ProgressOhio

She’s smart, very smart.

She’s politically savvy – a keen strategic resource on many political campaigns. She fits in, with both Washington D.C. dignitaries and people in the hills far from our big cities. She’s also a solid Midwesterner to her core.

Hillary Clinton? Nope.

Frances Strickland – she of a doctorate in psychology; field coordinator for her husband in what was seen as unwinnable Appalachia; one-time field director of the Ohio Democratic Party and currently Ohio’s popular first lady.

Hillary and Frances have a lot in common. Hillary the Yale law graduate. Hillary the campaign wizard. Hillary who spent 12 years as Arkansas’ first lady and learned to fit in. Hillary who grew up in Park Ridge, Illinois.

Both are toughened – obviously Hillary’s been fired at more frequently – but don’t think for a moment those whisper campaigns and attacks on Ted Strickland during the ’06 campaign didn’t hurt.

So why then is Frances loved and Hillary a polarizing force in a presidential race that is hers to lose? Buck the consultants Hillary. Let us see a little inner-Frances and a little more about us and less about image. Hillary could use a dose of Frances right about now.

The fact of the matter is that Hillary was Frances, before Frances was Frances.

You can see it in the early Arkansas pictures. The countless pictures of her early work on children’s advocacy issues. You can sense that over time Hillary really connected in Arkansas. You can be smart, independent and fit in across the Ozarks. There is a strong connection between the strength of women who make households work in tough economic conditions, and the strong women involved in politics.

Yet, there are those who treat Hillary Clinton like she’s so battle-weary and street hardened that she needs a full-body scrub. It’s like DC political insiders try to give her a mammoth full-body pedicure – to scrub the wounds and calluses of a very mean-spirited political world rather than connect what those wounds represent to all of us.

You listen to some of the Iowa and New Hampshire commercials and the mechanics are right but the message is wrong. There is too much talk about Hillary and not enough about the voters. It is as if her handlers believe she can put on some magical hat like “Frosty The Snowwoman” and repackage a frosty image by starting over.

And why should she have to be reborn?

There are 34 videos on Hillary’s YouTube site in a series called “The Hillary I Know” and I watched many of them the other day. All heartfelt to be sure. But there is something missing about them.

Maybe it’s the slick commercial production. Maybe it’s the editing or vetting process. It occurred to me as I watched her on CSPAN the other day, speaking with her jacket unbuttoned, animated, connecting with some real people – not the stylized real people you see these days with hand-selected partisan people arrayed as if in Oprah’s studio with the candidate emerging from among the set (sorry Oprah I know it’s a Hill column and Barak’s your man.)

It’s ironic that some unscripted C-SPAN footage said more to me about Hillary Clinton than all the tens of millions of dollars worth of scripted moments in Iowa and New Hampshire.

Now keep in mind I’m an Ohioan, not a DC operative, so take this observation for what it’s worth (which given DC operatives contact with me this year isn’t much.) But Hillary reminded me of Frances Strickland in that brief CSPAN moment.

I’ve often told classes of students that political messaging is as much craft as it is science. No one taught me this, but in its essence, communication comes down to three distinct elements:

• THE ACTOR: The person or focus of the communication.
• THE ACTION: The verb of politics. The activity created or transmitted.
• THE RECEIVER: The receptor – the person between those two ears.

While communication is simple, the reality of it is hard. Primarily because we are not wired to hear the same things, to feel the same things, and to respond in the same way to the same things from that single messenger. Every childhood game of “telephone” demonstrates that simple reality.

And there lies the problem for Hillary Clinton’s handlers. Too much focus on the Actor in the age of new technology can lead to too many misfired interpretations by the Receiver.

As technology gets more sophisticated and political fundraising hits new heights, the 2008 branding of Hillary Clinton brings to mind marketers struggles during the ‘80s new Coke fiasco.

It’s not about the Actor; it’s about the Receiver/Audience. You cannot package the Candidate (the Actor) without making the issue about the taste’s of the voter (the Receiver.) And since we all receive things so differently – that means it can’t be a micro-researched talking point branding the candidate – it has to be a broader feeling than those tested – a degree of comfort that makes Hillary Clinton’s campaign not about her, but rather about us.

The funny thing about all of this is that the trend in political consulting is to make things more like modern Madison Avenue and conveniently ignores some of the very real problems with this style of marketing for something like the new Coke problem.

For all the marketing advances – focus groups, polls, micro-targeted marketing lists -- when they make marketing about the new Coke product itself, not about us, marketers face the wrath of Receivers convinced (rightly or wrongly) over broader experiential impressions like familiarity of taste, habit and cultural connections – all things about the consumer experience– not the product itself.

It’s as easy as remembering that if you go on a first date, or on a job interview, and the conversation is all about you – and not about your date or your interviewer – you leave with a sense of no connection. In that sense, the trend in politics is actually a flawed and outdated, product oriented model.

Iowa’s vote last night was more about a broad feeling about the change Huckabee and Obama represent and much less about anything Iowans actually know about either candidate personally.

