was heralded as an example of his seventy plus years (he stumbled and stammered throughout the speech, despite using a teleprompter) and as a tactical blunder that made an unimpressive impact (he presented it in Louisiana to a few hundred when he should really have gone to Minnesota where he had a support base of thousands, and he was in front of an aesthetically disgusting green wall that juxtaposed grossly with his McCain logos).

McCain's speech was painted as lacking ethos, pathos and logos, the fundamental ingredients in a persuasive speech. This was compared to Obama's speech at clinching the nomination, which was presented at the culmination of the young senator's eloquent shine in the limelight of recent successes. The oratorical gap between his and McCain's speeches has been shown analysed and broadcasted by the media, with the underlying message that it is extremely vast. These comments woulda' coulda' and shoulda' been avoided by the McCain campaign; they serve as an example of what never to do when presenting a poignant speech in a presidential election.

But the biggest victim of the media this election, aside from this and even the systematic deconstruction of campaigns run by candidates like Dennis Kucinich and Ron Paul, would have to be Sarah Palin. She's not exactly the sharpest knife in the box, and the media wasted but a second in drawing up plans for slashing attacks against her credibility as a VP nominee. Her interviews have been disasters, exposing flaws in her knowledge of fundamental issues of the US and the world, her genuine republican character has been shattered by scandals uncovered in her personal life, and her image has been flaunted as stupid and dipsy by impressionists and comedians. What started as a resurrection for the McCain campaign ended with a diagnosis of cancer, systematically eating the McCain candidacy from the inside out.

4. Know when, who, and how to attack your opponents

Something that has emerged from this election is the weigh-up of whether attacking another candidate will help or harm your campaign. From the outset, Obama and Clinton waged a heavyweight battle for the democratic nomination. The problem that Obama faced was that by attacking Clinton to a vicious extent, he risked losing her support base at the point where he would need her chunk of democrat support to unite with him. The flipside of this was that Hillary didn't seem to understand that this principle applied to her as well, so she willingly got her hands dirty in some slashing attacks, making Obama, who was too afraid to fight back to a significant extent, seem weak and vulnerable.

The fundamental problem with initiating a slashing attack is that sometimes it reveals a dishonest and underhand flaw in your own character rather than that of your opponent. Hillary became a victim of this, and it is now being seen in the McCain campaign, which has also fired some nasty volleys Obama's way. The way to deal with this is to calmly put down attacks against one's character, and to continue to show magnanimity and confidence in the eye of such threats.

On the grand scale of things, an attack against another candidate serves only to satisfy your own following, and to insulate your opponent in his support. An attack against an opponent's voting record, sure, that's acceptable. But when attacks are of a personal nature, it becomes clear that over the long term, the minority of Americans not already bound by a commitment to being a republican or a democrat will be more inclined to support that victim rather than the bully. The bully can expect their chickens to eventually come home to roost.

This does not apply, of course, when a candidate's private affairs are in a state that warrants criticism. For example, Sarah Palin and her unfair dismissal order back in Alaska, or John Edwards' adultery cover-up that went against every family value he stood for as a candidate. In this case, it is the victim who can expect their chickens to come home to roost.

In summing up, we've managed to cover some analysis into tactical successes and failures of the election race for 2008. This year's decision will soon be made, but the points covered here will no doubt be ones to watch for in future elections, in order to gauge what it is that candidates have in consideration when sitting down with their campaign aides and drawing up plans. From a successful candidate, you can expect broad policies that appeal to mainstream America and you can expect a balancing of tokenism in their candidacy. Failed attempts can be expected to be attributed to a failure to succeed in the above two points, a result of attacks by the media reflected in poor support, or by aggressive tactics that undermine one's own image in the eyes of voters. These are fundamental things in an election which should no only be pivotal in the minds of candidates, but also in the minds of voters.