Presidential campaing of Volodimir Zelensky: usage of Donald Trump's experience

Elections are the basis of democratic system; they are the source of legitimization for government power. Success or failure of every political leader is based on political campaigns, designed to attract a large number of voters, rather than on political elite decisions. Effectiveness of such strategies depends on different psychological factors, mainly on political leader’s image, which is especially efficient in the case of political cynicism.

The present research looks at civil unrest and rise of political cynicism in postSoviet and a number of western countries, where citizens’ distrust to their government is increasing, while politicians’ ratings are falling. In such conditions, people may support those politicians who offer radical solutions that are different from traditional politician’s promises. Such solutions, directed by fear and despair, are often far from being well thought and as a result lead to backlash soon after the elections.

THEORETICAL BASIS OF THE RESEARCH

The interaction of media and political figures is studied by many authors (Coxall et al, 2003; Xu and Peterson, 2015; Xu et al, 2019; Van Aelst et al., 2010; Van Aelst, 2014; Sevenans, 2017; Kunelius and Reunanen, 2012).

Political image is studied as a part of economic theory and marketing. Frank Jefkins’ “Public relations in marketing management” is one of the most substantial works that defines image, types of image and methods of image building (Jefkins, 1983).

“Political image makers and the mass media” by Dan Nimmo is about image and its attributes. The author studies history of professional image-makers, basic methods of creating image and defines image, special role of mass media in image building (Nimmo, 1976).

Experimental approach is used by M. Adolphsen, who has studied the image in the context of economic relations, where political party can be considered as brand, a politician is a product or rather a package of services, while political program and other promises are the characteristics of that product. He concludes that any political candidate should demonstrate not only their merits, but also values that differentiate them from other political leaders (Adolphsen, 2010).

S. W. Resenberg and his colleagues consider image-building as a threat to democratic process, as people not only concentrate on a politician’s image rather than on his political campaign, but start to ignore real social problems (Resenberg et al., 1991).

• A. Saunders (Saunders, 2006) studies interactions between mass media and politicians during primaries as an aspect of image building. Ways of improving the image by interview are studied by A. M. Simon-Vandenberg (Simon-Vanden-bergen, 1996).

• H. K. Parikh analyzed Barak Obama’s 2008 Presidential campaign to systemize ways of building a personality cult (Parikh, 2012). Of a special interest is the fact that by studying personality traits that mostly attract the youth, the author concludes that social media are an effective method of political image-building and creating trustworthy relations between a politician and the electorate. Day Paul stud-

  ies the presidential campaigns technologies in the United States oriented towards different economic indexes of social welfare. Politicians should keep in mind how the electorate sees the differences between democrat and republican candidates (Day, 2010).

• J. Citrin and J. Stoker studied the relations between political cynicism, low political trust and image building (Citrin and Stoker, 2018). The issue of political cynicism is also studied in the article by E. Gimenez, N. Schwarz dedicated to social networks as an instrument for society mobilization and creating the proximity to people (Gimenez and Schwarz, 2016).

Another important topic is the effects of the mass media on electorate’s political consciousness and their political choices. The influence that mass media have on political consciousness of electorate is the topic of P. Lazarsfeld’s study of 1948 (Lazarsfeld et al., 1948). M. E. McCombs and D. L. Shaw conclude that mass media direct the electorate (McCombs and Shaw, 1972). S. Iyengar makes similar conclusions: mass media, TV in particular, play a leading role in defining the perception of social reality and thus determine the electorate’s choice. These authors outlined the importance of traditional mass media (Ansolabehere et al., 1991); however, it must be kept in mind that nowadays Internet has a dominating role in modern communication.

An important study of social networks influence is made by S. Van Kessel and R. Castelein who analyzed the potential usefulness of twitter as a tool for politicians in avoiding criticism and shifting the blame onto their opponents (Van Kessel and Castelein, 2016). Among the Russian studies concerning internet and mass media, one should note S. Volodenkov on modeling political processes on the internet (Володенков, 2011).

Joseph Jack Place has analyzed the image of Volodimir Zelensky and his party as the party of reformers and how it sometimes contradicts reality (Place, 2020).

• V. Abakumova and L. Slinchenko, has analyzed tactics, used by Ukrainian candidates during 2019 elections (Абакумова и Слинченко, 2019). Rohozinska and Shpak studied political cynicism in Ukraine and how it helps the new politicians (Rohozinska and Shpak, 2019). S. Podolianchuk wrote a Master Degree paper on the Ukrainian mass media and its independence from government (Pod-olianchuk, 2020).

• A. Wilson studied the history of the country’s independence and its demography and how it affects the Ukraine (Wilson, 2013). R. McMahon draws conclusion on the issue of the reasons of economic crisis in the Ukraine (McMahon, 2014).

