At first glance, Barack Obama’s ascent to presumptive Democratic nominee would seem the result of a conflagration of complex cultural forces, powerful fundraising and a gift for gab. According to Karl Rove, it’s much simpler than that.

Rove wrote a very savvy op-ed in today’s WSJ in which he discussed Abraham Lincoln’s Rule, summed up as the ability to “out organize” a political opponent as the practical wisdom behind any political recipe for success. He writes that Lincoln said to, “make a list of voters…ascertain for whom they will vote, have the undecided voters talked to by someone they hold in confidence, and, on Election Day, get all Whig voters to the polls.”

The political postmortems on Hillary Clinton seem to agree that her campaign erred fatally by not sending enough people into the B-list caucus states that Obama won so handily. This recalls a prescient piece written a few months ago by Frank Rich in the NYT who, around the time the news was out about the Clinton’s fundraising woes and personal loans to the campaign, claimed that Clinton could not mount a comeback precisely because the campaign was so badly organized, citing, among other things, $1,000 dollar bills racked up at Dunkin Donuts as the evidence of fiscal miscues.

Back to Obama. It’s true that politics has become hi-tech and digitalized in a way that many are only now beginning to grasp. What’s interesting here is that politics – not corporate America (which one could argue has more to gain) – has become the great crucible form which has sprung so many innovative approaches to communicating, organizing and fundraising.

Exxon Mobil with its GDP-sized profits faces staggering and complex regulatory threats to its business. I wish there were some statistics to prove it, but I am sure we can all agree Exxon Mobil may also boast one of the lowest approval ratings of any company in the world. The point is this: why can’t some of the world’s richest companies and most innovative enterprises seem to find a way to manage their own reputations? Right now, Exxon spends hundreds of thousands of dollars on “Advertorials” in the New York Times, which are essentially paid advertisements dressed up to read as prose editorials. Does anyone read them? In a world of high gas prices and endless Congressional hearings on price gauging, do they transform opinion? Doubtful.

If there are any lessons corporations can take from politics it is how to handle the business of winning the public’s approval.