Discipline

 No doubt, Barack Obama’s impressive win over John McCain has captured the imagination of the world. Everywhere, people look to the recently concluded US presidential elections for lessons about electing to power personalities who commit to manage change.

Everywhere, there are people seeking to borrow the Obama brand to guise up their own electoral pursuits. That includes people here in this country looking to the possibilities the 2010 elections might offer.

Earlier this week, for instance, Makati mayor Jeomar Binay finally admitted his intention to seek the presidency of this country. A clumsy publicist from his camp immediately tried to portray him as the Filipino version of Obama, calling the Makati mayor “Jojo Bama.”

I doubt if that highly contrived nickname will stick. But it did provoke a wave of jeers from the e-groups I participate in.

In the Pagbabago e-group, Jim Paredes, constantly blessed with an irrepressible wit, says the better nickname should be Balat Obama!

I agree wholeheartedly. Balat Obama will not only catch fire. It will also underscore the essential truth that whatever similarities there may be between the American leader and the Makati mayor, they can only be skin-deep.

The other item that sparked much discussion in this same e-group was a stray observation that the Filipino politician who most closely approximates Obama — entirely in terms of media savvy and youth appeal — is Senator Francis Escudero. That stray observation, made by someone who says he is not particularly taken by the senator’s political record, invited a wave of jeers.

Someone in the group recounted how, during the bicameral conference on the renewable energy bill, Sen. Escudero tried to convince his fellow legislators to classify natural gas as renewable energy (?!?). Outrageous as that idea was, it might, had Escudero succeeded in his crusade, qualified natural gas distributors (read: First Gas) for incentives under the renewable energy law.

When Escudero failed to convince anyone, he left the bicameral conference and was never seen again in this vital meeting on a piece of legislation that would have great bearing on our nation’s energy future. That utter lack of concern for a piece of legislation that should be among his areas of responsibility in the Senate, suggests that the young legislator is vulnerable to vested interest groups.

GSIS chief Winston Garcia goes further than that. He has labeled Escudero as a “stooge and spokesman of the Lopez family.” This after the senator, who should be looking at the quality of regulation over the energy sector, failed to stand up for the consumers when Meralco once more raised its rates.

Critics of the way Meralco is run and how badly the firm treated the consuming public want Escudero’s voice registered in the matter of Meralco’s deferment of the P3.9B refund it owes consumers over the misapplication of the currency exchange rate adjustment mechanism as well as the P30B refund owed consumers for the firm’s income taxes passed on to consumers.

Meraclo did begin to refund consumers for the wrongful charging of meter deposits. But for anyone to benefit from this refund, one must produce the original receipt and line up in the nearest Meralco branch. How many would do that?

I doubt if we will ever hear Chiz Escudero rant about this. Which makes for a chasm of a difference between him and what Obama stood for: a rejection of the power of lobby groups in Washington.

Going back to the Obama phenomenon itself, there appears to be unduly large emphasis on the man’s charismatic appeal and a great under-appreciation of the other, equally vital element of this phenomenal electoral outcome: the disciplined organization that sprung up in the course of this campaign.

A friend, Louis Perron, who runs an electoral consulting firm out of his main base in Switzerland, supplied me with some staggering figures about the Obama campaign.

For instance, it is not widely known that the Obama campaign mobilized 8,000 internet-based groups for the presidential effort. These internet-based groups were responsible for staging 50,000 local events to draw support for Obama’s presidential bid.

In all, 1.5 million volunteers were engaged and organized through the internet for the campaign. They organized small rallies, knocked on doors, made phone calls and blogged continuously for Obama.

The result of this internet-based campaign effort is impressive.

96% of all black voters went for Obama. Black voters constitute 13% of the US electorate.

66% of all voters aged 18 to 29 went for Obama. This demographic group constituted 18% of the US electorate.

The internet-based campaign enabled Obama strategists to closely target specific demographic categories. The strategic targeting was guided by voluminous data collected from focused group discussions, polls and other sources of voter information.

The internet-based campaign also managed to raise record volumes of campaign contributions from a large mass of supporters giving $100 or less. The campaign resources were, as well, finely targeted towards the crucial swing states to give the candidate the advantage in the crucial delegate count.

In a bottom-up campaign such as we saw, Perron emphasizes that the vital element was discipline. The message must be coherently delivered and the grassroots army of volunteers must act with singular purpose and common strategy.