Web TV, Radio & The Bonner Gazette

The G20 Summit

2010-06-24T18:34:00.000-07:00

A VOUS LA PAROLE

2010-06-03T13:51:00.000-07:00

BONJOUR ET BIENVENUE.

A LA “GESTION DES COMMUNICATIONS ALLAN BONNER INC.” NOUS PRECONISONS LA FORMATION MEDIA, BILINGUE. EN GENERAL LES GRANDES VILLES DE NOTRE PAYS OFFRENT DES SERVICES MEDIATIQUES DANS LES DEUX LANGUES OFFICIELLES.

NOS FORMATTEURS ONT TOUS DES CONNAISSANCES DE TAILLE. ILS SONT ANCIENS JOURNALISTES, CHEFS D’ANTENNE, ET/OU ANCIENS GESTIONAIRES DES GRANDS RESEAUX DU CANADA. ON COMPTE PARMI EUX DES CHEFS DE BUREAU A L’ETRANGER, ET DES RESPONSABLES DE SALLE DE NOUVELLES DES GRANDES METROPOLES DU PAYS.

AU FIL DES ANNEES NOUS AVONS FORME DES MILLIERS DE CLIENTS. PARMIS CEUX-CI IL Y A DOUZE PREMIER MINISTRES, 36 MINISTRES FEDERAUX ET PROVINCIAUX, AINSI QUE PLUS DE 2000 OFFICIERS MILITAIRES, ET 2000 DIPLOMATES DANS LES 5 CONTINENTS DU MONDE.

NOUS SOMME TOUJOURS PRET A TRAVAILLER POUR VOUS…

Shaw Festival 2009

2009-08-10T20:29:00.000-07:00

Waiting for Levittown

2009-07-08T20:25:00.000-07:00

It has been a very powerful day in New York. My matinee was spent waiting for Godot and who showed up but John Goodman, Nathan Lane, Bill Irwin and John Glover. These are four of the most powerful people you can see on the stage.

The four bring a physicality not usually seen in the existential piece. Goodman, if only through his size (but with many more gifts), brings a menacing quality. John Glover brings in some non-human qualities to his role. Nathan Lane dances with Bill Irwin. What a production.

On to Levittown for opening night at the Theatre at Saint Clements church. Where to begin?

How about beginning with the creek of the wood on the third stair that seems to make that noise which signals another family member's presence in the middle of the night. But nobody's there. How about all the sights and sounds of the old family home long after many of its residents are gone?

Perhaps this is why the "geographic cure" is a recognized psychological approach to the ghosts and memories (good and bad) in most families. The idea is that if you move away (from house, family, etc.) you leave some troubles behind you. Playwright Marc Palmieri explores the creeks and groans in the old family homes in a Levittown housing project in New York. These family members didn't move away and so must confront both real family members and sundry ghosts from the extended family, war buddies and the past.

There's rich ground to plough here. Artifacts, dead family members and poorly remembered past events are all real (albeit absent or even inaccurate) as socializing agents. If this weren't such a weighty play I'd work in the song "I Remember it Well" from Gigi, sung by Hermine Gingold and Maurice Chevallier.

In fact we don't remember anything well when it comes to family history, but I digress.

What is slightly underdeveloped is the theme of passing down hurts and wounds from generation to generation. The identical homes in the housing development is a metaphor for this no doubt, but the theme of "normalization" in the American Psychiatric Association's Diagnostic and Statistical Manual is dense territory not fully explored.

There are loaded guns all through our memories, relationships and family homes, and this play asks us to confront them.

Special comment about the performance of actor Curzon Dobell. It has been said by those who claim to know about such matters that British, Canadian and American actors are distinguished thusly:

The British act mainly with their heads (Olivier, Gielgud and so on)

Canadians act mainly with their chests (Christopher Plummer, William Shatner especially as he wheels through the decks of the Enterprise)

Americans act mainly with their crotches (Al Pacino in Salome for example)

Well, this chap seems to act with his entire body. This is fitting since he was born in America, grew up in Canada and was educated (in part) at The Bristol Old Vic Theatre School in the UK. His whole body includes intense and controlled hand movements as if to release his angst through his finger tips. He leans his head back on the living room chair as if the weight of the world is contained in his head, yet his 165 lb, 6' frame looks as if it might not hold the intensity and weight of the complex thoughts in his head.

Dobell has a unique quality to his voice (as does John Malkovich) and a body intensity as does Christopher Walken.

At any rate, my wife and I ran all the way back to our hotel with his performance living rent free in our minds. He's playing an abusive and menasing father rather too well.

It was fun to see Mr. Dobell act because one of the last times I saw him perform was about 38 years ago when he was in radio and convinced me of the merits of going into that business--a recommendation that I have been grateful for weekly. It seems to have worked out reasonably well for both of us--him especially.

Shaw Festival 2009

2009-05-25T18:44:00.000-07:00

Sunday in the Park with George

George is pointillist, impressionist painter George Seurat. The Park is the Island of La Grand Jatte. Art critics and sociologists endlessly speculate about who is whom and relationships depicted on the canvass. Like all good art, the discussion can take you to gender, class, politics and elsewhere.

Stephen Sondheim wrote this after deciding to quite Broadway and stick to writing mystery novels. He was lured back and this is a result.

Like several of Sondheim's works, it doesn't immediately hit a potential theatre goer that looking at a picture (or invading Japan in the case of Pacific Overtures or killing customers in your barber shop and baking them into pies--Sweeney Todd) will make for a great stage play, but it does. It does for the same reason that art critics and sociologists discuss the original endlessly. I've seen a Broadway production and the only thing more beautiful was a Baz Luhrmann's La Boheme. It took 20 minutes for a set change, at the end of which we were in a Paris apartment and it was the only time I've ever seen an audience applaud a set.

But I digress...

Impressionist paintings are easy on the eyes and so if you have a moment when the action or the song isn't completely captivating, there's the eye candy.

