July 2024, Year XVI, n. 7
Bernie Campbell
A Passion for Politics
“That’s the secret to campaigning. A passion for politics is really a passion for people. If campaigns don’t connect with people, there’s no amount of money or advertising that can overcome that problem.”
Telos: As a political campaign manager, you have advised candidates and political parties not just in the US, but also in several countries around the world. What skills and expertise have made you successful in your profession?
Bernie Campbell: Like many of life’s best discoveries, I stumbled into politics. I met a candidate for US Congress, a real underdog running against a five-term incumbent. He didn’t have a chance, so when he asked if I wanted to run his campaign, I didn’t have anything to lose.
And while we did lose, it was unexpectedly one of the nation’s closest contests, and the next day, my voicemail was full. I’d taken a job and found a career. One that would take me around the world.
I’m always hesitant to give advice. If I’ve learned anything from three decades in politics, it’s that there’s never only one way to win an election, achieve a dream or reach a goal. For me, politics is about people. The people you work with, your team that makes the campaign possible, and the people you’re trying to reach and persuade, the voters.
I’m not sure it’s really a skill or an expertise, but I’ve been on boat docks before sunrise talking to fishermen/women and later, ended that same day at the midnight shift of an industrial plant – and left energized, wanting more. That’s the secret to campaigning. A passion for politics is really a passion for people. If campaigns don’t connect with people, there’s no amount of money or advertising that can overcome that problem.
And for me, usually the outsider, parachuting into a new country and culture, the key to my success is not just connecting with people, it’s being open and prepared to learn from people. A skill maybe, actually more a mindset.
I bring with me to each place a set of experiences, a track record of developing strategy, a toolbox of tactics, but there’s no one-size-fits-all approach and campaign plan. At least there shouldn’t be. From my first moment on the ground, I need to assimilate, socially, culturally, as quickly as possible, and to do that, there has to be curiosity, humility, sincerity. I have to be a student before I can become a teacher. If I’m not prepared to learn from those I meet and work with, then there’s no way I can provide meaningful counsel. Maybe that’s my expertise, knowing what I don’t know and figuring out how best to learn it, as quickly as possible.
In 2013, you advised Mario Monti in his electoral campaign. What lessons did you learn on Italian politics? And is there any anecdote you would like to share on that experience?
It was a challenging time for a campaign. The sovereign debt crisis had weakened economies and financial institutions across Europe. One of the first things I learned after arriving in Rome, ‘the spread’ wasn’t a sports betting term, it was terminology used to interpret financial market strength, the difference between national bond yields. It came up my first meeting. I didn’t have a clue. I had a lot to learn.
I’ve had the opportunity to work with government leaders and candidates around the world, and there’s none I appreciated working with more than Mario Monti. Knowledgeable, positive, empathetic, with a wry wit that you rarely saw coming. One time, my family had come for a visit, Monti invited us all to dinner. At the restaurant, I moved to sit beside Monti, figured we had things to discuss, but he blocked the chair and directed me to another one across the table. He had my daughter, still in grade school at the time, sit beside him. They talked all night, and I learned something about Monti. Everything didn’t have to be about politics.
Italy’s 2013 election was really my first face-to-face introduction to populism, its energy, its passion, and, when channelled and directed, its power.
That election defied many of Italy’s traditional and socioeconomic voting patterns. The appeal of Cinque Stelle movement founder Beppe Grillo was fuelled by frustration, anti-system, anti-establishment dissatisfaction, and interestingly, he drew from both the right and the left. His voting coalition proved disruptive. The polling didn’t necessarily capture it, but if you were watching, it was hard to miss. And in an election with a significant group deciding late, many voters got caught up in his wave.
We’ve now become used to campaigns driven by personality that bypass the traditional media and grow a diverse vote coalition through social media. That was one of the takeaways of the 2013 campaign. Grillo broke many of the traditional rules, spent much of his campaign traveling the country throwing gasoline on the fire of voter anxiety and distrust. It was an indication of things to come. He didn’t win, but then, he did.
If I have a snapshot of that election, it’s the final weekend, the final rallies. The last opportunity to build momentum and send a message. Monti had his final rally in a Florence Opera House, a small-ish crowd, but respectable. Berlusconi, worried about crowd-size, bailed on his rally. Bersani gathered his followers at a Rome theatre. Grillo filled Piazza San Giovanni. Hundreds of thousands of supporters standing all day in the rain.
The power of populism and, in many ways, the future of politics.
2024 is a key electoral year, on both sides of the Atlantic. What is your take on the electoral campaign in the US?
2024 is a key electoral year not just on both sides of Atlantic, but around the globe. Half the world will vote this year. We’ve already seen surprises. In India, Modi’s self-predicted landslide, never happened. In South Africa, the ANC’s thirty-year parliamentary majority was undermined. In Europe, maybe not a universal earthquake, but in many countries, powerful tremors. A clear anti-establishment, anti-status quo sentiment, and voters willing to prioritize change over almost everything else. We’re seeing many of those same trends in the United States.
