From Donald Trump’s “Make America Great Again” to Kamala Harris’ walkout song “Freedom” by Beyoncé, both presidential campaigns are trying to solidify their brands for larger audiences. Basil Smikle is a political strategist, policy advisor and professor of practice and director of the nonprofit management program in the school of professional studies at Columbia University. He joins host Krys Boyd to discuss how campaigns brand themselves, how they attempt to label each other, and what voters actually respond to in the end.
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Transcript
Krys Boyd [00:00:00] Presidential candidates talk a lot about what they want to achieve. Often with an emphasis on those heady first hundred days in office. But before any ceremonial bill signings or executive orders or policy declarations, they first have to convince many millions of American voters that they are better suited for the job than whoever is running against them. The process of building a political brand is essential for any candidate and their staff. And it doesn’t happen in a vacuum. Even as they are working to communicate who this person is and what they can do for us, the citizens of this country, they are usually fending off the other side’s attempts to paint them in a very different light. From KERA in Dallas, this is Think I’m Krys Boyd.
Kamala Harris and Tim Walz want to show themselves as upbeat and forward thinking. The Trump campaign talks about them as radical. Donald Trump and JD Vance want to demonstrate strength and commitment to conservative values, the Harris campaign snarks. They are just weird. Whatever you think about the people running, they definitely put a lot of work into managing their image. We wanted to explore how they do that. How much control campaigns can exert over the way their candidates are perceived, and what happens when their chosen political identities are threatened by some outside view of who they are? So Basil Smikle is here to share his insights. He is a political strategist and policy adviser, professor of practice and director of the Nonprofit Management Program in the School of Professional Studies at Columbia University. Basil, welcome to think.
Basil Smikle [00:01:32] I’m glad to be here. Thank you so much.
Krys Boyd [00:01:33] I will note here you had a stint as executive director of the New York State Democratic Party. But as a political strategist, I imagine you’ve been able to learn to fully analyze the strengths and weaknesses of both parties and candidates in any given race.
Basil Smikle [00:01:49] Absolutely. We had to recruit candidates for office. It’s very important, a big part of the job, and many were happy and enthusiastic to do so. Others felt that they couldn’t because they were maybe Democrats in a very red part of the state or part of the country when I was working with other folks. So being able to understand what voters are looking for, particular voters in purple districts or voters in very rural parts of the state and other parts of the country, that’s a very, very important part of the job. And oftentimes that meant, talking to Republicans and understanding, you know, what they’re looking for in their candidate.
Krys Boyd [00:02:29] Once you had recruited those candidates, what did it take to give critical feedback to people who like, by definition, have enough of an ego that they believe themselves to be the most qualified person to run for a particular office?
Basil Smikle [00:02:42] You know, interestingly enough, and perhaps contrary to what a lot of people think about politicians, and a number of them don’t always, appear with that muscle, meaning that you have to teach them to talk about themselves in glorious ways. You know, you have to teach, teach them how to kind of come out of themselves, to be able to talk to voters. It’s an incredible thing. And I have to say, I ran for office once. I ran for a state Senate seat in 2010. And I like to think of myself as an introvert by nature and a professional extrovert. So to stop a voter, has he or she is going to the subway to work and say, I need you to vote for me and essentially say in that same moment that if you do so, I can make your life better. That’s a that’s an incredible statement to make to anybody. It seems sometimes narcissistic. It seems sometimes very ego driven. But that’s essentially what you have to convey to the voter that by, by engaging in this act, this very private, personal act, that somehow your life is going to be better. And I am the vehicle for that. Not only do we have to get candidates some candidates probably more than you think to actually do you be able to say that? But we also have to give them the tools to follow that up with actual policy or some kind of, some kind of way of being able to describe the things that they care about so that they feel or that the voter feels connected to them.
Krys Boyd [00:04:11] Did that experience of campaigning change the way you thought about yourself, like, give you a professional confidence that has lasted?
