The Niagara Strategy

Today's topic is the one-way verticality of modern campaigning.  With the invention of the internet, we were supposed to be entering a new era of democracy - a flattening out of hierarchies in favor of more open and direct communication, where everyone could have a voice.

That didn't happen, of course - or at least, it didn't happen where it matters.  We ordinary mortals can communicate with each other about what we had for lunch, or how cute this kitty is.  But try getting in touch - personal touch - with a presidential candidate.  Unless you're willing to move to Iowa or New Hampshire, or applying for a job, good luck with that.  Campaigns no longer have mailing addresses or telephone numbers, and if you try to communicate by email or Twitter, you're basically just giving your fingers and thumbs a workout.

Which is surprising, really.  When I was a kid, my Dad was a politician - elected six times to the Virginia legislature - and rounding up volunteers was always a major part of the strategy.  As a candidate, you needed a fair number of volunteers to do the routine tasks that made up running for office.

Those were the days of electric typewriters, rolodexes, phone banks, and box after box of index cards, but campaigns found ways of staying in touch with people.  And not just from the top down.  Volunteers had access - on some level.  If you had an idea, a complaint, or an observation, there was someone willing to hear it - at least, until you proved yourself a crank or nutcase.

That's no longer how it works.  Campaign staffs are huge and professional.  That's one of the main reasons candidates need to raise so much money.  You need to pay people.  (If you're a Democrat, you need to provide health insurance and allow them to unionize - which is good, I suppose.)  All these professionals seem to be young.  They all have impressive resumes.  And they all talk to each other - but God help you if you're just a citizen with something to say.

Not, of course, that there's no communication.  Make a contribution or answer an inquiry from a campaign and - once they have your email address - you'll receive a torrent of information and requests for additional contributions.  They'll also invite your input - but only in terms of answers to questions posed by the campaign.  They know what they want to know - and that's all they want to know.

Which isn't surprising, really, given the mindset of the internet generation.  When you grow up doing research on the web - looking something up on Wikipedia, for example - it's not at all like it used to be.  In my youth, doing research - general research, scholarly research, legal research - involved going to a library and looking in books.

I realize that sounds old fashioned, but the great thing about that sort of research is that it sometimes led to happy accidents.  For example, if you aren't familiar with actual encyclopedias, one of the cool things is that - in addition to the exact entry you were looking for - there were other entries right before and after it.  Sometimes, you would end up reading several neighboring entries and learn something more interesting than what you wanted to know.  Sometimes, even more relevant.

As a college student, I got used the phenomenon of going into the "stacks" to find a book, and finding a much more useful book on the same shelf.  As a law student and young lawyer, I was astonished at how often legal research led me from the cases I thought I needed to cases that were far more persuasive - again, sometimes by chance or mere proximity.

But in a modern "data-driven" campaign, the professionals will only ask the questions they think matter - which means they will never encounter the question they never thought of.

And the sad thing is, when one of these people becomes President - we all must hope - they will continue to be surrounded by people who think they know all the questions, and therefore, all the possible answers.  Without the slightest chance of an actual new idea.

And that's what I call the "Niagara Strategy".  A modern campaign is set up to become a one-way flow of information and requests - from the top down.  If you're an ordinary citizen with an ordinary question - or even a brilliant insight - your chances of getting it heard are next to zero.

Candidates will tell you they're listening, but that's not really true.  Presidents have long lived inside a bubble.  Now, you only have to start running to enter that condition.

I don't know how you fix that.  I understand that Elizabeth Warren is calling small contributors - she has no other kind - at random.  That's something.  But odds most folks, getting an out-of-the-blue call from an amazing person like Senator Warren, will be too stunned and excited to remember what they would really want to say.

When he was President, and running a war to preserve the Union, Abraham Lincoln made it a point to open his doors regularly - for several hours - to receive anyone who was willing to stand in line outside the White House for a chance to talk with him.  Not just men, either.  He met a mother who had lost a husband and sons in the war, and wanted her last son home to do the plowing.  He met inventors with crazy, and not-so-crazy, ideas.  He met people who disagreed with him about the conduct of the war.

Lincoln's "public opinion baths" were a vital part of how he governed - and he was doing something a lot more important than anything going on at present.  (Except climate change, of course.  We'll see how many candidates really make that an issue.)  But the last President to do something like that was the fictional Jed Bartlet, with his chief of staff's "Big Block of Cheese Days".  I don't see much chance anyone out there today will renew the practice.

And I'm not unaware that most candidates are holding town meetings.  Good for them.  Town meetings are a great opportunity for people to get the feeling that candidates are hearing their unique concerns.  But that's not really how they work.

When I was working in John Warner's first campaign for Senate - as a volunteer - I saw him come before some civic association, take out his speech, toss it aside, pull of his suit coat, and ask for questions.  Broad-shouldered John would roll up his sleeves and say. "To heck with this speech. I want to wrestle with your questions."  And every question he got, he had an answer - complete with statistics and facts.  I was very impressed.

So I asked an aide how he dared to open himself up that way.  And the aide told me:  "There's no risk. We've done extensive polling.  There are seventeen questions a person might ask that anyone else in the room is likely to care about.  And John has memorized his answers to those seventeen questions.

"If anyone asks about something else, it's either going to be an obscure question or something nutty.  Either way, no one else in the room will care a hoot in hell about it.  So John will furrow his brow and say, 'I'm sorry.  I haven't done my research on that important question, but I promise - if you'll give your contact information to my aide over there - I'll get you a letter within the week.

"And we would send that letter.  Which satisfies the person asking, and pleases everyone else, who doesn't care about that unfamiliar topic and wants to get to their concerns, which will almost always be one of the seventeen questions John is prepared to answer."

Which is pretty much what will happen at a town meeting.  Indeed, with TV cameras on, most citizens will avoid asking a really unique question, for fear of making fools of themselves.  They'll ask something safe.  Which, of course, keeps the candidates safe, too.

Politics.  Love it or hate it - and any intelligent person must do both - a lot of it has always been a show.  But back before the internet - and the Niagara Strategy - there was a lot more opportunity for a volunteer or a concerned citizen to get a new idea, or a new question, in front of somebody in position to do something.

It seems that's no longer the world.