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Ben Kaplan 01:00
Hey, it's Ben Kaplan. Today on Unpolitics, I'm chatting with Macon Phillips who served as Director of Digital Strategy for the White House during the President Barack Obama administration. Philips got to start overseeing online fundraising and communications for the 2008 Obama Presidential campaign, and later drove efforts to revitalize the President's social media and web presence. During his tenure in the federal government. Phillips also served in a similar capacity for the US State Department, where he sought to extend our nation's digital communication presence to other areas of strategic importance around the world.
Ben Kaplan 01:35
So how should elected and appointed leaders use digital comms to amplify their own messages and actively engage with supporters and constituents? And how can we avoid the polarization and disinformation that seem to go hand in hand with politics on social media these days? Let's innovate.
Ben Kaplan 01:55
Macon to tell your story, but also the story of the rise of digital and digital organizing and infrastructure in modern American politics, it's helpful to start at the hotbed of this circa maybe 2004, which is like Vermont, where you were, where you are now. But really, because some of this have roots in the organizing for the Howard Dean presidential campaign, which rose up real fast, flamed out kind of fast as well, but had its roots in innovative ways of organizing people. So talk about your beginnings and politics in Vermont, and then to DC and then to Obama and what was happening in the rise of digital as a way to organize and move people.
Macon Philips 02:37
I'll do my best. And thanks, Ben, for having me on. And for a chance to talk about all of this. And you're right. I'm in Vermont today where my story began. And I'll try to be quick. But as you point out, I've been really fortunate to be on the first row, or part of some really big changes in how politics works in the country. And frankly, we're gonna get into it, they're not all working out that crate, you know, I don't, I don't think, you know, everything has broken to the benefit. But at the same time, it's really important to kind of understand what those changes have been. It began when I moved to Vermont, as an AmeriCorps VISTA and started becoming more aware of domestic policy issues, frankly, poverty, the education system housing going up, I'd never really had to engage firsthand. And at the same time, Bush was saber rattling to go to war in Iraq. And I was wondering, like, what is that all about, and the President could be wrong, like, you know, I just really hadn't paid attention to news. I think a lot of people are like that they kind of all of a sudden, they realize like the President's not infallible, and this could be a really big mistake. And that was getting me kind of pay more attention. And then finally, Howard Dean decided to run for president out of Burlington, Vermont, where I was living at the time. And his campaign was incredibly innovative in a number of ways. But really imagine, for the first time a campaign sending out an email to a few 1000 people, and asking them to pull out their credit cards and type in those numbers on the internet. You know, ecommerce was not where it is now. And the idea that you could get a lot of people to give you 20 bucks, and actually get them to do it over and over was was a really new concept. But it was incredibly powerful for Dean's campaign. But the other part, which is more profound when you think about it was how they built an organization using tools like meetup that allowed supporters of the campaign to find one another in real life IRL, and not just be in this digital world. So one of the things I think that's really important is that from the outset, innovation and politics by digital technologies has manifested itself not just in the virtual space, but very much in the real world space. And really important digital innovations. Always connect the two. Okay,
Ben Kaplan 04:46
so they're not in a silo of itself. It's really like a hybrid connector of people in the real world to make it more efficient to connect with others. Howard Dean rose quickly, he had sort of his Howard Dean scream moment that sometimes We'll talk about how he kind of flamed out quickly. But then fast forward to it sort of sets the stage and 2004 for really, you know, it wasn't president then he was a state senator than a US Senator Barack Obama in 2008. And really, you weren't part of the Howard Dean campaign. But you were in Vermont, you had friends and roommates, a lot of them who were and then you took that and you moved to Washington, DC, I think joined an outfit called Blue stage digital, where suddenly Barack Obama is a client before he runs for president. So what did you take from that experience? You know, what you saw from Howard Dean? And how did that start impacting the rise of Barack Obama before he became the figure? We know him today as
Macon Philips 05:41
Yeah, I think getting to know a lot of the people who worked on the Dean campaign because I was roommates with a lot of them. As I mentioned, I was an AmeriCorps VISTA in Burlington at the time. And then joining blue state in DC and spending a few years bless thinking about like Obama or anything like that, but more about how we can apply these lessons. One of the things that was incredibly destabilizing was what was happening to the media and the rise of blogs, the rise of all of these new news sources that were making it easier for more people to add their two cents, making it easier for more people to add their version of events, but also making it more easy to find like minded individuals to build coalitions. And it was a really dynamic time. And I only bring that up, because it reminds me a lot of right now, in the sense that we talk about AI. And we talk a lot about sort of the media space, as if these are things that we should judge and say they're not good, and we're worried about them. But like, the reality is, they're just happening, and we have to learn to adapt. And so what we helped was, you know, labor unions, we help the DMC learn to adapt to these changes to operate successfully in a world changed by digital technologies develop new fundraising programs,
Ben Kaplan 06:57
what was the hardest thing to get people? That was the biggest challenge? Was it just like, one, you know, we're used to controlling everything really closely has happened in the corporate world, too. And suddenly, we can't control everything. There could be someone somewhere, who says they're a Democrat doing their own thing. And we have less control. But that's one thing that's maybe challenging. Another thing is that suddenly, maybe it's less centralized power, if someone could just is good at using these tools. They can be a spokesperson, quickly, it's not just the media, like what was the challenge at that time of getting people to adapt, or organizations to adapt or the existing power structure?