Basil Smikle [00:04:18] It rewired my brain. That’s certainly true. And but I always tell people it’s incredible. It was an incredible opportunity to run for office because the muscle memory is incredible. In other words, I walk by those areas that I spent campaigning, and I remember every corner. I remember every stoop that I sat on. I remembered the stories that I heard from voters. I remember the buildings and what the buildings are or what they used to be, and how the long term residents. This is an area that covered, Central Harlem, so historic community. So these voters have been in these districts for a long time and have this incredible memory of the geography, of their district. They’re there. They know those spaces. And to hear the history of those spaces is incredibly important. But I would also say, it does humble you quite a bit, because when you go to a voter and say, and I just tell you very quickly, I was running on a, on an issue, one of the issues I ran on was education reform. And, my mother is a schoolteacher. She’d been a teacher for 30 years in the public schools. And she sent me to. I went to Catholic school for 12 years. So one of the voters said, well, did you ever go to a public school? I said, no. She said, where’d you go to college? I said, Cornell and Columbia. Oh, so you’ve never set foot in a public school, have you? And I and and you want to talk to me about education policy. And I then called my mother. I was like, yeah, mom, why you send me to Catholic school? What they deal with, what campaigns do is it forces you to really get to know who you are, why you made the choices that you made, how you managed the opportunities that were given to you, and then think about, well, how do those things translate into serving the people? That’s a that’s a this is an incredible, a process for anybody.
Krys Boyd [00:06:06] And of course, you have to figure out how to convey your message both to people who are already on board with what you have to say and those who might be inclined to disagree with you without giving in to the temptation of telling everybody precisely what they want to hear.
Basil Smikle [00:06:20] Well, you know, sometimes the industry of the business around politics is designed for exactly that, telling them exactly what they want to hear. But on the on the actual campaign trail, when you’re talking to actual voters, you know, you want to be able to project, you want to be able to project the confidence, but you also want to create an opening for them to project in you. And let me explain what I mean by that. One of the things that I talk to my students about is messaging what an a great message is in campaigns was hope and change, right. Because it’s it was broad. It’s it’s it’s broad enough. But it’s also ambitious. It’s forward thinking. It’s aspirational. But on the flip side, so was Make America Great Again. Now I have my personal feelings about that. But what connects those two messages? The fact that they were broad enough that as a voter, you can project whatever you want into that messaging, right? If you are somehow, concerned about the direction of the country, if, you know, there are, you know, you have economic issues and you feel like, you know, ten years, 20 years, 30 years ago, your life was better make America Great Again might be something that you cling to because you remember a time that was great or good for you, and you want that to come back. Hope and change could be aspirational. Maybe you don’t like what happened before, and you want to see the country go in a different direction and hope and change, you know, create a moment for you to sort of look beyond the present, project into the future and be able to create and build the future that you want with the people that you care about. So the ability to project your own, interests and ideas into somebody’s campaign and campaign strategy is a very important, very important function. But of course, as you alluded to, this, more specific you get, the harder it is to do that. So sometimes these, these slogans, these messages, these campaigns, seem somewhat vague or broad, but that’s done intentionally.
Krys Boyd [00:08:25] You know what you just said, Basil? It’s such a beautiful explanation of what branding is. In the parlance of a political campaign, beyond choosing a logo or making ads, like when I choose a brand of shoes, it’s because I imagine myself doing a faster workout or looking more elegant when I go to work or something. It’s this idea that by connecting with that brand, in this case the candidate, this will it will be part of how we live our lives.
Basil Smikle [00:08:53] Well, that’s right. I mean, how many, how many people bought Air Jordans back in the day because they thought it would make them j ump higher?
Krys Boyd [00:08:59] Did not work?
Basil Smikle [00:09:00] Nothing to do with their actual physical ability. But yeah, you know, the, you know, branding is a psychological construct, right? You you see a logo, you hear a brand, you see a person associated with a brand. It gives you a sense of the life that you might have and in the way that’s what we do in politics, right? What is possible in your life, in the lives of your children? How can we make that better for you? How could we improve your situation? If I give you a lot of detail, that means that, you have an opportunity to make decisions about whether you like or don’t like something. But if I just make you and I. This is a very, very important part of this. I just need to make you feel good. I need to make you feel good, and I need to make you feel better. It’s not the the the human brain is a political brain. And we we want to feel good about the things that we do. And I often say, well, why? Do you know, sometimes my students will like, why do we like reality shows a lot? There’s a very interesting reason for that, because in some ways you look at a reality show and you can say, oh my God, that’s terrible. I’m so glad I’m not like that. I’m so glad I don’t know anybody like that, that because what is it doing? It’s making us feel better about who we are. And so campaigns, you know, often try to do that. They often try to make, make you feel good about the choices, about becoming part of a movement, to be part of something that that gives you that sense of inclusion. And so when is going back to your very first question, we may have experienced that when we, you know, when we saw Obama’s campaign in 2008 and kind of proprietary, organization he created around his candidacy in the movement around his candidacy. So how do why is that this a similar thing to what Trump has created? Because there are people that support Donald Trump that feel really good about supporting Trump. He’s made them feel good about that. Now, you may disagree with the how and the why, but when we talk about seeing and understanding why people are attracted to the candidates that they are, that’s why. And that’s why his supporters will always be his supporters. Right? There’s some persuasion. There might be some folks who can pull off, but the people that support him really support him and the people that support Kamala Harris right now to some extent, or Barack Obama or Hillary Clinton, whom I work for, you know, people love. There are there’s a. Group of folks that will always love them because they feel part of something special, and it makes them feel good to be a part of it.
