Vox Custodes

The Internet has become inextricable from modern campaigning, thanks to the ubiquity of email and the cost-margins of online messaging. But have we really reached a point where elections are won on the web?

This week’s readings make a strong case for “yes.”

The Obama campaign, particularly its 2008 iteration, is presented as an exemplar.

Zach Exley’s impressive article, “The New Organizers,” captured the evolution of the Dean campaign’s operations, as described by Nuxoll, into a new paradigm of involvement in 2008. Massive amounts of self-entered website data facilitated a “neighborhood team” structure and enabled volunteers to become leaders, rather than assets to be directed by central authority. This is contrasted to the 2004 Kerry Campaign, which was unable to grant volunteers consistent duties—and couldn’t sustain passion as a result. What Exley describes, however, is a type of involvement that spurs lasting connection. In their desire to keep the intense feelings of the campaign alive, participants go on to remain active in their communities and public service. As Patrick Frank, a young volunteer, is quoted: “on the Obama campaign, when I see people like me and my friends used to be, we turn them around and say, ‘Well hey, here’s how to be a community organizer. Let me help you be a community organizer.’”

This GOTV innovation is also discussed in Seth Colter Walls’s “Neighbor to Neighbor.” By using real-time, mobile data tracking, canvassers can track on-the-fence voters within neighborhoods, even street by street. These canvassers can also increase voter registration (presumably regardless of party).

And even a Harvard Business School case study, by Deighton and Kornfeld, discusses Obama’s paragon of online presence. Drawing lines from the Eisenhower shift to TV, and Nixon’s use of direct mail, the authors suggest that the ‘net is both a logical descendant of these and something new altogether. The study notes that Obama’s YouTube channel had a view count nearly ten times higher than Hilary Clinton’s channel. It also points out, via the example of Clinton’s “3 AM” ad, and the way in which Obama supporters made mitigating parodies, that a passionate, tech savvy constituency can provide an amazing buffer. (In a YouTube era, one wonders whether a movie-making Kerry supporter could have weakened George Bush’s “wolves” ad.)

So the consensus seemed to be that the Internet really was changing the game, and that it might even be able to become the whole game, and that Obama’s 2008 campaign was nearly perfect in its applications.

But I decided that some crowdsourcing was in order, so I decided to see what fellow classmates thought, too. Billy Pope’s blog links Shirky’s maxim on successful group formation (Answer #1 on our midterm!) to the Obama campaign: “a plausible promise, an effective tool, and an acceptable bargain with the users.” (Although Pope also finds flaws with the follow-through, and the ability of the campaign to interact with government once the race is won.) With regard to Obama’s embodiment of Shirky’s concepts, the “New Organizers” article reinforces this observation. Exley notes the field campaign’s “ubiquitous motto”—“Respect. Empower. Include”—and draws a persuasive picture of an organization that gives its volunteers real parts to play, and, more importantly, parts they want to play. But with regard to the Exley piece, classmate Kevin Prager makes a good point: “While I know that the use of online tools was crucial to execute a flawless ground game in 2008, this article barely even mentions technology. Why? Because it is still an enabler in this field, and cannot yet replace the human touch.”

Looking past Obama at a more recent ground game, an article about Harry Reid discusses applying the long tail to campaigns, via “nanotargeting.” This form of niche-messaging and informational persuasion seems to represent every noble hope for how the Internet can be employed to enhance constituent decision making. But classmate Zach Crowley raises worthy concerns about the ability of streamlined campaigns to stint on troublesome details, even as they purport to inform voters.

In the end, I think Kevin’s idea is closest to right: the Internet is an amazing tool, as is the capacity for vast, granular data collection. But without a dedicated cohort of believers, field teams willing to work unimaginable hours for terrible pay and in the face of as much citizen rejection as popular support, the Internet cannot win elections. Molly Ball’s recent Atlantic article drives this home, by examining the degree to which this election will cement—or dismiss—the value of tightly focused field work. My mom, who’s been campaigning for Obama in New Hampshire, would probably agree. I know she’s hoping her efforts pay off.

