Tuesday, September 23, 2008
The Ricochet Effect
I thought I'd carry on with the election theme a bit by sharing some of my insider views of various election strategies. They say that politics, like sausages, is something one should never watch being made. I'm hoping that, by exposing a bit of the sausage works, people can make more informed dietary choices, shall we say.
There is a very clever political tactic that has been around a good long time but has found renewed subtlety and effectiveness in recent times. I like to call it the Ricochet Effect, although I'm sure other spin doctors have fancier names for it.
The idea of it is that, in order to draw off your opponent's fire, you set up an irresistibly distracting target that is heavily shielded but effectively meaningless. Not only will your opponent waste a bunch of ammunition shooting at the pointless target but some of his own bullets will bounce back and injure him.
In Canadian politics, the left employed this tactic for ages and ages through an election tactic that even won its own nickname: Medi-Scare. For decades like clockwork in every federal and provincial election the Liberals and NDP would put out ads saying "if the Conservatives get in, they will destroy our cherished Canadian Medicare system." The Conservatives, who can often be the biggest suckers in the world, would dutifully trot out and say "no, no, we would never do that. We love Medicare. In fact, we'd make it better." But their loud protests would only make voters more suspicious and in any case this would distract the Tories from talking about the things they wanted to talk about.
In the current US and Canadian elections, this tactic has become much more subtle, but the shoe is on the other foot. Now its the left mindlessly firing shots at pointless targets while the right remains calmly disciplined.
In the US, its the Democrats completely unbalanced reaction to Sarah Palin. I'm not a big fan of hers either but, really, the partisan attacks on her have been over the top. The preposterous implication in many of the attacks is that somehow Sarah Palin isn't really a woman and her candidacy is not really a victory for women's rights because she's not a Democrat. This rather obvious hypocrisy will sit poorly with non-partisan voters and that's exactly what the Republicans are counting on. In any case, the more press time Palin gets - good or bad - the more it serves to shift the focus and drain the celebrity status from Obama. My advice to US Democrats: quit taking the bait, ya big sillies. Stop talking about Palin.
In Canada, Conservative Stephen Harper, ever the brilliant strategian, has come up with an even subtler way to use the Ricochet Effect. Despite NDP accusations that the Tories are "the party of big business", the Tories for years have been making a concerted effort to reposition themselves as The Party of the Middle Class. If they succeed, this will ensure them long tenures in government for decades to come. They will, as the Canadian catch phrase goes, become the new "natural governing party", if they can get a broad enough swath of the middle class committed to voting for them.
They already have much of the middle class under their tent. In this campaign, they are making a special effort to rope in blue-collar middle class voters. To this end they've constructed a stalking horse around arts funding. The Tories haven't actually cut arts funding on a net basis, but they made a point of cutting funding to some specific programs regarded as sacred cows by the arts community with the conscious intent of making the artie types angry.
Now, you see, the arts community is full of nothing but lefties who are never going to vote for the Tories anyway, so it costs the Tories nothing to alienate them. On the other hand, the Tories' blue-collar target voters are people whose ideas of culture probably begin and end with professional wrestling and country music and who have a philistine cynicism about their tax dollars being spent on ballet and obscure Quebecois art films.
The NDP, the Liberals and the Bloc have all whipped themselves into a lather about "arts cuts", to the point of staging public protests about them. Despite being skilled politicians themselves, these partisans appear blissfully unaware that they are playing precisely into the Tories strategy - a strategy which arch Tory backroom boy Doug Finley actually described in detail for the Globe and Mail some weeks back. Every time Joe Steelworker sees on TV a bunch of hippies and college professors screaming about arts cuts, he starts to think more seriously about voting Tory for perhaps the first time in his life.
Wee-chew! Wee-chew! "Aaagh, my foot!"
So, as the old saying goes, there's a sucker born every minute. I guess my overall advice to voters is: Ignore distractions. Any cause celebre raised in the midst of a campaign is likely to be bullshit, so just tune it out and try to focus on the issues that mean something to you.
posted by Mentok @ 10:14 a.m.,
3 Comments:
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At 3:03 p.m.,
FiL said...
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Kinda off topic, but last night on CBC Radio I heard one of those free air time ads from the Conservatives. It has an egregiously ham-fisted, obviously scripted set of "phone messages" left by "voters" supposedly "worried" about Stephane Dion. At first I thought it was a parody, but then it became apparent that, in fact, some strategist thought it would be effective propaganda.
Most. Puerile. Campaign. Ever.
And I've seen quite a few, both far & near... -
At 6:24 p.m.,
Mentok said...
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Yes, I know what you mean. The initial round of Tory TV ads (not the "Papa Harper" ones, the "regular citizens" ones) struck me as terribly transparent. I thought "geez, is this the best the Tory brain trust can come up with?"
I know they market test the crap out of these things, so they must have seen some value in them.
Best I can figure is they're going for the aggravating but memorable campiness factor (you know, like "By Mennon!").
I know from my work in print propaganda that sophistication really, measurably doesn't work. Repetitiveness and simplicity are the goals of most agitprop, not thought-provoking.
Still and all, it would be nice to see some level of artistic craft in these things. -
At 12:47 p.m.,
Rick said...
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How ironic that you would show a picture of someone making their own sausage at home in connection with the sausage/politics metaphor! About this time of year, I always make up a big batch of brats for Octberfest, and let me tell you, the homemade variety is way healthier for you than the commercial kind. Maybe we could extend the idea from local to national level politics?
As far as Sarah Palin goes, you're completely correct that to spend too much energy on her is to miss the point. However, you have to admit, she's an appealing target. And, pointing out how inane she is raises the question of McCain's judgement to pick her as is running mate and possible successor. So, Palin-bashing has a point beyond simple comedy.
But, I think you're right to characterize the conservatives in the US as more subtle in their political orchestration than the liberals. Just look at all the ballot initiatives of the past 4 elections in the US!
