It’s Really About the Dogs

There are four basic fundamentals to a candidacy: message, motivation of volunteers, media and money. Without a message, there’s no reason for a campaign unless the candidate simply has an ego bigger than the federal de%uFB01cit or a pile of money he’d like to burn. There are plenty of those kinds of candidates, but most people (liberals and conservatives; Democrats, Republicans and independents) go through this process because they truly and deeply believe they can do better than the “clowns in there now.” It never occurs to them that should they win, they will instantly become one of the “clowns in there now.” But, for the moment, the passion of one’s principles is what de%uFB01nes “message.”
A candidate may have convinced oneself and even a reluctant wife or husband that he or she is “the one” who can and should do this. But if that candidate can’t convince a growing body of people to work for the campaign as volunteers, then it’s time to think about helping a candidate instead of being one. If there is no energy from one’s immediate family and his or her closest friends, relatives, associates and neighbors to give up substantial amounts of time and money to help, then maybe that “gut feeling” was little more than too much pepperoni pizza. A good dose of Pepcid AC would be far less expensive and more satisfying for that type of “gut feeling.”
If the candidate and the message do motivate volunteers to sweep the %uFB02oors of a dirty old building being rented to house the campaign, eat cold pizza and drink warm sodas at 1 a.m., lick envelopes and stamps until they gain weight from the sweetness on the adhesive, then there might be a real deal going down.
Immediately, if not sooner, the candidate needs to understand how to utilize all forms of media to get the message out and recruit more volunteers. By media, I don’t just mean radio, television and newspapers, but the simpler forms: how to handle a microphone, how to write a good letter, how to think in terms of venue and visual and how to use the Internet to build a network of supporters and disseminate the hopefully maturing message.
Of course none of this matters if there is no money. Money is the “mother’s milk of politics,” we’re often told, and many a campaign is a hungry little orphan for lack of it. Some candidates have money and no message; others have message and no money. Most consultants would probably rather work for the candidate with lots of money, since they assume they can create the message and invent the media. Money can’t buy love, but it can rent it. Even “motivated volunteers” can be “paid volunteers,” which seems unseemly to me. But then some people pay prostitutes for arti%uFB01cial love, which seems to be mutually satisfying to the john and the working girl. So if the arrangement of someone paying even the “volunteers” satis%uFB01es both the political john (candidate) and the political whores, the only downside is that it just diminishes the integrity of the real thing.
Some candidates with a message and little money surprise people by winning, and candidates with lots of money and no message often surprise people by losing. Having operated a presidential campaign with a dime to the dollar of most of my opponents, building everything around the message and a motivated army of volunteers and using every available media opportunity possible, I can report that money isn’t the only thing. I just wish I’d had some more of it!
 
Ultimately, all the slick commercials, yard signs, stickers, robocalls, television and radio spots, newspaper ads and billboards can’t substitute for what wins an election—votes. In my early campaigns, frantic volunteers would say, “We need more yard signs and bumper stickers! We’re going to lose without them.” It’s tempting to want to match one’s opponent with collateral materials, but one can learn the hard way that signs don’t vote. Rarely does a person show up at the polls and say, “I came because I really love the colors on the sign of Mr. Huckabee.”
All of those things can be helpful in showing support, building momentum, advertising the candidate and creating interest—even intimidating an opponent and playing with his head. In no way do I dismiss the value of advertising and having and spending money on all the elements of a campaign. It’s just that if those various things aren’t part of a master plan to actually get people off their couches and car seats long enough to stand in line at the polling place, it won’t matter.
In my campaign for president, being short on money most of the time meant two things. First it meant having to put up with a press corps that focused mostly on the process of the election at the expense of the policies of the candidates. For months, the only questions seemed to be: “How much money have you raised? How many staffers do you have in New Hampshire? How much TV have you bought in Iowa?” In the %uFB01rst 11 televised debates among the GOP candidates, there was only one question raised about healthcare, and it went to Tommy Thompson. Having spent an enormous amount of my tenure as governor on the issue, I was dying for a chance to discuss it. In interviews I would try to explain why it was the number one domestic issue and would drive the economic issues within %uFB01ve years. But most of the questions from the debates were either repetitious inquiries into our positions about Iraq (remember Iraq—the issue in the primaries that was barely mentioned in the general election?) or some inane and totally irrelevant question about creation, the pardoning of Scooter Libby (the average American probably thought a Scooter Libby was a small motorbike for people who are liberals) or an attempt to have us respond to something we had said 20 years earlier.
We were aware that we had to be unconventional in order to make up for the lack of money. We would use a little bit of money to air a very unconventional TV spot (like the now infamous Chuck Norris ad), and the networks and bloggers would give us a million dollars of airing of it for free. We couldn’t have afforded a national campaign buy that would have given us the same exposure that ad got for free on YouTube.
We knew that what mattered was getting to the people as directly as possible and giving them a reason to go and vote for me. To a candidate with enough money to buy the top 500 feet of every broadcast tower in the nation, GOTV stands for “Go On TV,” but for those of us who have to run an insurgent, grassroots, volunteer fed and led organization, it still means GET OUT THE VOTE.
There’s a great story about an executive selected to be CEO of a dog food company. He hired the best nutritionists, graphics designers, marketers and sales force imaginable. The product was developed, packaged and marketed. But sales were terrible. He assembled his entire team and tried to motivate them. He shouted, “Who has the best nutritional formulation in the dog food industry?”
“We do, sir!” screamed back his team.
“And who has the most thoroughly researched container design and marketing campaign in the industry?” he asked.
“We do, sir!” came back the reply.
“Then why are our sales so horrible?” he then inquired.
There’s a long silence. Finally a voice in the rear of the room burst out, “Because the dogs won’t eat the darn stuff, sir!”
All the money, marketing and machinery in the world won’t work if the dogs won’t eat it. In the end, GOTV is about getting voters to go vote because they believe the message and believe in the messenger.Former Gov. Mike Huckabee (R-Arkansas) was the guest editor of the October 2009 issue of Politics magazine.