Krys Boyd [00:11:26] What goes into decisions about what qualities a campaign brand will focus on? Because every candidate comes in with a wealth of different identities and experiences they could choose to highlight. I’m thinking of someone like Donald Trump, who has always leaned heavily into, like, the business guy stuff has not necessarily tried to build his political identity around being like a lifelong urbanite or the father of five children.
Basil Smikle [00:11:51] Yeah, it’s interesting. Some of the time, some of the polling helps us do that. The polling in the focus groups, which usually come first and then the polling, they help us do that. They help us sort of narrow the focus a bit more, but they also can help us as campaign operatives or the campaigns themselves, focus on the strengths and tamp down on the weaknesses of individual candidates. So some may say, you know, this is this take, you know, Barack Obama, for example, in his, primary against Hillary Clinton. And sometimes I go with go through this exercise with my students. They will say, if, you know, thinking about Barack when he first came out, he’s young, he’s African-American, he’s smart, he’s got swagger. He speaks so well, you know all these things about him. But they focus a lot on young, on him being young and not sort of part of the Washington establishment. A lot of those same students would say that Hillary Clinton was really smart, but she was part of you know, she was like, she’s been around a long time. It’s a name that they that they knew and had been familiar with for a long time. So how do those two things work in the context of campaign operations? We then take what voters said that struck them and tamp down on things that, you know, they didn’t like. So but I also say those things don’t happen in a vacuum. So, for example, given what I just said, Hillary Clinton can’t be the campaign that candidate of experience if Barack Obama is not the candidate of hope and change, if that makes sense. Right? Those two things are operating sort of hand in hand, even though they’re running against each other. They pulled those messages because of the analysis of their opponent. Right. Barack is going to focus on his youth, and his not being this institutional name because they believe that’s what voters are really looking for. The theory of the case for Hillary Clinton at the time was, though, can’t the voters want someone with experience? So they’re going to highlight those things and hope that they’ve made an appropriate case to the voter?
Krys Boyd [00:13:57] Basil one could argue Donald Trump at this point, does not need to explain what sort of president he would be, because the country has already seen that for four years. But many things have changed in the country and in the world since he first ran for office in 2016. Have you seen Trump’s brand evolve accordingly, or is he making the same arguments, winning arguments that worked for him in 2016?
Basil Smikle [00:14:23] He’s making similar arguments not quite the same. In 2016, he spent a lot of time talking about draining the swamp, if you remember. And if you remember that first debate where he spent most of his time, engaging in ad hominem attacks against his primary opponents, you know, little Marco, boring Jeb, that kind of thing. And, you know, going back to our touching on our branding conversation, what was the initial response of the voter when they heard that in the ways that he talked about his opponents, a lot of people laughed because they thought it was kind of funny. But no, he can’t be serious. When he talked about draining the swamp, a lot of voters were like, yeah, you should go ahead and do that. So if you consider the visceral, emotional response that voters had to the things he says and the things he did, you can understand why his voters, his supporters, adhered to him so closely. The difference between 2016, 2020 and today is that as you lose, you voters do know more about him. He’s not a novelty anymore, but they’re also aware of what happened on January 6th. And a lot of voters look to him and say that, you know, he even if he didn’t, you know, directly incited that, that he was okay with it happening. And a lot of voters believe that. And so part of what he has, he has had to do, is, you know, talk about essentially not get into that argument. Did he or didn’t he, he would just double down essentially on why it needed to happen. And it is to think about the how interesting that language is. Right? Because he may try to distance himself from it, but he calls the folks that were out there January 6th. Patriots. Right. And that’s going to resonate with a certain kind of voter, his voter. Right. And he has. In many ways. Therefore, try to rewrite what it means to be a patriot. Which is why Kamala Harris spent a lot of time at the convention recently trying to retake that that narrative back a little bit. But he’s rewritten in many ways what it means to be a politician in this country. He has changed politics in this country, I would argue not for the good. But, you know, there are voters out there who actually still like him, right? And so his voter is his core voter. I don’t think he is. I don’t think he’s changed that much in terms of his approach to politics. He’s kind of a he’s not one that that is known for his message discipline, except for, kind of bringing things back to him. And the reality is, again, a lot of his voters like that, he is the sort of, focal point of people’s, what people think would would be a benefit in their lives. It’s not the party, it’s not the policies. It really is in the man. And I think he knows that and has embraced that. Now more than ever. He certainly didn’t have it as much in 2016, although he talked that way, but now he knows it. And my, you know, I would also add that he now understands that the Supreme Court is making decisions that kind of align with what he wanted. And the judges are making decisions across the country that align with the party that he now runs, which he did not before in 2016 and was there in 2020, but now more, more clearly now there you don’t have the, the divisions, and the defections that you had before.