Similar to Italy in 2013, there are signs of disruption in longstanding socioeconomic, racial and ethnic voting patterns. Economic frustration and establishment distrust are high. And that’s creating difficult headwinds for President Biden.
This election may well be decided by an essentially new group of voters – double haters. A significant voting group that doesn’t like either of the two main Presidential candidates. Where they land will be determinative in who wins the 2024 US election.
Do you see any similarities between the trends in American politics and the long-term rise of the populist right in Western Europe?
Ask me that again on November 6.
There are similarities, but those electoral similarities are also global. After the Brexit precursor to Trump in 2016, it is understandable to see these trends in a more limited US-Western European context and look for lessons from these most recent EU elections. But when looking for voting trends, we’d do better if we widened our view.
Voters around the world are angry and distrustful. If it’s not working, they don’t want to wait. Many are struggling, suffering, and they can’t wait. These elections are not just about feeling voter pain. They’re about fixing that pain. And many voters desperate for change are willing to take big risks.
Mariella Palazzolo
Editorial
Our guest for the July issue of PRIMOPIANOSCALAc is Bernie Campbell, who knows a thing or two about elections and reminds us that a passion for politics is really a passion for people. And he does not mean this in the abstract sense of “service to your community”.
People who have the kind of passion he is talking about go down to the boat docks before dawn to talk to the fishermen or wait outside the gates of an industrial plant to get to know the workers. They don’t try and give them lessons on how the world works, they try to learn what doesn’t work from them so they can adequately represent them.
This is why, in Bernie’s words, spin doctors have to be students first and then teachers. They cannot just serve up pre-packaged messages to voters, they must respond to voters’ needs with political proposals.
It goes without saying that nowadays the exact opposite happens in politics, and election campaigns are no exception. Today’s politicians are communicators who, with varying degrees of rhetorical mastery, explain to what remains of their base that if they are worse off than past generations, if they see no prospects for themselves and their children, if they see their communities falling apart and their countries slipping into poverty, degradation and violence… it is inevitable, because according to the last decades of history, Academia-backed economic theory and the experts’ general consensus there is no alternative.
Not only is this inevitable, it might even be fair. You all have been living beyond your means and now you have to pay. And if it is your children who have to pay, it is just natural for them to take it out on you and not on the people who have been forced to impose the necessary sacrifices.
Just one curiosity, though. You all think this way of seeing things goes back to Mrs. Thatcher, right? Not really. This same idea, worded differently, was used to justify the same policies in 1976 by Mrs. Thatcher’s predecessor at 10 Downing Street. James Callaghan… from the Labour party.
“We used to think that you could spend your way out of a recession, and increase employment by cutting taxes and boosting Government spending. I tell you in all candour that that option no longer exists”
You be the judge… but every now and then, history must be rewritten.
How long could this political communication strategy work? If only one party had appropriated it, voters would have chucked it in one or two election cycles.
It managed to last about 30 years just because it is part of the shared legacy of all the traditional parties – first Callaghan’s party, then Thatcher’s – while inevitably, ignored by the winners’ claims and the losers’ grievances, voter turnout for the ritual election ordeal began to plummet. Then suddenly, a new spectre began to haunt Europe, and not only Europe, this time. Yet another scarecrow with “-ism” attached to its name like a threat in need of exorcism.
Bernie’s story is an evocative reflection of the campaign that witnessed the appearance of this spectre in Italy, in such a commanding way it could not be ignored. Crowds fill the historic squares of communist militancy once again, but waving other flags. Now this spectre is anti-political, it is leading a revolt against a politics that has found no other answer to decline and degradation except that: “History has taken a turn.”
Bernie is not Italian and in 2013 he was not working for the populists, but he is immune to class paternalism and has learned the lesson on the reasons underlying populism well. He could teach them to many in Italy…
PRIMOPIANOSCALAc 2024 cover series is inspired by the works of Romano Gazzera, a Piedmontese painter known for his ‘giant’, ‘talking’, ‘flying’ flowers which, along with other iconographic themes connected to historical and collective memory, characterised and distinguished him as the frontrunner of the Italian Neo-floral school.
For Campbell we have chosen the Buddleja, an evergreen shrub that has showy, fragrant flowers in summer. It adapts to all kinds of soil, just like Bernie adapts his strategies to any political or cultural setting. It is known as the ‘butterfly bush’, due to its attractiveness to butterflies… just like Bernie hopes voters will be attracted to his candidate? Honey and vanilla fragrance seem to work for the Buddleja!
Marco Sonsini
Bernie Campbell has more than three decades of experience in political campaign management, speechwriting, media relations and crisis communications.
He has advised more than fifteen campaigns, candidates and political parties in more than a dozen countries. Just to mention a few: US, Nepal, Ukraine, Greece, Nigeria and Brazil.
He received his BA from Wake Forest University and his Master’s Degree in Theological Studies from Harvard University.
Campbell founded Campbell Communications, LLC in 2001 to provide political and communications counsel.
Bernie lives in New York City. When he’s not reading or thinking about politics, he can often be found rowing or sitting at a wine bar (probably talking about politics).
Marco Sonsini
SocialTelos