Barry LePatner once said, “Good judgment comes from experience, and experience comes from bad judgment.” This quote defines the top 10 most shocking political strategies that worked listed in this article. I am sure Mitt Romney, Jimmy Carter and Mikhail Gorbachev and others listed here have learned a lesson or two about winning. Top 10 List hopes you did too.
1. Barack Obama – Voter Fraud (alleged)
Accused of voter fraud
There were many factors that hurt Mitt Romney and favored Barack Obama in the 2012 presidential election and some of them are still speculated to this day. The Democrats portrayed Romney in the worst way possible; as a wealthy, out of touch millionaire who wanted to return women to the 1800s. The Left Wing Media, who sided with Obama, did everything it could to perpetuate that caricature of Romney. Obama’s race was an advantage; voters of all persuasions, particularly minorities, still cannot get over the thought of having the first black president. The 47% of Americans on welfare were predisposed to vote for the food stamp president over Romney, wanting the free goodies to keep on giving, despite the long-term unsustainable downturn.
In spite of the odds, polls indicated that Romney was going to win the election. The economy is now close to Great Depression era conditions, and unemployment is almost as high as when Obama first entered office in 2009. Economic conditions has become so dire after Obama took office it prompted the rise of a new movement, the Tea Party. Presidents rarely win reelection when the economy is this bad!
So how did Romney lose a race that many reputable polls and pundits predicted would be easily won? The most realistic explanation people are thinking of: voter fraud in a few swing states. According to the Columbus Dispatch, one out of every five registered voters in Ohio is not eligible to vote. In at least two counties in Ohio, the number of registered voters exceeded the number of eligible adults who are of voting age. In northwestern Ohio’s Wood County, there are 109 registered voters for every 100 people eligible to vote. An additional 31 of Ohio’s 88 counties have voter registration rates over 90%, which most voting experts regard as suspicious. Obama miraculously won 100% of the vote in 21 districts in Cleveland, and was able to get over 99% of the vote where GOP inspectors were allegedly illegally removed.
No one really knows what happened,. But I am sure Romney’s outrageous comments during debates did not help his case. One comment in particular…”Binder Full of Women.”
You decide for yourself who won this debate on domestic policy.
2. Boris Yeltsin – Tropikanka
As Russians were gearing up to go to the polls in July 1996, Boris Yeltsin was nervous about losing elections. The weather was another reason to panic. With the sun shining and the temperatures quite high, Yeltsin fretted that his city-dwelling supporters would decamp to their country cottages, instead of staying home and voting. Russia’s president needed a way to keep his base from traveling.
His solution? an unusual way to use of soap opera. No show was more popular in Russia than the Brazilian morality soap Tropikanka, which r drew 25 million viewers to the state-owned network ORT. With the election looming, ORT made a surprise announcement: The show’s finale would air as a special triple episode on election day between 8 a.m. and 11 a.m. Voters had no other choice but to kill time with voting.
On 31 December 1999, in a surprise announcement, which aired on MSK on Russian television and taped in the morning of the same day, Yeltsin resigned in favor of Prime Minister Vladimir Putin, who had taken over as acting president. In the speech, Yeltsin asked for forgiveness for what he acknowledged were errors of his rule, and said Russia needed to enter the new century with fresh new political leaders.
3. Jon Gnarr – Screw-You Campaign
Every Presidential election in the United States, Mickey Mouse gets every few thousand votes. Everyone knows Mickey Mouse cannot be President, but they vote for him as there is no other candidates to vote for as the others are quote and quote “sad and pathetic”.
Same thing happened in Iceland in 2010. Jon Gnarr was the Mickey Mouse for Iceland when he ran for 2010 Reykjavik City Council election under the newly formed “Best Party”, Gnarr promised such ridiculous things as building Disneyland inside the airport, and free towels at all spas in the city, and promised to break all of his campaign promises. Gnarr ran simply as a screw-you to all the rest of the politicians running, and with slogans like “We promise to stop corruption. We’ll carry out this by participating in it openly”. He won!
After Jón became mayor of Reykjavík, it was proposed that the city be nicknamed Gnarrenburg, as per the title of an earlier television talk show which featuring Jón.
4. John Dennis – Night of the Living Pelosi:
John Dennis was running for congress and he ran a campaign that highlights the failed policies of Nancy Pelosi and in his ad campaign “Night of the Living Pelosi” he compared Pelosi to a Zombie. Pelosi’s reputation was slightly tarnished, but not to get Dennis in power.
