ESSAY MATT BAI

Democrats tend to make celebrities of their campaign consultants, which is why anyone who has closely followed this presidential campaign could probably pick out Mark Penn or David Axelrod, the chief strategists for Hillary Rodham Clinton and Barack Obama, in a bar.
To refer generically to these strategists as “consultants,’’ however, as if they were necessarily experts in the same craft, is to obscure important differences in how they got to where they are.
This long and remarkable political struggle between Mrs. Clinton and Mr. Obama has been a study not just in the brilliance and the blind spots of the candidates themselves, but also those of their most trusted - and highly paid - advisers.
Mr. Axelrod is an advertising guy. A man who perfected the craft of encapsulating an entire life in 30 seconds, he has a gift for telling personal stories in ways that people can understand.
Axelrod’s insight - the idea that has made him successful where others might have failed - is that the modern campaign really isn’t about the policy arcana or the candidate’s record; it’s about a more visceral, more personal narrative.
This is probably a big reason why Mr. Obama has, from the start, focused almost exclusively on broad themes of “hope’’ and “change.
’’ His campaign reflects all the attributes of a political ad: the stirring words, the beautiful pictures, the simple and elegant story line of a ruined political system and the man whose moment has arrived.
Mr. Obama showed the constancy of this approach on the night of his losses in Ohio and Texas.
Mrs. Clinton had spent the previous week mercilessly deriding Mr. Obama as a guy who gives nice, vague speeches but who isn’t versed in the finer points of governing.
The attacks seemed to have taken their toll.
But when Mr. Obama took the stage in San Antonio, he seemed intent on reiterating her point - or at least he didn’t attempt to refute it.
Mr. Obama stubbornly dove right back into his familiar narrative of inspiring a movement.
Such is the almost defiant faith that Mr. Axelrod and his candidate have in the transformative power of their story.
Mr. Penn, on the other hand, is a pollster, and pollsters tend to look at campaigns as a series of dissectible data points that either attract voters or drive them away.
Get a health care plan and an economic plan that 70 percent of people say they view favorably.
Pay attention to words that move the dial in focus groups, like “real solutions for America’’ or “ready to lead on Day 1.
’’ Mrs. Clinton’s relentless focus on pragmatism and specificity, as well as her willingness to shift slogans, are not simply a result of her own personality but also of Mr. Penn’s strategic outlook, which values testable ideas and phrases over more sweeping imagery and themes.
Mr. Penn’s influence was on display recently when both Mrs. Clinton and her husband suddenly started talking about the potential of her choosing Mr. Obama as a running mate, even though she has consistently disparaged him as too inexperienced to occupy the Oval Office.
It seems likely that Mr. Penn polled this question in the wake of Ohio and Texas and found that it had appeal.
Thus the campaign abruptly began hammering at a new message, and one that undermined its core point about Mr. Obama, in order to attract some critical segment of voters reflected in the latest data.
These two campaign worldviews, of course, aren’t mutually exclusive; Mr. Obama does his share of polling, and Mrs. Clinton has her own story line of change.
But the emphasis that each consultant has brought to his respective campaign is what accounts, in some measure, for how the two candidates have succeeded to this point - or for how they haven’t.
At times during the campaign, Mr. Obama has sought to gird his message of hope with more references to his concrete proposals, but more often he has seemed to discount the importance of such specificity, and this has enabled Mrs. Clinton to portray him as insubstantial.
Mr. Axelrod’s storytelling has created a dynamic hero who sometimes seems estranged from the practicalities of governing; Mr.
Penn’s data has created a credible platform put forth by a candidate whose theory of leadership can seem small.
What voters love in one they crave in the other.