More postings to come after I've seen the Shaw version. But in general, it's a must-see if only, but not only that Sondheim is the last of the line and keeper of the faith. Mentored by Ocsar Hammerstein II, he is responsible for the bounce in Broadway in the late 1960s on after popular culture ceased to be based on this American art form. Popular culture was Broadway, with even the smallest towns occasionally seeing touring companies and their radio stations playing the hits from My Fair Lady, The Music Man (before the Beatles turned Till There Was You Into a Rumba) and South Pacific.

But I digress...

Here is what was going through my mind as I watched the Shaw Festival version in Niagara-on-the-Lake, Ontario. First was the famous quote from New York theatre critic John Simon who called this group of players the best rep company in North America. I was watching acting and singing, but the players would also be dancing and goodness knows what else in other productions that week. What a workout.

The next thing is what a treat it is to see a professional production in a 32o or so seat theatre. Broadway and the west end have a few about double that size, but normally it's 4 or 5 times that size. I feel like I'm in the production at the Royal George Theatre.

Next is that the festival deserves full credit for staging the major Broadway productions. Between about 1920 and 1960 dozens of fabulous productions were staged and it's just not happening anymore. I don't think you can go through life without seeing them. Sondheim the the last of the line, starting with West Side Story and giving the genre a little longer life with his various hits.

Next, I began thinking about visual literacy. This is the week that President Obama staged managed the nomination of a Supreme Court judge as if it were a campaign event. Leno is leaving The Tonight Show and Elizabeth Edwards is still making the rounds with her tell-all book.

We are fascinated with behind the scenes issues. On visual literacy, when you show a photograph to some isolated people they look to the sides and behind the picture to see the context. It doesn't make immediate sense. A famous Australian documentary mainly showed feet walking, because that's what nomads and travellers on "walkabouts" know and are concerned with.

This may be similar to what Sondheim went through looking at Seurat's work. What's going on in this picture? What are the relationships between and among the people depicted? What were the people doing before and after the picture was painted? That's what Sunday in the Park with George deals with, as we listen to Sondheim's complex music.

A Moon for the Misbegotten

For those who don't have enough alcohol and drug abuse in their lives, there's Eugene O'Neill. He comes by the interest in the subject honestly. Born in a Broadway hotel, his older brother drank himself to death at age 45 and he abused alcohol himself. As he died in a hotel room in Boston he was heard to whisper, "I knew it, I knew it. Born in a hotel room and God damn it, died in a hotel room."

As Richard Gwynn recently chronicled in his book about Canada's first Prime Minister (John A The man Who Made Us), drinking to excess was much more common in our parents and grandparents time. Even before that, in England, a scarcity of potable water caused even children to drink ale. Eight glasses was the limit, and if someone was acting strangely, s/he was considered "one past the eight."

A few seasons ago I saw Moon on Broadway with Kevin Spacey. His manic energy and lost soul quality somehow gave the depressing topic of alcohol abuse a sweat flavour.

Good King Charles' Golden Days

Before I see a Shaw (or sometimes Priestly) play, I think of cable TV political talk shows. What? Imagine Chris Matthews (MSNBC) or Don Newman (CBC Newsworld) welcoming a round table consisting of a member of the clergy, a professor, author, retired politician, feminist scholar and retired Supreme Court judge (add your own favourites) and they begin a lucid discussion of power, culture, gender, leadership (in Good King Charles case) and other topics. There are no commercials. There is an intermission. No one shouts over the other. As with all drama and poetry, it's like real life with the boring bits edited out. The topics have been written and edited carefully by a smart guy to sound like general conversation.

What's equally amazing is that the topics of class, the nature of work and the other topics Shaw tackles are as fresh and relevant today as they were up to 100 years ago when conceived and wrote his major works.

So here are some of the topics this play tackles:

-gender relations, gender roles

-civics & governance

-science vs religion

-religion vs religion

Isn't this exactly what is the mainstay of cable talk today? At two points in the third act, the King speculates that there must be at least a half a dozen good rulers and a half a dozen good legislators in the land. He wonders how you'd go about finding them and then putting them to work.

After the convoluted primary season in America, which got more than a few people favouring direct democracy, and Canada's near constitutional crisis, this is a very, very good question.

Brief Encounters

Long before Seinfeld's show about nothing, there was Noel Coward. In Private Lives a world traveller is asked about various locations and manages to explain that China is "very big" and that Japan is "very small." As the British would say when they are not the least bit interested in something..."how interesting."

Long before celebrities became so in great part for not wearing underpants, there was Noel Coward. He invented himself and managed his reputation and fame very professionally.

Born Yesterday

Obama's Inaugural

2009-01-18T08:11:00.001-08:00

My book launch, at Ben McNally's book store on Bay Street just south of Richmond in Toronto is on President Obama's first full day in office--January 21st, 5-8 pm. Ben has kindly stocked the new book--Political Conventions: The Art of Getting Elected and Governing and previous publications--

Doing and Saying the Right Thing
Media Relations
Tough Love at the Table
Political Columns: Behind the Scenes with Powerful People

In honour of the event, here are the top ten news stories that the mainstream media are not covering:

1. The inaugural address is important to set a tone for the presidency. Perhaps, but Kennedy's was the best and still featured backward talking -- "ask not...in battle we are" and he passed little legislation and soon after was in Vietnam, Laos (in a bigger way) and the Pay of Pigs. There is no correlation between initial oratory and governing.

2. Why do Americans have a transition that lasts longer than two months? They claim that the staff is so large and government so complex that the transition requires this time. How about when the British ran the world (often with barefoot runners and quill pens as management guru Peter Drucker says). Their transition was days for the government and usually weeks until Parliament met.

3. If Bush was so divisive, why did he not have to use his veto until his second term? The answer is probably signing orders telling the bureaucracy how to interpret legislation, but it's still a topic worth exploring.

4. Unsung heroes of inauguration day. Who covers Hoover, Hayes, McKinley, Coolidge and Eisenhower as great speakers? Each deserves a thought in this inaugural week, especially Eisenhower who once wrote speeches for Gen. MacArthur. A big surprise is LBJ. Google his speech and it is magnificent prose.

