For political communication guru Lis Smith, working in politics is working to build a better world.
“There’s something grand about being able to shape American public life—to shape the policies that we live under every day,” she said during the October 28 First Tuesday political talk program. First Tuesday is a series of interview webinars focusing on the 2020 election cycle hosted by Mason Robinson Professor of Public Policy Steven Pearlstein.
As a “rapid response specialist,” Smith decides how a campaign will respond to attacks against their candidate, while always being ready to send arguments back against the opponent. In this fast-paced environment, Smith fondly describes her field as “not like any other profession in the world.”
Still, for Smith, the thrill is not all that calls her to the job.
“Campaigns aren’t just a game, they are a means to the end,” she said. “The end result is, I get to help put really good people in office—people with whom I share values, and people who will be really good leaders in critical moments like [today].”
With that in mind, Smith has built an impressive resume for herself through the candidates she has stood behind.
While known most recently for her ingenuity behind Pete Buttigieg’s fast-rising Democratic presidential campaign, Smith was also a key player in Senator John Edward’s (D) presidential run. From 2006 to 2010 she stayed busy, participating in numerous gubernatorial campaigns, and then in 2012 was named the rapid response director for the Barack Obama reelection campaign. Shortly afterwards, she returned to the Democratic Governors Association, working most notably with Martin O’Malley in his 2016 primary run against Hillary Clinton.
So how, then, does one decide who will be a “good leader” or candidate, especially for positions as influential as the president?
“We look for the remedy to what ails the previous president,” Smith explained. “After Trump won in 2016, there was this view in the Democratic party that to beat Trump you had to be him. You had to emulate his crudeness, and all his grotesque mannerisms—raising your voice, insulting everyone who disagreed with you, hyperventilating over every issue—and that was sort of the path the Democratic party was going down. [But] the reality of presidential campaigns is that we go between opposites.”
In Smith’s eyes, the more moderate characteristics exemplified by candidate Joe Biden rose, predictably, out of the need to “remedy” Trump’s now-iconic brashness.
“I don’t think [attacking] makes sense in this race,” Smith said. “Trump is defined [already]…People feel how they feel about him.” A nonconfrontational strategy may be one of the greatest contrasts from Clinton’s run against Trump in 2016, but, as Smith predicts, it could be the key to a race that is not framed inside of Trump’s control.
The political climate going towards the November election has shifted since Trump’s first campaign, and Smith sees a nation losing interest in the relentless bashing of candidates in favor of finding a plan to lead to recovery, which is, she said, “the message people need to hear.”
The First Tuesday series, sponsored by the Honors College and the Schar School of Policy and Government, will return with its final guest speaker, former Republican Congressman from Virginia and former rector of George Mason University Tom Davis, on November 10 at 9 a.m. ET. Mason students, faculty, and community are encouraged to sign up and participate. There is no First Tuesday program on Election Day, November 3.