Krys Boyd [00:18:06] Kamala Harris, of course, is the sitting vice president of the United States. She is not a political newcomer. So what was it she needed to achieve in so many people were talking about her reintroducing herself to her own party and to the country more broadly at the DNC convention.
Basil Smikle [00:18:23] Yeah, it was a it was probably one of the best conventions I’ve ever been to and important for her to introduce herself and in some cases reintroduce herself to the American people. Her biggest task going forward is to keep the enthusiasm up and getting voters to trust her. And I use that term trust, because a lot of people don’t know her yet. And, you know, she’s going to start making some decisions about policy. But going back to what I was saying before, it may be necessarily vague so that people can just buy into the movement around her candidacy and not just focus on the policy, though I think, you know, they’ll be they’ll still be sound policies, but they’re going to be a lot of voters that are going to pick it apart may not support it and so on. And just as a campaign tactic, you know, I think for her, it just it’s more important to get people to know her, get people to know her story, make sure that she’s relatable. We often talk about that, make sure that she’s consistently projecting her authentic self, and keep that enthusiasm going. And we could see that that’s working because she’s raised over a half $1 billion in a month, which is unheard of.
Krys Boyd [00:19:36] She is, of course, the first woman vice president, first black and Asian vice president in American history. And she will add to her collection of firsts if she wins in November. Her campaign, though, doesn’t seem to be branding itself specifically around those history making identities. Why do you think that’s the case?
Basil Smikle [00:19:55] Yeah, it’s an interesting tactic. Look, my family is Jamaican, and I would love to see. I would have loved to see to hear Bob Marley at the convention. I don’t think I heard Bob Marley at the convention at all. Yeah. It’s an interesting tactic because in the 80s and early 90s, a lot of African-American candidates did not talk at all about race. And in many ways, their policy making was race neutral. And that was important because if they were running for Congress, mayor or statewide office, they they were usually not the first, but the first to have a really good opportunity to win. And they had to govern by creating these coalitions that were largely white but increasingly diverse. Barack Obama, when he ran in 2007-08, famously did not talk about race except one time when he was attacked by about his pastor. If you remember Reverend Wright, he was then, you know, they tried to sort of I think Republicans tried to sort of be pegging him to what they called a more militant pastor. And then he made a speech on race, I think it was in Philadelphia to try to change the conversation a little bit. But there are a lot of voters, African-American voters, that wanted to see him engage more. So it’s not an unusual tactic not to lean into what some would call identity politics. I have issues with that term, but certainly folks would call that identity politics. There are a lot of leaders that choose not to do that, because they want to be more inclusive. They want to build, larger coalitions and are concerned about, upsetting some folks or alienating some folks. Interestingly enough, Hillary Clinton leaned into her identity as a woman quite extensively. Again, a campaigning tactic. She believes that at that time, particularly running against Donald Trump, that that would work. I think with Kamala Harris, you know, we know a bit about her identity and how she defines herself. What is going to happen is they’ll have the surrogates go do that, and she’ll just focus on sort of the big, big ticket items. But we’ll see if she gets pulled in a direction where she has to engage it more.
Krys Boyd [00:22:10] What is your concern around it, is it the term identity politics or the use of identity politics?
