By Richard M. Fawal
I supported Barack Obama during the campaign, and I wholeheartedly support his commitment as President to continue organizing Americans. Presidents often try to rally public support for their positions, but this is the first time any President has tried to actually organize public support into direct actions that will have measurable impact. That’s laudable.
The task is by no means an easy one. Governing is very different from campaigning, and building support for policy is not the same as building support for a politician. If the Administration is going to be successful in its organizing efforts, those charged with the task need to remember that effective organizing is first and foremost about community.
For political and organizing purposes, a community is defined as a group of like-minded individuals with a shared sense of purpose. Those of us in the business of mobilizing people to engage in politics know that sometimes a community exists and other times it must be created. Obama’s campaign successfully created a community out of Americans who shared a vision of the future and wanted to see change in government, and that community propelled him to victory.
Obama is mistaken, however, if he believes that the members of his campaign community will continue to be like-minded and share a sense of purpose now that the object of the mobilization is specific legislation; “change” and “hope” are easier organizing principles than stimulus plans and massive federal budgets. One cannot simply shift a community’s sense of purpose from one objective to another.
If the Administration is going to successfully organize support for the President’s policies, it must focus on mobilizing communities that already exist. The White House needs to understand which communities care the most about each policy priority and concentrate efforts on mobilizing them. Deliberately organizing factory workers, college students, homemakers, educators, business owners and other key communities into forces that will speak up on the President’s behalf on specific policies will produce far better results than simply trying to get the folks who campaigned for him to engage in every policy battle.
Many of organizations and corporations that may oppose the President on specific legislation have mastered this approach. Lobbyists for a large life insurance company I know never enter the office of a Member of Congress without an insurance agent from that Member’s district or state by their side. An airline industry client activates their vendors and suppliers every time Congress votes on an issue that affects their business. These businesses know the communities that care most about specific policies, and they know how to use them to get legislators’ attention.
The White House would do well to think very hard about what it really means to organize communities and to avoid the assumption that past organizing success ensures future success. President Obama is fully capable of creating a new template for presidential power, but if he is not careful he may preside over an organizing failure that will tarnish his presidency and frustrate those who worked so hard to help him attain it.
Richard M. Fawal is a Partner at Watts Partners.
