Is Storytelling the Secret Weapon of the 2012 Race?

Arianna Huffington/

If we can all take a break from the breathless back-and-forth about Bain-gate for a moment -- and if you can't, maybe later you can retroactively take a break -- there was a more meaningful exchange that came out of President Obama's interview with Charlie Rose that aired on CBS Sunday and Monday morning.

The president used many of his oft-repeated lines, saying that "this campaign is still about hope... it's still about change," and that he "underestimated the degree to which in this town politics trumps problem-solving." But it got really interesting when the conversation turned to what the president considers the biggest mistake of his first term. It was, he said, "thinking that this job was just about getting the policy right."

So what else is needed? "The nature of this office," he said, "is also to tell a story to the American people that gives them a sense of unity and purpose and optimism, especially during tough times."

That's a spot-on description of one of the key elements missing from the last three-and-a-half years: storytelling. But while Obama has accurately diagnosed the ailment, he hasn't delivered on his own prescription. Where is the narrative that will give us that sense of unity and purpose and optimism? His campaign has given us all a crash course on the ills of Bain Capital and the sorts of business practices that shouldn't be happening, but he hasn't given us an alternative narrative of the kind of capitalism that should define the nation as we emerge from the financial crisis -- if, in fact, we ever do.

But of course, neither has the Romney campaign. Indeed, its ineptitude on the subject was underlined when it responded to the Rose interview by saying, "Being president is not about telling stories. Being president is about leading."

So Obama hasn't delivered, but Romney remains clueless about the fact that the office he's running for isn't CEO of the country. It's much bigger than that. And telling stories, casting a narrative, is an essential element in communicating ideas and values, and an integral part of leading -- especially leading from the Oval Office.

"Stories are the creative conversion of life itself to a more powerful, clearer, more meaningful experience," says screenwriting guru Robert McKee. They are "the currency of human contact." Or, as film producer Peter Guber, author of Tell to Win: Connect, Persuade, and Triumph with the Hidden Power of Story, puts it: "Telling purposeful stories is certainly the most efficient means of persuasion in everyday life, the most effective way of translating ideas into action."

And translating ideas into action is, of course, the essence of the president's job. So that's exactly what campaign season should be about -- each candidate telling us the story of where he thinks we are as a country and, more importantly, where he wants to take us. The best way -- the only way -- to do that is with narrative. "The stories our leaders tell us matter," wrote Drew Westen, "probably almost as much as the stories our parents tell us as children, because they orient us to what is, what could be, and what should be; to the worldviews they hold and to the values they hold sacred."  More >>