Basil Smikle [00:22:15] The use of it, typically because it’s often used in the pejorative, and I always say that everybody and everybody engages in identity politics. It’s often used in the pejorative to talk about, you know, people of color who always who are, you know, where when they say, we always want to talk about people of color. Oh, you black, you always just want to talk about black stuff. But the reality is, you know, everybody engages you. You vote based on who you, your identity, whether you’re black, Latino, whether you’re a veteran, a farmer, a woman. Whatever however it is, you define yourself. You likely vote from that lived experience and that is who you are. That is your identity. We don’t have to define that. You are the author, narrator of your own narrative? And, you vote from that perspective. But oftentimes identity politics is used to mean minority politics. And then people get uncomfortable, don’t want to talk about it.
Krys Boyd [00:23:19] Plenty of observers have noted that Donald Trump seems to have struggled a bit to find his footing running against Kamala Harris rather than Joe Biden. Which leads to this question of how much a candidate’s brand in any given election is shaped by their opponents identity. You spoke about this in the context of primary elections, but I’m I’m interested in how even in general elections, this happens.
Basil Smikle [00:23:41] Absolutely does happen. And you you definitely see that in the race right now. You know, Donald Trump’s whole campaign was centered around Joe Biden, because remember what he called him before? He used to call him Sleepy Joe. So if you take the quote, Sleepy Joe candidate that he’s running against, he’s going to have the more energetic crowds Donald Trump is. From his perspective, he’ll have the more energetic crowds. He’ll be the one to rile up the base. His base will be more enthusiastic for him than Biden’s base will be for him. And, you know, and he’s going to be the one to sort of manage and manipulate the media cycle. So what’s happened? Oddly enough, Democrats went from one of the worst ones I’ve seen to one of the best. And so he doesn’t have that same opponent. So he thought he could not do as many events because Joe Biden wasn’t going to do that many events. But now Kamala Harris is doing a lot of events. So now he’s got to change to meet that. Kamala Harris has these incredible crowds. He doesn’t have his big crowds. So his his comments about crowd size, while you may have dismissed them in the Joe Biden era, the Kamala Harris crowd stories are an actual story. So voters are now aware that there’s in this enthusiasm and that there’s significant interest in her, so much so that not only does he mock it, but he then gets mocked for mocking it by Barack Obama. On the DNC stage, which is a great it’s a great moment, by the way. But but, but but now it’s sort of turned against him. So I do think that he has not found his footing running against this new candidate, because you remember, he’s been running for over a year. The money is raised and being spent against one candidate, and now you’ve got to change your whole theory of the campaign to meet this new candidate. And, and, and it doesn’t seem like he’s doing that very gracefully.
Krys Boyd [00:25:40] When Kamala Harris ran for president in the Democratic primary in 2020. Her background as a prosecutor didn’t necessarily endear her to a lot of Democratic voters. She’s found it useful to play up that background now as a way of reminding folks of Donald Trump’s legal troubles in ordinary times, Basil, you know, convictions on numerous felony charges would have seemed likely to implode any candidate’s chances of winning. These are not ordinary times. Trump’s base has been energized by all of this. Does that make Harris’s decision to lean into that narrative risky for her?
Basil Smikle [00:26:19] You know, it’s interesting because we have to also think about who she’s talking to. And that’s a very important part of what we do. Who is she talking to? Is she talking to the Democratic voter who’s probably already there with her, or is she talking to the Trump supporter who she thinks she can peel off? That’s probably not the case. She’s really talking to a small slice of voter in three, four or five states. And that voter is probably probably likes parts of Donald Trump in his, in the way that he goes after elites or how they perceive that he goes after elites. They may like the way he stands up to people. They may think that economically they’ve done better under him. And she has to then convince that voter that not only are those things probably not true, but that you should not, for the sake of the country and its history and its future and for future presidents. You should not want this person back in office. And here’s why. You know, with all of this sort of prosecutorial, flairs and, and, and comments that you’ll make thereafter. So, yeah, I think, you know, she, she, she tamped down the prosecutor part a bit, in, in, in 2020. And remember, at that time we were also coming off of, you know, there was a lot of George Floyd there. There was, Breonna Taylor. I mean, we were talking a lot about police reform and so on. And even though black women or black prosecutors, make up, you know, less than 2% of all elected prosecutors nationally, it was still going to be a very difficult conversation for her to have. I think in that time, she’s gotten better at talking about the reforms that she’s implemented. So that’s, I think, a big delta there, a big change. But yeah, I think I think it’s an interesting point where she spoke very early on when Joe Biden stepped down and she said, you know, I’m going to go after Donald Trump like a prosecutor because I know the type, the big applause line. And, you know, from that, I think it’s really it’s really been a focal point of her campaign. And the hope is that those that small sliver of America that she needs to reach will, will side with her.
