Obama and the Art of Power | Robert Greene | Big Think

Obama and the Art of Power

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Power and strategy expert Robert Greene analyzes what propelled President Obama to victory in 2008—and how he can avoid losing power now.

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Robert Greene:

Author and public speaker Robert Greene attended U.C. California at Berkeley and the University of Wisconsin at Madison, where he received a degree in classical studies. He has worked in New York as an editor and writer at several magazines, including Esquire, and in Hollywood as a story developer and writer. In 1995 he was involved in the planning and creation of the art school Fabrica, outside Venice, Italy.

He is the author of numerous volumes on power, strategy, war, and seduction, including the international bestseller "The 48 Laws of Power," "The Art of Seduction," "The 33 Strategies of War," and "The 50th Law," co-written with rapper 50 Cent. Greene currently lives in Los Angeles.

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TRANSCRIPT:

Question: What propelled Obama and not McCain to power in 2008?

Robert Greene: Well you know a lot of things in history are timing, and it’s very peculiar because in retrospect things… people can look more brilliant or necessary than they actually were. So the fact that Bill Clinton faced George Bush, the first George Bush in ’92, was just the perfect moment for him in that sense. People were really bored with the Reagan era. They didn’t like Bush. He was unpopular and it was timing. W happened to have the good fortune of facing Al Gore in the year 2000 for all the virtues of Al Gore, and we love him, ran probably one of the worst campaigns, and he is not a good campaigner. In retrospect it looked like W, you know Karl Rove, that great genius, was able to do this electoral magic, but in fact, he happened to have the good luck to face two very weak candidates in Gore and in Kerry. Obama, I’m not saying Obama had luck, but the moment was totally right. People were just viscerally nauseated by W. They had enough of the wars, the incompetence, Katrina, the secrecy, but what Obama did that was brilliant, and I talk about it in The 50th Law to a little extent, is he understood that the timing was right and a normal person would have waited. I even thought he should have waited and I was wrong at the time, that it was too early for him. Nobody knew him. He had no record. He was a black man in America. You know what are you thinking? Give it some time. He understood that this was the moment. If he waited to 2012 that moment would have gone. He would have… Hillary would have won. She would have been in a position of power. He would have never had a chance. This was his moment. He opposed the Iraq war. He had momentum and he ran a brilliant campaign. It’s a question of obviously facing a very weak candidate in John McCain. I don’t know who they would have put up, who could have possible posed a greater threat, but Obama was brilliant in how he saw that this was the one moment he had and then he ran… For a Democrat, because Democrats generally are pretty incompetent when it comes to running elections. I’m a Democrat myself, so I say that with you know a little bit of I’m upset to hear that, but someone like John Kerry… Typically Democrats don’t understand strategy. They’re always reacting to news events and tacking there here and there depending on what is happening. They have no sense of the larger picture. Obama was the first person in my lifetime… I can swear the first candidate in my lifetime who I could say this man understands strategy. He ran a brilliant campaign, a lot of it based on a consistent message, which is one thing I preach, which was his opposition to the war and change, very well marketing wise. It was brilliant. This was the first man in my lifetime who I could compare to FDR or John F. Kennedy, two other brilliant campaigners in history.

Question: In what areas, if any, has Obama ceded power since 2008?

Robert Greene: You know, it’s a little hard for me because I have a problem, which is I like him a lot and I normally don’t have this problem because I normally don’t like politicians, so I can view them with some distance, so I’m giving that caveat that I have this problem. I’m not completely objective. He has run up against some things that he hadn’t expected, which for somebody at his age, with his level of executive experience, which wasn’t any is going to encounter.

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