Category: Chairman’s Desk

Trump’s larger-than-life rallies, his brilliant use of social media, and his ability to churn headlines touched more voters than any army of door-knockers could ever hope for.

Thisarticle first appeared in the Toronto Star on November 20, 2016.

 

The sky hasn’t fallen.

It has been nearly two weeks since the U.S. presidential election; the stock market is coasting along, the nuclear arsenal has yet to be launched, Americans are still going to work every day and the President-elect continues his passion for unfiltered tweeting.

Trump’s campaign’s successful unorthodoxy demonstrated there is no longer a cookie-cutter formula to winning political campaigns.

This success will have meaningful implications for upcoming election cycles. Trump’s winning campaign, which will be deconstructed for years, has fundamentally altered who is able to run for public office, who votes in elections and what matters during campaigns.

Cable news commentators spent weeks analyzing, prodding and lambasting not only Trump’s debate performances but his whole campaign. While they laughed at his Republican convention, and criticized his lack of policy chops, Trump’s voters didn’t care.

Trump threw out the campaign rule book because he had never read the campaign rule book. And, in doing so, created at least three new rules for elections to come.

First, the person with the best ground game no longer necessarily wins. Second, television advertising is no longer the key to success. Third, authenticity no longer matters.

Throughout the campaign, Trump insisted he did not need to rely on traditional campaign tactics to win. Hillary Clinton used the data-driven, on-the-ground machine that propelled President Barack Obama to two straight electoral victories. Trump, meanwhile, pointed to the overwhelming nomination victory he achieved with a relatively small team on a tight budget, and he stuck to that strategy for the election campaign.

Defying all convention, Trump registered new voters in record numbers. Since 2012, Republicans in Florida alone registered more than 350,000 more voters than the Democrats. Trump’s larger-than-life rallies, his brilliant use of social media, and his ability to churn headlines touched more voters on a sustained basis than any army of door-knockers could ever hope for.

Nationally, Clinton had more than twice the number of field offices Trump had — 489 to 207 — and three times Trump’s presence in North Carolina, Iowa and Colorado, yet won only Colorado. In crucial battleground states, the Democratic National Committee had the edge over the Republicans. The Democrats employed five times more staff and organizers in Florida, seven times more in Pennsylvania, and an eye-popping 26 times more in Ohio.

Second, Trump campaigned in a different way. Instead of spending millions of dollars on television advertising, he focused on old-school rallies, his message seeping through the free media coverage and his often-ridiculous Twitter posts.

Never before, in a presidential race, has there been such a disparity in the amount of money spent on television advertising. But this advantage did nothing to move independent and undecided voters to Clinton. Rather, it was Trump’s strategy of earned media, alongside an active and well-run social media presence that was most effective.

At the end of the campaign, Trump had raised $258 million, which was only a bit more than the Clinton campaign’s spending on TV ads alone, and far behind Clinton’s total spending of $502 million.

Some pundits have claimed it was Trump’s masterful use of social media that pushed him over the top. Rather, it was the combination of earned media, social media and rock-concert-sized rallies that defeated a stunned Clinton machine in both swing states and traditionally Democratic U.S. Rust Belt states.

Finally, rather than strive for authenticity, he played a consistent role just as he had done on his reality TV shows,

The Apprentice

and

The Celebrity Apprentice

.

Campaign professionals strive to create an authentic candidate who people can relate to; one with a back story that captures the essence of people’s aspirations.

This was never going to happen with Trump, an unusually privileged son of a businessman, a billionaire who hasn’t paid federal taxes in years.

But for what Trump lacked in authenticity, he made up for with consistency. His contrivance was perfectly constant, across all media, whether it was a major network interview, a stadium appearance in front of 10,000 adoring fans or a late-night Tweet.

This bombastic, entertaining and egotistical character had a message. And he knew it. He stuck to it. And his supporters latched on. And he won.

Jaime Watt is the executive chairman of Navigator Ltd. and a Conservative strategist.