Krys Boyd [00:28:46] For its part, the Trump campaign has tried to brand Kamala Harris as a radical leftist. Trump in recent days has been referring to her as Comrade Kamala because everybody gets a nickname. We know that that language resonates with Trump’s base. I wonder if that framing, once again, to look at these swing voters is potentially a tougher sell there.
Basil Smikle [00:29:07] You know, it’s interesting because when you then add, you know, the AOC to it, when you, you know, a lot of, progressives who, you know, the Bernie Sanders of the world, yeah. You know, he’ll he Trump will will will put everybody together and say, you know, the Democrats, the far left, they’re socialists. They want to ruin America. You know, to some extent that language has worked, you know, how is it that, you know, when I was in high school and studied economics, 4% unemployment was what was considered full employment. Like you were you were in a utopia. And we’ve actually been there. And and people still don’t believe that the economy is better. Now I understand why, you know, stand how inflation factors into that, understand how housing factors into that. But he has very, he has, in a very profound way, really convinced a lot of voters, that there that Democratic policies are not going to work for them, that the economy is not going to work for them, that they are not in touch with them. And that is part of the democratic challenge, the big, big, big democratic challenge, which is to go to those voters and say, you you actually have been better off under Democratic leadership. Here’s why. Here is what the metrics say, that for all of the things that you care deeply about, there are policies that affect that change. And by the way, Democrats have a history, a track record of that. So they’ve got to have that conversation. And that’s why one of the things that I’ve been saying publicly is that I would love if that half $1 billion that the Harris team raised was not necessarily spent on television, but it was really spent on the ground, really talking to voters where they live about how they live.
Krys Boyd [00:30:58] Basil. This brings us to weird. Democrats who have been trying to defeat Donald Trump over the past three election cycles have tried to portray him as undisciplined and uninformed and untruthful. And then is this like existential threat to democracy as we know it? None of that has been as effective as they might have liked. Why has this simple, kind of banal criticism that he and his running mate have weird ideas picked up so much steam?
Basil Smikle [00:31:26] Because we all know what weird is. We may define it slightly differently, but we all have a we don’t know what that looks like. Feels like, sounds like, it’s visceral. If you think about it. And somebody raised this the other day, I thought it was a really profound point in trying to explain to a voter. First of all, when you’re explaining, you’re losing. That’s the little political rule of thumb I always use. So if I say that Donald Trump is an existential threat to democracy, what does that mean? I’m going to have to really sit down and explain that to you, because you may not feel it initially. You may think about January 6th. You may remember that moment. But if I have to explain to you what’s at stake, if you don’t already know and you’re not otherwise following, that’s a conversation. That takes a long time to have takes some persuasion. And if you’re a campaign, that means it takes money and resources. But going back to, you know, something I have said and I’ve always said, what is the emotional response that a voter can have to a candidate or a situation? And weird elicits an emotional response. It elicits a kind of gut response. We know what that looks like and feels like. We all have a sense of what’s weird to us, and that’s why we can then take a look at the campaign and say, you know what? Yeah, that is that is weird. And I don’t have to explain it after that because you already have in your mind what that means. That’s that’s golden for us. And that’s why I’ve in many ways, I’ve been saying that all of the, all of what has seemed somewhat organic in the last month or so would have taken millions to pay for over time because, you know, it just kind of fell that, you know, the walls call them weird and like, that stuck everything else that might have been tested. And, you know, scholars may have come to the table with and written incredible pieces about which I’m sure I’ve read. It all came down to him just being weird, and it stuck.
Krys Boyd [00:33:23] How do you campaign’s brand vice presidents in relation to the people at the top of the ticket, is the idea to highlight how aligned they are with the candidate, or define all the things that they bring to the ticket that maybe are not associated with the candidate themselves?
