Reviewer: Lincoln Pennington
Collision 2012 is a recap of the 2012 presidential election from the perspective of Washington Post journalist Dan Balz. The book’s details are drawn from Balz’s travels with the campaign across the country and talks with campaign insiders. He provides insight on the rationale behind each campaign’s strategy during each phase of the election. His perspective as a journalist emphasizes how much political campaigns are ultimately about public relations. For example, the Obama campaign is described as focused on research and data-driven decisions. Balz highlights how this research was utilized in crafting Obama’s strategy and message. Politics and campaigns specifically are largely driven by public relations principles, such as reputation management and publicity. The book offers an interesting perspective on how the research, objectives, programming and evaluation process is utilized during political campaigns.
Balz starts by giving readers background on the candidates, Mitt Romney and Barack Obama. Through this background, Balz is highlighting an aspect of the campaign analogous to the research function. He discusses the country’s perception of Romney after his failed 2008 bid for the Republican presidential nomination, and he mentions the Obama campaign’s evaluation of 2008 campaign and their plans for differentiating the 2012 campaign. However, Balz also discusses the political environment, which was an important element of the campaigns’ research process. This environment includes the downgraded U.S. credit score and Democrat’s losses in the 2010-midterm elections. From there, Balz moves into election-specific events during both the Republican primaries and the final battle between Obama and Romney in the general election.
In terms of functioning as a public relations case study, the book is weak in one place – objectives. This is largely due to the obvious goal of winning the election for any political campaign. However, it does include section related to Obama’s summer ad blitz and both the Democratic and Republic national conventions. As Balz mentions, the ads served to meet a specific objective in controlling the narrative before Romney was the official nominee. Also, the conventions are full events on their own, and each campaign had its own objectives for their respective convention. An interesting element of the campaign process at times, though, is the lack of control each has over programming. Certain events, like the conventions and debates, are mandatory, but candidates also enter the process knowing they will have to be forced to travel and give stump speeches. This difference is similar but still distinct from the typical ROPE model. Through Balz’s narrative, it is clear how each campaign addresses this pseudo objective and programming phase, but it also functioned as a good reminder that campaigns aren’t in complete control of every step.
The book ultimately lacks a formal section that would compare to the evaluation phase. However, the book itself and the reflective insider interviews serve as independent evaluations of the process. As neither candidate is running for election again, though, there is no formal evaluation by the campaigns mentioned by Balz. For those interested in politics and campaigns, I would recommend this book to understand how the media perceives candidates and their public relations machines. It also serves as a valuable supplemental text to a case studies course because it shows that each step isn’t always neatly defined and formalized.
Lincoln Pennington
Collision 2012 is a recap of the 2012 presidential election from the perspective of Washington Post journalist Dan Balz. The book’s details are drawn from Balz’s travels with the campaign across the country and talks with campaign insiders. He provides insight on the rationale behind each campaign’s strategy during each phase of the election. His perspective as a journalist emphasizes how much political campaigns are ultimately about public relations. For example, the Obama campaign is described as focused on research and data-driven decisions. Balz highlights how this research was utilized in crafting Obama’s strategy and message. Politics and campaigns specifically are largely driven by public relations principles, such as reputation management and publicity. The book offers an interesting perspective on how the research, objectives, programming and evaluation process is utilized during political campaigns.
Balz starts by giving readers background on the candidates, Mitt Romney and Barack Obama. Through this background, Balz is highlighting an aspect of the campaign analogous to the research function. He discusses the country’s perception of Romney after his failed 2008 bid for the Republican presidential nomination, and he mentions the Obama campaign’s evaluation of 2008 campaign and their plans for differentiating the 2012 campaign. However, Balz also discusses the political environment, which was an important element of the campaigns’ research process. This environment includes the downgraded U.S. credit score and Democrat’s losses in the 2010-midterm elections. From there, Balz moves into election-specific events during both the Republican primaries and the final battle between Obama and Romney in the general election.
In terms of functioning as a public relations case study, the book is weak in one place – objectives. This is largely due to the obvious goal of winning the election for any political campaign. However, it does include section related to Obama’s summer ad blitz and both the Democratic and Republic national conventions. As Balz mentions, the ads served to meet a specific objective in controlling the narrative before Romney was the official nominee. Also, the conventions are full events on their own, and each campaign had its own objectives for their respective convention. An interesting element of the campaign process at times, though, is the lack of control each has over programming. Certain events, like the conventions and debates, are mandatory, but candidates also enter the process knowing they will have to be forced to travel and give stump speeches. This difference is similar but still distinct from the typical ROPE model. Through Balz’s narrative, it is clear how each campaign addresses this pseudo objective and programming phase, but it also functioned as a good reminder that campaigns aren’t in complete control of every step.
The book ultimately lacks a formal section that would compare to the evaluation phase. However, the book itself and the reflective insider interviews serve as independent evaluations of the process. As neither candidate is running for election again, though, there is no formal evaluation by the campaigns mentioned by Balz. For those interested in politics and campaigns, I would recommend this book to understand how the media perceives candidates and their public relations machines. It also serves as a valuable supplemental text to a case studies course because it shows that each step isn’t always neatly defined and formalized.
Lincoln Pennington