Here is a little story from a far away Country.
It is 2007, there is a presidential elections in this country, the conservatives are in charge, the current president Mr C is very unpopular (<40%), his government doesn't fare much better. The Opposition from the left is extremely confident, after all the approval ratings of the current government are very low and never, ever, has the same political party held the reigns of power for more than two terms. After two terms the people get so sick of the current party in power that they vote them out, every time.
The contender from the right is Mr S, the current interior minister, he is part of the government despite being a personal enemy of the current president Mr C. Being part of an unpopular government, he has a lot running against him, however due to a certain detachment that he has maintained from his own administration he is seen as an outsider of a sort: A maverick. Many left wing pundits have managed to portray him as an arrogant ruthless and quick to anger man.
From the left, Mrs R. was selected through a primary of a sort, riding a vast grass-root movement avid for change. To say that Mrs R. portrays herself as post partisan would be an exaggeration, but she has displayed a certain distance from ideological orthodoxy and it inspired many people.
The election is a rather complicated process, there were many candidates, but suffice is to say that at the last stage of the election only the two main candidates remained: Mr S and Mrs R. And, incomprehensibly to some, Mr. S won. How could that happen? Well obviously one strategy was better than the other. Here is a brief description;
1) Mrs R ran and inspirational campaign, she was after all an historic candidate, potentially the first woman president of the country. She embodied the promise of change that many in the media as well as the entertainment industry loved. Alternatively, part of the campaign was to capitalize on the bad image of Mr. S in the Media. It should have worked and maybe it could have.
2) Mr S opted for a radically different approach, instead of trying to beat her in the fields of inspiration and media hype, he focused on bread and butter issues to a point quite never seen before. Also managed to confuse the hell out of his detractors by publicly endorsing certain policies of the left, notably about immigration, suddenly his bad public image didn't stick so much any more.
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