[From The Citizen, the HKS newspaper]

Once you’ve been here for a while, you’ll eventually see them: the black SUVs parked in the Kennedy School Quad, with their flashing red and blue lights, and the taciturn men in dark suits with earpieces and Oakleys. And we’ve all noticed the Very Important People who occasion this swirl of pomp and circumstance, as they alight from their vehicles, or as they’re whisked about by attentive aides. Visiting dignitaries are a fact of life at this institution, but it takes a particularly questing academic mind to wonder what that swirl means in a scientific sense.

Jennifer Lerner, Professor of Public Policy and Management, is just that sort of seeker. Her office looks out over the quad, and as The Citizen interviewed her, a black SUV and security personnel were coincidentally waiting for some unidentified luminary. “Yes, there they are,” she said, and it was the ubiquity of the experience that prompted her, in part, to examine what it means to be the person at the center of the swirl. Using her position as Founder and Director of Leadership Decision Making, a Harvard executive education course, she was able to access and interview leaders across a range of sectors and a range of ranks. The results are two recently published studies with fascinating but counterintuitive results. Professor Lerner and her coauthors have upended the portrait of the burdened boss, the stress-fractured figure who ages faster than the rest of us owing to the weight of his responsibilities.

“Upon the King!” Shakespeare’s Henry V exclaims, “let us our lives, our souls, our debts, our careful wives, our children, and our sins lay on the king!” Four hundred years later, we still embrace the picture of the leader who bears his subordinates’ loads, and his own, as well. But it turns out that leaders—especially powerful ones—actually experience less stress than nonleaders. This was demonstrated in Lerner’s first study via self-reported responses and through measurements of cortisol levels. (Cortisol is an adrenal hormone that the body releases in response to stress.) The second study showed that decreasing stress levels are observable even among leaders perched on different rungs of their respective ladders: the higher up one goes, the lower the stress. “Not only are leaders less stressed than non-leaders,” study co-author Gary Sherman, also of Harvard, has been quoted saying, “but more powerful, higher-ranking leaders are less stressed than less powerful, lower-ranking leaders.”

The reason? “Control,” says Lerner. Such control, she notes, does not require mastery of the environment, but rather “the perception of having influence” over the course of events and subordinates. More highly-ranked leaders have greater control, and thus less stress. So perhaps it is Mel Brooks, rather than Shakespeare, to whom we should turn: “It’s good to be the king.”

It is not only leaders who can profit from these observations, however. Allowing subordinates to experience the perception of influence—what Lerner calls “the sense of predictability that goes hand in hand with perceived control”—may be able to reduce their stress levels, as well. “Having control can mean things like flex time,” she notes, “so I get to decide which days I work at home, which nights I work late.” These “little increments of control” may be enough to give subordinates some of the same benefits as their bosses.

Before leaping to the assumption that the head that wears a crown lies easy, however (to paraphrase a different Shakespearean Henry), Lerner presents an important caveat. Leaders who operate in “contested hierarchies” don’t experience decreased stress levels like their more stable counterparts.

So is this why presidents age so noticeably in office? Is this why Obama’s hair has gone white?

“That is certainly one possibility,” Lerner says. “He is in a contested hierarchy, and his leadership is attacked on a daily basis and so our data really can’t speak to his situation. But cortisol and other stress hormones are most likely harming his health.” Maybe the saying should be Uneasy lies the head that wears a crown—if that crown can be taken.

Of course, none of this answers the ur-question: Do leaders have less stress because they’re leaders? Or are leaders leaders because they’re less prone to stress? Lerner phrases it more succinctly: “Ah, yes—are leaders born or made. My hunch, absent data, is that it’s both.”

All this is presumably good news for Kennedy School students who aspire to climb the ranks. Just think—all the effort and the long hours will eventually be rewarded by a stress-free sinecure where your car comes with a driver! And if, on the climb, you’re lucky enough to have a boss who takes lessons from Dr. Lerner, and allows you the perception of influence, you’ll probably have less stress as you ascend, too. It really is good to be the king.