Verified by Freudian Psychology
In Terms Of Impression-management, Team Obama Is Kicking Team McCain's Butt
Team Obama's impression-management strategy was incredible.
Posted September 29, 2008
Many leaders, and far more celebrities, employ “impression-management coaches” (or public relations [PR] agents) when they stick one-or-both feet in their mouths. Mel Gibson did following the anti-Semitic diatribe he launched at the LAPD officer who busted him for DUI. When Kobe Bryant was accused of raping the assistant manager of a hotel he visited, the L.A. Laker star used PR agents in an effort to refurbish his image and retain his lucrative “endorsement persona.”
While politicians are not immune to needing this sort of help, I cannot recall the use of impression-management coaches to deal with stigmata that come to light during an election campaign. Once Senator Thomas Eagleton’s history of depression was exposed, his vice presidential aspirations vanished quicker than you can say ECT. Ditto Gary Hart. After one fateful trip aboard the good ship Monkey Business, his run for the White House was torpedoed, as was his career in the Senate soon thereafter.
But times have changed since depression was a source of shame and discovering that a gray-haired politician was having an affair with a 20-something-year-old girl evoked cries of righteous indignation from New York Times editors. Today, the electorate is “cool” and relatively unflappable. Even so, there were obviously some members of Barack Obama’s campaign team that feared voters might not be cool enough to embrace the notion of a Black man with a Muslim middle name becoming president.
I believe this because Team Obama created and executed one of, if not the, most impressive impression-management strategies I am aware of. Actually, the impression-management coaches working for Obama did two things: (1) They niftily addressed (in large measure) the stigmata that Mr. Obama may have carried with him into the race for the White House, and, (2) did a masterful job of tar-and-feathering John McCain. Let’s look at each tactic briefly:
Pre-emptive strategic self-presentation. The psychologists preparing Barack Obama to become our next president had a problem well before the democratic primaries. They knew that some people would be uncomfortable if Senator Obama was associated or “linked” with the Black Muslim party. When your candidate’s middle name is Hussein and his skin is Black, in some quarters that spells trouble: Smoe people might make an association to “Malcolm X” and badda-bing, you’ve lost them. If my use of the term “badda-bing” evoked Sopranos, you know what I am driving at.
Every PR professional since the time of Edward Bernays, the father of public relations, will tell you that their science is designed to understand and manipulate the irrational thoughts of the masses. A little known fact about Bernays is that he was a nephew of Sigmund Freud, and he used his uncle’s theories (about irrational thought and “herd behavior”) when designing the fundamental strategies of his profession. The best PR agents know well that if you zero-in on the most basic, irrational aspects of the human thought processes, you can manipulate the vox populi into singing your tune.
Sometimes, a great PR campaign can achieve positive image-enhancement simply by repeated association: Get enough images of the macho Marlboro Man in front of the public and every Russell Crowe wannabe will carry a pack in the sleeve of their T-shirt. But this sort of PR campaign works best when trying to create or develop an image for something or someone that previously had none. What do you do to preempt negative associations drawn from yoking someone to a pre-existing image or association (Hussein means 9/11)?
One technique involves tapping into a fundamental belief that all (normal) humans hold in the recesses of consciousness: The world is a just and fair place. This so-called “just world hypothesis” or theory also functions as a “just world effect:” When confronted by evidence suggesting that the world is not just, most people act to restore justice as quickly as they can. However, since behavioral “injustice correction” is hard to effect, most people sustain their belief in a just world cognitively: Since a “bad” person would not be the most powerful elected official on earth, anyone who accuses our president of a crime must be wrong. That is how most people adjust their thinking to restore justice (“the president must be innocent") irrespective of what G. Gordon Liddy & “the plumbers” did or what was on Monica Lewinsky’s blue dress.
Truly masterful impression management coaches don’t wait for violations of just world theories to occur. Instead, they preempt them or inoculate people against even considering “unjust” notions about their clients. I am assuming this was precisely what the impression-management coaches on Team Obama did: Throughout the early stages of his run for the White House, Senator Obama would caution audiences (and later enjoy having news outlets repeat his statements) something to the effect of: “You know, they’ll say I don’t look like the presidents on our currency; they are going to tell you that I have a funny name; and you know, they’ll even say, ‘Have you noticed he’s Black?’”
