Burson-Marsteller

Hold the back page

by Michiel van Hulten on 5th November 2008 • The Cast Blog

The New York Times is an American institution. It is the newspaper of record. It is known as a ‘liberal’ newspaper (in the US, ‘liberal’ means leftwing) – it has backed every Democratic presidential candidate in living memory. And so in a sense, today’s headline on the front page is no surprise. “Obama” is the single word emblazoned across the top of page 1.

But except for the first page, there’s no mention of the election in the paper’s main section. That’s not because the New York Times doesn’t care about the election. On the contrary, it cares passionately. It’s simply because the paper has a golden rule: international news first. So pages 2 – 29 today tell us about an Iranian minister being fired, a Colombian army commander resigning, an Israeli strike in Gaza and a plane crash in Mexico. You have to turn to page 30 (and a special supplement) to get the paper’s take on Barack Obama’s “decisive and sweeping” victory.

For many years the Gray Lady (as the New York Times is sometimes affectionately known) seemed out of touch in putting foreign news ahead of domestic developments. Today it couldn’t be more in tune with the popular mood. That’s not because Americans have all of a sudden developed a taste for overseas events. But in electing Barack Obama as their next President, they have defied the laws of political gravity – just as the New York Times has done throughout its existence.

Europeans sometimes perceive Americans as not being the most politically sophisticated electorate. And yet yesterday they elected arguably the greatest politician in a generation, an unapologetic intellectual and a passionate internationalist as their next President. The New York Times all of a sudden looks very ‘with it’.

I have had the incredible privilege of being present at three key moments in the ascent of Barack Obama. The first time was in 2004, when he delivered the keynote address at the Democratic Convention in Boston and called for an end to partisan politics – telling his audience that “there are no blue states, there are no red states, there are the United States of America”. The second time was when he accepted the Democratic nomination for President in August of this year. “This election is not about me, it’s about you” was his message at Invesco Field, the 85,000 seat ‘mile high’ stadium in Denver, Colorado. The third time was last Monday, when he held the closing rally of his campaign at Manassas Park in rural Virginia. There, he managed to work the crowd into such a frenzy that his rallying cry of “Fired up! Ready to go!” could to be heard for days on end – including from the otherwise perfectly behaved group of Burson-Marsteller consultants and clients I am in Washington with.

Having observed Obama closely for the last four years, nothing is more striking than the consistency of his message. Sure, he has finetuned a little here and there, and the economic and financial crisis have forced him to talk more about bread and butter issues than he is naturally inclined to do (for Obama, politics is more about the ‘how’ than about the ‘what’). But his basic premise has remained unchanged: it’s time for all of us in the United States to come together and change this country. Political pundits and campaign veterans marvel at his ability to stay ‘on message’. But to see this merely as a successful campaign strategy is to miss the point. When Obama repeats the same point day after day, week after week, month after month, year after year, it is not because he tries (and manages) to be ‘on message’, but because he passionately believes in the new politics he is advocating, the result of a lifetime of living the kind of change he is calling for. His authenticity is what defines him; it’s what secured his victory in the Democratic primary and it’s what won him the support of the American people yesterday.

Hard as though this may be to believe today, America will at some point grow tired of Barack Obama. All political careers ultimately end in failure – the only question is when. I was in London in May 1997, when Tony Blair was first elected – and we all know how that story ended. But today, Obama embodies the American yearning for change, for a return to international respectability and moral leadership in uncertain times. Last night, the streets of Washington DC and America were awash with people celebrating. Cars were honking, strangers embracing each other, foreigners made to feel welcome. And today, as it chronicles the Obama victory in the special section buried deep inside its daily edition, the New York Times is the coolest paper in town.

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