February 11, 2009 5:12 PM
- Text
A Conversation With Joe Trippi
(CBS)
Political Players is a weekly conversation with the leaders, consultants, and activists who are shaping American politics. This week, CBS News' Brian Goldsmith talked with veteran Democratic strategist Joe Trippi at a conference on Youth and Voting sponsored by Harvard's Institute of Politics. The following is an edited version of that conversation:.
CBSNews.com: Joe, you were Howard Dean's campaign manager in 2004. What were the biggest positive lessons from that campaign that you think the 2008 candidates could emulate?
Joe Trippi: Well, I think that campaign proved you can get more people volunteering for you and raise more dollars if you have a strong Internet component to your campaign. And I think the tool sets of Facebook, MySpace, YouTube -- all these things that we didn't have -- only make it more powerful for people to send their friends video of you and say, "Hey, vote for this guy." I mean, different things like that are much stronger than they were for us.
And I think we were pretty successful at changing that paradigm. You'll see more of that this cycle.
CBSNews.com: Are there some tools that you would say a candidate shouldn't use because there's no control and they could quickly spiral out in a way that could hurt the campaign?
Joe Trippi: No, I don't. We never ran into those kinds of problems. I think we ran into trying to use technologies that weren't ready for primetime yet like text messaging in 2003 or 2004. I'm still not sure it's ready yet. You can go down an alley and spend a lot of time and resources trying to become the biggest text messaging network in the country, and it doesn't amount to anything.
I still have yet to find the website or the tool that blows your campaign up. I mean, the Dean campaign didn't get blown up by something that happened on the web. Although a lot of people predicted that would happen, it doesn't happen.
CBSNews.com: And what are the negative lessons? I mean, what do you think campaigns in 2008 could learn from Dean that they should do differently? Was it your spending rate? The way you used technology?
Joe Trippi No. Look at the campaign, the candidate, and his message--and the old politics still matter. I mean, negative politics still works. Attack ads still work. Just because you use the internet to raise all this money doesn't mean somebody can't nuke you and cause you to lose and cause your negative ratings to go up. It's not going to protect you any more than a lot of money to buy television that was raised at dinners will protect you from attack ads.
On the spending, I think everybody's going to do it even worse this time because, as important as we thought winning Iowa was in terms of the calendar, it's even more important this time. We were operating under a theory saying, "there's no sense in having a dime after Iowa and New Hampshire because whoever wins Iowa and New Hampshire will not be stopped." We, I think, were right in making that judgment, if you look at what happened with John Kerry.
And I don't think having $40 million or $50 million in the bank would have stopped John Kerry from rolling through those states. Some other campaign manager may make a different argument. But that's the one I would make.
And I would make the case that this year, it's even worse because all those states have moved up. And I don't care if you have $400 million in the bank, and Hillary might. If somebody surprises her and wins Iowa and New Hampshire, that person is going to be rolling. They have so much momentum that all that money hoarded and saved up, all those chestnuts, aren't going to do you any good.
CBSNews.com: Let's talk a little bit about the technology because you, obviously, were a big innovator and a pioneer four years ago.
Joe Trippi: Look, the first wagon train across the country didn't necessarily take the best route, right?
They were still a bunch of brave people in the wagon train. The arrows were coming. Did the first one even make it? I have no idea. But I'm saying, look, we were pioneering. Sometimes we did go down the wrong road -- I mean, we did, "Oh, gosh. That's a dead end. We've got to turn around and come back." But I mean, there's no way if we tried to not blaze a new trail and tried to do it the old way, there's no way anybody would even know who we are today.
CBSNews.com: Joe, you were Howard Dean's campaign manager in 2004. What were the biggest positive lessons from that campaign that you think the 2008 candidates could emulate?
Joe Trippi: Well, I think that campaign proved you can get more people volunteering for you and raise more dollars if you have a strong Internet component to your campaign. And I think the tool sets of Facebook, MySpace, YouTube -- all these things that we didn't have -- only make it more powerful for people to send their friends video of you and say, "Hey, vote for this guy." I mean, different things like that are much stronger than they were for us.
And I think we were pretty successful at changing that paradigm. You'll see more of that this cycle.
CBSNews.com: Are there some tools that you would say a candidate shouldn't use because there's no control and they could quickly spiral out in a way that could hurt the campaign?
Joe Trippi: No, I don't. We never ran into those kinds of problems. I think we ran into trying to use technologies that weren't ready for primetime yet like text messaging in 2003 or 2004. I'm still not sure it's ready yet. You can go down an alley and spend a lot of time and resources trying to become the biggest text messaging network in the country, and it doesn't amount to anything.
I still have yet to find the website or the tool that blows your campaign up. I mean, the Dean campaign didn't get blown up by something that happened on the web. Although a lot of people predicted that would happen, it doesn't happen.
CBSNews.com: And what are the negative lessons? I mean, what do you think campaigns in 2008 could learn from Dean that they should do differently? Was it your spending rate? The way you used technology?
Joe Trippi No. Look at the campaign, the candidate, and his message--and the old politics still matter. I mean, negative politics still works. Attack ads still work. Just because you use the internet to raise all this money doesn't mean somebody can't nuke you and cause you to lose and cause your negative ratings to go up. It's not going to protect you any more than a lot of money to buy television that was raised at dinners will protect you from attack ads.
On the spending, I think everybody's going to do it even worse this time because, as important as we thought winning Iowa was in terms of the calendar, it's even more important this time. We were operating under a theory saying, "there's no sense in having a dime after Iowa and New Hampshire because whoever wins Iowa and New Hampshire will not be stopped." We, I think, were right in making that judgment, if you look at what happened with John Kerry.
And I don't think having $40 million or $50 million in the bank would have stopped John Kerry from rolling through those states. Some other campaign manager may make a different argument. But that's the one I would make.
And I would make the case that this year, it's even worse because all those states have moved up. And I don't care if you have $400 million in the bank, and Hillary might. If somebody surprises her and wins Iowa and New Hampshire, that person is going to be rolling. They have so much momentum that all that money hoarded and saved up, all those chestnuts, aren't going to do you any good.
CBSNews.com: Let's talk a little bit about the technology because you, obviously, were a big innovator and a pioneer four years ago.
Joe Trippi: Look, the first wagon train across the country didn't necessarily take the best route, right?
They were still a bunch of brave people in the wagon train. The arrows were coming. Did the first one even make it? I have no idea. But I'm saying, look, we were pioneering. Sometimes we did go down the wrong road -- I mean, we did, "Oh, gosh. That's a dead end. We've got to turn around and come back." But I mean, there's no way if we tried to not blaze a new trail and tried to do it the old way, there's no way anybody would even know who we are today.
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