Macon Philips 07:31
That's a great question. I'm sure there's a ton of great answers. And I'll think of one after this interview, right. But the one that came to mind right now, I think, particularly early on the incumbents sort of status quo, the decision makers, the people who actually were in a position to affect change, even within large organizations, oftentimes saw the internet people as kind of a different kind of activism. And you know, generating a ton of emails or faxes or whatever, through this sort of online organizing was almost like a different category of input that was easily disregarded, kind of like
Ben Kaplan 08:02
the fringe, the frontier of organizing, and politics. Those are crazy folks over there in their own little digital world, but it doesn't affect us in the mainstream was the attitude early on, you may
Macon Philips 08:12
have had this experience, too. But like, I've learned incredible things from Reddit, right? That's an example. But I've also seen some incredibly silly stuff on Reddit, right? So you kind of have the whole range there. When you think about Reddit as an example, as I guess my point is, it was really hard to get clients to see this as an opportunity to learn and to understand their target audiences more to understand the playing field more and policy solutions more, to collaborate more. And they saw it as an opportunity to have more cowbell, they didn't have to pay to print a bunch of pamphlets, they could just make a website and blast it out to people. And I think like being empathetic, and sort of understanding who you're talking to is a best practice. It's something everyone talks about. But in terms of digital engagement, I think we just came on way too strong pushing messages and not really spending a lot of serious time learning from our communities. And there wasn't that interest. And doing that, because people felt like this online community was great as an amplification apparatus, certainly as a fundraising apparatus. But ultimately, I saw a lot of the lessons of direct mail applied to digital. So it's now we send out these frantic emails, we send out these sort of like, oh my god, ultimate last alert, secret plan, give me 20 bucks, instead of actually educating people on issues and trying to like understand where they are. And that's what's always been a challenge.
Ben Kaplan 09:35
Digital becomes a one way communication mechanism. That's like less expensive than direct mail, right? We can send a bunch of emails, we don't have the cost direct mail, great. We can just distribute as opposed to being let's have a two way conversation. Let's understand you better let's engage with you and pull insights of what you really care about at this early stage. Just like one way, the two way part comes later.
