Now that the great race is finally over, I am thrilled that I lived to see what was previously unimaginable: An African-American candidate overwhelmingly elected President of the United States.
Not as a protest or grievance candidate but as iconic symbol for change, with wide spread across the fabric of American society.
This monumental achievement was in no small part made responsible by the truly brilliant strategic planning and the tactical campaigning of President-elect Barack Obama.
No future presidential candidate will ever run a campaign the same way as a result of the Obama win.
This should be a harbinger of sound thinking process, cerebral approaches and hopefully better decisions borne out of improved judgment from past mistakes.
Taking chances means making mistakes.
This is what I see as strategic development that won an election.
BAD TIMES = BETTER CHANCES: Tapping into a national, across-the-board mood of anger and unhappiness, Obama's brand embodied not only change, but more importantly hope, vision, challenging the status quo and then upsetting it like we've never seen before.
The message was consistent, continuous, and coherent.
Tap into the vein of meaning, need and relevance and people will buy what you are selling.
DEFINE, Don't Be Defined: Obama's team managed and ran access to the candidate unlike any other Presidential candidate before.
This came under a great deal of attack from the media, but what it did was important because it succeeded in Obama being able to manage the electorate's perception of him, regardless of the press' attempts to take over how the voters saw him...
Not since Presidents John Kennedy or Ronald Reagan has image been such a force of nature responsible for carrying a candidate in to the White House.
Obama is almost a cult of personality.
PERCEPTIONS: More Important Than Reality During the debates in September and October while the economy was crumbling all around us, neither candidate stepped up and took control of the situation, Obama definitely missed a big opportunity to show voters that he was as angry as anyone about self-created greed on Wall Street that caused this meltdown.
The voters wanted to see a display of intensity.
Obama instead chose to be calm and reassuring which worked better in the minds of the voters because he seemed more "Presidential.
" The Economy proved to be the number issue for voters and it came down who which candidate appeared to look less useless on the issue than the other.
John McCain missed an even bigger opportunity by not stepping up and doing what he does best: go on the attack and announce that his cabinet-in-waiting, Attorney General Rudy Giuliani and Treasury Secretary Mitt Romney will be taking names and kicking ass in Washington and Wall Street! This cost McCain the election because all people remembered is his statement the morning the meltdown started to hit the fan that the basic fundamentals of the economy were sound.
The last time someone equaled a great moment in bad timing like this, a ship called Titanic sank.
MESSAGE IS KEY: Obama keep the message on point that change was necessary after eight years, thanks to the current President and the Republicans.
Three out of every four voters in the US felt that the country was going in the wrong direction.
The voters associated the need for change as a result of these two factors.
Add in two unpopular wars, the economy in shambles while almost a trillion dollars going out of this country into the coffers of those are essentially are against us, the Republicans failed to successfully sell the message that they were the true agents of change lead by John McCain who was seen as being in lockstep with the current administration.
Bottom line here is that McCain didn't do enough to distance himself from his past record of voting with the President 90% of the time.
That's baggage that even the worst airline just can't lose.
INNATE LIKABILITY: In the end, It's Just A Popularity Contest! Despite highly questionable past associations and dubious relationships, Obama managed to leverage an intangible that has immeasurable value - Likability! More people respected John McCain than Obama, but the ratio of people who liked Obama more than McCain was at least 2-1.
Think it doesn't matter? Past Presidents like John Kennedy and Ronald Reagan used this factor to win the White House.
Still think it doesn't matter? Like Obama, Kennedy beat a more experienced opponent who was very qualified, but as innately unlikable as they come - Richard Nixon.
Until he resigned, Nixon, whether you like it or not, was the most accomplished President on foreign policy accomplishments and national security.
People gravitate toward things, places and people we like.
Human nature doesn't change.
Motivation: Sometimes a pep talk works better than a lot of Xs and Os on a blackboard.
Without a doubt emotion won out over intellect in this race for the White House.
Obama told the voters what they wanted to hear and it made people feel better, enough to put their faith in him to vote for him.
His plans aren't especially original, brilliant, unique or proprietary.
The realm in which politics operates in is such a dysfunctional silo, that no light can penetrate and where oxygen doesn't exist, filled to the brim with the worst people and practices; it isn't likely anything truly remarkable can happen there.
We'll be happy if there is even the slightest bit of improvement.
What really worked for him was taking what was all around him that wasn't happening and wasn't being done and taking ownership of it.
He embodied motivation, pro-activity and at least his approach was creative.
Sometimes that works wonders.
Hard Work: Obama's core value that lead to success was their ability to out-work, out-fund raise, out-organize, and out-do McCain and Republicans in battleground states, former red states, appealing to 75% of first-time voters, mobilizing the African-American vote, women and other groups like never before.
This resulted in Obama getting more votes than any previous Democratic Presidential candidate and more than 52% of the vote.
This 2008 election saw a turn out that has been seen in a Presidential election since 1960.
No smoke and mirrors, just grinding it out, winning voters one at a time.
Regardless of what party you support, elections are won on strategic planning and this race showed that truth to be undeniable.