The Insiders are back! Jaime Watt joins Peter Mansbridge, Kathleen Monk and David Herle to discuss the U.S. election. Is Donald Trump’s win a game-changer for political campaigns and how they are run?

Aired on CBC’s The National on November 15, 2016

Just as Harper has watched Trudeau dismantle 10 years of policies, Obama will witness Trump do the same as both victors stand in stark contrast to their predecessors

There’s an adage in politics: Your successor is your legacy.

Politicians spend their lives in government advocating for policies and passing legislation they believe will form their legacy — one they hope will be a lasting one for the nation. We have no shortage of such Canadian figures; think of John A. Macdonald, Wilfrid Laurier, Tommy Douglas and the mythology that continues to exist around them.

But more than what they achieve in office, the legacy for many is defined by the leader who replaces them.

That’s something I have been thinking about this week. How Barack Obama’s legacy will be defined by his successor, Donald J. Trump.

After all, President-elect Trump is everything Obama is not. And in many ways, the fundamental differences between the two men led to Trump’s victory in Tuesday’s U.S. election.

Obama is politically correct; Trump disavows political correctness. Obama is an intellectual; Trump rails against the intelligentsia. Obama is a policy wonk; Trump policy can be described on a bumper sticker. Obama is an internationalist, in favour of globalization, free trade and immigration; Trump not so much.

This time, however, the people who voted for Trump didn’t use the criteria upon which Obama was elected. Rather, these white, primarily rural, and middle-aged voters formed a new coalition founded on disenchantment with the status quo and a belief that the system was fundamentally rigged against them.

This coalition of voters was formed because of a canyon of deep division. A divide between urbanites and rural dwellers, the educated and uneducated, the rich and poor, and whites and ethnic minorities that’s growing at an alarming rate and is creating an inescapable ‘us vs. them’ mentality.

Feeling ignored by Washington, and more specifically by Obama and his administration, this cohort of voters focused on disappearing manufacturing jobs, a porous U.S. border and their very real sense that America’s value system was shifting under their feet. And that their America was becoming unrecognizable.

Donald Trump and Barack Obama’s policy platforms run entirely counter to each other, with little in the way of overlap.

However, there is more than just policy differences at play. A successor can represent the celebration or utter repudiation of their predecessors’ approach to leadership and governance.

A Clinton victory would have cemented Obama’s policy legacy and reinforced his governing style. Rather, with Trump’s victory, the latter appears to be the case.

This is not just an American phenomenon, of course, nor is it new. In 2013, Mayor John Tory, a renowned collaborator and consensus builder, was elected largely as a consequence of voters’ exhaustion with the divisiveness of the Ford era.

In Ontario in 1995, Mike Harris replaced Bob Rae as premier. He did so based on his Common Sense Revolution and plan for smaller government and tax relief, which washed away Rae’s far more expansive government.

And more recently, in 2015, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau was elected prime minister, skyrocketing from third place in the House of Commons to leader of a majority government.

His success, in large part, was the stark contrast Trudeau provided with his predecessor.

How gut-wrenching must it be for Harper to watch as Trudeau repeals much of the significant legislation from his 10 years of public service?

There was little common ground between the agendas of Trudeau’s campaign and the Harper government. The Liberals have decimated the previous government’s tough-on-crime legislation, climate change policy, and fiscal framework.

While Trudeau continues to enjoy an extended post-election honeymoon, the Conservative Party is about to select its next leader. Kellie Leitch — the antithesis to Trudeau — is starting to look more and more like the next Tory leader. Many among the elites, as Leitch likes to call them, are puzzled by what she is up to.

But as the 2019 federal election approaches, a case can be made that the voter base that mobilized for Brexit and Trump could manifest itself in Canada. Make no mistake: Canada is not immune to such discontent, and if storm clouds occlude Trudeau’s sunny ways, there’s a chance the next prime minister of Canada will be diametrically opposite to the current one.

Obama desperately wanted Clinton to win, for both his legacy and his country, and he campaigned relentlessly for her. Her failure is his loss, and his legacy has been tarnished because of it.