RESULTS

On September 2019, shortly after the presidential election, the Ukrainian new President Volodimir Zelensky referred to the 45th US President as his teacher. He meant that he was inspired by the American President and decided to build his strategy around a new generation of politicians, who differ from typical politicians1.

By typical politicians he meant his main opponents – the Ukraine’s previous President Peotr Poroshenko, and leader of the biggest Ukrainian’s opposition party “Batkivshchyna” Yulia Tymoshenko.

Volodimir Zelensky’s strategy can be characterized by massive usage of nontypical tactics and methods that brought him victory during 2019 presidential elections, while every candidate’s programs being almost the same, with the only difference in prioritizing the problems, they promised to resolve.

Timoshenko’s campaign was very populistic, her program was aimed at raising as much attention as possible and consisted of standard promises without specifying the way of achieving the results2.

Foreign policy was the focus and the most prominent characteristic of Peotr Poroshenko’s presidential campaign: (1) integration of Ukraine into the European Union; (2) integration of Ukraine into the North Atlantic Treaty alliance; (3) returning the control of territories in Crimea and Donbass3.

It should be noted that this program repeats the same promises of 2014 Poroshenko’s presidential campaign. It can be said that his program was consistent enough, but his inability to bring these promises to life during his 5 years in office arose a lot of doubt among the Ukrainians. In order to improve his problematic political image, resulting from breaking his own promises during his first term, P. Poroshenko copied H. Clinton’s tactic of shifting electors’ attention. While H. Clinton accused Vladimir Putin of interfering into the US elections, Poroshenko during 2019 election avoided economy issues by focusing on confrontation with Russia as a source of all problems experienced by the Ukraine and as the main enemy of the Ukraine’s freedom4.

The key aspects of Volodimir Zelensky’s Presidential campaign are very similar to his opponents programs, but they were not as much focused on foreign policy as Poroshenko’s campaign than and not as populistic as Timoshenko’s promises, which were as follows: (1) democracy law; (2) taking immunity away from the President of the Ukraine, the deputies and the judges; (3) land reform that will allow the sales of Ukrainian agricultural lands.

The first two points were to demonstrate the will of the future President to fight against Ukrainian corruption, while the third one was essential to attract credits from International Monetary Fund that would help to strengthen the Ukraine’s economy.

Unlike Timoshenko and Poroshenko, who were using classical ways of image building during presidential elections, Zelensky decided to repeat Donald Trump’s experience and build his own image of a counter-culture independent political leader.

The following criteria were chosen for comparing Trump and Zelensky political campaigns: susceptibility of election process to political cynicism of voters during the election, candidate’s disposition towards critique of establishment and willingness to use traditional / untraditional ways of communicating with electorate. Using these criteria, the following trends in political image building were identified:

• 1.    The choice of the image of counter-culture political leader by both candidates, which was determined by raising conflicts between society and current government in the first place; in other words, a high level of political cynicism during the elections.

• 2.    Exploitation of previously established nonpolitical image by both candidates.

• 3.    Orientation of both presidents towards maximal domination in media space, with an active usage of free media and such methods as negative campaigning of fake news.

• 4.    Intentional provocative rhetoric of both Donald Trump and Volodimir Zelensky as a way of gaining and keeping attention of voters.

The image of a political leader is tied to their voter’s trust, so the image should be built with the voters’ expectations in mind. To make the best choice of the image, a politician must understand what political cynicism is and what the reasons of its rise in a society are.

Political cynicism is “mistrust generalized from particular leaders or political groups to the political process as a whole – a process perceived to corrupt the persons who participate in it and that draws corrupt persons as participants” (De Vreese, 2008). Dissatisfaction with standards of living is the most common reason of high levels of political cynicism in the society.

According to Gallup chart, analysis of the situation in the Ukraine in 2019 shows that almost two thirds of the Ukrainian citizens described their living conditions as unacceptable. It should be noted that their displeasure started long before Poroshenko came into power, it means, that political crisis had started not during Poroshenko’s period but long before that. That partially explains why the political cynicism is systematical. It should be noted that the number of the Ukrainians willing to leave the country and change citizenship was also rising for a long time5.

If we analyze the country’s economy that directly affects the levels of political cynicism, it should be noted that during Poroshenko’s presidency the Ukraine’s economy could be described as highly unstable. Therefore, just before the 2019 elections, according to Gallup, almost 40 % of the Ukrainians had faced the problem of not having enough money to satisfy such needs as food or place for living.

There is an interesting pattern in how Ukrainian regions distributed their votes according to how economically successful they were. Poroshenko gained the most votes in the western regions of the Ukraine which suffered the least from economic downfall during 2014 revolution and had the biggest growth during 2016, twice as high as the other regions6, while other regions had voted for Zelensky.

