INSIDE POLITICS - THAT AD: HILLARY'S MAC JOB

This is the ad that has mysteriously appeared on the Internet and has taken the Democratic primary debate by storm. It's a very clever parody of a 1984 ad for Apple Macintosh computers (based on George Orwell's novel 1984) which effectively portrayed IBM as Big Brother and promised to smash the consensus.
In this ad, it is Hillary who is portrayed as the evil and controlling establishmentarian. It certainly puts those wan so-called Fine Gael attack ads from the beginning of the year (see the billboard discussions here!)into the shade, in terms of professionalism, the personalised nature and focus.

There is a clever reference to Barack Obama's website at the end but his camp have hotly denied any involvement.

In the double-cross conspiracy theories, some people believe that Hillary's people put it up so they could put about the suggestion that Barack Obama's people were getting so desperate they had to resort to attacking her.

Anyways, as far as political advertising in this country goes, let's paraphrase a very famous sentence from 1917 in Russia: I have seen the future and it sucks!

INSIDE POLITICS - The Grid

Outside conference season, Sundays are usually quiet days for political journalists. The political parties all know it is a quiet news day. Most of the press releases all have a 'Here's one I prepared earlier' vibe to them.

But in a strange kind of way, weekends have almost been busier than weekdays over the past two months. To be sure, a lot of it is explained by the party conferences and Ard Fheiseanna.

But it's axiomatic that an election is approaching faster than an Atlantic squall.

Sunday was a short straw day. Four separate press conferences - two Government, one PD, and one Labour. At least one of them - and maybe two - was a neat demonstration of the goldfish syndrome. Backroom people know that collective memories last all of about three seconds. So the trick is to announce the same thing over and over again.

But Sunday was the first time that I got a sense of the Grid. The Grid is the diary mode that all parties go into in an election campaign. The schedule everything to wonkish, nerdish, paranoid and exhaustive detail. There's the message of the day. There's the issue of the day. All the effort to get maximum exposure for the party's top personalities across as many demographics, across as wide a geography, as possible.

The Grid will be on the web, on the pod sphere and, yes, on the blogosphere for this election. Political parties will try to fulfill the American civil war maxim of getting there firstest with the mostest. A number of politicians - Dominic Hannigan, Joanna Tuffy, Ciaran Cuffe, John Gormely - have well established blogs. Labour threw up a video of Pat Rabbitte asking us the famous question with the weasel comma: But, are you happy? Mary Harney went one better this weekend with a slick video to accompany the PDs' billboard campaign on health. And here it is but see below for continuation of discussion!




Not so slick though was the actual launch of of the billboard by the Progressive Democrats. Its location was the junction of Stephen's Green and Grafton Street on a busy Sunday morning. That was a mistake. The reason. Politicians might actually encounter what they fear most - the electorate.

It was a very predictable event. The photographers do their smiley shots. Then the reporter huddle around to ask questions of our heroes. All us rabble are missing are the cards with the 'press' legend slipped into the band of our fedora hats.

But there was a guy passing who wasn't reading the script. Con Kennedy threw in a question right at the end of the huddle. The press officers tried to fend him off gently. But he was not to be deflected. He has a four year-old-son who has anaphylaxis which means that Con Kennedy always needs to carry shots of adrenaline. He asked a simple question: why was there no paediatric immunologist in Ireland to deal with his son's rare condition.

No amount of statistics, or general political pronouncements, or aspirations can deal with such direct human experience.

In fairness to Mary Harney, she did her best. But from a public relations perspective, a carefully coordinated press conference had been essentially hijacked.

It was a little like Tony Blair being ambushed by the Women's Institute or John Prescott throwing his famous uppercut. The dailies on Monday morning didn't report the PD billboard launch, rather the fact that an angry young father had rained on the parade.

The Grid. It's not in the sphere yet. In America maybe. But over here, the election will be fought on the streets and in the hustings. Not on the web. Its influence is growing, certainly, though it will take some time before it reaches critical mass.


As an end note, here is one of the vaguely funny parodies that are doing the rounds on You Tube. Do people have nothing better to do with their time except feeds us with such abundant blog fodder?

So we finally got the attack poster featuring Michael McDowell yesterday. But it was one issued by the PDs and not by Fine Gael. The FGers lost confidence and went for a wan poster showing an idyllic scene with the same message. I spotted the new FG poster driving in this morning. Because the concept is a 'poster within a poster', the size of the slogans and writing is smaller, and very hard to read. It really lacks impact.

Meanwhile, the PDs one is simple, direct, does what it says on the tin. Judge for yourselves.

And what is it with the Irish Independent and Pat Rabbitte? This morning the Indo suggested that Labour deputy leader Liz McManus's oppostion to her party joining a FF-led coalition was kind of conditional and that she too was beginning to waver. The newspaper had based its assertion on her reference in a radio interview to unforeseen circumstances that can give rise to extraordinary responses.
But in a quote that the Indo itself used yesterday, she made it clear what she meant by those.
"I spoke at one point on radio about the possibility of extraordinary circumstances arising which might change the situation. But I was literally talking about something like a national state of emergency or something like a third world war. That might alter my views but it is about the only thing that would do so.
"My position has been clear and consistent. There is no change from what I said in the Irish Independent last week."
Well, now we know. Labour will have no difficulty going into coaliton with FF in the event of a nuclear fall-out.

We in the Irish Examiner published a story yesterday about the new Fine Gael billboard campaign that employs the módh díreach with a direct attack on Michael McDowell. It's not the first time that FG have used negative type campaigns since 2002 and most of it seems to be directed at the PDs - obviously, they will be fishing for votes out of the same pool.

Just over a year ago, they used a great image of Bertie Ahern and Mary Harney. The scene looked like a restarant or a bar. Both of them were looking away from each other, like a married couple who were drifting apart. I think the slogan referred to the spark being gone.

They also had a couple of cartoonish type posters zeroing in on Harney, McDowell and Tom Parlon... the Parlon one portrayed Mr Delivery as a cowboy in the Marlboro man/TJ Dallas mode.

The previous ones were humourous. But the McDowell poster is more cutting, more direct. The story has sparked off a huge debate about the benefits or otherwise of negative campaigns and attack advertising in politics.

It has long been a standard feature of the stumps in the US and has also been used to mixed effect in Britain - the one that comes to mind is the Tony Blair 'Demon Eyes' posters used by the Tories in the 1997 election campaign (it didn't get them very far). Negativity can work despite what focus groups say, but only in the following contexts.

1. Best for leader to stay above the fray
2. Must be counterbalanced by positive messages and vision
3. There must be some basis to justify the fears that are being raised.

Will it be a dirty campaign? They are all dirty in their own ways. The Queensbury Rules of politics are only really observed in that moratorium period in the last 24 hours. In a way I hope it is. Because boy, have we hit the doldrums in the past year.