Graham Bell The 2012 United States election is proving to be a closely run contest with polls suggesting that both candidates are level pegging with only a couple of weeks to go. Both leadership capability and marketing campaigns are going to play a key part in deciding the outcome. Joining me today in the studio to look at these two issues are Donna Ladkin, Professor in Leadership and
Ethics and Paul Baines, Professor in Political Marketing. Donna how have the candidates been looking to demonstrate their leadership capabilities and what seems to be impressing the voters?
Donna Ladkin
Graham Bell
It’s a good question, one of the things we have to remember is that Obama is actually trying to impress people based on his record of already leading the American people where Mitt Romney of course hasn’t had that post so very much for him it’s about what he would do in terms of taking up that leader role and I think what it kind of demonstrates is the difference between what is actually takes to lead which of course Obama has been doing and what it takes to get elected to get elected to be a leader, I think these are actually two very different things in fact and require different capabilities. For instance with Obama I think one of the things that many of his voters or many of his supporters have perhaps been a bit disillusioned by is the fact that he seemed to promise much change that he hasn’t actually been able to deliver on in quite the way that they might liked to have seen but I think that is actually part of the reality of “leading” rather than just getting “elected” because when you are trying to get elected you can say lots of things about how you are going to do things but the realities of actually governing and especially within the American political system in which anything that the President wants to do can actually be stopped by
Congress means that there are very different kinds of skills required. So I think it’s interesting from Obama’s perspective because basically he is trying to indicate to people that he has done a good job in terms of leading where many of them may actually feel that they are a little bit disappointed in the way that he has been or his lack of progress on some of the issues that he seemed to make promises about. Whereas for Romney on the other hand he can almost say anything because he is not in that post so it is really for him trying to convince people that he will be the leader that they want but of course even for him no matter what he says it’s going to be very different if he does get elected to actually be the leader and to actually govern. So again it’s very interesting what you can say as leader and the kinds of issues that you have to face when you are trying to govern as opposed to how do you get to be in that role.
Have they been able to change or has the perception of them changed with their leadership capabilities during the process of the campaign?
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Donna Ladkin
Graham Bell
Paul Baines
I think that has been a very interesting one because I think perception, the way each man has come across has been quite decisive in terms of how the polls have placed them particularly up to the first debate when up to the first debate it seemed like every bit of news print that I was reading about
Mitt Romney said that he came across as very wooden, mechanical, people didn’t really warm to him as a character and that seemed to actually put him behind in the polls along with other things that had happened like the video tape that got put forward and so forth, but in fact during the debate quite interestingly he came across very well I think every commentator even people who support Obama gave him a clear victory over Obama in the way that he put across his case so I think all of a sudden this man who had been sort of said to be very wooden and mechanical actually came across as quite passionate and he actually sort of put his case forward in a very sort of strong way and this actually made quite a difference in terms of how people perceive the two candidates. So whereas prior to the first debates Obama actually had quite a large lead in the polls or at least a sort of commanding lead in the polls after that, since then Romney has been gaining ground and I think a lot of that has to do with the way he is being perceived now as a much more believable character by the fact that he performed quite well in those debates.
Marketing campaigns are going to play a massive role presumably now in the campaign, what typically works in the US elections?
Well I mean it’s quite interesting because you have got different marketing campaigns at different points. It begins with needing to secure the nomination from your particular party so each candidate Obama and
Romney had to make the case for the reason why they should be put forward as the presidential nominee, that’s interesting because what that means is that you play to a restricted crowd and the restricted crowd of course is your own particular party. So Romney had a different situation from Obama because Obama was an incumbent and was always going to be the first choice whereas Romney wasn't the first choice, he had to make the case to be first choice. He managed to secure that, interestingly enough his fortunes waned and ebbed during that particular phase but eventually he secured the nomination and he secured the nomination to some degree by a fairly strong rhetoric. He then has to tone down that rhetoric to appeal to a more average voter if you like and the swing voters who were not quite sure who to vote for and so he then has to do that in such a way that he says things which appeal to them but which doesn’t contradict what he’d said previously and that’s not an easy thing to do. Once you have secured the primary nomination the nomination in the primaries, it’s then the case of moving forward into the general election, the US general election and the point is, the interesting thing there is that once he’d been selected it’s then about illustrating how he can be a commander in chief, how he can
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Graham Bell
Donna Ladkin demonstrate ‘presidentialness’ if you like and so what he has been trying to do what Romney has been trying to do is portray himself as effectively a leader in waiting, whether he’s done that is ultimately what will decide the election, so if the American people think that he really is a more credible president and leader than Obama then it’s at that point that he is likely to be elected president. However given the nature of the debates, the debates typically have not been influential in the vast majority of post-war elections, they’ve played a key part in 1960 Nixon versus JFK he effectively lost that election as a result of his appearance. 1980 Carter lost against Reagan and that’s regarded as definitive but by and large it has a limited impact on the election. In this election, the first debate definitely secured an advantage for
Romney no doubt about it, perhaps four points, put him back in the race, without that particular extra benefit he would have been dead in the water I think, so it re-energised his campaign, it brought him back and the result is that we are now neck and neck, so going into the final two weeks of the election it’s all about expenditure on television, advertising and it’s all about the story and the tête à tête the response to each other’s points and arguments in the news and that is ultimately what will help decide the election, that and the targeting of specific swing states, the three ones that
Romney needs to take him into the presidency are Ohio, Wisconsin and
Nevada, if he can win those he can win the election. We might also see some very negative campaigning because that’s often the case with direct advertising, cable television advertising, maybe some positivity some negativity even in the same spot so it could go very negative at this point.
Is there anything from a leadership point of view that the candidates can do now to influence the final outcome?
Well the important thing to remember about leadership is that without your followers a leader isn’t leading, so both of them have to do their utmost to mobilise their particular constituencies to get out and vote for them on 6th
November and of course that’s sometimes harder said than done because it’s really, elections are won and lost just because the volume of people who actually believe that there is a chance that that candidate that they want to support will get elected so for both Mitt Romney and Obama they have to actually mobilise their constituencies to get out and vote and so it will be very interesting in the next couple of weeks to see how they target those constituencies particularly what kinds of messages they are trying to do to attract the people that they want to get out and vote for them on 6th
November.
Graham Bell And Paul from a marketing perspective what are they going to be looking to achieve?
Paul Baines Oh some of this will come down to money. The Romney campaign has about two hundred million dollars left which is an awful lot of money to spend on
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Graham Bell advertising in the last couple of weeks but that’s what they will do. They also have a couple of super PACs with significant funding left over equivalent to another hundred million which could also support advertising, third party advertising in the election, so I think we will see a lot of Republican third party advertising at the last minute. Obama has less, about half of this, both including himself and his super PACs so we will see, the Obama campaign will have a lighter impact, unless there is more money in the last two weeks but then it is difficult to raise too much more given the amount of time that we have got left, so I think we will see an incredible burst of energy from
Romney in a whole hearted attempt to secure the presidency. One could argue however that it is already secured Obama is leading amongst registered voters both in the national vote and in various swing states so one could argue that this last two weeks may well be a futile effort but that’s not will be on Governor Romney’s mind, he will be doing his best to win and given how close it is he might well do.
Thank you both very much for your time today. It will be an interesting couple of weeks.
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