Why, you wonder, did Obama repeat this cautionary tale several times? His goal was to shake the foundations of the electorates’ just world theory. People hearing Obama had to think; “How unjust; they cannot do that! Why that’s racist!” To restore justice, listeners had only one choice: To block themselves from focusing on, or attending to, surface aspects of Senator Obama that could unjustly evoke negative thoughts and associations.
The sheer brilliance of this strategy is that by using an inoculation of “injustice” to evoke “natural defenses” against violations of the just world theory, Team Obama prevented “infestations” of beliefs that might prejudice people against him or lead to the conclusion that he, himself, bore prejudices. While I am 100% convinced that Mr. Obama is not a man who harbors hateful prejudices, many people could have drawn that conclusion when it was revealed that the church Barack Obama attended for over 20 years honored Louis Farrakhan as a man that "truly epitomized greatness." However, as a result of how the non-toxic dose of injustice Senator Obama gave the nation worked (evoking just world theories on his behalf), this did not occur. In fact, it became hard-to-impossible to find Obama “guilty by association” in any manner.
The tar-and-feathering of John McCain. Team McCain, in contrast, did nothing to preemptively manage the stigmata clinging to their candidate like lice: President George H. W. Bush. Whether they did nothing because they overlooked the problem or because they felt impotent to address it, Senator McCain has been damaged every time Senator Obama attributes every ill in America to the policies of George Bush, and adds that McCain is nothing but Bush redux. If you watched the first Presidential debate you witnessed Senator Obama using this strategy as often as he could. McCain’s “defense” –I was not Miss Congeniality; I am a maverick” – was easy to construe as post hoc wriggling to shake-off highly effective condemnation-by-association.
So what can Team McCain do now? The tar has stuck, denial would seem disingenuous, and Bush’s record is difficult-to-impossible to defend right now. More to the point, were McCain to show contempt for a fellow party member it would be incredibly poor form. Actually, “dissing” one’s teammates is NEVER a good strategy. Al Gore learned this by not asking Bill Clinton to campaign for him. Many political experts claim that by ignoring the now “fully-rehabilitated” former president, Gore alienated many Democratic Party movers-and-shakers and, actually, cost himself the election race against Bush.
I believe McCain must go on the offensive, gently, to tap into the sense of justice that protected Senator Obama from having any of the mud flung at him from sticking. Actually, I say this from experience: Many of the executives I coached felt a need to “shake-off” reputations wrongly attributed to them. Fact-based protestations didn’t work, but when I helped my clients generate appropriate appeals for fairness, these tactics did. McCain can mount a campaign of this sort effectively, but only by attending to these provisos:
1. McCain must appeal for justice, not demand it. Saying, “I feel it unfair that I am yoked to the policies of an administration that I often opposed. Would it be just, Senator Obama, if the electorate came to believe that you as endorsed all of the policies and position statements that emanated from the Trinity United Church of Christ during the 20 years you prayed there? Is it just, simply because you often professed affection for Reverend Jeremiah Wright, to say that all of the people he honored –particularly Louis Farrakhan—you, too, hold in high esteem?”
2. McCain should avoid, “My record speaks for itself” when attempting to distance himself from Bush. Voters do not “read records.” Most voters have only the most superficial sense of a candidate’s policies. Sound bites, images, and “big picture” associations (“the party of the rich vs. the party of the people”) are what stick.
3. McCain must act in an empathic manner. Were McCain, in debate #2, to say (when addressing Obama), “Senator, I understand how you come by your belief that I would continue the policies of the Bush administration. I regret this, but I understand how easily a prejudice like that forms in otherwise just and caring people. Regrettably, in the Senate we are all guilty of categorizing people on the basis of surface attributes –He’s a Democrat; she’s a Liberal; etc.— and, having done so, never getting to know that person for who they are. Please stop stereotyping me and I promise to never stereotype you.”
Are these “appeals for justice” too little, too late? Who knows? I fear, particularly with regard to strategy #3 –trying to turn the tables on a man who so adroitly preempted being stereotyped— that these strategies may be seen for what they are. But hey, I don’t have a crystal ball. What do you think?
