President Obama and the Tortoise

Today's underdog: President Obama

If President Barack Obama were a college basketball team, he’d be Butler. If he were an animal, he’d be the tortoise. The list goes on, but your sake and mine, I will come to my point. President Barack Obama has become the underdog, partly due to his own actions and partly due the trends of history.

In this article, Tom Cohen supports the argument that Obama is casting himself as an underdog. President Obama’s campaign team argued Obama was the underdog entering the first debate, President Obama was very confrontational in the last debate, and over the past month, Obama has been campaigning hard, including a 48 hour road trip. Cohen labels all these actions as underdog behavior. An interesting statistic also points to Barack Obama as an underdog. In this article from the PAX Americana Institute, it is illustrated that only Ronald Reagan has won reelection when unemployment is above 7%. Based on this information, I feel I can declare Barack Obama an underdog.

Before considering if this Obama strategy will keep him in the White House, we need some more information. In Jonathan Smucker’s recent blog post titled “Underdog vs. Winning Team Impulses”, Smucker evaluates how we like to cheer for the underdog, but at the same time, we like to be on the winning team. This is further supported by several studies referenced in a Slate article by Daniel Engber. We want an underdog who also has potential to win. In other words, as Engber emphasizes, if the underdog truly has no chance to win, then we won’t root for that underdog. Let’s examine two hypothetical teams, as Engber does. Team X is half as likely to win as team Y (odds 2 to 1), but team X’s win would be two times as enjoyable as team Y’s (gratification 1 to 2). If we care about ability to win and gratification of win (being an underdog), the two numbers identified, then neither teams holds an advantage among neutrals. Engber also points to studies that show people will view an underdog’s odds more favorably than “experts” identify them to be. So, in the example given, team X may now be only two thirds as likely to win (as opposed to half as likely), with the same amount of gratification, simply because people wish to make the underdog more capable of winning. Now, team Y’s advantage over odds is smaller than team X’s advantage over gratification. Team X, overall, has the bigger advantage.

That said, let’s apply the information to the election. Barack Obama has championed himself as an underdog. Therefore, he has indicated his odds of winning are worse than Mitt Romney’s. However, when we consider some chances, like Intrade’s, Obama has over a 60% chance of winning. Consider Engber’s simplified characteristics. If Obama’s odds according to voters are better than Romney’s (assuming this is what Intrade is showing us), and the gratification of him winning is greater (because of being an underdog), then Obama holds the voter advantage. Of course, this is an oversimplification, and we cannot now know if it will work. But if it does indeed work, we learn that to win as an underdog you should increase perceived advantage without losing potential gratification, or, in other words, look stronger but still be as fun to watch win. Furthermore, it seems the Obama campaign team took a step similar to one taken by Turkey, as explored in the last blog post. The team departed from the norm in proclaiming themselves underdogs.

Will becoming the tortoise allow the President to beat the hare, Mitt Romney? Is Mitt Romney even the hare? Or is it more like the President and the tortoise racing a cheetah? Or is Romney the tortoise? After the election, we may be able to add the tortoise to the likes of Turkey on our list of the winning underdogs. But maybe the hare will come, too.

Turkey and Gravy

Today's underdog: Turkey (the country)


Name an underdog. Name another. Keep going. Now, how many of those underdogs were people or teams? Personally, if I named the first five underdogs that came to my mind, all would be people or sports teams. But this doesn’t give fair consideration to the underdogs that can’t be classified into these two categories. So, who can be an underdog?

Dictionary definitions yield some information. Merriam-Webster defines an underdog as “a loser or predicted loser in a struggle or contest” (underdog). Though vague, the definition does imply that an underdog should be a person or team, since “loser” is used to describe a person or team in our vernacular, as is a “contest”. So does this definition allow today’s underdog, Turkey, to really be an underdog?

Perhaps, it would help to use an analogy in order to think of a country as a person. A talk show and a talk show host could be underdogs (like Oprah and her former show). A talk show host like Oprah has overcome adversity. And a talk show may be placed on a poor TV channel, yet achieve success. So what if we think of Turkey as this underdog? Turkey’s people, policies, and success (economic and political) can be compared to the show’s producers, style and content, and profits. Success despite neighboring crises is like being on a bad channel. If this TV show and host is an underdog, and Turkey can be related to a show and host like this, then by extension, Turkey can be considered an underdog.

