Robi Ganguly’s Big Ideas

As many people across the U.S. did, I spent some of this past weekend thinking and talking about Barack Obama’s selection of Joseph Biden as his running mate. When I found out on Friday evening, I was rather dismayed and Twittered the following:

Biden?! Biden?! No no no. This can not be happening.

My friend Andrew saw that and asked me my thoughts about it, so I wrote him a rather long email, which seems appropriate for a blog post on the topic as well.
In short, the selection of Joseph Biden is a great management decision and a questionable strategic decision. While I certainly appreciate how they came to decision, I’m rather concerned that the Obama team has gotten overconfident in its abilities. I believe that they are really overestimating their abilities to explain nuance and complexity and that overconfidence could really become obvious over the next few months, beginning with this selection.
To explain what I mean, I want to start by saying that I believe that there are many strong reasons for selecting Joseph Biden as Vice President. Some of the strongest are the following:

• If politics is a business, Biden is a fantastic hire. He’s the kind of pick that adds a ton of value and should really round out the adminstration’s skill set. He’s known for getting things done in the Senate and should be a good bulldog in the administration in order to push things through. What you need in any organization, especially one fraught with bureaucracy, is execution. Biden brings a wealth of experience in executing in the political realm. He’s a great COO hire, if you want to think about it that way.
• He’s a team player. I believe that he’s got an ego that will allow him to mesh with Obama and play second fiddle. It’s very very hard for most politicians to accept that Obama is essentially a superstar politician as the result of 6 to 10 years of planning and risk-taking, in conjunction with some luck. They grew up in a system where you’re supposed to work for decades in order to get to the top of the heap. Even the Clintons toiled for a LONG time to get to 1992. It’s tough to really tell, but my sense is that Biden doesn’t actually have this issue and that is important to a positive working relationship because egos derail political organizations far more often than is typically reported.
• Obvious reason #1: He’s well-versed in Foreign Relations and Security matters, as is being talked about. This is actually helpful to Obama and a big asset. Obama shouldn’t think that he’s mature enough to go out and tame the world on his own. A lot of the world operates in a mindset that tradition and seniority matter. Regardless of how they see Obama (in a positive light b/c he’s a big difference from Bush, sure..), many of the countries around the world and their leadership believe that you should be old and a known entity in order to work with them. This is one of the reasons why Condoleeza Rice has a hard time gaining traction abroad and why Dick Cheney, when he does travel, manages to have some pretty meaningful meetings. Sad, but true.
• Obvious reason #2: He’s an asset in courting some of the middle class white vote and should be helpful in states like Pennsylvania and Ohio – swing states. He is not a known entity nationally, but in the Northeast he’s certainly got some name recognition and should assist in some key states.

BUT, the risk here is that the voting population of the U.S. won’t understand the strong reasons for picking Biden and how he’ll be helpful in running the country. Taking complicated decisions and explaining them to the U.S. is exceptionally hard and I am concerned that the Obama team is overconfident in its ability to do so. Especially with the mainstream media constantly wanting to put all decisions in black and white terms (observe how they discuss the selection process, it’s very rarely an investigation of concepts and tradeoffs, it’s mostly presented as a list of bullet points). Consider these broad groups of folks that will be in play:

• The folks who are behind Obama because they’re single-mindedly focused on new, different, aggressive leadership. Many of these folks have reacted by essentially saying, “damn it, that’s not exciting”. Who are these people, for the most part? The young voters. Obama needs to keep them excited enough to actually vote in November. McCain and Co want to bore them into staying at home on Tuesday.
• The folks who are the “centrist objectivists”. You probably know plenty of these folks and might even consider yourself one – they say they’re fiscally conservative and socially liberal. They believe in meritocracy and like to talk about who’s going to run the country the best as a leader and minimize government’s interference in the workings of society and the capital markets. These folks also tend to believe that career politicians are distasteful. They happen to be part of the reason that we haven’t had a president who wasn’t an Executive in some regard for over 3 decades (Carter – Governor, Reagan – Governor, Bush – VP and head of the CIA, Clinton – Governor, Bush II – Governor). Obama picking a senator painted a big target on his back. If McCain picks a former Executive, these folks are very vulnerable to the arguments about career politicians (regardless of the duration of Obama’s career).
• The miffed Hillary supporters. People can be stupid and sometimes people are stupidly loyal. Some of these folks will think it makes more sense to stay home and pout than to vote. I am counting on Hillary to get out there and keep talking to these folks. I think she’ll do it, but this is a big issue.
  • I still maintain that from a pure #’s analysis, Obama picking Hillary means the election is over. It might not have been super practical, but it would have killed the McCain campaign. I personally never got the sense that they really disliked each other and couldn’t work together, but enough smart people have argued convincingly that I see that it could have presented real issues. That doesn’t diminish a key fact, however: Consuming the media is a successful strategy. The chatter about a Hillary selection after the Democratic National Convention would have continued all the way through the Republican convention and established the Repubs as an afterthought in many voters minds. McCain would have had to select Paris Hilton as a response, if he wanted to get some meaningful media time.
• The crowd of folks swayed by attack advertising: Democrats hate admitting that people are swayed and influenced by negative ads. It’s a large blindspot in their decision-making process. The truth is, attack ads fucking work. And it’s really really easy to attack the record of someone who’s been a Senator for 36 years. Why? He’s voted on every issue you can think of dozens of times. Sometimes for, sometimes against. You can paint whatever picture you want.

So, that’s my thinking. Some very broad, simple concepts might drive decision-making for sizeable groups of people. Obama’s campaign requires nuance to counter some of these things. Nuance is terribly tough to communicate during the election cycle. (I want to be clear here though: I very much appreciate the nuance and fundamentally believe that people are more complicated than the buckets that my points imply. But communicating to people in a nuanced manner through the mass media is VERY VERY difficult.)
Despite all of that, I think Obama should still manage to win. McCain’s a terrible candidate for the Republicans – almost as bad as Dole was in 1996. But I believe the Obama team, in picking Biden, made their path to winning in November harder than it should be.
Simple as that. They could have won the campaign quickly, now they have inserted a lot more chance into it. The Republicans are feeling hopeful and seeing rays of light. I don’t think that that is a good thing if you’re an Obama supporter.

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