Narrativewatch: Obama's "Sputnik moment"

In his State of the Union speech on Tuesday, President Obama called for big investments in education, infrastructure, research and innovation as the best ways to make sure the US meets the challenge from an economically resurgent China. He wants to improve the education system, ensure there are more maths and science graduates, pioneer new industries, invest in R&D and encourage entrepreneurship.

Here’s his call to arms:

Half a century ago, when the Soviets beat us into space with the launch of a satellite called Sputnik, we had no idea how we'd beat them to the moon. The science wasn't there yet. NASA didn't even exist. But after investing in better research and education, we didn't just surpass the Soviets; we unleashed a wave of innovation that created new industries and millions of new jobs. This is our generation's Sputnik moment.

In recalling the time when a complacent America was galvanised into action after the Soviet Union launched the first Earth-orbiting satellite, and saying “now we must do it again”, Obama was telling a springboard story, but in a political setting.

(What’s a springboard story? Storytelling guru Stephen Denning defines it as:

a story that enables a leap in understanding by the audience so as to grasp how an organization or community or complex system may change.

For more background, click here.)

Springboard stories can be as powerful as, well, as Saturn V rocket. But they are tricky things for politicians to keep under control, because others soon drop in context and spin. For instance, Slate’s Fred Kaplan noted the apparent contradiction between Obama’s call for the funding of "a level of research and development we haven't seen since the height of the space race," investing in biomedicine, information technology, and clean-energy technology, and his proposal to freeze annual domestic spending for the next five years.

Kaplan discussed how America prevailed over the USSR in the space race of the 1960s and concluded that “doing big things” (another key soundbite from the speech) usually needs a big injection of government funding.

There’s more to it though. Today, Don Lee and David Pierson of the Los Angeles Times show how the analogy between America’s current concern about China and the US/USSR space race doesn’t really stack up. They remind us that China’s attitude towards the US is not as aggressive or as belligerent as that of the Soviet leaders of the 1950s and 1960s. The level of economic integration – and dependence - between the US and China is well-documented and neither side wants to mess that up. Some companies may choose to have their innovative plant in China. Lee and Pierson make another telling point:

Perhaps most important, Washington was able to respond to Sputnik by pouring billions of dollars into a new space program. But today, the nation is deeply in debt.

The last comment goes to the heart of whether the springboard will work -- or, in this case, whether the rocket will leave the launch pad. This week, Dan Farber of CBS pondered whether Obama will be able to persuade private corporations, who are, after all, more likely to have the investment capital, as well as Congress, to put the billions of dollars in the innovation and technologies that will be needed if America is to out-innovate, out-educate, and out-build the rest of the world.

President Obama should be congratulated for trying to find his own version of Ronald’ Reagan’s “morning in America”. But he will need some robust, credible policies and incentives, as well as sound political strategies for pulling in private sector investment and spurring innovation.

I have long argued that sound policies need compelling narratives in order to be sold successfully. Obama’s “Sputnik moment” may prove that clever narratives need sound policies in order to stick.

As Lee and Pierson say:

If partisan strife leads to paralysis and neither [Obama’s] proposals nor alternatives are enacted — or if they fail to produce quick results and the public grows disillusioned — then the slow growth and high unemployment of today could stretch even further into the future.

Footnote: In case you missed it, Sarah Palin tried to peddle a counter-story on the “Sputnik moment”, but it all went a bit weird. Click here.

Narrativewatch: Sarah Palin releases 'mom awakening' political broadcast

via telegraph.co.uk

Sarah Palin's new "mom awakening" TV spot has sparked a fresh round of speculation that she will run for president in 2012.

The spot is a clever piece of political narrative, based firmly on the "rot at the top" archetype. Palin warns of a "fundamental transformation of America", with her country's children and grandchildren under threat from an unnamed enemy within.

To ram it all home, she compares America's 'awakening mom' to a grizzly bear protecting her cubs - a cultural story that everyone can understand.

The spot packs a powerful emotional punch, without saying outright what the threat is. Some images used suggest that the danger comes from the Democrats' healthcare reforms, but you can't be too sure.

Posted via email from Neil Stockley

The difference that Sarah Palin makes

Sarah Palin has been one of the political phenomena of 2008. On the one hand, she energised the Republican base, for a time. Someone had to do it. On the other, liberals - my side of politics – initially did not know how to respond to the youthful “hockey mom” with kooky views about global warming and much else. Some of the commentaries, from both sides of the Atlantic, were simply embarrassing.

What the voters think matters more. Today, syndicated columnist Froma Harrop explains the impact that Sarah Palin has had on her. Ms Harrop is an “independent” -- that’s a non-aligned or floating voter, for those in Westminster-type countries. She supported Hillary Clinton, had doubts about Barack Obama and, over the summer, considered voting for John McCain. Now she’s backing Obama.

"What happened [?] Sarah Palin happened.

"Independents like me wanted two things out of a McCain running mate. (1) A capable leader who could step into the top job should something happen to the not-very-young No. 1. (2) Someone who would temper McCain's recent efforts to woo social conservatives. They got neither in the Alaska governor.

"Sure, Palin gave him a bump in the polls right after the Republican convention. She gave a rousing speech, written by a crack speechwriter. But once on her own, she quickly displayed a shocking ignorance of world affairs and a general inability to talk coherently on policy matters. Her habit of dividing America -- even individual states -- into good and not-as-good sectors comes off as downright weird."

Froma Harrop uses Real Clear Politics poll averages to show that she’s not atypical of voters like herself. The drop in McCain’s ratings started in September, straight after he named Governor Palin as his choice for Veep and before the sharemarket crashed. Ms Harrop says:

"Independents tend to be fiscally conservative, socially liberal and strong on defense. They were McCain's natural constituency and in mid-September gave him a 13-point margin. That lead has since flipped over to Obama, and Palin is a big reason."