Macon Philips 09:56
I think that that's right. And I think like this whole idea of like cool elaborating on something, it's really important, particularly for an EEG people earlier in their career to understand, you know, I graduated in 2000. And that means I was in college when Wi Fi came out. But it also means I left college before Google Docs came out. And Google Docs think about it as a watershed moment in terms of how groups can create documents to that date, it was I have a doc, I email it to you, you redline it, you email it back, the way that people collaborate has really fundamentally changed thanks to all these digital technologies. And yet, a lot of the people who are in positions of power sort of came up and learn to their ways of working before then. And so part of starlings work is to certainly design, you know, really cool campaigns, but ultimately implementing that is really hard for organizations when their leadership may know a subject matter effort or issue cold, but don't quite understand the way we need to generate content to actually make it interesting to people these days, right. So there's a real cultural shift that's happening in terms of how people collaborate around content development versus some of the things I saw early on,
Ben Kaplan 11:06
how does it come to pass? I mean, eventually, Barack Obama will be a client of Blue State Digital, you'll be working on that account. But then eventually, you'll leave to join his campaign for president, you'll have a new media role in that campaign, and eventually that will lead to you joining the government. So what happens? Did either Barack Obama, the candidates, get it? Or did people on his team get the digital will be important? Why does he start to embrace it, and this would have paves the way for 2008. That's coming in his embrace of digital as a key cornerstone of the campaign,
Macon Philips 11:39
I think Barack Obama was able to leverage digital technologies to run a campaign like everyone saw, because of what he did before the internet was even widely available, when he made a choice to walk around the South Side of Chicago and knock on doors and ask people what their problems were, and then more importantly, respond in a way that made them feel that he could help them. And, you know, I've been asked this question a couple different times. And I always ask people, if they've actually spent time knocking on doors, because it's hard. But I think there are their door knockers who use the internet, and then there's people who just want to blast and I think Obama is a door knocker, he will show up and try to understand where people are coming from, and then ultimately lead them there. But you know, on the top of our website, was a quote of his that said, I'm asking you not to believe in my ability to change Washington, I'm asking you to believe in yours. And with that kind of approach to leadership, being able to use participatory technologies to scale that fundamentally, participatory model. Wasn't that hard, frankly. So you know, having a leader who understands what organizing takes, he immediately saw the value of tools to help organizers train more people to share data to contact voters, he that was easy. He wasn't distracted by cable news and a lot of the press cycles. And he was under he was able to understand that people got information, in way different ways than he did. Right. And just being able to understand that is critical. So yeah, he had an eye for it. That said, he absolutely was not someone who was in our business every day. I you know, I'd be lying if I said, you know, he and I would come up with all this amazing content together. You know, he was focused on winning this election, getting out on the road and meeting people. And we were there to document and kind of support that. But it was an incredible experience.
Ben Kaplan 13:31
When you joined his presidential campaign, you said I think I believe we chatted before right around the Super Tuesday is sort of the the cycle of that year, before you're taking on the Republicans, you're still having to like win the nomination. What was the advantage that he had through this sort of like digital channel compared to Hillary Clinton? Or was she trying to do the exact same thing at the same time?
Macon Philips 13:55
Well, I mean, I think that there's definitely an answer of a general sense. And then I haven't thought about the sort of specific comparisons. What's interesting is working backwards, we hired some people from the Clinton campaign, and they were incredible, you know, whether that was on digital advertising, or the policy team or otherwise. So what's interesting from a like, how are the campaigns different? And how are they better or worse? What's interesting is after the Clinton primary campaign ended, a lot of those folks came in to help the Obama campaign. So that's always nice. I think a lot of the innovations were sort of shared. That said, I think Obama's message was much clearer. And I think his message resonated with people who were angry about the war in Iraq. And that was a really important contrast to Hillary Clinton. And as we saw through organizations like move on, there was a ton of online enthusiasm and energy around that issue. So I think early early on, you know, right when he got out and announced his candidacy, you that clip of him talking about a dumb war, and all of that, you know, really whipped around. And then you had a lot of students who would self organize for Obama and one of the seminal events that he's talked about. And certainly the campaign acknowledges is the student event at George Washington that was organized on Facebook, when they really didn't know how many people would come up. And all of a sudden, they had more turnout than they had had, at any event, they realized there was something happening on the internet, they needed to take seriously. And only Claire never really had that. And she has so much. And I think part of what she has is a lot of that sort of pre Google Group doc way of working, frankly, you know, a lot of established and really thoughtful people who work in a certain way. And it was really rigid, it was hard, I think, for that team to execute nimbly, and to ultimately take risks and sort of be in terms of of content as a fresh and interesting, for lack of a better term. And then
Ben Kaplan 15:56
what was the result before we get into when you join the administration. Finally, after that year, Obama wins the nomination. He goes up against John McCain in that election. And what did digital mean, at that point, once you sort of get out of just within Democratic Party, democratic activists, people who are really engaged, you get to a general electorate, what did you notice? What did the digital sort of infrastructure and digital organizing mean, at that point in that campaign against John McCain? Well,
Macon Philips 16:26
I think when a campaign moves from our primary to general election, you shift in terms of geographics, right, you're now thinking about battleground states, and you're thinking about fundraising states, and you're thinking about the other states, I grew up in Alabama, the 2008 Barack Obama campaign was not trying to win Alabama, and they weren't planning to raise a lot of money from it, right? So when we look at a state like California, Obama carried that in 2008, but also raised a ton of money from it. And if you look at a state, like, you know, Ohio is always a classical North Carolina, you know, these are states where you're really focused on volunteer organizing, and making sure you're registering people to vote and turning them out and funding that work with money raised from other states, right. So you start seeing this sort of differentiated strategy start growing, you start seeing the state specific battleground states have their own digital programs. And
Ben Kaplan 17:14
you're saying you're making the point implicitly that even the states that are not battlegrounds, that has like, a California, that's a firmly Democrat state has a role in the strategy because maybe that's where you get a fundraising muscle and weight that powers you in lots of other places. You see that more even now, where you'll see like in places that are solidly in one column, like California, for Democrats, you'll see like people being raised as volunteers to do phone banking, and call other states. Right. So you're saying that it's the rise of each state having its own strength and having a different strategy appropriate to the state?
