El candidato cool

El Wall Street Journal analiza hoy la campaña del Gobernador Jon Huntsman desde un punto de vista distinto: estilo, carácter y gancho generacional.

(...) But Mr. Huntsman is trying something different in GOP politics: a campaign based almost entirely on atmospherics. It is, in many ways, the political version of a Ralph Lauren product launch.

And it has the political class wondering: Can it possibly succeed? Can a guy who is marching well to the left of the core of his party—and garnering barely 2% in most national polls—surge to the fore on the strength of what his message guru calls "a phased branding" campaign designed to sell him as cool, young and different?

The Huntsman approach borrows elements from two famous presidential campaigns, Ronald Reagan's in 1980 and Barack Obama's in 2008, while paying homage to techniques more typically used to sell iPads or Chevy trucks.

Some branding consultants think it's a bad mix. "People are buying iPads because they're a fashion statement," says Rob Frankel, a Los Angeles-based branding expert. "But we don't pick presidents because they are really hip guys who used to be in rock bands."

Among past presidential sales jobs, the Huntsman team says it has studied the Obama effort most closely. Mr. Obama went out on the stump with rolled-up sleeves. Mr. Huntsman has rolled-up sleeves. Mr. Obama had a graphic O with a white sun and a red road inside it. Mr. Huntsman now has a red H as his logo.

But unlike Messrs. Reagan and Obama, the 50-year-old former Utah governor—scion to a wealthy Mormon family, motorcycle enthusiast, high-school rock musician—entered the race largely unknown to his party's voters.

So his ad and image guru, veteran Hollywood-based campaign strategist Fred Davis, introduced him with a series of intentionally offbeat Web video ads.

(...) Mr. Davis says the whole strategy hangs on the campaign's view that Mr. Huntsman is "truly different." Other candidates are attacking Mr. Obama or seeking to appeal directly to the Republican base. But his client, Mr. Davis says, "doesn't pound podiums, doesn't speak ill of opponents." What's more, "he's a young, cool guy."

It's a tack that has many Republicans scratching their heads. Is there a cool conservative vote? Are Republicans hankering for a mellow moderate?

"What is the substance, the message in his biography, that allows Huntsman to transcend the normal political process?" asks Christian Ferry, who helped run Sen. John McCain's 2008 campaign and is unaligned this year. "I'm confused by that."

Not so with Esquire magazine's style and grooming editor. In a day-after critique of the various candidates' Fourth of July attire, Esquire gave Mr. Huntsman high praise for his "perfectly cut," all-American red-checked shirt. "Also," the magazine noted, his "distressed leather belt actually makes him seem 'relatable.' "

Mr. Davis says his candidate is the cure for all those who are "sick of problems that are never solved, sick of what politics has become."

"That's Gen H, baby," he says. (...)

* Los más veteranos del blog recordaréis que hace cuatro años intentaba descifrar las claves de la incipiente campaña de Obama en términos bastante similares: Where's the beef, Barack?