Outline of Newsweek’s ‘Secrets of the 2008 Campaign’ report

If I had to give a single example of why traditional journalism won’t (shouldn’t?) disappear, I’d point to the series of articles that Newsweek just released about the 2008 presidential campaign. Entitled “Secrets of the 2008 Campaign,” the 7 chapter (!) report is based on extensive reporting which they had to promise not to release until after the election.

The amount of new information is staggering and it answers scores of the questions that bloggers could only speculate about before. In a lot of ways, it’s made me feel like all the pre-election rumour blog surfing was a total waste of time.

I’ve been raving about this piece like a lunatic to everyone I know and to make sure that everyone reads it, I put together this handy dandy outline (The bullets correspond to a page in each chapter).

Chapter 1 - Obama: How He Did it

• Obama getting the attention of Democrats. Ethel Kennedy: “torch is being passed to you” but some fear and reluctance from family
• Obama’s self awareness: “There’s a certain ambivalence in my character that I like about myself… It’s not necessarily useful in a presidential campaign.” Campaign team comes together and set the ethos: “No-Drama Obama”. Obama decides (forced?) to go to the grassroots
• Obama gets “high and mighty”, learns from his mistake and get “Fired up! Ready to go!”
• Hillary squanders ‘05-‘06, questions why she wants to run, and gets tangled up with their first Bill controversy
• Clintons blow through cash, tries to work with a “team of rivals”, and get their first shock when they get their “asses kicked” in Iowa. “What!” exclaimed [Bill] Clinton, who then called out in a loud voice, “Hillary!”
• pandemonium in campaign, Hillary tears up

Chapter 2 - McCain: Back From the Dead

• In 2000, McCain loved the Straight Talk Express, joking with reporters, and his Luke Skywalker role. In 2006 as the front-runner, he reluctantly found himself in the middle of a slick campaign, albeit one which struggled to raise money. Feeling that the campaign was “sinking.”
• McCain loved sparring with journalists but was “at heart a loner”, “Senator Hothead”, and “McNasty” who ducked out of key leadership decisions in his campaign.
• Against advisers, McCain is still optimistic on Iraq. Campaign invigorated by a nothing-to-lose attitude, gang of pirates mentality and wins New Hampshire and South Carolina
• Deals with the NYT piece about McCain’s relationship with a lobbyist and the campaign learns that the “liberal press would always turn on you”

Chapter 3 - The Long Siege

• Bill Clinton’s righteous indignation and worry that his wife was blowing her chance; gets everyone in South Caroline riled up because of a comment about Jesse Jackson. Caroline Kennedy endorses Obama and someone realizes “Oh, my God, we’re done.”
• Hillary gets fatter, Obama gets skinnier and Michelle makes a careless mistake about finally feeling proud of her country
• Chaos and incompetence inside the Hillary campaign, struggling with messaging, and brief success with the 3 a.m. ad.
• Obama worries about Pastor Wright, drops the ball by not researching his sermons, and single-handily pulls himself out of the situation with a moving speech on race.
• Clinton dream dying but finally finds her voice. Stalemate between the campaigns
• Obama makes a lame Star Trek joke, Obama finally wins nomination but skips celebratory beer to prepare for a morning talk

Chapter 4 - Going Into Battle

• McCain’s speaking style frustrates aides; jokes constantly and seems to be “amused by the haphazardness of his own organization”. Salter and Schmidt becoming drinking buddies and work themselves up over Obama.
• Schmidt takes over from Rick Davis. McCain sorely disappointed by Obama’s unwillingness to engage in a series of townhall meetings. Aides force him to avoid dealing with the press from now on.
• Schmidt crafts the celebrity attack ad on Obama. McCain feels that Obama “lacks guts” and personally offended by Obama’s political maneuvering earlier in the Senate
• Hillary’s team awkwardly folded into Obama’s and the campaign becomes nervous because of the impact of the celebrity ad.
• McCain’s persuaded to go all negative while avoiding the race issue. Obama’s team taps into online social networks, gather phone numbers, and crash Red Cross’s site.