Jaime Watt is the executive chairman of Navigator Ltd. and a Conservative strategist.

Jaime joins Matt Galloway on CBC Toronto to discuss the outcome of the U.S. election.

Aired on Metro Morning on CBC on November 9, 2016

The prime minister’s governing style assumes one crucial thing — voters are willing to overlook large deficits. But for voters to happily stomach deficits, they must see results.

According to the Polimeter, an online application created by political scientists at Laval University, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s government has kept 24 per cent of the 353 campaign promises the Liberal Party made during the 2015 federal election campaign. He has broken five promises, which is about one per cent.

The Liberals pledged they would run short-term deficits of less than $10 billion in each of the next two fiscal years to fund investments in infrastructure and the middle class.

This week, in Finance Minister Bill Morneau’s fiscal update, the government doubled down. In its first year in office, the Trudeau government has racked up a deficit of nearly $31.8 billion.

The Laval analysis has highlighted that the number of promises kept entirely or in part (56 per cent) by this government far outweighs its predecessors’ average after one year (33 per cent).

The conscious decision to break the promise of ‘modest’ deficits has allowed the Trudeau government to remain on track with its other foundational promises. Simply put, the Trudeau government has broken one foundational promise to facilitate the progress of 348 others.

In the 2015 election, a plurality of voters was willing to accept that the new government would increase the debt.

On Tuesday, Morneau talked about the long term, announcing his plans for attracting foreign investment and creating an independent infrastructure bank. Strategically, the government eliminated the $6 billion annual contingency fund, making the government’s figures appear less overwhelming.

It is too early to tell if Canadians will remain as comfortable with this approach as they have been in the past. For now, the Liberals are still riding high in polls.

According to Nanos Research, one in two Canadians say they prefer Trudeau as Prime Minister, 16 per cent prefer interim Conservative Leader Rona Ambrose, and eight per cent prefer lame-duck NDP Leader Thomas Mulcair.

Political wisdom holds that to govern effectively, prime ministers have to make hard decisions, including ones that divide voters, shift governing philosophies and diminish voter goodwill.

Trudeau’s governing style may challenge this model.

Trudeau has positioned himself as a consensus-building, fiscally liberal politician who employs fact-based policy-making. As opposed to picking winners and losers, Trudeau tends avoid decisions that upset or let down large swaths of the population. Instead, he spends money to solve his policy problems and fulfil campaign promises.

This governing style assumes one crucial thing — that voters are willing to overlook large deficits. But for voters to happily stomach deficits, they must see results.

In its first year in office, the Trudeau government has approved a pipeline, increased funding for the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, created 40,000 jobs for youth, taken in more than 30,000 refugees and cut the rate for the middle income tax bracket to 20.5 per cent from 22 per cent, addressing issues that spoke to the urban, young and educated voters who swung the election in the Liberals’ favour in 2015.

Moreover, people who cite the deficit as a determining factor when they vote are firmly within the Conservative Party tent and will likely never consider voting for Justin Trudeau.

The current government in Ontario is a case study in how deficits don’t necessarily affect a party’s electoral fortunes. The provincial Liberals have accumulated a significant amount of debt, leaving Ontario, astoundingly, as the world’s most indebted subnational government.

Yet, it’s not Ontario’s fiscal situation that is hurting the Liberal government. It is issues like high hydro prices — which seem to be a conversation topic around every dinner table these days — that seem to be threatening the Ontario Liberals’ long reign.

Ontario’s sky-high debt has been around for decades; it has yet to facilitate a changing of the guard.

Prime Minister Trudeau will continue to spend, and to give Canadians what they want and what he promised them. It would not be surprising to learn that his team has a comprehensive plan to execute, at least partially, on the remaining 152 promises before election 2019.

Stephen Harper’s government constantly warned voters that deficits would have dire consequences. The message fell on deaf ears.

Everything we’ve learned in Canadian politics in the last two decades has demonstrated voters do not care about the deficit, and our prime minister knows this better than anyone.

Jaime Watt is the executive chairman of Navigator Ltd. and a Conservative strategist.