Macon Philips 17:51
That's right. And I think like, there's a role for every state to play, like we and and that was part of what we did out of the national office in Chicago was kind of a foundational everyone else strategy, right? Because there's people who get a car and drive across the border to volunteer as people give money, like, you know, you can have everybody be part of it. But the one of the cool things that happened was we went from a team of about 35. And we hired, we did two things from a state infrastructure standpoint, we ended up recruiting and hiring state New Media directors in the key states like Florida, Ohio, North Carolina, Virginia, Nevada, those sorts of things. And they worked with the state level office, to develop content to help get turnout to events to develop materials for the media, fundraising, organizing, communications, but at a state level, right. We also created a road team, and this was the team that deployed with the president or then the Senator. So as he was traveling, we had cameras in the bubble until we were getting that content, which you know, sold itself online, right. But we had to get a camera in there and learn like how do you do that with someone who's getting the Secret Service for the first time? And is this going through all of these weird events and all the logistics, and it just took everyone working from the advanced team, that kind of thing. It was figuring out how to rent planes, create events, all the way to direct mail team who had helped us with design sometimes, or we would help them and just like it was really interesting to see how that worked.
Ben Kaplan 19:27
And just to give a frame on that. I think when you said 35 People in demand, you're talking like the Obama Presidential campaigns, new media team, which was started at 35 people, and then eventually we need to scale to like 100 or so here's
Macon Philips 19:39
the deal, man. There are some like, oh, geez, like when Obama was announcing with his family in the snow. In Springfield, Illinois, everyone kinda remembers that. He launched a website. And there was, you know, two or three people in the national headquarters going and had no idea where it would go. And at that time, blue state was supporting him, but it was really like, we're gonna help you launch the website, we'll help get things going on some general strategy, but that team grew to 30 over the course of the primary, right? Because they had to tooth and nail really show that they could raise money. Like, forget about all the other stuff like, Oh, look how much like you got on your video. And like all of that, when they started showing steady growth of fundraising, they were really able to drive a lot in terms of recruiting more people. So it was really bootstrapped. I think that's really important for people to understand is there's a real credibility, when that came from early Obama that showed people that like, Hey, you may not like their skinny jeans, you may not like them, you know, in the how silly they are. They're younger, they're making all these blogs on whatever. But did you see the number that just came in from the last email they sent? Like, whatever they're doing, let them keep doing it. Think about it that way. So
Ben Kaplan 20:52
you're saying it starts with just like a couple people make it a website. There's no infrastructure really at all. It grows to be 30 plus people, but really, the reason it grows and is allowed to grow and as invested in is because you can't argue with cold hard cash as fundraising dollars coming in
Macon Philips 21:09
100%. And this is the core lesson of like digital strategy, to my mind is understanding the existing incentives of the business model you're trying to impact, right? Like, what why are they doing in the first place if ultimately, this campaign wanted to win, but early on, they needed to show fundraising quickly. And you were asking earlier about the Clinton campaign, I just give you an a cool example of how digital is to help a non fundraising way. So they amassed an email list, right, because Obama was running, raising money doing events started, they start getting more and more people. But if you recall, there's a whole superdelegate part of the process for nominating and like Clinton had all of these super delegates wrapped up because you have so many relationships, we were able in the team did this right when I showed up to look at our email list and cut reports of like all of a congress person's constituents who are on our list and send it to them being like, here's a data backed report, all of the Obama supporters in your districts please reconsider your commitment to Clinton, right or whatever. And it's like a really different way of using data and sort of the community we were building to have more credible communications, and it wasn't a fundraising thing. So there's just like a ton of different ways the team was showing how it could deliver value to the campaign early on. But it had to show that Obama didn't just want digital to have digital, it had to like, walk up to how it was supporting the enterprise. And they just knocked that out
Ben Kaplan 22:31
of the park. And then you arrive in around Super Tuesday, that probably was March of that year. And you come in as Deputy Director of New Media, which means you start scaling the team even further, which is why you start having like the state directors and key states and everything else in the I think you scale from like, roughly 35 people to 100 people over that next time as you sort of flesh out that operation to go to a general election, basically. And what is the lesson of of the final general election, Obama wins, and it's not close. It's complete, really victory. What do you think causes that? And then how does that start to be transitioning to like, oh, man, we're actually joining the government now. Now, this becomes like, this isn't like an upstart thing anymore. Now we have real power, we have real control over many different a lot of infrastructure. And we started thinking about, like, how does this impact governance, not just campaign?