Chapter 5 - Center Stage

• Obama’s computer systems get hacked, campaign feels like Obama’s been knocked “off stride” and nervous that the Clintons might try to steal the spotlight at the convention. Team searches for a running mate and says Obama: “I’m leaning toward Biden”
• Obama gathers opinions about this choice, Clintons give great speeches but then the Palin pick gets announced. Biden: “Who’s Palin?” McCain wanted his “brother” Lieberman but would have trouble with the base about his pro-life stance so McCain impulsively gambles on Palin, gives her a five minute phone call.
• McCain’s team charmed by her, gets picked in highly secretive process, and gets presented internally; some did not even know who she was
• Palin announced and campaign picks up some steam
• Obama camp nervous; “People went a little Kerry and Dukakis there for a couple of days” but bloggers quickly digs dirt on Palin. Then a gift: AIG burns up, McCain says “economy strong”; Obama pounces, McCain fumbles
• McCain tries to get involved in bailout bill but “Washington didn’t want him.”

Chapter 6 - The Great Debates

• Obama realizes “McCain had stepped on a banana peel”, preps for debates as if it were a bar exam.
• McCain doesn’t look at Obama during the first debate (“Because you told me not to! McCain retorted”), and coaches worry about what appears to be his disdain for Obama
• McCain sees Biden on Youtube: “He looks like an angry old senator!” and staffers hope he picks up on the irony before the next debate. Campaign goes all negative and not everyone happy about this
• Palin overhandled, made to feel uptight, and then rebels. Crowds get vicious about Obama and McCain reels about how things are going.
• McCain’s team meet and decide not to tell McCain how bad things actually are; McCain makes sure not to play the race card but everyone worried about how supporters are changing.
• McCain tries to land a knockout with “Joe the Plumber” but it’s sloppily executed and no background checking done

Chapter 7 - The Final Days

• Obama’s team worries about how to handle Jay-Z and registers hundreds of thousands of new voters
• Refuse to give out “walk around money”, instead opting for get out the vote drives
• Obama’s campaign organization has thousands of volunteers who are empowered, responsible and putting in long hours. Axelrod and Obama communication ascends to telepathy.
• Gloom in the McCain camp, reluctance to share bad news with him but paradoxically “The crazier things get, the calmer he becomes”
• McCain has a poorly run ground campaign with lots of mistargetted effort. “Unit cohesion” crumbling and “Wasilla Hillbillies looting Neiman Marcus from coast to coast,
• On election day, Obama’s emergency handling team “had the feel of a corporate office on a slow Tuesday”; McCain still cheery, running a last townhall: “best event in New Hampshire, probably ever.”
• Palin gearing up for 2012, not cooperating with campaign, asking to speak at McCain’s concession speech. Obama wins and “as even-tempered as ever.”

Angry students on the march

November 5th was the designated Day of Action for the Canadian Federation of Students’ Drop Fees campaign. Students from across the province gathered in dowtnwon Toronto protest the rising cost of higher education.

The “Drop Fees” slogan itself is brilliantly ambiguous. Do they want to simply lower fees back to historical levels? Or perhaps more subversively, is it an attempt to get rid of all tuition fees like our communist socialist European cousins. Depends who’s asking; depends who’s answering. Both meanings were voiced during the event.

But in any case, I was there to take some shots for the Varsity, not to analyze whether it’s all a pipe dream (slideshow at the end of the post)

I caught up to the mob at College and Bay.

At University Avenue, someone decided that everyone should engage in an impromptu sit-in. Twenty minutes and five backed up streetcars later, they decided the fun was over and the marchers headed over to nearby Queens Park.

I found myself getting pushed close to the temporary fence as the crowds yelled for Dalton McGuinty to come out of hiding and discuss the situation.

Getting pressed by the crowd at the fence was was a bit too tight for comfort so I climbed on to the back of a truck which was acting as a makeshift platform. My friend Justin was DJ-ing for the march and he made some space.

Speaker after (non-liberal) speaker blasted the McGuinty government for breaking their promise about a new tuition freeze. But it dragged on. I even heard one of the CFS staffers mutter about there being too many speakers.

Perhaps the most interesting thing was the co-option of Obama’s slogans. Someone from the platform would yell “Drop fees now” and the crowd would start chanting “Yes we can.” Questionable semantics aside, Obamania still seems to be in full gear.

