There’s a lot of selection bias in who gets called a “good” or “bad” campaigner, or public speaker, in politics. That selection bias comes from this: most reporters never really watch, or pay attention, to most politicians on the stump, beyond what others choose for them is worth watching.
A great example of that is how every 3 months, another reporter tweets about how weird it is that Donald Trump plays Elton John songs before his rallies. The thing is, Trump has been doing that since 2015. The most covered, most watched, most scrutinized politician in the last decade, and I would hazard a guess that a large number of professional Political People have consumed 90% of their content about his campaigning through either
- A person on Twitter choosing specific clips to tweet
- A producer on cable news choosing specific clips to put on TV Ultimately, this is how news consumers need to consume the news. They don’t have time to watch it all. But that applies to many reporters too.
The fact of the matter is this: if you have the minor technological investment that allows you to pull raw campaign clips out of the ether and post them to social media, you’re taking a very important position within the news funnel. Is this good or bad? There are arguments either way. But if your job is, like mine, influencing earned media in politics, it’s something you need to be aware of.
In that spirit, I leave you with a clip of Joe Biden being a Very Good Campaigner:
Biden: I lived in Pennsylvania longer than Oz lived in Pennsylvania and I moved away when I was 10 years old pic.twitter.com/MSeRZI7oUj
— Acyn (@Acyn) November 5, 2022