Yeah, yeah, Obama gave another decent speech. But his campaign showed off the constant organization and citizen engagement that helped Obama beat the Clinton machine and will give him a similar advantage over the old-school electioneering of John McCain. Instead of just sitting around congratulating themselves and crafting media images, the way political parties usually do at their balloon-drop coronations, the Obama campaign threw a huge public event that drew thousands of eager citizens ripe for campaign organizing:
- The campaign engaged folks in the stadium with text-messaging activities about key issues.
- Obama's people set up volunteer sign-up stations throughout the stadium to get folks to help with Labor Day weekend campaign activities.
- Visitors could sit down at several phone banks in the stadium to call for Obama; folks who made at least 12 phone calls were entered in a raffle for good seats on the stadium floor.
- The campaign set up voter registration booths to urge everyone coming to make sure they could do their most important part in November.
Obama campaign manager David Plouffe told the crowd that Republicans had wondered why the Obama camp moved the Democratic convention to the stadium for its final night.
"I think it's time we taught them a lesson about how to win an election," he said. "Every day, every hour is critical. The stakes in this election are too big. We need all of you. We have to out-hustle, out-work, out-think them" [Burt Hubbard, "Crowd Urged to Share Moment and Tout Obama," Rocky Mountain News, 2008.08.29].
Hustle, work, and think—sounds like a winning formula to me. While the GOP sneers about stage dressing, the Obama campaign is turning conventions upside down with its constant focus on getting the job done. Obama knows that running a campaign—and running a country—is more than making nice speeches. It's about using every opportunity to engage and organize people... a little something called leadership.
We're here to elect the most important leader in the world. Obama's Mile High Stadium event—not just the speech, but everything his campaign did throughout the day—shows Obama is ready for the job.
The list of innovations and improvements at the convention speaks to one of the features of great leadership not only in how the leader's ideas get implemented. It's great leadership when those good ideas have a way of working their way up from the idea person into the policies and practices of the organization. It's looking like the Democrats are getting it right.
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