All in all, it was a pretty well organized event with a much bigger turnout than the previous events. Also, unlike some previous marches, this one stuck to the tuition issue without veering into the hodgepodge of left-wing issues that seem to surround these events.

Created with Admarket’s flickrSLiDR.

Obamania in Toronto

Election Day in America means a night of anxious television watching for Canadians.

Like always, I can’t say it better than the NYT so I’ll just quote:

It’s hard to overstate how fervently vast stretches of the globe wanted the election to turn out as it did.

But first, it was a few of hours of result watching in a den of the liberal elite media (the Varsity headquarters). CNN had some pretty slick holograms that we’ll all be chuckling at in 10 years.

CNN called it for Obama promptly at 11 and the room went wild — not many people pretend to be unbiased up here.

After watching McCain’s speech, we headed to Yonge and Dundas.

We arrived to find a pretty small crowd struggling to find a way to listen to Obama’s impending acceptance speech. Someone’s iPhone swooped in to save the day. An online radio stream from NPR was played over Newmindspace’s mobile speakers. Technology for the win.

Most of the action centred on a group that had brought some flags and a life sized Obama cutout. The media (which seemed to outnumber the celebrants at first) was all over them.

It wasn’t the spilling-onto-the-streets sort of gathering that some people expected but there was no shortage of honking and screaming. After the speech, more people trickled in and the event turned into a dance party.

If this crowd was any indication, Canada is ready to give America a second chance.

I’m sorry everyone

(Courtesy of MoveOn.org. Well done).

Campaign web design roundup

Amateur hour in Canada

It’s election season in Canada and that means another fresh batch of web site redesigns.

2008 is a special year for political web design: the bar has been blown through the roof by BarackObama.com. How do Canadian sites do in comparison? Let’s just hope that we can get through this election without the rest of the world noticing how bad our parties’ sites are.

(For the sake of brevity, critiques of the Green Party and the Bloc Quebecois are left as exercises for the reader)

First, the good: NDP.ca

A solid design with lots of nods to Obama’s site. Compare:

• a shot of Layton gazing into a brighter future (or is it the past? He’s looking to the left)
• bold colours with glows and gradients all over the place: in the header, behind the icons, etc.
• even the donation splash page is straight from the Obama playbook

There are lots of other little things that they got right. For instance, there’s a prominent place for the email signup. In spite of the wishes of us technophiles, most people still consume info via email.

It’s not flawless though: it’s a bit strange that the first three menu options don’t have any sub-options. Also, the sections of the plan page could be organized as drop down options. Also, why do they have to be listed using images instead of text.

Update: Could the site get any more Obama-like? This popped up on the site today:

Overall, the site does what it has to do and it actually looks like it belongs in 2008. Unlike:

The bad: Liberal.ca

A pretty uninspired design.To be honest, I can’t even think about what to say about it since it’s so boring (does this say anything about Dion?).

The site is riddled with small problems that build up to give a bad impression.

A few picked at random:

• Green videos? Is this a mistake?
• The colour of the body type is a light gray and doesn’t give enough contrast against the white background. This surely won’t help with the geriatric vote.
• Why is Flash being used all over? For instance, on the front page, all they’re using it for is to do mouseover effects — totally unnecessary.
• The link to Dion’s profile is broken if you go via this page.

A bland site with little overall design; however, it’s not as bad as:

The downright ugly: Conservative.ca

It’s almost a national disgrace that the governing party of Canada has a site that’s this ugly and childish. I’ll avoid discussing the controversial jabs that they make at Dion and note some of the design problems:

• The header is brutal: there’s a logo that’s too fuzzy, a ridiculous little bump in the background image to accommodate Harper’s head, and a photo that looks like a snapshot from a point and shoot camera.
• Bevels!? These were barely even cool back in the era when people were first discovering Photoshop.
• Interior pages that look like they were ripped bleeding out of a Word document.
• Really bad icons everywhere. Note the folder icons used on this page.

Perhaps it’s all just a guise. Good design? That’s for elites.

Maybe another election…

Very disappointing performances from Canada’s two big parties. It’s hard to believe that these national organizations could do so poorly on such a crucial part of any campaign.