Political Stagecraft Here, There & Everywhere

Cristina Yesterday, Hillary Today

Campaign rallies often are not what they appear to be on TV. This is true not just in Argentina but in many countries. In many cases, in Argentina, candidates pay for “supporters” to be bused into rallies from far away places. These political “extras” often have no real interest in either the candidate or the election. They attend rallies in exchange for money and/or food. This has long been one of the worst kept secrets of Argentine politics.

Cristina Kirchner’s last campaign event before the election was a perfect example of this. The event took place in La Matanza, about 30 minutes from Capital Federal. It was a cold, rainy night, which probably discouraged some true supporters from showing up. Moreover, La Matanza isn’t exactly Palermo or Recoleta. It’s not the kind of place you’d want to be left alone on a dark night. But that didn’t prevent political operatives from busing in hundreds (perhaps thousands) of paid extras to make the event look like a popular gathering of patriotic partisans.

I covered the event as a journalist. I mixed in with the crowd and spoke to people who had come to see Cristina. Most of the people there paid little or no attention to Cristina or her speech. Some admitted to being paid for their attendance. A good number were drunk and, in some areas, the air reeked of marijuana. After Cristina’s speech, the crowd dispersed rapidly. Almost all spectators moved quickly back to the buses that had brought them, leaving behind a heap of trash, discarded banners and plastic bottles. Some people came just to collect the trash for recycling. “I get 90 centavos or one peso per kilo for the bottles,” said one woman. Few showed genuine enthusiasm for Cristina or the election.

Of course, none of this would surprise an experienced observer of local politics. And none of this necessarily indicates what kind of president Cristina will be. Some politicians are more popular than others and some elections are more engaging than others. This election was noticeably devoid of energy and enthusiasm. It was always a forgone conclusion that Cristina would win. So it shouldn’t be too surprising that Cristina’s last rally lacked the kind of support that an outside observer might expect during the last act of a presidential campaign.

Whatever the case, it would be a mistake to think Cristina is the only politician – or Argentina the only country – to use money and enticements to get extras to play the part of genuine political supporters. This happens around the world, including in “developed” countries and older democracies such as the U.S. Consider what happened last week with Hillary Clinton’s campaign. Hillary’s staff got college students to ask prepared questions at a rally. Campaign staffers offered to bus students to the rally and then gave some of them a choice of questions they could ask at the rally. The questions, obviously, had been pre-approved by Hillary’s team, thus improving the odds that Hillary would face no really tough, unexpected questions.

It would be unreasonable to say Hillary lacks popular support and is incapable of attracting sizable crowds of genuine supporters. She is a popular candidate who has a genuine following among millions of Democrats and others who are disenchanted with President Bush and the status-quo in Washington. But it would also be unreasonable to believe that Hillary and other U.S. politicians are above the kind of political pandering and staged campaign events that characterized Cristina’s last political rally. Both women’s campaigns have employed less-than-respectable tactics to make them look good.

Last week, Hillary’s campaign got caught staging a question-and-answer session at Grinnell College in Iowa. Watch the video here to see how the leading Democratic candidate in the world’s most powerful democracy stuck her finger in the eye of democratic dialog. Thought this kind of thing happened only in developing democracies like Argentina? Think again.