In households, coffeeshops, and community centers across the country yesterday, Obama supporters gathered for community outreach events under the theme “Hope. Action. Change.” This three-word slogan is smart marketing because it builds on Obama’s message of hope, highlights the individual’s role in a democracy, and subtly responds to a popular critque. It may even hint at the trajectory of the campaign.
Some people have criticized the Obama campaign for not having enough detailed policy outlines on issues such as health care and education and relying only on his rhetoric of “hope.” To a certain extent, I think this critique is fair. I wouldn’t cast a vote for a candidate who didn’t have concrete policy proposals. However, the election is still a year and a half away, and there is still plenty of time for the Obama campaign to roll out these plans. At this point in the campaign, it makes sense for Obama to work to connect to people at a personal level to build a loyal base of supporters, rather than bore them with policy details. In other words, the campaign can be said to be rallying up hope.
By branding the community outreach events under “Hope. Action. Change.,”the Obama campaign is outlining both a general theme for his campaign as well as his approach to participant democracy. During yesterday’s webcast, Obama says that he is running against a “politics in which people are divided from their government.” The alternative to this broken system is one in which concerned citizens play a more active role in the governing of this country. As a community organizer, Obama surely saw that in order for people to get involved in political and social change, they must feel personally invested in the issue and be shown realistic steps they can take to enact change. Hope. Action. Change.
The Obama campaign, along with those of several other Democratic candidates, should be applauded for their open-source use of technologies that empower the user to take ownership of the campaign. The Obama campaign in particular is recognizing that the principle of community organizing is the same as that of political action – the only way for change to take place is to inspire people and to show them how to take action.
In the course of presidential races, a lot of lip service is paid to individual empowerment: the campaign isn’t about the individual office-seeker, it’s about you and your family and making the world safer for the children. By working to offer practical ways for individuals to actually get involved, the Obama campaign could go far in proving that with him, it’s not all talk.
So what’s the next step for the participatory campaign? We have the cutting-edge online tools at my.barackobama.com; we have a network of people across the country who are willing to get their hands dirty in this campaign. How could he involve us in policy creation? Maybe, instead of just rolling out a plan developed by experts and tested with focus groups, he could engage us in a dialogue about the issues and take our recommendations to heart. Maybe a forum on the website could allow us to discuss and vote on specific policy ideas. The campaign could then use this input when fleshing out Obama’s plans for health care, education, campaign finance, foreign policy, etc, and the rest of us could keep the discussion going about how to affect these changes at the local level.
So what do you all say?
“Civic hope and action IS an issue!”
While I’m sympathetic with those who feel that Obama needs to come out stronger on where he stands on the issues, I think many people forget that restoring civic hope and action IS an issue, and possibly the most important of them all. Without that “hope” and subsequent impetus to action, people can’t even begin to truly engage the serious issues we face as a nation.
Yesterday I attended an inspiring community kickoff “houseparty” with students from around Washington, DC. At one point we began discussing what the most important issues are to those who were in attendance. The list compiled was what you would expect to find: the War in Iraq & American foreign policy, climate change & the environment, universal health care, education & affordable tuition, ethics reform, etc. The issue I shared though was one that I don’t hear people voicing enough as a legitimate and highly important issue: civic renewal. This is an issue that directly affects our ability to deal with the other issues, and it is one that Obama has a unique and incredible power to take up and champion. Hence the reason it has become the thematic issue of his campaign.
We need to work hard to make it clear to our nation that “civic renewal” is an issue that should be front and center with all of our other pressing political priorities.
“A Participatory Political Platform”
Erin’s questions and suggestions about the next step in Obama’s participatory campaign are remarkably on point. How can he engage the American public to help his campaign further develop its policies? How can he create a participatory political platform? In our connected age of technological revolutions that are giving way to a new participatory politics and culture, this a question that every candidate and campaign should be asking.
While political mavericks and policy experts will always have a strong hand in shaping policies, there is an immense amount of creative, intelligent, innovative thought amongst the broader American public that needs to be tapped into and incorporated. How to set up some sort of open system and process to accomplish this in a smooth-flowing and realistic way is quite another question.
Having an open forum about the issues is a great way to start, though I’m not sure how the best ideas would be filtered out. One idea is that the community as a whole could vote on the best policy options that emerge and those with the most votes would rise to the top where they could then be offered to Obama’s policy team.
On a similar note, this is something that I think it would be great for Barack the Youth Vote to engage in. We could set up a system and process for America’s youth to develop innovative and creative solutions that could potentially find their way into Obama’s policy platform. And in either case, it would be a great way to increase our generation’s political engagement and thinking.
“Addressing the Systemic Issues”
I just ran across an article titled “Presidential candidates and “substance”" by Glenn Greenwald that touches pointedly on my earlier comment. He writes:
“All of the candidates, including Obama, are going to issue a detailed health care plan soon enough. But the political system in which those health care plans — and every other specific legislative proposal — are going to be assessed, debated and processed is profoundly corrupt and broken.
Thus, any candidate who does not address those systemic political diseases is not actually being “substantive” at all, no matter how many thick white papers they issue chock full of think-tank-developed “plans.” Between (a) a candidate who understands our fundamental political problems but who has yet to issue a detailed health care plan and (b) a candidate who has all sorts of detailed, wonky legislative policies developed by aides but who has no real critique of our political culture and will do nothing but feed off of it and perpetuate it, candidate (a) is clearly the more “substantive” candidate in the way that matters. “
You can read the full article out of the which the above quote comes from here: http://www.salon.com/opinion/greenwald/2007/03/31/substance/index.html
[...] a remark that closely relates to an earlier comment I made about “a participatory political platform” he states, “What we’re not going to be doing is saying to young people, “Here, [...]
Thanks for all the great comments. I agree that restoring civic hope is an issue, but I think it’s also important to continue to work with the people whose hope you just renewed, to assist them in fully realizing their potential as political actors. Obama has a great opportunity for engaging a large number of people in a meaningful dialogue about policy, and I hope he takes advantage about it. His comments regarding listening to the youth voice are very encouraging!