Friday, 22 February 2008

Obama steals a march with technology

By Edward Luce in Washington

Published: February 20 2008 20:17 | Last updated: February 21 2008 01:21

This time last year a video featuring Hillary Clinton rapidly ascended to the top spot in YouTube’s rankings. In a parody of an Apple advertisement based on George Orwell’s “Big Brother” from 1984, Mrs Clinton was depicted as Big Brother. Again and again it replayed a clip culled from her own campaign website in which she said: “Let the conversation begin”.

Peter Leyden, director of the New Politics Institute, which examines how technology affects US campaigns, says the Big Brother video perfectly encapsulated the difference between Barack Obama’s campaign and that of Mrs Clinton.

Mr Obama, he says, has run the model new technology campaign, in which staff and volunteers have the autonomy to make their own decisions and in which potential supporters who visit his website are offered multiple online materials.

The Obama website offers almost instant video replays of his speeches, which are also packaged by Obama officials for YouTube. A few mouse clicks from each webcast provides a simple procedure to make online donations. Users can set up blogs, join the Obama Facebook group and even download ring tones featuring recordings of his speeches.

The contrast with Mrs Clinton’s relatively conventional website is instructive. In one of her first webcasts Mrs Clinton offered to “have a conversation with America ”. But the questions she received were obviously screened. The fact these “conversations” took place online could not disguise the fact they were controlled.

“Even businesses find it hard to change their organisational structure to fit the demands of new technology,” says Mr Leyden. “But for political campaigns, which are classic command-and-control operations, it is particularly difficult. Mrs Clinton maintains a competent and solid website but Mr Obama has made it the central organising tool of his campaign.”

As Mrs Clinton wages an uphill battle towards the must-win primaries of Ohio and Texas on March 4 following her 10th straight defeat to Mr Obama on Tuesday, criticisms about her organisational structure are becoming increasingly noisy.

Some blame the recent failures on her campaign’s original launch premise, which billed her as the inevitable candidate and as the candidate of experience at a stage in US history when there is an overwhelming desire for “change”. Others blame it on last month’s irascible interventions by Bill Clinton, who reminded US voters of how a “co- presidency” might function were Mrs Clinton to take the White House.

But it is hard to avoid the conclusion that Mrs Clinton has maintained a much less flexible campaign than her surging opponent, in which technology has been treated as an add-on rather than a central tool. She has also relied on a small coterie of family loyalists rather than recruiting far and wide like Mr Obama. Early on, Mr Obama hired Chris Hughes, co-founder of Facebook, the social networking site, to advise his campaign.

“Candidates get the campaigns they deserve,” says Bill Galston, a veteran of Democratic contests. “The media needs a narrative and Mrs Clinton did not provide one. It is too late now to come up with one. All she can hope to do is to sharpen her message and hope something unexpected happens to Mr Obama.”

Clinton insiders privately concede that her campaign has proved inflexible in the face of Mr Obama’s early successes. Instead of recalibrating their strategy following Mr Obama’s emphatic win in Iowa on January 3, the Clinton campaign continued to operate on the assumption the race would conclude with her victory in the “Super Tuesday” primaries on February 5.

That is why the Clinton campaign ran out of money after “Super Tuesday” and why she had to lend herself $5m to keep it going. It is also why the Clinton camp was hopelessly out-organised in the post-Super Tuesday states, such as Virginia, Nebraska, Maryland and now Wisconsin – all of which Mr Obama won.

And it explains why it is only now that the Clinton campaign is getting to grips with the hybrid caucus-primary structure of the Texas nominating vote in less than two weeks, in spite of the fact that the Lone Star state’s high Latino population ought to have made it a comfortable win for her.

Mr Obama’s better use of technology has enabled him to raise funds at more than twice the rate of Mrs Clinton in the past six weeks from an expanding universe of online donors. She, in contrast, has had to divert valuable time to attend traditional “offline” fundraising events. “Once you have your online fundraising network in place it operates at virtually zero cost – in time and overheads,” says Mr Leyden. “Mr Obama has built a kind of online ATM. Mrs Clinton doesn’t have that.”

Mr Obama was on Wednesday endorsed by the 1.4m International Brotherhood of Teamsters. The union announced its support after a vote by its executive board.

John McCain, meanwhile, on Wednesday accused Mr Obama of “Washington double-speak” for fudging over whether he would accept public campaign financing in the presidential election, writes Andrew Ward in Washington .

The presumptive Republican nominee has pledged to accept public funding – which would place a cap on spending – if his Democratic opponent agreed to do likewise. Mr Obama made the same pledge at the start of his campaign but has since hedged on the issue.

“I committed to public financing; he committed to public financing,” said Mr McCain. “I hope he keeps his commitment.” Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2008

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