Macon Philips 23:24
Oh, yeah. I mean, you're answering a lot of the question already, I think, when I think back to that time, leaving aside just the wonder of winning a presidential campaign and being able to celebrate with so many incredible people who, you know, just so many inspiring people in that campaign. Once the dust settles, it's like, Okay, now what, and I moved from the campaign into what's called the transition team, which when you think about it, there's like a period of time between the campaign ending and the inauguration. And so that was the website change.gov, which we launched the morning after election night in, in Grant Park. And then I went to Joseph bank and bought two suits for $25. And, you know, showed up to my first day at the government office, and tried to start planning on on that very transition. And I think there were two, two big stories from that period of time. The first was the transition of the campaign to whatever it became, from a political standpoint. And that wasn't something I was involved with on a day to day basis. But I do remember trying to engage in that and offer my point of view. And I think we really bumbled that. I think that was a really, you know, looking back, it was challenging to figure out how to transition from a political campaign that was so aligned and purpose driven to a political party that could support a President's agenda without the president feeling like it was becoming too political. It was a real balance issue. And ultimately, I think it changed the way Obama and his voice in how that manifests itself and other leaders in the Obama world talk to me equal and how open they were with people about, you know how to advocate and support for things like the Affordable Care Act. I mean, we really did, you know, start pulling punches with a online community that had gone to the mat for this guy to win. And, you know, a lot of different political strategists have talked about this in terms of like, oh, we should have done this, we should have done that we, you know, tried Republicans tried to break their fever, and it never worked. And we were that was our mistake, we should have, you know, all of this. When I think when I look back at it, I really wish instead of pushing for the campaign to move into the party, which I think I remember, feeling was a good idea, remaining separate, and sort of being a third stalking horse that would be more Obama aligned and less democratic party aligned. But that's a whole other podcast. That was one part of this. The other part was, as you mentioned, shifting from the idea of serving supporters to serving citizens, and not just citizens, but serving people. I mean, one of the great responsibilities when you are in the United States government is Yeah, you're a lot of other people are paying attention to you. And I went on to work at the State Department for three and a half years. So I certainly learned a lot about that, from that experience. But we had to think about how to bring in criticism and challenges to policymaking. Right? How do we make better ideas? How do we explain things to skeptical people, you know a lot about politics is finding your allies and turning them out. That's no way to run a country. But we felt like at the White House, there were three really core objectives for the digital team in which we eventually named the team, the digital team. After a few months, they started as new media, but then I became the Director of Digital Strategy. And people were like, What the hell does that do? And you know, the way we would answer is, we would say, first, the White House, we amplify the President's message@whitehouse.gov, the only person has that as their home page is my mom, we need to actually think about where people are going online to get information and make sure that we're there. The second is how we make this work more accessible, how we tell the story of Obama's policy priorities in a way that uses all of these amazing tools. Let's not just put out press releases, and do press conferences. Let's make a video. Let's make White House whiteboards. Let's think about ways that we can visualize information to help inform the debate, to show the President's point of view, never tried to represent it as news, but making sure that whether they liked it or not, people understood where he was coming from. And then the final was how we could give people meaningful opportunities to participate. And that was really bringing in new voices. And we create a petitions platform for that we did a number of events where the President would answer questions. But ultimately, it was a way to build in the fundamental piece of the White House. And I'm proud of stuff, which is its ability to bring input in to bring in new perspectives, and ultimately help tackle some of these really hard problems that any President faces. So I'm really proud of the time we had there and feel like we made that transition pretty well.
