Google Can’t Save Your Bacon

Who needs professional dirt diggers when you have Google, Wikipedia and, now, Bing? If you want your campaign messaging and decision making to stand up to the scrutiny of experienced journalists and inquisitive voters, don’t rely on unsophisticated quick hits. Get professional help. In 2008, John McCain’s presidential campaign relied largely on volunteers, and worse, first time staffers to research the opponent, vet workers and donors and develop rapid response messages. It isn’t exactly a winning technique.
On the Internet, information is assumed to be plentiful and free. But new information is being created every day. In just 18 of the 24 months between campaign cycles, the world doubles its total amount of information. Public records are available at no cost, but privately held information is more often protected—soon, even The New York Times will charge.
Less than 10 percent of information is available via systems which law enforcement agencies refer to as “Open Source” records. The rest is only available for sale from private sources, must be accessed directly from a government agency or is classified. Even the best and brightest who feverishly search their iPhones and Blackberries from the front seat of the campaign bus only have access to a mere fraction of all that is knowable. In the heat of battle, what you don’t know can kill you.
Living through an entire campaign with a researcher who hasn’t spent more than 10 minutes in a library or at a government office looking at original source documentation means you’re really missing the mark. Find a voting record online or use an outdated database listing and you risk the health of your campaign on information that amounts to a placebo. As G.I. Joe repeats, “Knowing is half the battle.”
Stand-up comedian Jim Gaffigan is fond of saying real bacon bits are the fairy dust of food. Like pigs in swill, opposition research has a bad name but has been cultivated for 3,000 years. If it’s given short shrift or not done properly, your campaign is at a major disadvantage. In business, politics or war, successful teams know their competition as well as, or better than they know their allies. The adage “keep your friends close and your enemies closer” was invented as a tag line to sell research.
The private sector engages in the strategic process and calls it B.I. for “Business Intelligence.” Military strategists created and perfected the art form. Known as counterintelligence, research is used to detect and prevent attacks and (character) assassinations. Sound familiar?
Data and facts must be organized before information is created. Smart kids using Google (or forgive them, Wikipedia, the completely self promotional posting site not verified by any outside source) are just gathering data and facts. Websites such as OpenSecrets.org or individual state agencies’ such as the Oklahoma Ethics Commission Public Disclosure System provide campaign finance reports, which are merely organized listings of expenditure data and donation date factoids. This is a typical stopping point for the well intentioned.
Before information rises to the level of becoming intelligence it must be analyzed. Search engines miss the mark when it comes to adding a method of analysis, any analysis. Officially, the term used for their method is “search engine optimization.” Unofficially, oppo forces call it free word association. Searching the web doesn’t rise to the level of applying actual analysis. Analysis takes information and seeks to answer the question: “SO WHAT?”
Is the candidate’s bio truthful? Has the campaign accepted money from evildoers? These are facts. Tell me how a candidate experiences his mother-in-law’s breast cancer death and the affect on his support for health insurance reform. Then you’ve analyzed the situation sufficiently.
Campaigns are set in a time-space continuum but not the one that Einstein theorized. Campaigns are framed by the political environment of a very specific point in time and space: post-9/11 and pre-Katrina; recession or recovery. These circumstances offer context but won’t last beyond one or two election cycles.
Pull your bacon out of the fire and make true opposition research the meat of your campaign. Avoid the sugary substitutes high in tasty tidbits but low in actual fuel content. Opposition research will make your campaign messaging better, your fundraising easier and your advertisements more effective.Dr. Dora Kingsley is founder of Trenton West, a national policy and opposition research firm based in California and Washington, D.C.