Trump, Modi, Rahul: The three-pillar formula for a successful campaign

Trump has just followed the formula, as did Modi in 2014 and 2019, but not in 2024

What does Donald Trump’s victory tell us about what leaders do to sweep elections, lose them, or win but sort of underwhelmingly. Think Trump now, Rahul more often than not, and Narendra Modi in June this year.

 

The first lesson from the spectacular Trump win is the formula of three pillars for a successful campaign. Let’s say nationalism, triumphalism and cynicism. To see how it works, look at the MAGA (Make America Great Again) concept. That America deserves to be much greater than it currently is represents nationalism. That it will be made great again —harking back to some not-too-distant glorious past when America was the tops —is triumphalism. Always declare victory before the fight begins.

 

And if you argue that America was already great, its economy growing rapidly — having grown to almost twice the Eurozone’s gross domestic product (GDP) compared to about 50 per cent in 2008 — its stock markets booming, and its leadership in technology and innovation lighting up the world, I will show you what cynicism is. In electoral nationalism, my nation is never great enough until I am in charge. Then, it will be so much better.

 

As we jump continents and switch to India, we can see why Rahul Gandhi was devastated in 2014 and 2019, while Modi did so well. And then, why did Modi fall so short of his own expectations — and of those of the markets and pollsters — in 2024? That 240 was a disappointment for him. A victory on points was a letdown for one used to delivering quick knockouts. What brought him to that pass?

 

The Congress and Rahul are simpler to put to the test on our three points: Nationalism, triumphalism and cynicism. In 2014, Rahul was leading the campaign for a party in power for a decade. But his campaign rarely, if ever, highlighted its achievements. Had his party’s decade made India greater? And was he now going to make it greater still? Did this decade make India militarily and diplomatically stronger, strategically more secure and globally more influential? Did the Congress/United Progressive Alliance pull India out of the “morass” in which  “Vajpayee’s Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) had left it”? No such thing. That took away nationalism and triumphalism.

 

It was still so much about the rich and the poor, the inequality, the BJP’s communalism, his and his party’s concern for the poor, the deprived castes and the tribals. Rahul and his supporters could argue that he was staying closer to the truth — that there was indeed a lot of poverty, inequality and deprivation even after 10 years of his party’s rule — and ask how he could build such a triumphal campaign given this. The answer lies in the third part of our three-point proposition: Cynicism.

 

This is politics. You are talking to the voter—or, in fact, two kinds of voters. The undecided voter who may not see much difference between you and your rival and is weighing all options. And, even more importantly, your own loyal voters. It is imperative that you motivate them so well that they are sure they’re on a winning ticket and come out to vote in large numbers. In polarised electorates, it’s things like these that separate electoral routs from sweeps.

 

By 2019, one would have thought that the Congress would come back with a report card on Modi’s five years, arguing that it had done much better and that, if India wanted to return to that same glorious path, the electorate should vote it back in. No such thing happened. It was all about the Modi government’s “corruption” (chowkidar chor hai), misgovernance, failed demonetisation and, of course, the boilerplate charges of communalism. The entire campaign was negative. There was nothing to say that India was great under the Congress, and vote us back to make it great again.

 

It is one thing to say that Modi rode the post-Pulwama surge to override all his failures, but we also need to ask if there was any nationalism in the Congress campaign. Or even optimism, if triumphalism is too much to expect?

 

Modi in 2014, however, came riding a wave built on ideas not very different from Trump’s in 2024. India’s security and armed forces were weak and the world did not take it seriously; there were frequent terror attacks, and India meekly offered the other cheek (nationalism); India was the shaky “I” in BRICS and that he was going to take India to the top again, as it was in its “sone ki chidiya” past; and for China, there would be the “laal aankh” (red eye, meaning hard power) treatment, and for Pakistan, a 56-inch chest (triumphalism).

 

So overwhelming was this and so wound up was the Congress in its own contradictions —seeking a fresh mandate while implicitly repudiating its preceding two — that nobody even reminded him that India was coming from a decade of 8 per cent annual GDP, or of all the new institutions that had been built. And if Modi did not ever bother to acknowledge any of this, this was old-fashioned cynicism. He was out to make India great again, not greater. Just as Trump has now done.

   

Why then did Modi fall short of his own, quite reasonable expectations in 2024? The fact is that he had set up the campaign quite well, along the same three-point winning formula. India had become great under him, as evidenced by the parade of world leaders hugging him on camera at the G20; was on its way to becoming the world’s third-largest economy; and the past five years had been the most terror-free of the previous five decades. Wouldn’t you vote for him if he was only going to make India greater still?

 

Now go back to his campaign and pick the 10 high points. Almost all were about what the Congress was saying, or what it was promising, or allegedly threatening to do: Mangalsutra, buffalo, infiltrators, love of Pakistan, minorityism, casteism, how shabbily it had treated leaders from deprived castes, dynasticism, corruption. You can keep counting.

 

So many poll planks he had built in the run-up to the campaign — rising global stature (G20), the woman voter (women’s reservation) and Ram Mandir appeal to Other Backward Classes, with posthumous Bharat Ratnas for Charan Singh and Karpoori Thakur—were all forgotten.This was Modi in his uncharacteristic new, defensive avatar. We noted this in a National Interest column on April 27, 2024. If there was one thing we didn’t hear, or definitely not often enough, it was something like: “See how I have made India great in just these 10 years. Won’t you give me five years again to make it greater still?”

 

The fact is that Modi, uncharacteristically, got off his winning horse and shifted to an akhara fight. This broke his momentum in key states. As the big, nationalistic, triumphal messages waned from the campaign, an angry, resentful response to the Opposition’s allegations replaced what usually would’ve been contemptuous, Modi-style do-these-guys-even-matter cynicism.

 

This wasn’t just a shift in messaging. The Modi of 2024 was not riding on this troika of propositions that had won him two majorities and most recently brought Trump back to power. He was merely fighting to keep what was his. He succeeded in retaining it, though just about. This is how the 303 of 2019 was reduced to 240.

 

A pattern of what works in electoral democracies has now been set. You will find some variant of the same in most others, as national pride, culture and identity override pure, transactional economics.

 

(The second part of the defence budget National Interest, promised for this week, was overtaken by US elections. It will appear next Saturday)

 

By special arrangement with ThePrint