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Length: ~5hrs, 24 lessons

My rating: ★★★★☆ (4/5)

My one-liner takeaway: You can’t possibly get everyone’s vote, so be strategic about how you spend your time, funds, and energy.

It’s an unusual pairing, seeing Karl Rove and David Axelrod sharing a screen with a shared message. Rove and Axe were the masterminds behind the successful presidential campaigns of George W. Bush and Barack Obama, respectively. It’s immediately clear that they both have a deep respect for each other. Regardless of how they feel about each other’s political leanings, they emphasize that there’s much to learn from the other guy. The course breaks down the lengthy campaign cycle, the process nuances that go unnoticed by the public, and the emotional grind on the candidate and staffers. Rove and Axe take turns covering a broad and comprehensive set of factors and challenges a campaign will need to address: opposition research, debate prep, using media, target messaging, and more. Throughout the course they occasionally break away from the instruction manual and speak directly to the viewer, stressing the importance of getting involved with a campaign in any capacity.

Running a campaign involves being able to direct research, pivot decisively, communicate effectively, anticipate headwinds, conduct deep analysis, and having strong leadership. In many ways, it’s no different than running a large company, except with more pressure and an accelerated timeline. They broke away from the script near the end, when discussing the current state of politics. Both Rove and Axe acknowledged that the election of Trump had a negative impact on our democracy, but they seemed to blame the opposing party for the mess we’re in. It almost felt like watching talking heads on CNN. The course is quite thorough, but felt overly academic and textbook-like. It is dense subject matter and the do include several case studies to ground the rules and theories in reality.

If you’d like to hear it directly from David and Karl, check out their course here. As of now there are over 100 instructors to learn from, with more being added every week!

This review is part of a larger series, where I try learning from every single course within the catalog. Find my full list here.