5. One of the mysteries of American politics is the reference with which Lincoln is still held. He knew when he announced his candidacy that he would win (because of the vote split among candidates) and that his winning would cause secession. His first inaugural notes that slavery is a State issue and he denounces "the lawless invasion by armed forces of the soil of any State...". He said he had "no purpose...to interfere with the institution of slavery in the States where it exists. I believe I have no lawful right to do so..."He even supported the return of runaway or contraband slaves, even if they'd escaped to a non-0slave state. In a spurious legal argument he also says union is like a contract and a contract can't be broken by only one party to that contract. During the Civil War he couldn't get his generals to act---McClelland to attack at first and Meade to follow Lee to the Potomac at more than a crawl after Gettysburg. Either action would have ended the war early and saved lives.

6. Great public policy can come from the reviled as much as from the revered. LBJ's inaugural announced high-speed rail between Boston and Washington (4 hours) and it now takes 8 hours. Nixon announced that goods must have the cost of disposal built into their price. Ford and Carter had great environmental and energy plans. If any of this had been implemented, it would be America's century again.

7. Disappointments. Reagan, the Great Communicator and Bill Clinton have great reputations as speakers, but, read the text, their inaugurals are just middling.

8. Inflated press coverage. Washington's second inaugural is about 30 seconds long and in his first, he asked for his expenses to be paid while he refused a salary. Washington invented creative expense accounts.

9. Sidebar. While on the topic of speeches, it's too soon to rate Obama's in Berlin, but Regan's is better than Kennedy's. It's longer, more substantial and more direct. Surprising. And it was gutsy of Regan to speak there, given Kennedy's ownership of the venue.

10. Campaign reform. It's time for America to form a more perfect union and reform the party primary and the electoral process. The Union would be more democratic with a national election on a level playing field, rather than 50 state elections.

Q.E.D.

At Issue

2008-12-30T23:13:00.000-08:00

This montage of clips from the @issue programs I hosted recently was a great exercise in professional development. I have always encouraged my clients to take as many media interviews as they could. This is a way of collecting thoughts, mastering topics, practicing and keeping current. I took a bit of my own advice with these projects.

Toronto Steakhouses

2008-11-29T15:08:00.000-08:00

Toronto Restaurants

2008-11-29T01:18:00.000-08:00

Bon Apetite

2008-11-08T09:59:00.000-08:00

One of the downsides of business travel is countless restaurant meals. The first hundred or so are a treat, but then you get to dread the boredom of long meals with clients. When there’s nothing else to do, many of us string out the drinks before, appetizers, wine, desert and liquors. It’s an occupational hazard.

The bigger hazard is bad meals. The bigger hazard still is bad meals or poor service in great restaurants. On my first business trip to Hong Kong, a western client thought he was doing me a favour by taking me to what was reputed to be the best French restaurant in the world--Jimmy's. Well, I was disappointed. I didn't fly across the world to have a meal, a version of which I could have had in Montreal or Paris. The meal may have been great, but the venue was all wrong.

And that brings up the point of context. How you feel about a restaurant and meal is a function of the venue, the people you're with, the day you've had and many other factors. So my commentary on specific restaurants may be unfair and subjective, but it's the only commentary I have.

While I'm on the topic, there was The Rainbow Room on top of Rockefeller Center in New York. The food was mediocre and the service pretentious.

Acquivit? Up near the Rockefeller apartments in New York is one of the great venues of all time. It's a two story waterfall. It's much lauded and written up. The lamb was grey (being ordered rare). I sent it back and it came back equally grey and the server was unapologetic.

Toronto's much famed La Scalla, when it was still around? No. I took one of my first clients there years ago and we had terrible service and unmemorable food. We asked advice about menu items and wine and received none. I think the wine advice was, "Do you want red or white?"
No wonder it went out of business.

The Graycliff Hotel and Cigar Factory in Nassau? Pretty much. Fabulous food...a great history with many famous guests...lots of great service...but I just felt a little rushed with so many servers and the need to order desert a half hour in advance.

George V in Paris? Well, please. A baguette, fromage, jambon in the lobby, staring at $10,000 in flowers mounted at a 45 degree angle in vases was enough to make any food taste good. After a long flight we had a Sancerre for the first time, forever now known as my "breakfast wine" because time zones had me sipping this before noon.

Steak Frites? Everyone is better than the last in Belgium (I've had 18 in a row), but Maison L'Entrecot, a couple of blocks from Etoile in Paris featured a nice surprise. A small portion of flank arrives, sliced horizontally accompanied by frites. I was disappointed in the small portion. As I was finishing, the server came around with the platter and put another round of both on my plate. I went back several nights.

The Palm? Yes, in Washington. The Dupont Circle landmark is where K street lobbyists, lawyers, media etc hang around. It's been a fixture since 1972. I can't remember what I ate. I'm sure it was good. But the deal done was better. The Palm at the Weston in Denver saved me after the Democratic Convention. They'd shut down the food concessions at Invesco Center and I walked out with 85,000 other people starving at midnight.

701 Pennsylvania Avenue, Washington. This is smack in between the Capitol and the White House. Steps from the Canadian Embassy and the Newseum. The boss there takes business cards. My first and second trip were separated by several months and he greeted me warmly the second time. "You don't really remember me," I said. He assured me he did. "I put him on the spot asking my name." "Allan..." I was aghast. "Allan...um...Bond." Well, I'll take that shaken or stirred. This guy flips through business cards in quit hours waiting guests' second visits. What a pro.

Boil and Boil Wonderful. Just the name of this Hong Kong restaurant is worth the visit, and the great food is a bonus.

Harry's Cafe de Wheels, Woolloomooloo District, Sydney, Australia. This is the only meal I've not eaten out of a lot of exotic locations. This glorified push cart in a rugged district of Sydney has been a favourite of gangsters and celebrities for years, mainly because it stayed open late. The specialty is a meat pie with whipped peas on top and a ladle of gravy pushed into the peas and turned over so the gravy runs over the peas and pie. I circled Harry's watching others eat. I read all the clippings posted on the side and enjoyed the ambiance of the docks. I couldn't go through with it.

