At FirstVoice Bob and I aren’t in the politics business. We are in the story/communications business. But politics is a good place to see how mass media stories work. Right now, today, Gore’s campaign story is the strongest one out there.
Why? His has all five of our political story elements fully developed. Well, four and a half anyway, and we’ll get back to Passion in a minute.
As the Hero of his story he owns one of the major issues of this election – energy and ecology. Any other issue can be seen from that Point of View. That is his territory – the ground he stands on – and the worldwide Live Earth concert last month shows how broad a political base that potentially is. His Antagonists (big oil, big coal, Haliburton) are wildly unpopular and already strongly associated with the opposing party. Awareness is covered. Contrary to Washington conventional wisdom winning an Academy Award for his slide show “An Inconvenient Truth” proves Gore can be inspiring on the stump. Best of all, having been away from Washington for eight years allows this once ultimate insider to now very legitimately run as an outsider – an agent of Transformation – which is what most voters say they want. Staying out of the current endless cycle of cable debates actually reinforces this outsider image. So it all comes down to his Passion. Does he really WANT to be President?
I don’t know. He might not know. Thomas Jefferson denied he wanted the job almost until Election Day. He still won. He still did a great job. And passion can be borrowed. It is visceral. Stand next to it and you have it. Just pair Gore with a passionate VP. Say Obama. Gore/Obama might be unstoppable. But the same can be said about the Hillary Clinton machine. We will talk about her story next.
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