On the Campaign Trail, Image Rules

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On the Campaign Trail, Image Rules
Yohanes Sulaiman | November 13, 2012

"Candidates should cherish controlled dissent, allowing people in the campaign to critically analyze whether their candidate is truly on the path to victory."

The election circus in the United States has come to an end, but that in Indonesia — which will have its own presidential poll in less than two years — is only just beginning. The field here remains wide open, with many surveys indicating that the majority of voters still don’t know any of the possible the candidates well — let alone would be able to decide whom to vote for. But for Indonesian presidential aspirants there are important lessons to be learnt from the US presidential election.

Lesson No. 1 is that money — although always nice to have — cannot buy everything if competitors also have plenty of it. As the Republicans found out, regardless of all the talk of their donors willingly donating millions of dollars through political action committees to defeat President Barack Obama, the Democrats in the end managed to match the massive Republican war chest.

While money is still important, because you need it to build a campaigning infrastructure and for political advertising, with the cash-stalemate going on, the next election in Indonesia will be fought down in the trenches.

Candidates’ personal rapport with regular Indonesians, effective use of social media to spread campaign messages, generating voter turnout and enthusiasm, and political messaging will be crucial. Here Obama’s campaign performed much better than Mitt Romney’s. The Obama campaign convinced enough people to cast their votes, which allowed them to win the election.

Given that all the presumptive candidates in the next Indonesian election have deep pockets or at least are backed by generous billionaires, it is simply impossible that any particular candidate will be able to dominate the airwaves. Vote-buying will be difficult too, because there will be other bidders, which causes prices to rise.

As the recent Jakarta gubernatorial election shows, even though Governor Fauzi Bowo had seven times more money in his war chest than his challenger Joko Widodo, in the end Jokowi emerged the winner simply because Jokowi could generate more enthusiasm.

This brings us to lesson No. 2, which is to define yourself and your opponents as soon as possible. As Romney painfully found out, once Obama and his supporters managed to define him as an uncaring billionaire born with a silver spoon in his mouth, it was very difficult to overcome such a caricature. Each misstep was then used to reinforce the image of an out-of-touch political opportunist.

In the meantime, Romney was also unable to answer to Obama’s negative campaign messages and to sell himself to make the voters think they did know him, which would make them more passionate in supporting him. While Romney’s superior performance in his first debate managed to create some momentum, it could not defeat months of bad news and negative campaigns. So in the end, he lost.

With the majority of the voters in the next Indonesian presidential election being, at least until now, undecided and unfamiliar with the candidates, it is imperative that they quickly define and sell themselves to the voters and try to address any perceived weaknesses. Candidates should not assume that, for instance, by simply wearing Jokowi’s checkered shirt they could emulate Jokowi’s success. Jokowi had his own accomplishments as mayor of Solo to boast and he built upon it an image of a competent reformer and Mr. Fix-it-all, which led to outright Jokowi-mania.

Candidates clearly have to educate voters about their accomplishments, their plans, and their familiarity with the important issues. But more importantly, they need to be prepared and maintain discipline to prevent gaffes that could be used to sink their campaigns.

Candidates therefore should not surround themselves with yes-men and pollsters only interested in keeping their clients happy and keeping their contracts. That is one of the main reasons why Romney’s campaign crashed and burned. With the campaign insulated from bad news and aides unwilling to strongly challenge what they thought were bad decisions, it could not react and take quick and decisive action to prevent damage from spreading.

Candidates should cherish controlled dissent, allowing people in the campaign to critically analyze whether their candidate is truly on the path to victory. Without dissent, any campaign is doomed.