5. Ronald Reagan – Stealing Jimmy Carter’s Book
In 1980, Jimmy Carter and Ronald Reagan were neck and neck – competing for the role of Presidency of the United States. Because of a third-party candidate, no debates took place until the week before election. Carter prepared by writing his strategy and Q and A responses in a book. But before the debate, the book went missing and somehow wandered into the hands of Reagan (Republican Candidate). So Reagan immediately used a new strategy to use the book to know Carter’s responses and trump them with his famous witty remarks.
The strategy worked. Reagan crushed Carter in the debate and raised his support so much that he won, all thanks to a stolen book.
You decide for yourself who won this monumental Presidential debate
6. Fransisco Evardo Oliveira – Declaring He Has No Idea What He’s Doing
Francisco Silva was a clown from Brazil. In 2010, he ran for the Brazilian Congress by declaring that he had no idea what he was doing. He won with the second highest vote ever. People wanted change.
Detractors have filed a dozen lawsuits against Tiririca (Oliveira)
While most attack him for ridiculing Brazil’s legislative institutions, the most serious suit seeks to invalidate his bid for a federal seat by claiming that he is, like 20 per cent of the population, illiterate.
The commotion around Tiririca would be minor in other circumstances. But it has taken on bigger proportions because, according to polls, the comic is within reach of actually winning his seat to represent Sao Paulo state.
He has gained popularity with his advertisements, which contrast with the run-of-the-mill “vote-for-me” pleas seen on television.
While most candidates smile determinedly at the camera and pledge standard vows to cut corruption or improve health services, Tiririca – who graduated from being a circus performer to a television personality – serves as comic relief.
7. William McKinley – sitting on the porch of his house
In 1896, the presidential election was heated. William J. Bryan, McKinely’s Democratic opponent, was travelling all around the country giving long speeches in the long-held Republican seats of the Great Lakes and New England. Bryan also denounced McKinley at each stop, pretty much creating the modern campaign tour as he went along.
To combat this, his challenger William McKinley….simply sat on the porch of his house in Ohio and just talked to anyone who would listen. That’s it. That was his entire strategy – sit it out and let the voters come to him. Amazingly, McKinley;s strategy paid off, as Bryan’s wide appeal message alienated some of his supporter, while McKinley talking to people one on one tailored his answers for each voter, with the added side effect of McKinleys errors not made public. The laying about the house strategy worked, and he was elected president by a slight margin.
Success was short-lived for William McKinley, who was shot and fatally wounded on September 6, 1901, inside the Temple of Music on the grounds of the Pan-American Exposition in Buffalo, New York. McKinley was shaking hands with the public when he was shot by Leon Czolgosz who was an anarchist. The President died 8 days later from gangrene caused by the bullet wound.
McKinley was elected for a second term in 1900. He enjoyed meeting the public and utterly refused to accept the security available to his office. The Secretary to the President, George B. Cortelyou, feared an assassination attempt would take place during a visit to the Temple of Music and twice took it off the schedule. McKinley restored it each time. A wrong move on his part – costing him his life.
8. Antanas Mockus – Mooning, Superman and Mimes
Mockus, who is mathematician/philosopher at Columbian National University, managed to get elected as the mayor of Bogata twice by using some of the most creative methods, such as mooning audiences and dressing up like superman in public. His period of being mayor of Bogata was punctuated with similarly eccentric (though apparently successful) acts, such as taking a shower in commercials to promote conserving water and using mimes as a way to control traffic.
9. Calvin Coolidge – encouraging his people not to care about the government.
When Coolidge took office when Harding unexpectedly died two years into his term, but if Coolidge wanted a second term, he had a lot of work to do considering all the scandals and corruption Harding was involved in. Instead of trying to fix any of the problems, he just tried to make everyone forget about them, as if they never existed.
He emphasized the already-booming economy, small government and did not even bother to attack his opponents. Instead, the opposing Democratic party found itself divided and Coolidge did not have to do much of anything. He was “praised for not leading because that’s what the country wanted and he got his second term.
In 1928, he surprised many Americans by choosing not to run for re-election. His legacy is mixed. People who support more federal government involvement in the economy hate him. People who support less federal government involvement in the economy love him and see him as an aspiration.
10. Bill Clinton – hiring Mark Katz in 1993
For almost two decades, when politicians and corporate chieftains — including Clinton, Michael Bloomberg, former Viacom head Tom Freston and Time Warner’s Jeff Bewkes — have needed a hand with a presentation, they call Mark Katz to build their presentations and pepper their speeches with jokes and witticisms. When Clinton’s 100 days were not going as planned, he called Katz to help him and help was what he received.
My question: Why didn’t he hire Katz to write his speech about not sleeping with Monica Lewinsky?
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