The Connection as the Key to Success

By Amy Goldstein
Tuesday, September 12, 2006

APPLEBEE'S AMERICA

How Successful Political, Business, and Religious

Leaders Connect With the

New American Community

Douglas B. Sosnik, Matthew J. Dowd and Ron Fournier

Simon & Schuster. 272 pp. $26

It has been six years since a Harvard government professor, Robert D. Putnam, published the bestseller "Bowling Alone," which warned that Americans have become disconnected from their families, neighborhoods and civic life.

Now, a new book by an unlikely trio of political insiders turns Putnam's groundbreaking argument on its head. "Applebee's America" -- its name borrowed from the sprawling restaurant chain that bills itself as "America's favorite neighbor" -- makes the case that, at a time of unsettling social change, people across the United States crave a sense of community. The politicians, corporations and churches that succeed, the authors assert, will be the ones that find ways to satisfy that longing.

This intriguing, if not entirely bulletproof, idea is the result of a collaboration among Ron Fournier, former chief political writer for the Associated Press; Douglas B. Sosnik, a senior aide to President Bill Clinton; and Matthew J. Dowd, chief strategist for President Bush's 2004 campaign.

Despite their differences, the three write that they "found huge common ground." And in an era in which many political books are divisive appeals to factions of a polarized electorate, Fournier, Sosnik and Dowd have produced something more original: a lucidly written exploration of the common threads among successful politicians, regardless of ideology, and between politics and other major spheres of American life.

They draw their political material largely from what they had close at hand -- the Clinton and Bush presidencies -- and then draw analogies with Applebee's International Inc. and with megachurches, which they say are more about business than about religion. Their central thesis is that voters, diners and churchgoers are attracted to what the authors call "Gut Values Connections," which are more compelling than a politician's policy positions, a restaurant's food quality or a church's form of faith. "That's a lesson for anybody selling anything -- a hamburger, a candidate or eternal life," they write. "It's the connection that counts."

Savvy leaders, they argue, understand that the American public has grown cynical with mass media and other large institutions. Those who succeed rely on "life targeting" -- sophisticated marketing techniques to discern the values and tastes of specific segments of the public. These can then be used to conduct "niche communications" with voters and consumers through information technology or -- importantly -- by word of mouth.

The authors eschew the common wisdom that the nation is divided into "red" and "blue" states. Instead, they say the electorate consists of red and blue "tribes," linked by values, not geography, with a "vast Tipping Tribe -- frustrated, disengaged voters who could easily be persuaded to switch sides in the next election."

At its best, "Applebee's America" takes readers behind the scenes of Clinton's and Bush's operations, corporations and churches to see the strategies they use to forge a sense of community and make themselves popular. It includes a few -- too few -- glimpses into Sosnik and Dowd's views from the inside. There is a Clinton campaign memo on how his pollsters broke the electorate into nine groups with distinct tastes, and a scene in which Dowd ultimately convinces his campaign colleagues that life targeting can identify more Bush supporters: "Distracted as usual, [Karl] Rove flipped through a stack of paperwork while Dowd got things started. [Ken] Mehlman paced the room, his overcaffeinated style jacked up a notch by Rove's presence."

Readers see megachurches dividing their huge memberships into clusters of people with similar interests. And they see Applebee's hanging photos of local coaches and firefighters on restaurant walls and giving psychological tests to job applicants to make sure they are friendly enough.

Most of the freshest insights are in the book's first half. The second half covers the social trends that are forcing leaders to adapt, relying largely on secondary sources to reprise familiar ground about the cyclical nature of social change, increased mobility, the growth of exurbia and the impact of Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on the generation coming of age. Interspersed with the secondary sources are interviews by Fournier and Harvard students who helped him, often at Applebee's restaurants, but these ordinary restaurant-goers feel deployed as proof for the authors' views -- rather than the foundation of their ideas.

The book's greatest strength is the parallels it draws among "great connectors" of different political parties and spheres, but at times the analogies feel strained. The book compares Clinton's trip to the site of the 1995 Oklahoma City bombings to Bush's trip immediately after 9/11 to the rubble of the Twin Towers in New York -- arguing that both events "were such a jolt to the American psyche that voters were willing to temporarily suspend their skepticism and give their president the benefit of the doubt." It does not acknowledge the vastly different psychic magnitude of the two events.

Written in the third person, the book employs a descriptive, analytical tone. But occasionally the authors step out and, jarringly, start telling Democrats what to do. "Democrats should be plugging into the megachurch's social networks," they write at one point. At another, they say the "best course" for Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-N.Y.) "would be to frankly acknowledge any differences with voters and carry that disagreement as a badge of honor," adding: "It's the era of spine, not spin." And in a few spots, the book shifts gears into a how-to manual, with tips on "How to be a Great Connector."

The authors' blended third-person voice occasionally causes them to write about themselves in a curiously detached manner. ("Matthew Dowd was chewing on an unlit cigar, staring in disbelief at the numbers on his computer screen in Austin, Texas.")

The deepest flaws, though, are two phenomena the authors do not fully address. Some research suggests that the trend toward social fragmentation that Putnam identified has persisted. (Putnam himself makes an appearance in the book, due to a semester Fournier spent in 2005 at Harvard's Kennedy School of Government, where work on the book began. The professor allows that recent increases in voter turnout and megachurch attendance are positive signs, though not necessarily a trend.) The other flaw is that two of the book's Great Connectors -- Bush and Applebee's -- have become less popular, leaving the authors to caution that leaders must stay on the alert for shifting tastes to maintain their connections.

That said, "Applebee's America" offers a readable and useful way of thinking about what our politicians, corporations and religions are trying to do to us -- and how they are doing it.

Goldstein covers social policy for The Washington Post.