This is the Fibonacci Curve - it is the ideal growth to full potential curve that Nature uses in all systems. There is a lesson here for all politicians and it is established by the dynamics of the Obama campaign.

In Nature - as shown in the curve - the key to reaching your design potential as a system (as a Kid, as an oak forest, as a disease) are the “initial conditions”. These are in the early part of the curve from figure 0 - 8.

If the acorn, the baby, the flu virus experience the ideal conditions and can track this tight early part of the curve, the the momentum and the trajectory give the entity an excellent chance of going the whole way.

The acorn grows to a tree and then to a forest. The baby is competent and flexible enough to reach adulthood and attract a good mate. The flu virus can get critical mass in a host.

If you don’t track the curve early - as time goes on - you fail more and more. Think of a rocket leaving Earth’s orbit. Too much power and you go off into space never to return. Too little and you have to fall to Earth.

So what has this to do with Politics and with Senator Obama?

Iowa and New Hampshire are the key states that set “Initial Conditions” for the race. Both are retail politics states. You have to have a great retail operation to win them. If you do, you get momentum. And what is new today in the web era - you have set up a retail fund raising process that will trump the corporate donation process.

At the heart Obama’s campaign was the decision to be great at retail. At the heart of the Clinton campaign as the call to be great at corporate.

The key? The personality of the candidate. The Candidate who is good with people will be good at the web. Obama built a web based retail platform based not just on the tools but on himself. He is pre-disposed to be engaging personally. His early career has been grass roots.
Clinton is the ideal corporate candidate. She is well integrated into that world - this is where her vaunted 35 years of experience take her. Until the advent of the web - this too was a winning strategy for it cost too much in time and in money to fund raise retail conventionally.

This weekend, Senator Clinton has just fired her manager - part of the stated reason was that her manager had failed to deliver the online support that she needs. BUT - the issue is less the manager and more Senator Clinton’s inability to connect personally. It is more that the initial conditions of the Clinton Campaign were based on her personality and a call to focus on the corporate. Her heart was never really in retail or the web. She is more comfortable in the cozy world of elites.
So now, as in all natural systems, the differences are widening. Small differences in the curve by figure 8 widen exponentially over time. They widen because of the shape of the curve. A small change in the curve has to be expressed by an ever wider differential over time. If Columbus had sailed 5 degrees further north, by the time he crossed the Atlantic he would have discovered Nova Scotia!

As we have seen this weekend. Obama’s base in his personality and his choice to go retail early will pay off more and more. Clinton’s cold personality and her choice to go corporate will fail more and more.

The key now will be momentum and money. Obama is equipped to get more of both. Clinton is going to fall back to Earth as she can regain neither - she cannot go back to her initial conditions. It is now too late for her.

I think that this is a turning point in politics. Sure money is still important but it is how and where you get it that is the key.

For the first time since the early years of the republic, it is possible with the right candidate to have a president who is not beholden to the lobbyists! It is now possible to raise more money via the web than from the lobbyists.

Such a new reality will affect in the end all politicians and all races everywhere. The web will enable retail politics again.

We are seeing early signs of this in Alberta where bloggers are giving the Premier a shellacking.

A warning to all who think that the backroom is still the key to power.