Therefore, it can be concluded that the situation was similar to the 2016 US elections, where people from stagnating regions gave their votes to the candidate who was opposing the current government, i.e. Donald Trump.

Confrontation with establishment as a trend of both political campaigns is connected to a number of political scandals centered on President Poroshenko. Thus, Poroshenko was accused of corruption as he had avoided taxes during his presi-dency7. Another scandal was around the contraband of spare parts for Ukrainian military vehicles that Poroshenko bought from his ideological enemy – Russia, so he was accused of using war conflict for his own profit8. That resulted in a number of protest actions that took place in Kiev in March 9–11, 2019. Gallup research shows that during the last decade trust to the government among the Ukraine citizens was the lowest compared with other countries in the world. Volodimir Zelensky has managed to capture the Ukraine’s electorate mood based on the opinion that Ukraine’s business and political elites are highly corrupt. According to Gallup research, the Ukrainian respondents are confident that 91 % of Ukraine politicians are corrupt, while they say only 82 % businessperson are9.

Talking about confrontation between Donald Trump and his main opponent, Hillary Clinton, we can draw a parallel with a corruption scandal with Clinton Foundation that led to FBI investigation shortly before the elections, and another case related to keeping her private mail at her own server (Косяков, 2016, с. 53). According to real clear politics charts, popularity of Donald Trump was only 40.8 %, while 54.3 % of voters did not trust him; however, Clinton’s positions were not any better – 54.4 % of voters distrusted her and 54.4 % doubted her competence and moral char-acteristics10. These results show how highly polarized the 2016 elections were.

As mentioned before, one needs to be aware that it will be incorrect to equate political cynicism in different countries and under different social problems. Political cynicism in the Ukraine was systemic (most voters distrusted Ukraine’s government and political elite in general and it led to almost flawless victory of Zelensky); whereas in the US political cynicism is characterized by high levels of voters polarization (almost half of voters distrusted the government, while the other half supported it), in 2016 leading to a somewhat equal vote distribution, but it still favored Trump a little. This study is not aimed at analyzing who of political candidates managed to use political cynicism more effectively, but it can be said clearly that both candidates did exploit this factor during their elections.

Like his American colleague, Zelensky has managed to use a rising political cynicism and distrust to government and political elite with maximum efficiency. According to Kyiv International Institute of Sociology only 19 % of voters believed in honesty of Poroshenko, while more than 50 % trusted Zelensky11.

Zelensky started to build the image of counter-culture political leader by announcing that for the “last 28 years the Ukraine has been living in some dark forest” and “Ukraine’s citizens are led running in circles in this forest”, as he had accused every Ukrainian politician of being incompetent and unwilling to fulfill their political promises12. Zelensky characterized himself as a simple man, a result of “errors and broken promises” of previous political elite, so he had to participate in presidential elections in order to “break the current political system”13. Therefore, Zelensky stood against not only the Poroshenko cabinet, but against the completely Ukrainian political system in general. Partially, the rise of political cynicism in the Ukraine and its citizens distrust can be explained by inability of the previous president’s cabinet to fulfill his promises, such as integration of Ukraine into the European Union or resolving Donbass conflict, as a result opening opportunities for Zelensky to oppose his image as political leader to Poroshenko. If we compare these presidential elections in the Ukraine to the ones in the US, the situation would be reversed. First, Barak Obama did not take part in 2016 elections, but Trump opposed him, as if B. Obama and H. Clinton was the same person. Second, while Trump’s accusation of Obama’s foreign policy was too soft, Zelensky was accusing Poroshenko of his inability to peacefully resolve conflicts in Donbass and Crimea.

All the above confirms the effectiveness of the strategy of political leader image building based on confronting the previous political image, especially in conditions of economic downfall or slowdown in the country.

It is worth noting that Zelensky managed not only to repeat the methods of Donald Trump, but he also took into account the specifics of the Ukrainian elections, such as the election calendar – according to it, candidates could start their elections campaigns only ninety days before the Election Day14. Such system gives advantages to the government officials and those candidates who had participated in previous elections, those who already have the image of a political leader, high levels of recognizability and political program that had been presented to electorate years ago.

Such system allows them to register as candidate for presidency at any time they choose, while the new politicians have to announce their programs as early as possible and they are forced to fight each other for mass media, while getting lost among other new contenders, as a result lowering their chances of being elected.