Vauxhall Cafe, near Victoria Station, London, really called The Cafe on Vauxhall Bridge. Jet lagged and too early to check in, we decided to have an English breakfast. Two minutes after lining up and staring at the menu the place filled up with shift workers from the street. Two little people (probably my Welsh relatives) were behind the counter. Looking up me expectantly, I couldn't immediately fathom the menu or what they were saying. I said, "Yes" and sat down. Every minute or two, the nice little lady would yell, "Eggs, bacon, bubble" or "Bubble" or "Eggs, toast, bubble and squeak".

It was then I realized that Monty Python was more journalism or sociology than comedy. Something arrived and I ate it.

Ches's Fish & Chips in St. John's. Yes, more please, yes.

Obama-Nation

2008-11-05T12:22:00.000-08:00

It's an Obama-Nation in the nicest sense of the word. It is always hard to tell exactly where we are in history, but this might be 1932 or 1964 all over again. In 1932 after debating the role of government in people's lives for more than three decades, America settled on mild socialism and FDR. In 1964 Barry Goldwater began turning the country to the right--it just took until 1980 to really take hold. In 1968, the right won the short-lived revolution in America when Richard Nixon took office.

So what is 2008?

Here are some possibilities:

1) The break up of the centre-right coalition that began with the mid-term elections in 2006. Sarah Palin leads a rural, white Republican rump into the wilderness on a dog sled.

2) The end of the spectre of Vietnam haunting US politics. It will continue to dominate US military strategy, as does the Civil War, but it will no longer be forever 1968 for the Democrats.

3) The end of the baby boom domination of US politics. Although someone who was alive and kicking in the late 1960s could get elected president as late as 2020 or so, the electorate is sick of the era and the issues.

4) The sea has changed on how to raise money, bring out voters and use new media. We'll never go back.

5) Public campaign financing is dead.

6) Obama may use new media to govern in the same way he used it to get elected. Imagine using social networking sites, text messaging and such to get several million voters to email and text Congress on an issue? Will we see a continuous campaign based on new media too?

7) #6 may have serious implications for lobby groups. K Street may not dine at The Palm as often.

8) The electoral system is broken. Americans don't hold a national election. They hold 50 state and some territorial elections and mash the results together. Results come from different rules and different machines. One electoral college vote represents 135,000 voters in some states and half a million in others. One can become president with 16% of the population voting for you or 22% of the eligible electorate because of the weighting system in the electoral college. Obama got almost double the electoral college votes and a couple of percentage points more in popular vote.

9) The new president should demand a recount. He has a terrible economy, 2 wars, the world in a knot and is burdened by high expectations. Anything he does will be better, but everything he does will be making the best of a bad situation. It will be seen whether the electorate is grateful or disappointed. 85% of Americans think the country is on the wrong track.

God Bless America--it will need it.

Democracy

2008-10-20T04:13:00.000-07:00

I would love to see the play “Democracy” again. I think my recent trip to Berlin might cause me to appreciate Willy Brandt more. The delicate role he played in detente, the dangerous clash of ideology in walled and blockaded Berlin, and the Stasi (Secret Police of East Germany) mole in Brandt’s office might be more appealing now.

However, I’m still adamant that intoning slogans from balconies is not stirring political discourse.

In the Broadway play “Democracy,” by Michael Frayn, the main character is the fascinating West German politician Willy Brandt. He was the much loved Mayor of Berlin, then Chancellor during the cold war and played a pivotal role in German unification.

I should have loved the play. I loved Frayn’s British musical hall farce, “Noises Off,” and his intellectual offering from the other end of the spectrum, “Copenhagen.” Copenhagen was a hit in New York, and an even better production in my home city of Toronto.

Democracy should appeal to all political junkies. I even started the night with the obligatory dinner at the landmark Sardi’s Restaurant. But the play didn’t work for me. The spy intrigue was not intriguing enough. Why Willy was so beloved was not entirely clear. His work on treaties and meetings in the East have lost their meaning in the intervening decades.

(Imagine a play about Nixon’s trip to China, or Eisenhower’s worry about inflation and the military industrial complex.)

For a lot of history, “you had to be there.”

A lot of policy, treaty making and lawmaking just doesn’t stay exciting for years. But a politician’s speech should live for a long, long time.

In Democracy, the Willy Brandt character is occasionally seen on a high balcony intoning the words “Have the courage to show compassion.” There are cheers to show how beloved Willy is. But as I write this, I’m not sure I have the quote correct. He could have said “Have the compassion to show courage.” For that matter, he might have been as well off saying, “Have the compassion to avoid courage,” or vice versa.

The point I wish to make about political speeches is that they must be specific to the candidate, the times, the party and the audience. Otherwise, you’re just so much background music and wallpaper.

Take the candidate, for starters. Each politician has to decide whether she wants to be a lobbyist or a legislator. A lobbyist can do a lot of good public service through part time agitation and annoying of elected officials. If a person thinks she has a better idea of how to implement the laws of the land, then lobbying is an honourable and productive profession.

But there comes a time when a political person honestly feels that the existing laws are not serving society well. If she also believes that current elected officials are not predisposed to passing new and more proper laws, she should decide to become a legislator. So, when this candidate makes a speech, she should be distinct from other candidates. No other candidate should be able to make most of that speech and get away with it.

The speech should also locate the candidate in the times in which we are living. When I analyze political speeches for clients, I read a lot of platitudes and flag waving. Words about duty, patriotism, honor, sacrifice and so on are peppered through many speeches. Every age is concerned about jobs, productivity, competitiveness, trade, education, welfare, dignity and such. But what are the specific hopes, aspirations and needs of this generation, right now? What are the specific solutions that suit these times? Most speeches miss this specificity.

