Rhetoric and Reality in the 2008 Presidential Election
February 23, 2010 · By Richard Albert
Last week, as I thought about the remarkable rhetorical abilities of Ronald Reagan and Barack Obama, I was struck by the similarities in their respective paths to the White House.
As candidates, both Reagan and Obama were challengers to the incumbent party candidate. In Reagan’s case, he squared off against President Jimmy Carter of the then-governing Democratic Party. For his part, Obama faced John McCain, a member of the incumbent Republican Party. Both were at first deemed unprepared for a presidential run, but the tide quickly turned in their favour.
Curious, I then expanded the sample size to include all presidential elections since 1980.
What I’ve found is that presidential challengers have defeated the incumbent party candidate on four occasions–and on each of those occasions the challenger won by invoking the rhetoric of redemption.
This may or may not come as a surprise.
But what is interesting, I think, is that there may be a disconnect between rhetoric and reality in the case of the 2008 presidential election. I’ve developed this argument in a bit more detail in my latest piece at the Huffington Post.
Comments welcome, both online and offline.
An excellent piece, Richard.
Yesterday I heard an interesting interview with Andrew Brietbart (_http://www.politico.com/singletitlevideo.html?bcpid=1155201977&bctid=67375893001), who opined that the Democrat-dominated major media are responsible for much of the perceived disparity between Obama’s rhetoric and reality. If the media had bothered to critique Obama at all, Brietbart says, chances are the American people would not be revolting the way they appear to be right now. Alas, the media just couldn’t (can’t) help themselves and put Obama and his ideals on a celestial pedestal. Had they just brought an ounce of reality and criticism to the man during the campaigns then the DNC might still have a chance to hold Congress and the WH, both of which seem precarious at the moment.
Thanks for this, Mark. I’ll look at the video when I log-on to this site from my desktop. I’m reading from my Blackberry right now.
I think your point is dead on. And in many ways it speaks to the cardinal rule of politics: undersell and overperform.
To the extent that one believes that President Obama has, thus far, has a disappointing presidency, it may be due to the high expectations that he set for himself during the primary and general campaigns. Perhaps instead of setting such high expectations, he should have undersold expectations, which would have allowed him to score big victories by exceeding those low expectations and overperforming.
I’m certainly willing to admit that Obama has, slightly, exceeded my expectations… though he’s fallen far short of my hopes.
I have a question for you then. If he tried that strategy, do you think he would have been successful at selling the Hope & Change message he was preaching throughout the election?
In my opinion, I think he first would have fallen flat to Hillary Clinton who would have carried a very different message into the final campaign. Even if he did manage to surpass Hillary Clinton and carry on to the final campaign, a message that promised small hopes and a little change wouldn’t have delivered him the victory he was seeking.
I don’t think he really had any choice but to run the campaign he did if he expected to win.
Interesting counterfactual, Sean. You’re probably right, although we can’t really know for sure.
Perhaps the responsibility rests with the Fourth Estate to ask harder questions, to probe more deeply, and to press candidates more intensely about what precisely they propose to do if elected.
I think that the major failing of the election of Pres. Obama was the organization of the White House post win. I don’t think anyone can argue that President Obama is a passionate and compelling speaker, teleprompter or not. He sold the nation on Hope & Change with his charisma and personable nature. Anyone can write an amazing speech, but it also takes the right person to deliver that speech.
Had Mr. Obama organized his staff properly, reaching across party lines to find the right people to make his election promises happen, and then taken the role of the “take it to the nation” guy, his Presidency might have taken a different road.
Unfortunately, a series of bad choices resulting in the utter collapse of great chunks of his platform have sent him into an uncontrollable nosedive that he likely won’t be able to pull out of.
Also, and just as unfortunate, both the Republicans and the Democrats fell back behind partisan lines and instead of working towards the best interest of the nation, they ramped up the rhetoric.
All together, this has turned out to be a disastrous term for the United States. For better? For worse? History will have to be the judge.