David Plouffe discusses the 2008 race and campaign reform
David Plouffe was the chief campaign manager for President Obama’s 2008 race. He has consulted the Democratic Party for years and is respected nation-wide as a political strategist.
Harvard Political Review: Since the inauguration, the Obama for America campaign has become Organizing for America, but grassroots excitement seems to have lagged. Can this leaner mobilizing group really make a difference in supporting the President’s agenda?
David Plouffe: I think that anything Organizing for America does is really a bonus. No president has ever had this much engagement from the American people. The fact that his message is being shared with millions of Americans is an amazing asset. But, as the organization builds its staff and expands, Organizing for America will only become more important. As it is, thousands of Americans are canvassing, sharing and having conversations about the President’s beliefs for America’s future.
HPR: The Obama Campaign raised over three-fourths of a billion dollars, more than both of the 2004 presidential candidates combined. Are presidential campaigns only going to become more expensive? Does public financing have a future?
DP: It could. I think that there will be efforts to try and reform the public financing system to meet the times and I hope those are successful. We are very proud of the way that we raised our money: an average contribution of 85 dollars, four million contributors, and no money from Political Action Committees or lobbyists. The real danger in campaign fundraising is where it comes from. People expecting influence and voters are very concerned about that. Obama is the only major party candidate to ever refuse money from PACs. John McCain certainly didn’t. The DNC still does not take PAC money and it is the first time a political party has never done so. He is walking the walk in this regard. Our campaign was funded by the American people so we feel good about how we raised our money. And it was historic to have it to come from people that way and not from lobbyists and PACs. I think that there will be an effort in Congress to try and reform the system and I hope something can be done. It would be good to have a system more reflective of the times, but we will see what they come up with.
HPR: Do you think that it is problematic that presidential campaigns are so expensive? Does it make it inaccessible? Is the bar set too high for the future?
DP: It is not inaccessible. What Barack Obama proves is that someone who doesn’t have establishment support can compete. We won the primary as a grassroots underdog. No, I think that generally what a federal financing system will allow you to do is to lessen the amount of money that is spent, which is a good thing. But you have to find a way to get around these outside groups. We were pounded relentlessly by the shadowy 527s. Someone can open up a bank account, bring you a ten million dollar check, and then next thing you know be on the air right after that. Any talk of reform has to have some way to deal with that when it happens. If someone dumps fifty million dollars against you, you have to have the ability to fight back. I hope that the public financing system is addressed and reformed, but again I think that you have to focus on the way we raised our money. It has never been done before like that to have so many Americans giving money and it is a very healthy thing for democracy.
HPR: Looking back on the race, what was the biggest mistake the campaign made?
DP: Any endeavor like this is going to make a lot of mistakes. Obviously we didn’t win the New Hampshire primary and there are a lot of reasons for that. We didn’t win the Texas primary and that might have been able to end our primaries. There was a lot of mistakes that we made, but we got the big strategic positions right. Barack Obama executed at an extraordinarily high level. You have to remember how improbable all of this was. We began this as big of an underdog as you will ever find in politics. We thought we had to run a near-perfect campaign to win the primaries. We didn’t, but our central thoughts about our message and strategy ended up holding true and he ended up just being a tremendous presidential candidate. … I feel blessed to have been part of a campaign where so many of our big assumptions turned out to be correct. But that is not always the case. In this case it was.
HPR: The Bush administration has been criticized for waging a perpetual campaign in office. Can the Obama administration strike an appropriate balance between the campaign mentality and simply governing?
DP: Right now, I don’t think there is any campaign mentality going on. I think that Obama is simply trying to educate people about where he thinks this country needs to go and build support for that. There is a lot of support in the country for what he is trying to do, and there is a lot of support amongst Republicans in the country: Republican voters, Republican business leaders, and even some local Republican elected officials. But the Republicans in Washington have just decided on a strategy of “no”. Now that seems to be their electoral strategy and I think that is destined to fail. … [Our] goal in mind is not to get votes but simply to have conversations out there about what the president is trying to accomplish. That has never really been done before and our goal is to convince as many people to support the president’s agenda whether they are going to vote for him next time or not. The Republicans seem to be unhappy that the president’s approval rating remains high, but I think they ought to look in the mirror because what the American people want is solutions. … I would make a distinction between Republicans and Republicans in Washington. Republicans in Washington are arguing for one of two things: either return to the Bush policies or return to the politics as usual. … I don’t think they really understand the lessons of the past election or the lessons of where the voters are today, which is that they desperately want to make progress on these long-term challenges and they want the dialogue in Washington to be different. The important thing is that the American people believe that the president is trying to reach out, and he is. And he is going to continue to try and reach out, and maybe eventually some of the Republicans in Washington will help out and lend a hand.
HPR: Some people compare being a campaign manager to being a CEO of a business. To what degree do you think that this comparison is apt?
DP: Well, a campaign is not a business. We do not have cycle after cycle. We win or lose on Election Day. Our shareholders are our contributors and volunteers so there is some similarity there. Companies have business plans, forecasts for growth, and keep an eye on their competitors, so we have similar dynamics. We have a campaign message and strategy. We are trying to not reach a profit number but to reach a certain number of votes. Everything we do goes into measuring that. I think that we were a campaign that had a very clear strategy message, we were disciplined about measuring metrics of progress, and so we were a campaign that was fueled at the grassroots level where I think that people felt a great ability to help in their own way. That was all married to very serious goals and metrics. I think there is some similarities right there, but sometimes the comparison is taken too far because trying to sell a product is much different than a candidate running for office. We don’t have ten years to build our office. We have election day: either you win or you lose. There is no “we improved a little this quarter and we’re on a good trajectory”. The campaign world is much more black or white and it is a great motivator because I do not believe that a good effort in politics is worth anything because you are in politics because you believe that your party and your candidate is going to make a much more positive contribution to the future of the country. We don’t settle our disputes in this country by violence or civil war; we settle them at the ballot box. So this is deadly serious stuff: elections can affect the future of the country and so for that reason a good effort does not mean anything. You have to win because the stakes are big and our opponents believed the same thing. You have to win.