Similar to my rule about whether a candidate should be a lobbyist or legislator, the candidate needs to choose a party, and even wing of a party, wisely. If a candidate has a policy that she thinks any wing of any party might implement, then it’s not a very specific, ideological position. The reason to get into politics is that the powers that be will not do what you think is right, in the way you think is most efficient. If you can articulate this, you have what Madison Avenue calls a “unique selling proposition,” and you will be remembered. If you speech is full of platitudes, your message ends up being “me, too.”

David Letterman had a regular feature on his show called, “George W. Bush…Liar.” After the intro to the bit, there’s a clip of the President saying, “It’s great to be back in (pause) Des Moines” (or wherever he is). To me this signifies the difficulty of being authentically present with your audience. I’d start by asking the politician if it really is “great” to be back in this community or with this audience. If so, why is that? If you dig long and deep enough, you just might find that there’s an historical event worth mentioning. Perhaps there’s a business whose success illustrates a point about your approach to economics. Maybe a plant closure illustrates a point too. But there must be some good reason to be nattering on with these folks, especially if you flew all day to get there. My advice is to find out what those reasons are and capitalize on them.

The politician who just gets up and parrots generally accepted values and principles misses an opportunity to offer a concrete message. The candidate who sings the praises of the local organizer or entrepreneur without getting specific is condescending and wasting everybody’s time. The local hero has a fascinating story and if s/he is worth mentioning, then it’s worth doing the hard research to tell the whole story. It will be a real moment, creating a lasting link between audience and speaker. Moreover, the candidate just might learn a little about local issues, politics and people.

In short, the litmus test of a really good political speech is that it can not be delivered by just anybody. It is custom tailored for a particular candidate. The speech also can not be delivered in any community to any audience at any time.

The next time you proof-read a speech, imagine if sections could have been delivered in the North, South, East or West. Would they have worked in a small town, as well as the big city? Can you hear three or four Presidents from both parties saying these words? Could you imagine the message working in your parent’s time? If so, you’ve got boiler plate and blather. As they used to say in old time newspapers—“Get me re-write!"

Real Life Minus the Boring Bits

2008-10-08T22:52:00.000-07:00

Good poetry and drama are like real life with the boring bits edited out. It is astounding how relevant G. B. Shaw is today. You could inject his discussion of labour conditions, gender relations, class tensions into the current or next political campaign, and his ideas would fit right in. They might even shock or be ahead of their time.

Plays as Public Affairs

2008-09-30T09:57:00.000-07:00

Mrs. Warren’s Profession

When this story of prostitution made its Canadian premier in Winnipeg on April 30th, 1907, it lasted three performances after being mauled by local critics.

Not only about prostitution and society at the turn of the century it's also about a mother's love for her daughter. Mom's (Kitty) profession is positioned as a reasonable alternative to the disease and poverty that many young women were faced with at the time.

Author, George Bernard Shaw was born in Dublin, where he grew up in an genteel poverty. Mrs. Warren’s profession is a moving, brilliant representation of an alternative way of living and ultimately challenges conventional middle class values. It's especially fun to see Mother counselling her daughter about the evils and dangers of factory work and the relatively safety (minus reference to Jack the Ripper or STDs) of prostitution.

Theatre and Politics

2008-09-28T18:26:00.000-07:00

Canadian and American Politics

2008-09-28T16:53:00.000-07:00

Jim Goddard at 1130 News in my old home town of Vancouver occasionally calls for a comment. I know it's a crisis or political controversy when the phone rings, but it's nice to hear from him anyway.

Obama Supports McCain

2008-09-26T18:34:00.000-07:00

I rest my case. McCain and Obama are not good debaters at all. Any mid-rank Canadian Parliamentarian could out-debate both these guys. That's becasue our guys debate or hear good debating every day their legislature sits. American politicians don't debate well because they don't face each other in their legislatures.

What is with Obama regularly saying "John is right..."? McCain is using the old Ronald Reagan strategy of lampooning government spending. It's working. Obama needs to get specific and jab, not ponderously discuss multiple points.

One explanation Obama is giving is that his sub-committee meets as a committee of the whole. This is meaningless to viewers. McCain's criticism that Obama's sub-committee never met may be moot, but it is understandable.

Pistol Packin' Palin

2008-09-05T20:15:00.000-07:00

I'm So Sorry

2008-09-05T14:27:00.001-07:00

Apology to Aboriginals

2008-09-05T13:26:00.000-07:00

Campaign College

2008-09-05T13:11:00.000-07:00

Obama the Great Orator?

2008-09-05T12:07:00.000-07:00

Gov. Sarah Palin

2008-09-01T05:59:00.000-07:00

On first glance the Gov. looks good. She is a great speaker and compelling personality. She's a reformer--which means several things in America. She's not a progressive reformer like Bryan, Teddy Roosevelt or FDR, but an administrative and ethical reformer, perhaps like Ike. Anyway, nice title.

Like Daniel Boone, she may have killed a "bar" when she was only three, hunts, eats moose and her part Eskimo (Inuk) husband rides a "snow machine" (according to John McCain). I think a snow machine would make snow and not be something on which you'd ride.

The Gov. was a small town mayor, Gov. for over a year, is mother of five and is a nostalgic reminder of the good 'ol days of bee hive hairdoos.

McCain gets full credit for the timing of the announcement and the symmetry of the ticket. I am not concerned about her lack of foreign policy or military experienced. Lincoln had a little time in the militia and little legislative experience (like Obama). What were Wilson & FDR's military bona fides? If she can take a briefing, has good staff, she can perform the largely ceremonial role of VP. Should she have to take over on President McCain's death, she and staff will cross that bridge at that time. There's little in one's past that fully prepares one for high public office.

Politically

This choice may have neutralized Biden's debating skills. He cannot be seen to be mean or bullying to a woman. He's best to avoid direct response to her and just deliver his sound bites.

Palin appeals to a constituency with whom McCain is a little weak--the right. But, McCain is also weak with the social conservatives, fiscal conservatives, the Christian right and fundamentalists--all slightly different fractions. Palin may do well with a couple, freeing McCain to campaign in moderate and independent suburbs.

