It will go past the heads of most of the public as fast as a crawler on a 24 hour news station. Jim Messina, hailing from Colorado and blooded in Montana, was a key architect of Barack Obama’s 2012 re-election after having served as Deputy White House Chief of Staff.
Yet this life-long Democratic Party strategist has signed up with Britain’s Conservative Party.
Known as ‘the fixer’ he was described by senior White House aide Dan Pfeiffer as “the most powerful person in Washington that you haven’t heard of.” But despite his ideological history it seems as if Messina and his consulting firm, the Messina group, are selling their politics for cash. That one of his clients is Caesars Palace Las Vegas, reveals that he has also moved into corporate business and euphemistically is willing to roll the dice a bit.
Response has gone across the board from wide eyed to incredulous to jealous. But Messina is an admirer of David Cameron who some believe would land in the centrist Democrat spot in America, and Cameron seems to have the respect of Barack Obama.
Leading British Labour Party blog Labour List defiantly landed on the jealous side. “We love Obama” wrote Marcus Roberts and “The Tories’ near million pound hire of Jim Messina is a brilliant psy-op against Labour.”
Roberts, who works for the Fabian Society and is working on a piece called ‘Forward: Lessons for Labour from Obama 2012′, opined that the Messina hire is exactly what Labour ought to be looking at.
The notion is that ideology does not have the relevance that marketing and promotion does. He suggests that Labour’s strategy to win in 2015 is threatened, not because of an ideological or policy shift by anyone, but because the election strategies will be fought differently.
It’s not news to anyone that campaigns have long sought to improve their marketing techniques. What is a little startling is that victory and defeat is now principally seen in terms of having the best campaign personnel, regardless of whether they believe in anything you stand for.
Marshall Ganz, a senior Harvard lecturer writing for the Huffington Post, took a far more cynical and accurate look at Messina who as he points out is representing both ‘Obama for America’ as well as the British Conservatives at the same time; who while their leaders are cozy together have some polar opposite positions (like government spending) which Messina will concurrently represent.
As Ganz writes – “since 2009-10 when his (Messina’s) mission was often one of curbing the ‘overenthusiastic’ liberal advocacy groups ….. Does it underscore the Obama administration's very thin commitment to anything close to a progressive economic agenda ….. Or is it an arrogance of position that assumes that Americans are so ignorant that Obama's people can decry Republican austerity at home while at the same time support Conservative austerity in the UK -- and no one will care or even notice?”
The truth about Obama is that, while he is a social liberal, he is a control-freak first. So while he desires a socialist utopia he won’t sacrifice influence to get it. Likewise while Cameron has some conservative credentials the maintenance of power and control are paramount. Hence he sees re-election in 2015 as something to be bought, rather than something to be compromised for. Principles never enter the equation.
As Ganz also states “is it simply a matter of the money to be made that adds up to his kind of political amorality?” The answer from Messina would be an unequivocal yes.
The Guardian, in a typically us against the evil world mentality, went on offense against the appointment. They immediately launched a smear against a person they probably would have hailed as a guru a week earlier; bringing up a TV spot believed to be engineered by Messina in 2002 in which it was insinuated in video only that the opponent of Max Baucus (Messina was Baucus Chief of Staff) was a homosexual.
In traditional Montana that doubtless carried some weight though it’s a tactic that would get Messina prosecuted for a hate crime in Britain. Ironically he will now have to advance that standard as Cameron’s man and it remains to be seen if Labour (and possibly the Lib-Dems, UKIP & others) can get some mileage out of it.
But Joe Solmonese, a former president of the Human Rights Campaign and major advocate of LGBT issues in the States said: "Whether in President Obama's administration or on his campaign, the LGBT community had no bigger advocate than Jim Messina."
This goes to show that the LGBT national groups are liberals first, just as willing to throw standards and principles out of the window when they become inconvenient. They care about winning elections and, along with David Cameron, how that is accomplished is not as important as the fact that it is accomplished.
The story created little interest in the mainstream American media. But a Washington Post reporter scored an interesting White House quote. Juliet Eilperin reported that “Messina checked with the White House before accepting the contract, according to a White House official who asked not to be identified because of diplomatic sensitivities. The office emphasized that Messina’s decision to work for Cameron does not represent ‘any kind of a signal from the president’ regarding Britain’s future election.
This reveals that 1) Messina needs clearance before accepting certain clients 2) the official giving the quote knows that is not supposed to be public knowledge 3) The advance denial of a White House signal is indicative of the fact that there is one.
Messina is ahead of the game compared to many in Britain. Labour is still stuck trying to organize union-style while the Conservative Party communicates through middle class values and the society it creates. But Messina understands the value of communicating through the social media.
In recent by-elections and local contests both Labour and Conservative have made a hash of this! Meanwhile the very small English Defence League promotes with great effectiveness using principally Facebook and Twitter. UKIP promoted themselves the same way to some extent in May local elections and exposed dirty tricks by ‘the big two’ despite having only a fraction of the budget. For Messina to be effective he will have to defeat more motivated forces from the political right while maintaining that his party is a better choice than the traditional left.
Some believe he can succeed in promoting the Third Way concept for Cameron in the way that Tony Blair was portrayed. But that has previously depended on significant opposition from only one side. Cameron has put himself on a pedestal with snipers all around and it remains to be seen if Jim Messina can really be the Tories messiah.
