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Book Review: The Audacity to Win: The Inside Story and Lessons of Barack Obama’s Historic Victory by David Plouffe

I always follow US presidential elections closely, but the most recent one was special, as it was for many people. The grassroots movement of the Obama campaign, for which the Howard Dean campaign of 2004 Buy Cialis Online Without Prescription was a dress rehearsal was basically made possible by social media. The book by the Obama campaign manager, David Plouffe, is all you need to read to understand how the campaign was run and how the election developed.

If I had to summarize the picture that I got of the Obama campaign from this book it would sound like this: Big, big emphasis on grassroots organization; the use of social media and the Internet at large; and a clear and consistent game plan, consistently applied. In that sense, there is a lot in this book for campaigns around the world, adjusted for local election laws and political culture. Much can be said about the tremendous amounts of money that are involved in US elections, but money can also make good things possible. In the Netherlands, more money for campaigns would be welcome, because Dutch elections have this air of amateurism, and are generally not attractive. Elections are not exciting, and candidates are sometimes ashamed to go out on the street to campaign. Probably because they are received by the public with contempt…

In short, highly enjoyable and enlightening, and highly recommended for what it’s worth.

This entry was posted on Sunday, February 7th, 2010 at 8:59 pm and is filed under Book reviews. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.