90% of registered party members will vote party. Hillary Democrats are not going to move across the political spectrum and down one notch to support the ceremonial VP position because of gender. The Republican right will not move over to the Dems. and support a Black, liberal candidate because McCain is not right enough. Please.

Finally...

Some TV commentator noted we'd probably be up late into the night and early into the morning finding out the results of what may be a very close election. I'm thinking we may be in the House or Supreme Court finding out. I have a book due out for inaugural day--January 20. I hope this close election doesn't delay the inaugural because I'm working furiously to meet the deadline.

I'm joking but I'm not kidding.

Hurricane McCain

2008-09-01T05:36:00.000-07:00

Where to begin with the republicans? First, they were poised to steal the Dems' thunder and bounce, with their convention right on the heals of their opponents'. McCain did what he had to do in choosing a woman running mate, perhaps not the right one, but it at least levels the playing field with the historic Obama "change" ticket.

Then Gustav stole both parties' thunder. This storm could win or lose the election for the GOP. If it reminds voters of Bush's handling of Katrina, it's a big negative. If the current Republican team uses the occasion of their convention to raise money and show empathy, it could demonstrate their leadership and put them over the top.

Not Faking It

2008-09-01T05:33:00.000-07:00

I had two themes during my week at the Democratic National Convention. These themes apply whether you’re running for city council, organizing a riding or precinct, speaking on a free-time cable broadcast or in a nationally televised speech. The first theme is “getting a job done”. There are certain conventions and tasks that have to be addressed in a successful campaign. That theme appeared in the third paragraph of this column for The Hill Times.

Editor Simon Doyle preferred my other theme—what you can and cannot fake in politics. That became the lead, and a theme for subsequent radio and TV interviews.

People criticize journalists for writing the story before the event. This column is a hybrid. I wrote it in my hotel room on the last day of the convention before Obama spoke—I had to, knowing I wouldn’t be back in my room until 2:00 a.m. Having walked (with 85,000 others) out of the stadium at which Obama spoke, I only had the energy to eat and then file my last paragraph with Obama’s historic crowd appeal supporting the theme of authenticity.

Had something else happened, I would have written a new lead, negative last paragraph or an entirely new story. I was hopping not to have to re-write, because I had a 6:00 a.m. call for an hour of discussion on New Hampshire public radio’s “The Exchange”, followed by a trip to the airport and two other, shorter radio interviews.

After landing in Toronto, I went right into an interview with the Business News Network. Their focus was economics. I spoke of the crack in supply-side economics. That philosophy, party invented by economics Arthur Laffer in the 1970s, has dominated Republican politics since the Reagan years. So-called “Sam’s Club” Republicans want to know what “trickle-down” is really doing for them. The answer they usually get is, “not much”.

Obama is a bigger tax-cutter than McCain, yet interested in helping the working and middle-class directly. Speculation is that this may be through infrastructure spending. But this spending may have a duel purpose—manufacturing jobs, but in the energy sector. Hybrid cars, an accessible electricity grid, solar and wind power may create jobs, energy independence, economic independence and more national security.

At CBC Newsworld the next day, the theme was what Canadian politicians and campaign managers learn from the American experience. I’m always cautious about importing US techniques into Canada. We have a very different system. We vote for members of parliament and get that party’s leader indirectly. We don’t have the money a US campaign has. We have better debaters, but poorer speakers. We don’t have an intellectual history on which to draw. We are both liberated from a national mythology, and burdened by not having one.

American convention has the presidential candidate bragging about humble beginnings. When Canadian Prime Minister Brian Mulroney bragged about singing on the street for a tip from an industrialist in Baie Comeau, it was foreign to our ears. Americans are so distrustful of big government and Washington, D.C. itself that Joe Biden’s bona fide in this area is that he didn’t sleep in Washington, while working there for 36 years. Canadians are suspicious of someone who wants to lead a party, but who hasn’t run for the provincial legislature or Commons—Bob Rae, John Tory, Brian Mulroney. Each presidential candidate must have God in official speeches. We secularize campaigns.

So, in one campaign, there may be several valid themes. I chose authenticity as the dominant one for this year’s Democratic National Convention. What I didn’t have space for is the further evidence of Obama’s authenticity. Who gives him money. How many give. The number of emails obtained. The size of the crowds—one of the best indicators of voter preference—all tell a new story about a new connection to the political process.

You can fake a lot of things in politics. You can hand out signs at a convention, but you can’t make people wave them up for long. You can build in applause lines in a speech, but you can’t make people clap more than a dozen times. You can’t make most people cry. You can’t make the people in the cheap seats do much of anything.

The Democrats in Denver looked good from the floor, the media filing rooms, the TV risers, right beside the podium, in the cheap seats and in a private box. You can’t fake that.

The Democrats looked good because they did what had to be done. There comes a time at a convention or in a campaign when you have to get a certain job done. Success depends on it and second best won’t do.

All major speakers at the 2008 Democratic convention, and the party itself had Herculean jobs to do.

First, the Democrats have to shed their perceived weakness on national security and squishiness on domestic crime. They pretty much did that by making foreign relations expert Joe Biden the Vice Presidential candidate.

They also have to show they are not captive to special interest groups—unions and ethnic voters. Bill Clinton pretty much got that job done in his campaigns in the 1990s by putting more cops on the street, distancing himself from Jesse Jackson and criticizing rapper Sister Souljah for her violent and hateful lyrics.

At this convention, speakers acknowledged the role of skilled labor in America and even their role in renovating the Pepsi Center for the event. Speakers showed pride in there being more female than male delegates and referenced gay rights. But the party just seemed inclusive, not captive to these sentiments and groups.

The party had to pay tribute to Ted Kennedy, since this will surely be his last convention. The moving tribute and introduction by his niece, JFK’s daughter, Caroline, was fitting. Rumor was that Senator Kennedy was not able or available to speak, but he did. His references to his brother and the moon shot must have seemed like ancient history to anyone under 50 years of age, but his vigorous commitment to health care reminded delegates that there is a high purpose in politics.

