Are the Politicians of today bigger than their Party?

The focus of today's political parties seem to be the Presidents and their Prime Ministers and other members of their parties seem to have a rather minuscule effect on the masses. As a result the entire focus of attention of the public is being limited to Mr Trump, Mr Modi or Mrs May in their respective countries.

The current contest in the UK seems to be focussed on making it a personality contest rather than a political contest between the Tories and the Conservatives. Mrs May is known to be reluctant to share 'podium moments' with her other ministers, as is indeed the case with Mr Modi and Mr Trump.

Their speeches are most of the time "I, me mine" to quote a famous verse from the Beatles.

All through the day

I me mine, I me mine, I me mine.

All through' the night 

I me mine, I me mine, I me mine.

The role assigned to leaders is merely to allow them to bask in the personal glory of their leader. Prime Minister Modi in his New Year's speech where he addressed the problem of demonetisation said:

'My effort is to take the banking system to normalcy as fast as possible in the new year. I have asked all concerned officers in the Government to focus their attention to this task.'

The opening lines of Theresa May's speechesch while announcing the current elections in the summer were:

I have just chaired a meeting of the cabinet where we agreed that the government should call a general election to be held on June 8. I want to explain the reasons for that decision what will happen next and the choice facing the British people when they come to vote in this election.

The first four paragraphs of President Trump's speech during his recent visit to Saudi Arabia were filled with his own glory.

I stand before you as a representative of the American People, to deliver a message of friendship and hope. That is why I chose to make my first foreign visit a trip to the heart of the Muslim world, to the nation that serves as custodian of the two holiest sites in the Islamic Faith.

Today's political leaders are using the personal pronoun much more than leaders before them. By taking the credit for everything, they stand above the party. While the members of their cabinet are known as a matter of general knowledge, there is very little else that you can say about their cabinet colleagues. Not much is known of their experience or competence. This is in strong contrast to other political leaders, who also surrounded themselves with other personalities. President Nixon for example perhaps had the most prominent Secretary of State in Dr Henry Kissinger who retained his chair at Harvard during his political career.

On 23 January 1957 Krisha Menon a key member of Prime Minister Nehru's cabinet and often referred to as Nehru's Rasputin, delivered an unprecedented eight-hour speech defending India's stand on Kashmir. To date, the speech is the longest ever delivered in the U.N.  reportedly concluding with Menon's collapse on the Security Council floor. It was impossible not to notice such a man. But in today's political scenario it is impossible to see someone gaining so much prominence.

Political Storytelling : Controlling the Narrative

Besides being solo artists today's politician are controlling the entire narrative. In the age of pervasive media and information overload, it’s more important now than perhaps ever before to have ace communicators on your side. Todays leaders like Trump, May and Modi are all powerful communicators. When it comes to rising above the noise, creative communications is a distinct advantage. Given all of this, the emergence of politically storytelling is entirely being controlled by these leaders. Political storytelling isn’t about policy, credibility, or qualification. People connect with political leaders the same way they connect with books and movies; they simply won’t engage without a good story.

If we look at the US, Bill Clinton’s narrative was economic growth. In the 2000’s, George W. Bush’s was protection for the American people. Obama’s campaign was built on a story of hope and change.

Modi's narrative is about removing corruption which sucked the Indian state for the last 70 years, a natioaiilstic mindset that will bring India to the world stage with high economic growth, and Mrs May's narrative is about liberating the British people through Brexit.

Storytelling language gives a speech the qualitative content that help audiences engage with the speaker and help them remember the key points. It’s what enables us to repeat the message to our coworkers or our friends and family, long after hearing it.

Says Sarah Weber of Quantified Communications "We gauge storytelling language on a wide variety of components, identified through years of communication research. These include emotional undertones, sensory words that evoke setting, and the anxiety-building language that makes us want to keep listening for a resolution. To measure storytelling, we identify the frequency with which a speaker uses these and other key storytelling traits, then establish a score — a percentage, scaled 0-100 — that indicates how much storytelling language a speaker uses compared to all other communications in our database of over 100,000 spoken and written samples."

So today's political game might well be about story telling. Its about which political leader is using the narrative to get ahead. And needless to say the leaders who are only constantly criticising others, don't have a narrative - maybe a good lesson for the Indian opposition parties. So focus on the narrative, not on the faults of your opponent to be a successful political leader.

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