Ben Kaplan 27:46
What was some of the innovations that come out of that period? What are some things like hadn't been done before by a president, that maybe now we take for granted that like, you know, people just do like, yeah, you're gonna see this that was kind of new and innovative at the time, when
Macon Philips 28:01
we got there. sites like YouTube and Twitter just wouldn't load on government computers. There also weren't laptops, by the way. So if I wanted to publish the President's speech, or, you know, the his address that he released Saturday morning, I had to come in to the White House compound, Saturday morning at 5am to publish on the website. Okay, so this is where we're starting point. So innovation wise, it really spans everything from creating the first Twitter account for the White House, and sort of helping to get all of the decision makers there to understand why that's good, and how we're going to use it and, and sort of work through that all the way to helping incubate the Presidential Innovation Fellows, which went on to catalyze the US digital service. And you know, Jim pulka, who's another person I think you're speaking with, can speak a lot more to that, but I was there at the beginning of that. And that was really an innovation that came from the Obama national security world when he killed Osama bin Laden. After that happened. I remember Todd Park and I were having dinner. And I was sort of like, you know, when they the seal guys go into kill Osama bin Laden, they don't like put out an RFP to like get the right gun, like people are, this is a giant problem. Go figure out what you need to do. And we're going to find doing that. And it's almost like the smaller the team, the more effective those operations seem to be. And yet, we're looking at a lot of these government issues. And it just seems like they're so overly complex, like, could we create a version of that sort of elite team that wasn't national security, but looked at some of these technology not and then were deployed with political backing, just to blow through these issues. And that began with the Presidential Innovation Fellows that eventually became USDS after Todd himself was pulled in to a team to apply that approach to healthcare.gov. So whether it was figuring out how to put a YouTube video on whitehouse.gov, which I literally did, and we had a whole conversation with YouTube about adding a feature to remove cookies so that we could have embedded video without cooking people from third parties, and yes, I had to learn what all that meant, all the way to looking at the overall structures of government service delivery, and how we could actually structure recruitment and deploy resources to really expand, you know, who we're able to serve. And it was a huge spectrum. I can talk about some events that we did there other kinds of innovations, I don't know what would be would be useful there. through that
Ben Kaplan 30:24
whole period, there's a lot of you can say these kind of like first moments that maybe no one paid attention to it at the time for the general public, but like, someone had to do it, right. Someone had to implement it. And now it's like, commonplace that we would expect political candidates are those running for office, of course, they would have a Twitter account, of course, they would do these sorts of things. But what about when you move to I think, last couple years of the Obama administration, you moved to the State Department under Secretary of State former Senator John Kerry, where suddenly you take all those tools. And maybe it's the same things that you had that you said before, meaning, we want to amplify the President's message. And we want to make things more accessible. And we want to bring in new people and new input. But suddenly, it's Department of State, that means you're dealing with those who are not citizens, those who did not vote, those are in other countries that the US has to interact with, how does that change your thinking about what digital can do in sort of now you're trying to engage this entirely different population? Yeah,
Macon Philips 31:22
the mission and objective, you know, it shifted a little bit as I, as I transitioned jobs I, I went from managing a team of 13 staff and a few contractors, it felt like a team of four 500, this, but just a small but mighty team, to a Bureau of 300 Plus, including civil servants, Foreign Service officers, and I was the leader of that bureau. So it's just a very different day to day experience of having like more than one assistant, because the government bureaucracy really does kind of create a bunch of layers. So that was a challenge for me, to be honest, I was used to smaller groups. And so I had to learn a lot about repeating myself, right about having a bunch of meetings with a bunch of different people who only met with me once a month. But I had the same meeting six times it was getting frustrated with like, why I had to say things over and over things like that had nothing to do with digital is about change management, it was about starting to understand how this bureau could function well. But ultimately, the ambiguity that I encountered that I tackled at first was what was the purpose of my bureaus called International Information Programs. And for a long time, it did come from a tradition of telling America story to people. And what that meant was making sure that Louis Armstrong did a music tour and went out to sort of spread jazz in a certain area or having events and, you know, making sure that that American information got out to people, but in, you know, 2013, thanks to the internet, and things, generally, people could get information about the United States. And frankly, they could get more interesting information about the United States. And we were going to put out what they couldn't get. And what we saw as the opportunity was to really figure out how we could engage foreign audiences around American foreign policy priorities and be explicit about that, you know, this is important to us. And we're going to find the people who care about it and get them excited about it, too. So we want to do more work around the Paris agreement. And India is starting to develop its solar sector. And that's what they're excited about when it comes to green energy. Let's go to India and figure out how we can connect American innovation, solar and drive an interesting PD project there. Right. So there were a bunch of different examples of that we had a youth network across Africa for young leaders that we developed, that ended up being really useful when we had elections so that we could when those countries had elections, and we could share information through email, probably none of the larger email lists in that country, with young leaders. So there was a wide range of things. But ultimately, our bureau worked by and through embassies. And so what was really cool is starting to recognize the world as a bunch of different audiences. What our embassy in Ukraine is doing to communicate with Ukrainians is extremely different than say what our embassy in Malaysia is doing to communicate with Malaysians. But also, the information the embassy is putting out in Malaysia could be picked up by the people in Ukraine. And you might say to yourself, why would that ever happen? But remember, the Malaysian Air that got shot down? So I guess my point is, is this really fractured information environment that's also quite interconnected. And it's really interesting from the State Department to try to figure out how to organize all of that. And of
Ben Kaplan 34:30
course, then two terms are up. There's a new election. That's 2016, which is the election between Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump, did you expect to if Hillary Clinton wins that election that you stay on in some capacity or is like you had done your tour duty, like what a variety of beyond and regardless of that outcome, you are going to go on to do something else? Is that what you were feeling at that time?
