"All that is old and already formed can continue to live only if it allows within itself the conditions of a new beginning."
Running The Other Way with Ad Guru Hillsman
Posted 5:06 p.m., May 16, 2004
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I'll try to hold that thought as I relate what I heard Friday night on the Minnesota Public Television political affairs program Almanac."I try never to attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained by stupidity."
-- Bill Hillsman,
"Run the Other Way" (2004)
It was part of a discussion about the do-nothing Minnesota legislative session, which ended today. As the TV panel insiders predicted, little was accomplished. Gov. Tim Pawlenty's Education Commissioner Cheri Pierson Yecke was ousted through a non-confirmation vote. Lt. Gov. Carol Molnau was approved as Transportation commissioner, as were Employee Relations Commissioner Cal Ludeman and Metropolitan Council member Annette Meeks. (Senate committees had voted to oust Molnau and Meeks.)
On the other hand, the Legislature failed to close a $160 million budget deficit--a figure many expect will balloon next year to at least $1 billion, counting inflation. Lawmakers didn't pass a bonding bill that would have created numerous construction jobs. It got nowhere on proposals to extend sex predator sentences or to build stadiums for the Twins, Gophers and Vikings. A do-nothing Legislature.
So, back to Friday's TV program. What do you one Republican insider had to say about all this public-policy gridlock? Think she expressed outrage? Guess again.
"It doesn't hurt Republicans that they don't do much. I keep hearing that this is going to be bad for the Republicans if they don't do something. And it's like, no, actually I don't think the public is actually asking for anything. So I don't think it's bad for incumbents."
-- Mary Krinkie, Minnesota GOP lobbyistThis could as easily have come from a Democrat--in fact, it actually did, from DFL Senate Majority Leader Dean Johnson, who said, "The Democrats really don't need anything." You'll notice he's talking about his party's stalwarts. Not the citizens he and his party are supposed to represent.
Here's my translation of these sentiments:
Look, we in the two major parties have done our job. We've so alienated mainstream voters with years of negative campaign tactics, obsession over wedge social issues and rancorous incivility that we've turned state politics into our own private sandbox. The public isn't asking for anything; why would they? They don't think we'd do anything if they did ask. They can't even stand to look at us, or think about us. So we don't have to do anything for them. This is our own private club, for members only. Our only obligation is to get re-elected.
If you agree with that interpretation, allow me to recommend Bill Hillsman's new book, "Run the Other Way."
Election Industry Inc.
Anyone who knows Hillsman knows two things. He's serious. And he is masterful at the art of promotion--including self-promotion. He has no compunction in saying things about his North Woods Advertising firm like, "We've revolutionized the art of political advertising." But what the heck? He's right.
Hillsman and crew's ads ("Fast-Paced Paul," "Jesse Ventura Action Figure") were driving forces behind the low-budget election upsets of U.S. Sen. Paul Wellstone and Gov. Jesse Ventura.
His book describes much of what lay behind those campaigns, including Wellstone's initial reluctance to air the "Fast-Paced Paul" ad on the grounds that it didn't make Wellstone "look senatorial"--as if the Garfunkel-haired, spark-plug-sized Wellstone could ever look the part. The more media-savvy Ventura, on the other hand, did not hesitate to approve the action-figure motif for his ad campaign.
The book includes some fascinating side notes. It reveals, for instance, that early in the 2000 race, Wellstone and Jesse Jackson considered running on a single ticket for the presidency, but the idea fell apart when they couldn't decide who should top the bill.
It also describes the changes in Paul Wellstone, between the time of his idealistic 1990 Senate victory to his more orthodox 1996 re-election campaign. Wellstone had waffled on gay rights, voting for the Defense of Marriage Act. He flip-flopped on motorized vehicles in the protected Boundary Waters area of northern Minnesota. He flipped on whether he would vote for a flag-burning amendment.
It was a reelection bid that Hillsman--who could be faulted at times for a bit too much idealism--plainly found disspiriting, especially as it became clear that the senator was falling under the sway of big campaign money and election mill hacks and pollsters. The internal conflicts made for some senatorial paranoia. Hillsman describes an episode in which Wellstone pulled him aside, expressing fear that a Republican flak might have photographed him in a compromising position as Wellstone left a well-to-do Los Angeles donor's home.
Wellstone worried that at any moment, the Republicans might publish a picture that he thought could make it appear Wellstone was trying to hide his face with his coat, like some mafia don fleeing a courthouse. (In reality, Wellstone apparently was simply putting the jacket on when he heard a camera shutter click. The photo was never produced.)
