Themes and Strategies in the 2008 Presidential Primary

Introduction: Campaigns as Marketing Plans

Political campaigns depend to a large extent on the public image they create for their candidate. During the 2008 presidential primary season, the campaigns of Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, John McCain, and others worked hard to present a set of themes and issues that strategists believed would resonate with the public. Such issues and themes reflect both party goals and an attempt at understanding the wider electorate. Besides the perceived fundamental difference between Democrat and Republican — a difference that affects candidate presentation and choice of party-specific ideologies — candidates within a party must also be set apart from one another. Thus, while Obama and Clinton both ran against McCain as Democrats opposing a Republican, they also confronted the challenge of differentiating themselves according to specific aspects of Democratic policy and appeal.

At the same time, all candidates had to address the issues that strategists believed were central to the campaign itself: the economy, the Iraq War, health insurance, immigration reform, and so forth. Having found its particular niche and its particular take on the "top issues," a campaign next begins to gather supporters and solicit funds. By gauging the reaction of backers and assessing what works best in fundraising environments, a campaign team schedules further events, plans debates, produces commercial advertisements, and so forth. In short, the 2008 presidential primary campaign season resembled many other political campaigns — carefully orchestrated, heavily scripted, well-financed, and not averse to making more than a few statements that stretched voter credulity.

Key Issues Dividing the Parties

On the whole, there was little disagreement between the two parties as to the identity of the major issues: whether to keep troops in Iraq, how to fix the faltering economy, how to reform immigration, and how best to address social issues such as healthcare, gay marriage, and abortion. Further points of discussion included trade agreements such as NAFTA, the loss of American jobs to outsourcing, and the potential threats posed by nations such as Iran and North Korea.

These issues were easily identifiable even to those well-removed from the campaigns' intended spheres of influence, attracting the notice of foreign observers as well as Americans at home. John McCain sharply criticized the Democrats' avowed intentions to withdraw immediately — or almost immediately — from Iraq. As McCain pointed to the apparent success of President Bush's surge strategy, Democrats had to defend their insistence on withdrawal by making different arguments about the war's futility:

Democrats' new approach was aimed primarily at framing the issue for the November elections by focusing on the financial cost of military operations and the war's implications for the troubled U.S. economy. With the fifth anniversary of the war fast approaching, the Democrats — citing testimony by the Pentagon's own commanders — also emphasized the strain on the armed forces. In addition, the Democrats contended that the war against terrorism should be waged primarily in Afghanistan and Pakistan, not Iraq (Herszenhorn, 2008).

By using spin to present a story from a different angle, a campaign can hope to deflect negative criticism. The Democrats had formerly attacked the Iraq War simply on the grounds that it was not successful. In this instance, Bush's apparent success was turned into a non-issue; the real question became whether even "success" — framed in terms of financial and other political and security costs — was actually worth the price of the surge and of keeping American troops in Iraq.

Candidate Themes and Image Construction

The Iraq War as a bone of contention between Republicans and Democrats was but one example of the themes that characterized each campaign. While McCain emphasized his ability to serve as a strong commander in chief, Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama focused more on domestic priorities. A major source of difference between the two Democrats was the relative universality and effectiveness of their competing healthcare plans. Reacting to charges from the Clinton campaign that his plan left fifteen million Americans uncovered, Barack Obama began with the proposition that the two schemes were remarkably similar, but that his was more "empowering" in that it did not force adults to take out coverage. At the Democratic debate in Ohio, Obama denied that his plan left anyone uninsured while attacking Clinton for "whining" about his campaign's claims that the Clinton plan forced individuals to purchase coverage whether they wanted it or not (Espo, 2008).

The dispute reflected the major themes of the two Democratic campaigns — ideas played up again and again as a means of distinguishing between the two contenders. Typically, Hillary Clinton portrayed herself as the candidate with experience, citing her years in the White House and the Arkansas governor's mansion as more than adequate preparation for the presidency. She frequently cited her work in the early 1990s on a national healthcare reform plan that Republicans dubbed "Hillary Care." Barack Obama's campaign managers, by contrast, concentrated on the theme of "change," declaring that their candidate uniquely embodied the idea of far-reaching, positive transformation. Black Enterprise magazine summed up Obama's supposed qualities as those of a candidate who "transcends" race and appeals to all Americans across color, ethnic, and class lines:

"America needs Obama's unifying vision. The rap on earlier black presidential contenders, including Revs. Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton, was that their campaigns ultimately appealed to too narrow a swath of the electorate, dominated primarily by African-Americans and liberal voters. Obama's candidacy and message focus on middle-class tax relief, a commitment to a sensible, phased withdrawal and redeployment of U.S. troops in Iraq, and public-private partnerships to guarantee health insurance coverage for all Americans, which transcends race and political labels" (Granes, 2008).

The themes of change and transcendence were central to the fashioning of Obama's image as a candidate. He was presented as highly intelligent, well-educated, and equally comfortable around wealthy upper-class white Americans and impoverished working-class Black Americans. Affable and a powerful, inspiring speaker, he was portrayed as a candidate who appealed to all. In contrast, Clinton was long derided for regularly changing her image, and she struggled against a public perception that she was cold and calculating. Her campaign team worked to re-cast her as caring and empathetic.

Republican John McCain drew his support principally from those who continued to back George Bush's policies — voters who believed the nation had been made safer by the Iraq War and that the president's economic initiatives had been successful. In other words, McCain's supporters opposed large-scale change. With help from President Bush, the Republican candidate was able to allay fears that he was too independent and not conservative enough, thereby securing widespread support from within the party.

By portraying himself as essentially aligned with Bush, McCain was able to appeal to a broader swath of the Republican electorate than his former rivals, Mike Huckabee and Mitt Romney. Huckabee appealed to a relatively narrow core of Evangelical voters, while Romney was dogged by concerns about his Mormon faith — a factor that proved a significant negative among those same Evangelical voters. Once the alliance with Bush had been established and primary victories achieved, McCain was able to overcome the fundraising difficulties he had suffered in the early days of the campaign.

Conclusion: The Campaign as Firestorm

Clearly, presidential primary campaigns depend on a host of factors, all of which come together to create specific images of the respective candidates. Themes are presented that serve to rally voters and forge in their minds a living image of the candidate as the embodiment of certain ideals. These same concepts and symbolic representations are used to debunk the arguments of rivals and to further gather and entrench support. Supporters respond to buzzwords and to particular notions of what their favored candidate is like, and what he or she will do in office.

Money is raised on the strength of the support that is generated and on the kinds of supporters a candidate can draw to her or his banner. Campaign planners devise the best strategies, employing staged rallies, commercial advertisements, and televised debates as the best means to showcase their candidate — or identifying these as things to be avoided. The various tools in the campaigner's arsenal are picked up by the media at large and either used to set off an explosion of support or turned back on the candidate like so many incendiary devices. That is, ultimately, what a campaign is all about — creating a firestorm for the "right" candidate.