Basil Smikle [00:33:38] It depends on the time. There was a time when vice presidents were seen as being able to bring state or regional support. So, you know, you would have, you know, so, so, so you would choose in that sense. But, in a lot of ways, the candidates have now gotten to define how they how their vice president helps the ticket. You know, I remember, you know, my first presidential vote was for Bill Clinton in 1992. And, you know, Bill was young. He’s the guy that played the saxophone on Arsenio Hall. And I know a lot of people probably have no memory of that show, but I do, and I loved it. But, you know, he got Al Gore, who was in the Senate and serious, you know, just as young. And that was helpful because they wanted to have a young ticket, after George H.W. Bush and Reagan, who were older. Right. So this was going to be the sort of generate the next generation of leadership. So you got somebody young but knew the Senate and was serious also from the South. You know, in many ways, I thought George W. Bush brings in Dick Cheney because like, because Dick Cheney knew how to run the government. You know, Dick Cheney was like this, this serious guy, George W was the I believe this in my gut person, the one who, who, who, who wrote Christian, even evangelism into the White House, but Dick Cheney was going to run the government and everybody sort of knew that and run Congress and everybody so knew that. Barack Obama was, as we talked about before, young, inexperienced, nobody really knew him. But you knew Joe Biden. You he was he was a stalwart of the Senate. He knew how to, you know, as we say, be seen a lot these days, get things done and knew how to get things pushed through Congress. So at a time when Barack probably knew he didn’t have a lot of time to get, legislation passed, you bring on a guy who is experienced, who does know how to how to work through Congress. So if you think about Tim, Tim Walz, and Kamala Harris, he is the more established name. He’s an executive of a state, but as governor, been in Congress, he also represents, I think there is some regional and, regionalism in that choice as well, because he represents a part of the country that’s viewed as heartland, where, Kamala Harris is viewed as coastal. And there’s an elitism that the Republicans sort of project onto that. And so I do think that there is this kind of balance, but but the campaign’s at the top of the ticket in particular, is very careful in making sure that that additive that, that that addition is, is sort of explained away that you, you understand why that person’s there.
Krys Boyd [00:36:27] What about JD Vance? Does he come across as heartland or does he come across as Silicon Valley?
Basil Smikle [00:36:32] You know, I’ve always it was interesting. It was an interesting pick because I know there were a lot of folks on the Trump team that didn’t want him. I think the I think the Donald Trump pick is, is a bit different. In 2016, I understood the Pence choice because for similar reasons. Right. He was Donald Trump who’s sort of new to this. He needed a Mike Pence to kind of ground him in DC politics, in Republican politics in particular. That’s all changed now. He doesn’t need to be grounded in DC politics. He doesn’t need to be grounded in Republican Party politics. He is now the Republican Party. So his choices are more to I think there was some youth in there, you know, obviously to appeal to the younger generation of Republican leader. But honestly, I think a lot of it is just about who would who would project more fealty and be less threatening to him. Because if you listen to a lot of the ways that he talked about Mike pence, after that campaign, you know, he branded him as being disloyal. And we know that that’s something Donald Trump does not take lightly.
Krys Boyd [00:37:42] Some people have talked about this campaign as a referendum on American masculinity, which I find fascinating because one of the two major party candidates is a woman, but I wonder if you can talk about the different ways that Tim Walz is projecting a sort of masculinity as compared to the masculinity of folks like Trump and Vance.
Basil Smikle [00:38:03] I have said publicly that I thought Donald Trump’s version of masculinity, as he portrays it, is a toxic masculinity. It’s bullying, in many respects. And the way he the ways in which he talks to women, the way in which he has gone after, other men, the just the way that he projects, that what his view of strength is, is sort of putting down other people. You talked about also about people who are disabled. He talked about, you know, judges and, and, and generals in the ways he comes after them. It’s this, it’s this I’m going to go after you thing. And it’s sort of always on the offense with people. And to me that I’ve always said that that’s, that’s reflective of, of of what a bully does. Whereas, you know, what I think Walz’s approach has been is care, concern for his community, care and concern for his family, and doing what it takes when it takes to, to, to to support all of that in your circle. And not having to do that by being disparaging and not having to do that by elevating self. And I think that’s probably the biggest part that it’s I can, I can I can be strong for for my family, for myself, but I don’t need to put myself on a pedestal and make sure that everybody is watching me and, and, and professing their fealty to me, which is where I think, what I think we see a lot from, from, from Donald Trump. But it it’s, it’s also very important because it, it sends a message to young people about what it means to be a leader. And I spend a lot of time talking about that and thinking about that, which is how do we create a culture of civic engagement in this country. And when we do get young people civically engaged, how are they engaging? What are they saying? Who are they talking to? How are they talking to them? And if you are a person that you know comes across as a bully, those things that we rely on, called the social safety net, probably are not going to be part of your policymaking. Your care and concern for women, probably not part of your policymaking in that right there is one of the biggest mobilizing forces in this campaign cycle. You know, around that issue of women’s rights and reproductive rights and women’s health, because the Democrats will paint Trump as this person who is, as who who embraces toxic masculinity without care and concern for the women in his life.