Macon Philips 34:53
Yeah, you know, I wish Hillary Clinton had won, but it wasn't something I was really I loved working for Brock Obama and working at the State Department for Kerry and ultimately the Obama administration. And like, I always felt like the day I kind of gave up on really feeling like I wanted Obama to be successful. And I was really just like, fired up. You know, that was the time for me to step aside. It's frankly, why I left the White House, you know, I was exhausted. And I knew, like, we need fresh blood. And I wanted Obama to be successful, right. And I knew that would be the best way, like I needed to step out. But I also was like, wow, I have this opportunity to go to 40 countries and learn about the rest of the world, like, great, and I can support work there. So with Clinton, I just didn't feel that way. So I was gonna leave. And then when Trump won, you know, it broke my heart. And
Ben Kaplan 35:41
did you think just as an observer, you weren't involved in that election? But at that time before, he was just Donald Trump, you know, celebrity rally TV show host, but did you have a sense of his use of digital and how, you know, he's not someone who obviously he's older. So he didn't grew up in this, but he sort of had a knack for getting having people talk about him, right, no matter what it was better, it was good or bad. People would always say he like dominated news cycles, and a lot of that that point would be distributed digitally. Right, people will be talking about, what did he just tweet out? And what it did? So did he have you as an observer? Do you think he got something that other politicians did just because he was sort of like a creation of using media in a way and he knew how to use media, even though it wasn't specifically digital? Yeah,
Macon Philips 36:25
I got an answer for you, man. Yeah, I mean, the answer comes from a really close friend of mine, who is absolutely key in the Obama campaign at Joe rose Pars, and he was one of the founders of blue state. But I remember asking him this very question, because I don't, I was like, What is going on? This is crazy. Like, I don't understand. And he had this great response. He said, Donald Trump doesn't solve for boring. And I think like with a lot of our, like, communications, leadership, there's like a real risk aversion. Like, you don't want to be interesting, but you do want people to pay attention to you. You like this is the whole like, edgy, like, how do you become like, authentic, or whatever these words are. And I think that's never been a problem for Trump. What you see is what you, you get in a way. Now, I do think behind the scenes, he's also thinking strategically, in a lot of ways too, but maybe it's his experience on TV, maybe it's just his personality. And I'm certainly not buying what he's selling. But you can't deny he jumps off the screen. In a way I think that a lot of other people intentionally try to subdue in politics. And and yeah, he says he doesn't solve for boring.