Ms Harrop is correct in identifying the Alaska governor as a Republican liability, though the full Palin effect may have taken a little longer than she suggests. According to MSNBC yesterday, fifty-five percent of respondents say Governor Palin is not qualified to serve as president if the need arises, up five points from the previous poll. For the first time, more voters have a negative opinion of her than a positive one, by a nine point margin. In September, she held a 47 to 27 percent positive rating.

The Palin effect may be more about competence and credibility than issues. ABC News polling analyst Gary Langer says that, in a survey taken on Monday, 52 percent of likely voters said McCain's pick of Palin has made them less confident in the kind of decisions he'd make as president. That’s up 13 points since just after she was picked. Public doubts about Palin's qualifications (well-expressed by former secretary of state Colin Powell on Sunday) have grown. Just 38 percent say it makes them more confident in McCain's judgment, down 12 points.

MSNBC found that Sarah Palin’s qualifications to be president rank as voters’ top concern about McCain’s candidacy - ahead of continuing President Bush’s policies, enacting economic policies that only benefit the rich and keeping too high of a troop presence in Iraq!

And having Sarah Palin on his ticket has clearly not helped McCain to win support from women. Yesterday, ABC’s Langer reported that 50 per cent of male voters support Obama, compared with 46 per cent for McCain. But women favour Obama by a 57-41 per cent margin.

What a choice John McCain made.

If you read only one thing about Barack Obama or John McCain or Sarah Palin this week, make it . . .

. . . this piece by Drew Westen, Professor of Psychology and Psychiatry at Emory University, founder of Westen Strategies, and author of The Political Brain: The Role of Emotion in Deciding the Fate of the Nation.

Westen makes some pertinent points about the Democrats' need to create a brand for the McCain and Palin, before the Republicans put their own brand into voters' minds. And he provides some useful expalanations about how narratives and counter-stories change voters' perceptions.

Westen describes the 2008 Democratic Convention as “simply stunning, with multiple-base hits by many of the players and triples or homeruns by all its superstars.”

At the end of a highly excited summary of what happened in Denver, he says:

"In my book, The Political Brain, I argued that if you do exactly what the Democrats did last week--both inspire voters with your vision of what could be and raise legitimate anger or concern about what your opponent and his party have done or likely will do--you win elections. . .

"The convention reversed the momentum of a dreadful July and August campaign that made every standard Democratic error outlined in the book, starting with the campaign's stubborn refusal to brand McCain before he could brand himself or to respond to his successful efforts to brand Obama--as other, different, empty celebrity, uppity, narcissistic, and elitist."

But then Westen worries that Obama and the Democrats may fail to be tough enough with McCain and co. They need to fight fire with fire.

"We are supposed to be the party of science, yet we constantly practice political creationism.

(Ouch! Does that remind you of anyone you know?)

"A case in point is the way the Obama campaign appears poised to respond (or, more accurately, not to respond) to McCain's choice of a running mate, which they need to do immediately, before the start of the GOP Convention. Paul Begala has described how the narratives that sway the electorate are like constellations of stars in the sky. If your opponent picks and chooses just the right stars to place in the sky (and which ones to leave out, because they get in the way of the story he is trying to tell), he can create a constellation that shines like stars on a crystal clear night, whether that constellation is one designed to make his own stars twinkle or your candidate's stars flame out or obscured by cloud cover.

"It's a campaign's job to put the right stars up in the sky to create the constellations that tell the story it wants to tell about both its own candidate and its opponent. In the language of neuroscience, a campaign needs to connect the dots for voters to create networks of associations--an interconnected set of thoughts, images, ideas, metaphors, and feelings--toward each candidate that tell a compelling story about each, and to repeat that those stories enough times and in enough ways to make them "stick."

Westen explains:

"It is much harder to change an accepted narrative, particularly an emotionally compelling one, than to undercut it before it can take hold in the popular imagination. You don't want to let the other side blaze a neural trail in the wilderness (in this case, defining a political newcomer) that becomes the trail voters' minds naturally follow and then resist deviating from because it is the first and only story being told, without offering a counter-narrative that creates very different associations and activates very different feelings toward the candidates (in this case, toward both McCain and Palin).

"The constellation McCain would like to project this week is that this was a bold move of a maverick reformer, an effort to break the glass ceiling for women, an effort to bring executive experience to his team, and the elevation to prominence of a young, socially conservative reformer with a moving story of her commitment to the crusade against all abortions."

Westen offers three, hard-edged counter-stories to break McCain's constellation. And then comes the hard stuff.

"Palin may be a woman, but she does not share the agenda of any woman who voted for Hillary Clinton (and Democrats should speak out against the implication that she is picking up where Hillary Clinton, a woman of tremendous stature who could have assumed the role of commander-in-chief in a heartbeat, left off). Rather, the position she and others on the right have articulated [on abortion] gives every rapist the right to pick the mother of his child. That position is tantamount to a Rapist's Bill of Rights, which privileges the rights of rapists and child molesters over the rights of their victims. Those are McCain-Palin's "family values," and they are not mainstream American values. "

Later, he concludes:

"Palin's nomination is one that should put the nails in the coffin of McCain's candidacy in the wake of the extraordinary success of the Democratic Convention. It exposes both a poverty of judgment and a surfeit of hypocrisy and pandering to both the religious right and to the female center. But if the Democrats do not act before the GOP Convention, McCain's reckless move could become transformed by the media and then the public into the bold move of a straight-talking maverick with the foresight to catch a rising star.

"That's a story that should never be allowed to reach the moment of conception.”