Krys Boyd [00:40:35] Kamala Harris has agreed to an extended sit down interview with CNN, but until recently, she has conspicuously been reluctant to answer journalists questions in any depth. Why do you think she has held off on this?
Basil Smikle [00:40:48] She’s got to get her campaign squared away. I mean, I get I do understand the the interest in having her do these kinds of interviews. And, you know, as a as a voter, you want to see that your president can think. Can think in and respond on their feet and, and be conversant in certain issues. So you definitely want to see that. But I do think that there’s a moment, you know, she needed a minute. She had they could take a beat, as they say. We forget about how quickly all of this turned around and how little time she has left. But in that time, you know, as I said, she’s, you know, gotten about a half $1 million of, like, a million volunteers. And they’ve got to figure out what to do with all of that. So I do think it was a little bit of just the campaign trying to get itself off the ground and her getting acclimated to everything. I mean, she had, within a couple of weeks, she had to be the candidate, get a vice president to join her team and to get put a convention together. So, you know, I think voters can give her a little grace, but, you know, her, her doing it soon is more hopeful than not. And then, of course, assuming this debate actually goes forward, you know, we’ll see some more there.
Krys Boyd [00:42:01] I know it’s been so on again, off again that I’m not comfortable saying for certain that it will happen. But as of our conversation in this moment, there is one set for September 10th on ABC. What do you think each candidate will be most eager to communicate first about their own ideas and and then also about who their opponent is?
Basil Smikle [00:42:20] Yeah, I think, you know, Kamala Harris is going to is going to do what she’s been talking about doing, prosecuting the case against Donald Trump and laying and creating a really stark divide between the future that he offers in the future, that she offers, and the Democratic Party office. Because, remember, this isn’t just about electing her. It’s about getting the, you know, maintaining Democratic control of the Senate and flipping the House. So it’s really it’s it’s so I imagine talking about nationalizing abortion and the concerns around that and the fears around that are going to be among the things that she’s going to raise, but also prosecute the case as to why he’s just unfit to hold office, is that’s not who we are as Americans. You know, if I think about the Donald Trump approach, I just pay attention to the stuff that he said. He’s been very dismissive of her, and he’s also said she’s not smart. And now I have to you know, as we talked about identity politics before, there is a through line here. You know, he often is very dismissive of the, power of intelligence, of authority of African Americans, particularly African-American women. He railed against ABC for doing the debate. But if you remember, it was Rachel Scott, a correspondent for ABC, who he went after, at the National Association of Black Journalists conference, and called her rude. So when you think about all of the ways in which he’s talked about women, but particularly black women in the past been very dismissive of them and both antagonistic toward them. I actually I would expect to see some of that at the debate as well. I imagine his supporters and his team will be trying to keep that from happening. But but you know, he’s again, — message discipline. He’s not really known for that. And I think he’ll just kind of reflexively do this because he’s been doing it.
Krys Boyd [00:44:08] How do campaigns assess whether branding is working? I imagine it’s not so easy to turn the ship around if they realize something has been unsuccessful.
Basil Smikle [00:44:17] Oftentimes campaigns just have to be nimble. If you have a lot of money and resources, you can afford to be more nimble. But you have to you always start with sort of a theory of the case. What’s the theory of this campaign? What do voters care about? How can we address those concerns through the context of the work that we do in this campaign? And we have to continue to monitor what voters are caring about through polling, focus groups and so on. Pay attention to trends so that we can shift as the voters shift. Again, the more money resources you have, the more support you have on the ground, the more able you are to make those kinds of those kinds of ships. And that’s one of the things that Kamala Harris actually does have right now as an advantage, because with the money advantage she has, she can now play in parts of the country that that Democrats weren’t able to play in before and then force Donald Trump to spend money in those areas where he didn’t have to before. So that’s where, you know, that’s again, where money, resources, a large team, a lot of support can help you become more agile.
Krys Boyd [00:45:20] Basil Smikle is a political strategist and policy adviser, also professor of practice and director of the Nonprofit Management Program in the School of Professional Studies at Columbia University. Basil, I really appreciate your insights. Thank you for making time to talk.
Basil Smikle [00:45:34] That was a great conversation. Thank you so much for having me.
Krys Boyd [00:45:36] You can find us on Facebook and Instagram and subscribe to our podcast, free wherever you like to get podcasts. To find it, just search for “KERA Think” or listen at our website. think.kera.org. Again, I’m Krys Boyd. Thanks for listening. Have a great day.