Ben Kaplan 37:35
I think one of the other things that that I wonder about, if we just sort of project to the future, what is the future of politics, politicians campaigning? What's it gonna look like? I wonder if you know, you had this moment, we talked about like, Okay, did people grow up using Google Docs, their collaborative? Or did they, you know, not do that? And that maybe that becomes a watershed moment. But do you think a lot of people maybe in their in their 20s Now, but they are like, digital, social media, natives? Like they grew up on it, right? Like, they don't necessarily remember a time where there wasn't that? Do you think the next group of campaigners, candidates, they're all going to be like, content creators, I mean, content creators for politics, political ideas, you know, ideas of community change, maybe community engagement, but like, will there be this rise of people who just intrinsically get these tools better, because they were raised in it, and you're gonna see more political leaders who are just really adept at just like, they're just great. They're almost like influencers in politics, content creators in politics. Do you think that's coming? I
Macon Philips 38:37
think the answer is yes. Yes, to all of the above. You know, first of all, when we talk about the future of politics, as you know, it's quite different in different geographies, and certainly in different levels. So when we think about the future of politics and cities, or you know, smaller communities, the ability to really improve service delivery, and the ability to really understand what a local community can do, that maybe in the past, it hasn't had to do to be resilient, I think those things are really important. But when we get to like the federal level, and the national level, so to speak, your point about politicians who are much better at manipulating the press, we're going to see a lot more of that the matt Gates's of the world, and the sort of, you know, for the longest time type of people, because like people can't help themselves, and these folks know it. And we're just going to see more of that. But I think one of the promising things that we are seeing is a more holistic approach to the idea of I don't know the right language for this. But you know, I mentioned earlier, there was a real mistake I think we made or we didn't get a right, the transition between the Obama campaign and the post inauguration, White House and DNC and I'm seeing campaigns now, I think, Alexandria Ocasio Cortez is a really good example where a lot of the engagement she does with her supporters is around service projects in her district and it's really interesting to think about the confluence of how people build their networks around common interest and how elected officials do the same. And so people who are elected because they represent a group or they have built a constituency that continues to be part of how they work is really interesting to me.
Ben Kaplan 40:18
Well, and to me, it's also interesting about what's being done at the local level. And you have a couple of instances of like, you know, Congress, people who left national politics to reengage in local politics and this idea of, can we bring a digital tools or infrastructure to like, engage a whole new people in solving really practical issues, solving the issues in your backyard in your community, of course, there's a rise of more other tools, whether it's something like a next door where you're going to connect with your neighbors or other things like that. But to me, sometimes I wonder if the really interesting work being done is actually at the local level right now. Because you can, like, you know, relatively small number of people connected together in a way and with a common mission and a common purpose can like change the future of a community change the future of a city. And that's incredibly exciting. And then imagine if you could scale those individual communities all across the country, you could change the country. And I sometimes wonder, does all of these digital tools, is it going to result in a great president or leader rising up that's going to rally all of us? Or is it actually the aggregation of all of these small communities in areas that is going to create the change that we can be excited about?
Macon Philips 41:32
That's a great question. You know, it reminds me of a speech Obama gave where he said something to the effect of, you know, one voice can change a room and one room can change the town, one town can change a state, one state, a country, one country, the world. And I think like, that's a great aspiration. It's certainly not the reality. I think we see that and where does he get lost in that journey? Right. Where does that story that sounds so good, where it's breakpoints? And I'm not sure about that. I think that's something that I'm trying to figure out myself. Final
Ben Kaplan 42:08
question, Megan, I'd love to have your perspective on what others who are candidates, now, our elected officials, other leaders in government, if you had a magic wand, and could help them utilize their digital infrastructure, their digital voice, their digital organization better? What would you have them do one thing to be more effective today and tomorrow,
Macon Philips 42:31
I think one simple thing would be curating who they follow on social media, if they follow anyone. I think a lot of people don't expand their news sources and information sources enough, and it takes work to find them. But as you probably know, when you do find them, they're invaluable. So I think I would absolutely work on helping a candidate have more visibility into the needs and interests of the constituency they're trying to convince to vote for them and ultimately lead. And there's so many tools to do that in a non creepy way. And ultimately, this is what democracy is about. And so many candidates, I think, approach this from a more cowbell standpoint, instead of really trying to lift up people and make that about their campaign.
Ben Kaplan 43:21
What it sounds like, the idea that social media and digital isn't just a way, as we talked about, for you to amplify your own message. But it's also a way for you to listen, it's also a way for you to understand and it's also a way for you to have like a genuine conversation with groups that, yes, you want to influence but also you want to be your partners and change. That's
Macon Philips 43:43
right. That's right. So it like I said, I feel like I've had a really exciting time to see it go from, you know, very early days to wherever it is now and for as challenging as it's been. And for as much as we've seen its impact around misinformation and other other impacts your point about bringing in new voices, expanding power and inclusion to new communities. When that works, it really reminds me of what's possible. And let's see more of that. So thanks a lot for the time today.
Ben Kaplan 44:15
Well, thank you so much for Macon Philips, CEO of Starling Strategy, formerly Deputy Director of New Media in the Obama campaign, and then Director of Digital Strategy in the Obama Administration. Thank you so much for joining us on
Macon Philips 44:28
politics. Been a pleasure. Thank you, Ben. Good luck.
44:34
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