Taken on their own, Hillary’s issues are right for many American progressives or moderate independents. Hillary’s roots are right. Hillary’s experience is right. But the focuses of her handling (as opposed to the handling mechanics itself) are wrong.

Many of those “The Hillary I Know” videos are people talking about Hillary (the actor) rather than about themselves (with some exceptions.) It’s almost a hyper-response to that infamous blogger’s “1984” commercial re-make.

The campaign’s mechanical improvements such as early conference calls into Southeast Ohio with both former President Bill Clinton and Hillary Clinton – are much improved over the mechanically benign neglect of John Kerry’s 2004 connection in that Ohio region.

But if those conference calls become more about Hillary and less about Ohio’s Appalachians, the campaign will have employed austere, controlled phone-mericals with party intelligencia and overlooked the everyday voter living in the shadows of the Harmar Tavern (down in Marietta) or up in Sugar Creek where you can still smell the wood-burning and coal-fired heat of Amish farm homes.

Hillary’s problem is that her handlers have made this about Hillary’s image – not about her role in America’s image. It’s a text book campaign full of smart, experienced operatives using the best in technology, micro-targeted voter files, polling, politically correct protocol and the best political messenger in America – Bill Clinton – but it’s blindly sucked the inner-Frances out of Hillary.

I’ve seen Frances only twice since she became Ohio’s First Lady. Yet I got the sense both times she hasn’t changed.

The thing that doesn’t seem to change is that talking to Frances Strickland, the comforting smile is the same and even the briefest conversation is about – well you – not her.

When you think about it Ted Strickland’s popularity in polls has little to do with Ohio, and everything to do with the fact that what he represents so far is about Ohioans. He may have cut some Medicare program – but he’s forgiven because it’s about you and handling your tax money. He may have had an identity protection crisis – but he insured all those folks affected – making the resolution focused on those who were wronged and taking the sting out of the impact on not just them, but all of us and our own fears about identity theft.

The Culture of Corruption was so devastating in Ohio, because it was about us, and how Bob Taft, Bob Ney and other cronies, appeared to be concerned more about themselves and their cronies interests. Government became about them – not us – that was the crux of Noe. Coins were just a metaphorical vehicle.

Bill Clinton survived his White House scars, largely because what he did for America was about Americans, not about him or his personal foibles. When Potomac insiders make things about the Actor/Candidate, they risk losing the broader picture of what matters to all of us, the Receiver audience, which is in fact our most fascinating subject-- ourselves. Congressional Republicans found that out painfully in mid-term losses after the Lewinsky impeachment scandal.

George W. Bush can’t mistake the inevitable bad polling he gets, largely because, his decisions seem to be about him – about his ideology, about his cowboy way – about the Actor taking action, not the Receiver getting action. That’s why in 2004 he had to shift from Iraq to the co-opting of the inner psyche of our own Twin Towers fears of domestic terrorism. Terrorism is about us. Iraq is about Iraqis – rightly or wrongly in the American psyche.

The hyper-focus on the “real” Hillary fundamentally is trying to package her audience into a one-dimensional response that is so focused to the new Coke-politician it tends to alienate the very different ways many of us receive and react to their carefully researched messaging.

But when political messaging becomes about us and our collective wants and needs – as broad and expansive in interpreting things as we may be -- even impeachment or an unpopular Iraq War cannot cut through that strong personal connection or theme to the Actor/Candidate.

I’m sure in the case of both Hillary and Frances Strickland, handlers have their hands full. Two strong, educated women, who have more electoral experience than most of those around them – yet find themselves handled by the latest Political gizmo craze – the media grid – which is essentially a controlling method to ensure messaging is delivered with little deviation from focus groups or polling’s micro-message.

Message discipline they call it – conveniently forgetting that there is no discipline in how we humanly receive and react to micro-targeted information.

But you know the digital age is a very different unpolished age of new media. It breaks down the barriers of secret service agents, and even makes celebrities and internationally known politicians all too real in Digital High Definition to boot. And most importantly it makes the Deaver-like DC handlers and their grids cringe because it can’t be controlled – but that is what seals the modern missing connection between Potomacland and us. That’s what seems to be missing in Hillary’s callous makeover.

Hillary’s handlers have to realize that actors only play the roles; the audiences of voters determine hits – no matter the cost of the production. And memorable movies succeed by relating to the audiences connection, not the actors reflection.

Rather than hear broadcasters babble spin about the “real” Hillary, or stylized productions of people talking about Hillary – the lesson coming out of Iowa is America needs to see and feel universally how an unscripted Hillary fits in as one of us – the 1992 Hillary we saw ticking off Tammy Wynnette in her famous “stand-by your man” 60 Minutes moment.

Give Hillary back a little bit of her inner-Frances. Give her more of what was on CSPAN so briefly the other day. Make Ohio’s Presidential election about Ohioans unplugged instead of nebbishly controlling the candidates image into Hillary plugged up.

A little dose of that inner-Frances making Americans feel that Hillary Clinton’s candidacy is about us, not her – now that’s a Scioto Fever that will melt through icy waters.