The morning after
Barack and me
Kenneth Roy
Britain may be facing the worst recession in Europe, with the possible exception of Latvia, but the habits of dress-down Friday die hard. It is impossible to do business beyond lunchtime and by the middle of the afternoon the mighty fax is silent, the phone never rings and the e-mail has ceased to ping; around 4, our neighbours in the building start drifting off for an unhappy weekend of worrying about Christmas. Last Friday, however, was different. At 5.40, I was slumped at my desk in the usual fashion when, lo and behold, the e-mail did ping – a strange sound in the pervasive silence of 66 John Finnie Street – and I found myself muttering aloud: ‘Who on earth can that be, this late on a Friday night?’
Of course: I should have guessed. It was Barack.
‘Kenneth –,’ he began in his characteristically direct manner. He just wanted to let me know how the week had gone: nothing too drastic; all more or less according to plan; and wondering if I’d be able to join him in Grant Park for the election night party. True to form, he ended by asking me for five dollars. He’s a bit like that, Barack – quite upfront about money matters; all part of his irresistible charm. As a foreigner, I am unable to help financially – he should know that by now. But I can still lend a bit of moral support, spreading the word to the lazy Brits who work here in John Finnie Street, or writing relatively nice things about him in the Scottish Review online. Even when I write relatively nasty things, he doesn’t seem to mind.
For the last 11 months, Barack has been my most frequent and faithful e-mail correspondent. Scarcely a week has gone by without a friendly electronic missive. When he’s been away, or exceptionally busy, I invariably hear from one of the team – David, his inexhaustible campaign manager, or Joe Biden (remember him? perhaps not), or the lovely Michelle.
How did this beautiful friendship come about? Like a lot of people, I was curious about the man who was then a virtually unknown outsider for the Democratic nomination and anxious to know what he stood for, so I logged on to the Barack Obama website and clicked a few boxes. I was still finding it difficult to discover what he stood for, so I clicked a few more boxes, adding my e-mail address. An odd thing then happened: a notice came up thanking me for my interest and enrolling me as one of his supporters. Like so many things in life, it was all just a happy accident: what Sir James Black called in a piece here last week an example of obliquity.
I have been with Barack ever since. It feels almost like man and boy. To be perfectly frank, I still don’t have a clue what he stands for – though he does bang on about the need for change and, depending on the nature of the change, I’m with him there, theoretically. But if I haven’t learned much about Barack Obama’s policies, I have learned a lot about the most brilliant campaign in electoral history – a campaign whose success owes so much to its exploitation of the internet.
It is often pointed out that Obama has succeeded in raising unthinkable amounts of money from modest donations on the web. This is true, although it is only part of the story. Most of his e-mails have ended with an invitation to hit the ‘Donate’ box and the amount requested is almost absurdly small – rarely more than 10 dollars – just about enough to finance the downpayment on a glass of dry white wine in your average British four-star hotel. What is less often pointed out is that the accumulation of requests for absurdly small donations adds up, over the course of a year, to a tidy sum.
But even that is only part of the story. The genius of the marketing lies in the perfection of the pitch – informal without being irritating; personal without being ingratiating; serious without being hectoring; graceful under the severest pressure. It is amusing to hear that the political parties in Britain are hoping to learn from the supreme professionalism of these techniques. Dream on, chaps. At the heart of the Obama campaign was the seductive appeal of the candidate himself. We may now have to ditch the once reliable adage that politics is showbiz for ugly people; whatever Obama is (and I’m still far from sure), ugly he ain’t. Our lot? Hug-a-hoodie Dave and non-flash Gordon just don’t have what it takes to fight an effective internet campaign. When Vince Cable is the most admired man in British politics, you know you have a charisma problem.
I left the house this morning thinking: well, Barack has got what he wanted; the great prize is his; I suppose the last person he’ll be thinking about at the moment is me.
How wrong could I be?
At 5.58am the first e-mail of the day arrived:
Kenneth —
I’m about to head to Grant Park to talk to everyone gathered there, but I wanted to write to you first.
We just made history.
And I don’t want you to forget how we did it.
You made history every single day during this campaign – every day you knocked on doors, made a donation, or talked to your family, friends and neighbors about why you believe it’s time for change.
I want to thank all of you who gave your time, talent and passion to this campaign.
We have a lot of work to do to get our country back on track, and I’ll be in touch soon about what comes next.
But I want to be very clear about one thing…
All of this happened because of you.
Thank you,
Barack
Now, that’s what I call customer care.
MIDWEEK
INBOX
LOOSE TALK
Two views of censorship
SILENCE AND FEAR AT THE BARBER’S
Kenneth Roy
[click here]
THE PRESS WE DESERVE?
Rose Galt
[click here]
GLASGOW BY NIGHT
Photo essay by Islay McLeod
[click here]
BRIEF LIVES
Profile of Jimmy Shand
[click here]
THE SCOTTISH REVIEWERS
Look at me – I’m worth £50
[click here]
THE POSTBOX
[click here]
OPEN
NOW!
The Scottish Review Bookshop
You can now
order ICS books online for Christmas
Including:
an outstanding collection of character studies
Islay McLeod’s Faces of Scotland