At the heart of Hillsman's book is an indictment of what he calls "Election Industry Inc." Among these he includes political parties, pollsters, political consultants, media mavens, special interest groups and lobbyists, among others who profit from the current political system. That is, everyone but voters and candidates.
Election Industry Inc., in the Hillsman view, is all about incumbency. Incumbents are already subordinated to the system, they don't create problems in the way that mavericks like Jesse Ventura and John McCain tend to do. Officials that are used to being treated like royalty, who have it in their power to write the rules of the game to prohibit the intrusion of outsiders, have little incentive to change those rules.
"Election Industry Inc. is a vast and mendacious enterprise that has fooled all but the smartest and bravest candidates into believing that their way is the only way. Using the power of money and media, it is debasing our democracy and aligns itself against the best parts of our nature. Election Industry inc. is an enemy of the people, with colossal advantages and odds that are overwhelmingly in its favor."
-- Bill Hillsman,
"Run the Other Way" (2004)The rhetoric is a little hot, but the sentiment is understandable.
We Like ... Yikes!
To Hillsman, it takes much more than producing a few creative ads to stage the kind of maverick upsets he achieved with Wellstone and Ventura. It takes intelligence, strategizing, targeted marketing, and, if Hillsman is to be believed, dedication to the notion that the message is true.
But it also takes something else that Election Industry Inc. seems unable to grasp. It takes likeability on the part of the candidate. Hillsman's analysis on this subject could inadvertently point to bad tidings for presidential aspirant John Kerry, a frosty candidate chosen to confront the folksy George Bush on the basis of "electability," a supposed Kerry characteristic peddled heavily during the Democratic primaries by the practitioners of Election Industry Inc.
As he does over and over in his book, Hillsman ably boils the complexity of this point down to a few cogent lines.
"Here's why likeability is so important. Voters have to feel comfortable having you the candidate in their living room, especially in these days of TV-oriented campaigns. If they're not--if they can't trust you and don't like you--it doesn't matter what you have to say about Social Security or education or foreign policy or any of the Big Issues. They aren't listening. You can have the best ideas in the world. But if voters don't like you, they aren't going to vote for you."
-- Bill Hillsman,
"Run the Other Way" (2004)
Sheep Herders
Hillsman, an advocate of a new progressive third-party movement, shows his greatest disgust with the practice of the two major parties to actively limit the number of people drawn out to the polls on Election Day.
He asserts that, despite all the teeth-gnashing and scolding of those not participating in elections, the reality is that the electionmeisters pretty much want everyone to stay home, except for theor own party faithful--those whose votes and attitudes they can predict, if not control.
That's why the emergence of figures like Ross Perot and Jesse Ventura, or even nominal major-party mavericks like John McCain and Arnold Schwarzenegger, gives Election Industry Inc. convulsions, according to Hillsman. They bear a message--and elicit a response--that can't be easily measured, polled or controlled.
And that's because they bring out the independent-minded voters; people who think for themselves, take their time deciding on candidates, and regard the sludge that passes for "information" during campaigns for what it is, and ignore it.
"... As far as Election Industry Inc. is concerned, participation in our democracy is only good as long as it is predictable."Political parties don't want independent-minded voters going to the polls. They want like-minded voters going to the polls. They and their pollsters want to know what issue is most important to you and where you stand on that issue. Then--and only then--do they care or want to know if you intended to vote. If you're with 'em, golly gee yes, they want you to vote and they'll spend plenty of money telling you how right you are to think the way you think and vote the way you do. They'll even arrange a ride to the polls for you.
"If you're agin 'em, however, they will do everything they can to make you stay home, including making it difficult for you to get into the polls once you get to the polling place. Sometimes--as we saw in our last presidential election--they make it difficult for your vote to count even after you've cast it."
-- Bill Hillsman,
"Run the Other Way" (2004)Hillsman wraps up the book with a series of recommendations on running a winning insurgent campaign. It isn't the strongest part of the book, consisting mainly of a series of relative generalities ("Use the Internet effectively"; "Achieve critical mass in your fundraising"; "Be creative") and doesn't go very far in describing how the objectives might be achieved. After all, with all the obstacles put in place by the major-party powers, that is the central question.
But that's a fairly small complaint. Over all, this is a unique, valuable, idiosyncratic analysis of the state of our political paralysis, and worthy reading for anyone seeking to understand how it happened and what might be done about it.
Find out more about the book at BillHillsman.com
You can also view the best of Hillsman's political ads at the same site.