In that situation Zelensky and his team had one advantage, almost the same as his main opponents, the other experienced candidates. As Donald Trump who had used the image formed though hosting his “Candidate” reality show, Zelensky partly utilized the image formed by his TV series “The people’s servant”. However, there are some differences in the tone of their images: Trump had built an image of a ruthless businessperson, ready to break any rules and guided by the criteria of effectiveness. Zelensky was a media person long before the elections, but his shows were different in nature from those of Donald Trump, and this predetermined the differences in their images. Zelensky was a comedy actor, a director, a producer of entertainment television content and the leader of “Kvartal 95” comedy group. In his main show, “The people’s servant” TV series he plays the role of a teacher, who accidentally becomes the Ukraine’s President. The series helped to create the image of not an old-fashioned politician, but of a simple, straightforward man, who is intelligent, honest and responsible, the good person, who has all qualities to resolve all the problems in the country, but at the same time, the one “from the people”. The comedy series helped Zelensky to bring humor to politics, made voters interested in watching Zelensky to learn what happens next. The TV series was so popular that Poroshenko tried to ban it on television15, but this instead only brought more attention to the personality of Zelensky. The issues discussed in “The people’s servant” allowed Zelensky to demonstrate his future political campaign, his political program, his understanding of people’s struggle, and his vision of how to resolve a number of Ukraine’s problems, even before he announced that he was going to run for presidency.

It should be noted that different backgrounds of the presidents reflected different values of the US and the Ukrainian citizens; thus, the main criteria for the US were money and success (American dream), so Donald Trump used the image of a successful businessman who did not lose his touch with people, while Zelensky used the image of a kind, intelligent, but common fellow.

Another trend of the presidential campaigns is the will of both politicians to dominate mass media with the use of free media, negative campaigning fake news.

Poroshenko’s team tried to accuse Volodimir Zelensky of weakness and cowardice, incompetence and total dependence on Ukrainian oligarch Kolomoysky and even Russian political elites. In order to correct his image, Zelensky and his team launched a counterassault and accused Poroshenko of killing his own brother16. However, this accusation due to its absurdness could not keep people’s attention. A more interesting case is launching campaign of “misinformation library named after Poroshenko” that allowed him to dismiss any news as “fake news” (Константинов, 2019, с. 35).

A similar method was used by Donald Trump who claimed any news that harmed his reputation as “fake news”, and at the same time, in order to evade any accusations coming from his opponents, he tried to shift the voters’ attention by launching counter-accusations.

Donald Trump’s tactics during 2016 elections was avoiding unnecessary attentions to his flaws by provoking political scandals around his opponents, shifting voters’ attention to other people’s flaws and then participating in those scandals to stay relevant. In similar situations, Zelensky was using his comedy image to strengthen his own political image and attacking his opponent’s political image at the same time.

We can draw parallels, to illustrate it. Donald Trump announced that he was going to put his opponent Hillary Clinton into jail, while Zelensky parodied the slogan of Poroshenko. While Poroshenko said, “There are a lot of candidates, but only one will become president”, Zelensky answered, “There are a lot of candidates, but one will undoubtedly go to jail”17.

Both Trump and Zelensky attacked their opponents’ ability to lead the country. Trump officially accused Hillary Clinton of having bad health that would cause inability to take the US President Office. Zelensky used the similar method, but he suggested that both candidates to the Ukrainian presidency should pass a drug test18 to avoid rumors of being drug addicts that were initiated by Poroshenko; at the same time he refused to be tested at the medical center, as Peotr Poroshenko suggested, by arguing that this center did not have equipment to run this kind of tests, indirectly accusing its specialists of being corrupt and at the same time accusing Poroshenko of being drug addict himself. The maximal usage of free media allowed Zelensky to fight for attention of mass media, and thus close the gap n funds raised for Poroshenko’s and Zelensky’s election campaigns.

While Poroshenko managed to buy more TV advertisements, Zelensky concentrated on the internet, which proved to be the right choice, especially taking into account the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe report on the abuse of administrative resource at what possibilities for candidate were presented to promote their political campaigns on television19.

CONCLUSIONS

• V. Zelensky’s election campaign has a number of characteristics that allow drawing parallels with Donald Trump’s presidential campaign:

• 1.    Nomination of opposition’s candidate, whose image is different from current political elite. Success of that kind of political leader is determined by high levels of political cynicism in the US and Ukraine during elections. It should be noted that in the US this phenomenon had social background and political polarization, while in the Ukraine it was the result of distrust caused by seemingly uncontested rule of Poroshenko, economic crisis²⁰ and high levels of corruption²¹.

• 2.    Despite both candidate’s different backgrounds, their political campaigns used the effect of “a new person in politics”, meaning a person with no political past, who enters politics with a new, fresh vision and who is not under the influence of political elite. This worked well for Volodimir Zelensky and Donald Trump not because they were novice, but because they have managed to distance away from typical political leaders due to their lack of previous political background.

• 3.    Domination in media due to methods of provocation and epatage. One of Donald Trump’s tactics was provoking political scandals to attract free media that resulted in raising voters’ attention. Volodimir Zelensky who had brought comedic element into politics repeated this method.