Michelle Obama had to position herself as just plain folks. This is a silly political dance in the US since spouses have little or no constitutional/legal status, and ghettoizing them (mainly women) as cookie-bakers is demeaning. But, if the electorate votes for her husband, they’re also voting to have Michelle on their living room TVs weekly over the next four or eight years. Her personal story did the trick.

After a tough campaign and a slow-motion withdrawal, Hillary had to demonstrate unequivocal support for her leader. She did it. Like Ted Kennedy in 1976, she also made a speech so naturally and convincingly that some are saying that if she had demonstrated that skill in the campaign, she’d be the nominee.

Then Hillary added an unexpected classy touch during the alphabetical state roll call. A series of states passed or yielded to give the New York delegation the floor. Rumor was that California couldn’t muster its delegates or alternates who were back in Sacramento hammering out a budget. Another rumor was that with 20% super delegates, there might be a majority vote for Hillary, thus embarrassing Obama, or vice versa. Rumor was that delegations, especially Obama’s home-state Illinois, were jockeying for whose vote would put Obama over the top. Another possibility was that Hillary was jockeying to get her total up before Obama won.

Hillary appeared on the floor with her New York colleagues. A sea of TV lights surrounded her. After ten minutes of unexpected excitement, Hillary took the microphone on behalf of her delegation and moved that the roll call stop and that Obama be nominated by acclamation. The crowd roared relief and approval.

That night, Bill had to rehabilitate his position in the party too. After demeaning Black support for Jesse Jackson and equating Obama’s winning and inclusive campaign to Jackson’s narrower and losing effort, Bill had some serious repair to do. He did it.

Without any warm up, backdrop, lead in or set up, Bill simply said he was there to support Obama. Within the next 20 seconds he said he was also there to warm up the crowd for Joe Biden. In those couple of dozen opening words, Bill showed the unequivocal support he needed to. He used humor to diffuse the tension between the Clinton and Obama camps. And he also alluded to the fact that he now knew his place in the party--warm up act and elder statesman.

Making up for earlier waffling on whether Obama was qualified to be President, Bill pointed out that he is and did so several times for emphasis. He also had one of the great lines of the convention, saying the world is more motivated by the power of America’s example, than by an example of America’s power. Reviving a theme from his 90s campaigns, he mocked Republican “family values” by citing what a poor economy and multiple tours in Iraq do to families.

Vice-Presidential nominee Joe Biden did what he had to do too. The convention speech and the debate are the only sure moments in the sun for the Vice President in the American system. As much a fixture as Biden is, he was still introducing himself to the 30% of Americans who don’t really know him. He introduced his compelling and emotional personal story and had Michelle Obama in tears. He revealed himself as a great and partisan campaigner. Saying he really liked his friend John McCain, he then pointed out McCain’s inconsistencies and the profound differences between parties. This had the troops ready for action.

Honorable mention goes to a couple of other speakers. It’s not that long ago that some political operatives thought Nancy Pelosi would ruin chances for women in general and Hillary in particular. This semi sexist theory went that voters would find Pelosi too shrill (a female missive) and too left (a political missive). Even if she succeeded, voters would say, “well, we’ve got a senior woman; who needs another?” Thankfully none of this happened and Pelosi is a credible leader, perhaps helping to show gender can be ignored.

John Kerry made the speech he needed to make last time. Amazingly, mocking McCain’s flip flops, he defused the criticism that he was a flip-flopper last time out. The Senator McCain versus Candidate McCain refrain was brilliant. The young speech writer responsible was floating in the rafters after the delivery.

It was a love-in with Al Gore, and Keynote speaker, Gov. Mark Warner, showed the face of the next generation of Democrats.

And then there was Obama. The toughest thing in politics is filling the hall. You can bring out the faithful, friends, call around, car pool and lay on free busses. But filling a 75,000 seat arena and having the fire marshal say there are too many on the field cannot be faked. Stadium politics is the now the new normal—fill one or you’re a failure. In his actual address, Obama was a little more specific, more partisan and a little more polished in his delivery. He needs to ramp up the first two in order to win in November.

Gettin' it Done

2008-08-28T00:07:00.000-07:00

Here it is chronologically.

The roll can was ill-advised from the beginning. If Hillary didn't get all her pledged delegates, it would embarrass her and perhaps be contrary to party rules. If she got them all, she might embarrass Obama.

Roll calls are also boring if the result is known. The state spokesperson rhymes off countless platitudes and hometown boosterism.

But on this occasion, California passed. Rumor had it that they could not muster a majority for Obama. This is possible because 20% of the delegation is super-delegates. Moreover, many delegates and super delegates were still in Sacremento, locked in a room hammering out a budget. They may not have been able to muster alternates.

Then, going in alphabetical order, Illinois and New Mexico yielded or passed to give New York the floor. By this time we knew Hillary was in the NY delegation, perhaps brokering a deal or whipping delegates, or orchestrating a yield until California got its act together. Or was this jockeying to see which state would put the delegate count over the top for Obama.

None of the above. Hillary took the floor and shut the mystery down by moving that the nomination be unanimous. A classy and very smart political move, solidifying her support for Obama and creating 10 minutes of suspense that was great on the floor and on TV.

Then, Bill did as good a job tonight as Hillary did last night. He marched out and said he was here to support Obama. Then he said he was here to warm up the crowd for Biden. He used humor to acknowledge his past mistake of equivocal support for Obama and also implied that he knew his place in the party. In several ways he said Obama is ready and up for the job.

Best turn of a phrase--that the US must use the power of its example, not an example of its power.

Prediction: if Bill & Hillery don't falter during the campaign, they have solidified their position in the party as elders for the next decade.

Biden belted it out of the park too. His story and his laundry list of what Sen. McCain is wrong about whipped up the partisan crowd. He's in the right room, on the right ticket, at the right time.

Then, out came Obama.

Tomorrow night, Obama must belt it out of a bigger park.