So then let’s examine what makes Turkey an underdog, keeping in mind this analogy of a talk show. To start, Turkey comes from a region in which many nations are struggling. Here's a map of the region (thanks, Google Maps):

The highest PPP (Purchase Power Parity) ranking of those neighbors (specifically Egypt, Greece, Syria, Libya, Bulgaria, and Georgia) is 27 by Egypt, with the others much lower (courtesy of CIA Factbook). Furthermore, these nations are facing political chaos, too. There’s a civil war in Syria, a recent revolution in Egypt, and widespread protests in Greece. This region is the bad TV channel. Turkey has faced adversity, but succeeded in this underdog role. The GDP ranking for the nation is 17. There is a stable democracy. And Turkey has continued to succeed in the current economic recession. So if Turkey overcame the odds, how did they do it?

To keep this from becoming a heavy academic journal, I’ve identified what I believe to be the two biggest reasons for Turkey’s victories, based on this paper from the University of Michigan.

1)    Strong National Identity - After World War I, the struggling Ottoman Empire officially collapsed, forming several new nations. The Turks were left without a land to call their own. The Turks fought the Sultan and external nations for their independence, forming Turkey in 1923 as a republic. This strong national identity has encouraged stability and cohesion in Turkey, producers who see eye to eye.

2)    Departure from the Norm – After establishing independence as a republic, Turkey continued to pursue reforms. For one, Turkey used legislation to create a Turkish state and not a religious one, separating church and state, a large departure from the Ottoman Empire. Turkey also pursued economic reforms, bringing about industrialization. Turkey departed from the norm to prosper with the right policies or the show's form and content.

Turkey is clearly an underdog, like a talk show or talk show host. And with the two points above as a guide, we have an idea on how Turkey achieved success. But are these ideas applicable to other underdogs or do they just apply to Turkey? Is this how underdogs win? Or are these ideas gravy, tasty only with the right meal?

A Handshake

Most conversations with someone new begin with a handshake and an introduction. So I will begin this blog in a similar way. My name is Austin Bream and I am an underdog. Throughout my life I have found myself to be a longshot more frequently than a favorite. In sports, my flailing limbs leave me the last pick in most drafts. Occasionally, though, I manage to surprise everyone, myself included, with a spectacular diving catch for a football or a three point swoosh with a basketball. I have also been a winning underdog in other areas. After school (I’m a high school senior), I lead two different clubs, Project Earth and Cosmic Ray Club. While one is an environmental club and the other a muon research club, the two do share a commonality; both clubs are underdogs. They are small and, to many, insignificant. But overcoming the odds seems to be my clubs’ motto, and here too underdogs win, as I have restored prairies with Project Earth and published a research report with Cosmic Ray Club. The fact that underdogs can and do win fascinates me, but also makes me wonder if such wins are only exceptions.

The numbers, however, suggest that underdogs beat the favorites quite frequently. Over the past 200 years, more than 70% of wars with heavy favorites have been won by the underdog, according to a report by Ivan Arreguín-Toft titled “How the Weak Win Wars: A Theory of Asymmetrical Conflict”. It seems, at least with wars, the exception is actually the favorite winning. But is this true in other areas, like in singing and politics? What about in sports? And when an underdog wins, how is that victory accomplished?

In this blog, I will explore these questions and discover the ways in which underdogs win, from how the US hockey team of the 1980 Winter Olympics beat the Soviets to how the United States won the Revolutionary War. I think we all want to know how we, in the days we spend as underdogs, can achieve victory, and this blog’s goal is to find out. One resource I will use to frame this blog is an article called “How David Beat Goliath”, in which Malcolm Gladwell attempts to explain underdogs’ victories. He explores how using an unconventional approach allows many underdogs to overcome the odds and win. This blog will evaluate Gladwell’s claim in depth and determine if his idea can be applied to a diverse field of underdogs. To get a true understanding, I will choose a different underdog and a different field to analyze every week, looking for the ways in which these underdogs win.

Everyone is an underdog at least once in their life. And in those moments where the magic eight ball says no, it’s nice to know there is some hope. This is a blog about that hope and how that hope can be transformed into concrete steps to achieving victory. This is a blog about how underdogs win, and how you can win too.