Marketing Politically

Just a stray thought of which I haven't been able to rid myself over the weekend and into miserable Monday: What is politics if not marketing?

While Aristotle would say that political thought and reflection are the highest acts of natural causes that a man can make, what difference does any of the diplomacy make if not for the sake of re-election?

Re-election, being the lifeblood of any political viability, is both vice and virtue to politics, or so it seems to me. That's why we have different levels within our legislative bodies of representation: House has two years, President gets four, and the Senate gets six years to make their case for another term.

We obviously want some level of our government privy to the whims of the masses, and some to be insulated from those wants. That sensitivity binds politicians to their election campaigns; the most sensitive, the victor.

Marketing strategists and political operatives don't seem all that different, it's just a different strategy. You brand the face, name, phrase of your candidate, or some combination of all three, to get people who are uninterested interested. You enter the lexicon, thrusting your campaign — yes, both political and marketing campaigns — into the vernacular of those you wish to influence.

You saw a lot of that with the election of President Obama. He had a big, grinning face, unique, but not-difficult-to-pronounce-name, and hung a five letter banner "CHANGE" everywhere he went, first written by hand from loyal supporters in Iowa, to pressed on designer T-shirts. The iconic, three-color picture of the President is what will be remembered most from his campaign. It encompassed all three.

Senators, like Arkansas' Blanche Lincoln, are having to walk a tight rope toward re-elected prosperity, an arduous and difficult gait. She's obviously got her hands tied in some kind of restraint by those who will or will not elect her for a third consecutive term to the Senate.

While her policies are complex, her record long, and her biography well-documented, look for her opposition to use short sentences, if not monosyllabic phrases. She helped them out by dubbing a sympathetic constituency "un-American," but that will be a throw away.

I'm not really looking for an answer, it's just been buzzing around in my head. For all of the high-minded thought that's going into such policies as health care, climate changes, and, oh yeah, those two wars we're fighting, I'm just hoping that politics — the important part of it anyway — is more than picking between Reebok and Nike.

Random thought for the day. You're welcome.