The Political Cookout

In considering a Presidential candidate, for the sake of argument, let's say that the voting public in America is divided into three roughly equal segments. A third will always vote for more liberal candidate, a third for the more conservative, and a third is in the middle, alternatively labeled the 'independent' or 'undecided' voters. But these are two entirely different animals.
The truly 'independent' are perhaps the most discerning and open minded of voters, earnestly studying a candidate's background and positions to determine which might better lead the country. The undecided are, in many ways, the polar opposite. These are voters who are so disconnected from the entire process that they will ultimately cast their ballots on an entirely different basis.
Enter the Political Cookout.
Imagine that you're hosting a barbeque in your backyard on a summer night, and your spouse has invited several people that you don't know. As you're standing over the open flames sizzling your burgers and chicken wings, one of those strangers approaches with a beer in hand, ready to say hello and get acquainted. You're the cook--you can't excuse yourself from your station. You're going to have to stay and talk. How will that conversation go?
This is how most of the 'undecideds' ultimately do decide their vote. For them, 'studying up on the candidates' is confined to paid TV commercials, maybe a couple of soundbites on the news, or even catching part of one debate. From that input, a visceral conclusion is drawn--which of these people do I think would be the most bearable to me, trapped in front of that grill?
It's pointless to judge why their contact with the political process is so limited--it just is. And the perverse genius of the Lee Atwaters and Karl Roves of the Republican Party is that they have never looked down their noses at the 'undecideds'--they've embraced them, because in the majority of elections, they're the folks who will decide the winner. I'm hardly the first to make this observation, but when you consider the perceived persona of Eisenhower vs. Stevenson, Kennedy vs. Nixon, Reagan vs. his opponents and Clinton vs. his, I would submit that the undecided voters overwhelmingly determined that they'd rather have that beer and talk with the guy who won instead of the guy who lost. (Carter vs. Ford, you say? I believe that in this case, the ultimate 'unfairness' of the Nixon pardon swung even a huge share of the undecideds against Ford, even if Ford was seen to be the more 'regular' guy. )
When Rove stood his candidate up against both Gore and Kerry, he knew that he would never win among the independents. These were as close as you could get to mismatches in terms of experience, credentials and IQ. His only hope was to win the Political Cookout test, not only by making his own foil seem more personally likable, but more importantly, by making the opponents look as geeky, out-of-touch and generally unlikable as possible. Would you really want to have that beer with a guy who was delusional enough to think he was the role model for A Love Story? Or worried about changing his wardrobe from 'power colors' to 'earth tones'? Or a guy who married some divorcee for her money, and was so unpatriotic that he flung his own war medals into the trash? Of course not. Vote for my guy. He's more 'real'.
Which brings us to the current posse of hopefuls. Each candidate has his or her own set of handlers, deciding which is the best persona to project. And of course, the political calculus is different at this stage, since the necessary appeal now is only to voters of your own party in a handful of states. But at the same time, the media is already projecting how these personalities will play in front of the full electorate more than 20 months into the future. And voters across the nation, even the now-and-future undecideds, are already picking up cues.
For the GOP, this mission is especially dangerous right now. Giuliani, the Hero of the Horror, has a set of lifelong positions from abortion to social welfare that make him a real threat to the Democrats--but currently, he isn't running against any Democrat. What most threatens him is that the right wing of his own party never gives him a chance. So his answer, thus far, is to try and change the subject. And for the time being, it's working, because the majority of attention remains fixed on McCain.
And what a tragic figure he's become. His reputation, even among members of his own party, is rapidly moving from 'guy who survived a prison camp' to 'guy who didn't survive the prison camp very well'. He has politically abandoned previous positions faster than Anna Nicole Smith switched lovers. Whether he can temporarily accomplish Bush's miracle-- "hey, don't worry about my past!"--it will come back to haunt him should he win the nomination, turning the Kerry 'flip-flop' vocabulary against him, in spades.
Romney has exactly the same problem, but it's being subsumed so far by confusion about his 'Mormon-ness'. The subject of religion in this election is fascinating, but a topic for a future post.
When you consider the Democratic field (for the moment, at least, just two contenders), not only does Obama win the cookout test, but with more and more exposure, he's going to pull even further ahead on this count. His facility for saying things directly and honestly is not just appealing, it's the perfect tonic for the toxicity that's enveloped Washington for the last four election cycles. Like any good marketers, political consultants measure both awareness and favorability. Obama so far is in the happy position of knowing that as the first rises, so will the second.
Which leaves us, at last, with Sen. Clinton. Among political junkies, I would submit that for the last half century, the political campaign you'd most like to be inside of --just to observe the advice and argument--is hers, right now. As a candidate who's always been over-advised and over-coached, the natural reaction to the Obama threat is to do more of the same. But for her, that's pure poison. Her ability to compete, particularly in a general election, will largely be determined in how she responds right now to the cookout factor. Presently, the persona she projects is not one that would make you turn and say, "hey, how about you grab us a couple more beers?" And if she continues beyond the first exploratory steps of trying to drag down Obama rather than raising herself, she will never be invited back to this barbeque. The undecideds simply won't have her.
The lesser known of the Steely Dan duet, Walter Becker, once wrote a line of lyrics, "tomorrow's for squares, tonight is for real".
Hillary had better decide to get real now, or there won't be a tomorrow.

diderot