The Hillary High

2008-08-26T23:27:00.001-07:00

You can't fake a lot of stuff well. You can hand out Hillary signs but you can't get a crowd to wave them enthusiastically--especially in the cheap seats. You can build in applause lines and pauses, but you can't make people applaud for long--especially in the cheap seats.

You can get the speaker to read the teleprompter, but you can't make her reach out to audience members--yes, especially in the cheap seats.

Hillary did in tonight in Denver. I saw her and the crowd from good seats, a private box, cheap seats and the floor. You can't manufacture or fake Hillary's great skill and the genuine emotional response.

Reference to 1848 liberation movements and the "keep going" metaphor brought many, including me to tears or near tears.

If Bill does well and there are no further sources of friction, the Clintons have secured their place in the party for the next 10-15 years.

QED

Tomorrow, T. Boone Pickens wind plan in The Big Tent. Then Biden & Bill at night.

Hillary's Challenge

2008-08-26T09:27:00.000-07:00

Hillary has an impossible task this evening in Denver. She will be under a microscope to see if there is any equivocation, hesitation, reservation, procrastination or obfuscation about her endorsement of Obama-nation. An eyebrow, head nod, semantic nuance, pursed lip (not even both) or anything that doesn't look like complete, total, utter, four-square, lock-step support for Obama will be considered disrespectful.

Hillary's people still think she's been dissed. But she has a point that's she's done more than most runners up. What did Reagan do for Gerald Ford in 1976 again? What did Kennedy do for Carter in 1980?

As for Bill (Rhodes Scholar from the waist up), the authorities (Hillary) have him wearing an ankle bracelet. Trepidation is that he may go off teleprompter (surely there are bigger worries with Bill).

Remember,we're seeing a half-dozen of the best speakers in America at this event. It's all the sub and sur-text that has the possibility of rattling them.

When Did America Become a Democracy?

2008-08-26T08:54:00.000-07:00

So I had my follow up chat with the Dean of the Woodrow Wilson (he kept us out of war until after the election) School. You'll recall I challenged her on her contention that America was the world's oldest democracy. I (on behalf of members of the British Commonwealth everywhere) cited Britain.

She rightly cited the lack of universal suffrage in England in 1776, precluding that country qualifying as a democracy. To which I replied,"like in America." To which she replied that American suffrage was also based on property rights. To which I replied,"and race." To which she replied that the King still had power. To which I replied that democracy was evolving.

When I cited Greece, she said "oldest continuously operating democracy."

Then it occurred to me to ask if the % of people who could vote in England in 1776 was really less than the % who could vote in America. She said she'd have to check. It would be an interesting stat to have.

This got me thinking. Should the clock on American democracy be started with some of the state constitutions, articles of confederation, federalist papers, shots being fired in the revolutionary war, first congress, president, second of each or when?

In terms of continuously operating, would the years when Lincoln suspended Habeus Corpus be a pause? Would the Civil War, when the South had it's own president (before Lincoln) and constitution? Given the dean's criteria of suffrage, I wonder if American democracy should date from the emancipation proclamation in which Lincoln only freed Southern Slaves over whom he had no control at the time? Surely democracy can't date from the time when Jim Crow laws made one Black person's vote worth one-sixth of a white's. How about women? Perhaps American democracy dates from the 1964 Voting Rights Act.

Happy 44th birthday America!

We have similar issues in Canada. We can't start the clock until the act which made women "person's". Some start it at the Statute of Westminister. Some might pick the time the phrase "A Canadian Citizen is a British Subject" came off our passports. How about dating our independence as a country from the last appeal to the British Privy Council (1938 on Federal jurisdiction over broadcasting)?

I promised the Dean a new blog and here it is.

The Bounce

2008-08-26T08:53:00.002-07:00

The problem with the republicans having their convention right after this one in Denver is that pollsters won’t be able to measure the “bounce” Obama and the Dems get. McCain might announce his running mate Friday morning—skewing data collected that day on “who you’d vote for.”: McCain dominating the news day Friday can neutralize Dem gains from four straight days of TV.

The Bounce

2008-08-26T08:53:00.001-07:00

The Bounce

2008-08-26T08:53:00.000-07:00

They Did What They Had to

2008-08-25T21:30:00.000-07:00

The party did what it had to do--honour Ted Kennedy, and for many good reasons.

Then, Michelle Obama did what she had to do. She said she loved her country. This may counter previous statements about having been only recently proud of her country. She also positioned herself as just plain folks, with family triumphs and tragedies.

Michelle also touched the bases of working people, her beloved father and Hillary. Tough work, but it had to be done.

Teddy referenced brother presdient JFK setting his sights on moon, not saying it was too far to go, so let's give up.

I like presidential history and especially the Kennedy years. But citing a goal achieved almost 40 years ago is a little retro. I note the mustic--"Celebration" and "You're Still the One." I'd google and find out how old these gems are, but google might not work through the time/space continuum.

Obama needs to go to the economy, hammer away on change, give a speech 25% better than he has to date and have spefics on the war and foreign policy to give him the bounce he needs.

Now, sleep.

Younger than Springtime, are you

2008-08-25T16:19:00.000-07:00

Anne-Marie Slaughter, Dean of the Woodrow Wilson School had a lot of good ideas for President Obama. She wants him to close Gitmo, rid the world of nuks, adhere to the Geneva Convention and perhaps admit more countries to the security council.

But her parenthetical phrase that America is the world's oldest democracy got me off her bandwagon. Britain? In fact, as blogged elsewhere, the American revolutionaries used their free status and Englishmen under the Magna Charta, Bill of Rights and countless other laws and acts of parliament to push for independence. I'll corner her over drinks.

Controversial Dr. King

2008-08-25T15:43:00.001-07:00

One great panelist in the Big Tent came up with this historical perspective. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was extremely progressive on economic issues and was also against the Vietnam War. In his pocket when he was shot was his sermon for the next Sunday, entitled, Why American May go to Hell.

The speaker speculated that an association with Dr. King in 1965 might have been as controversial as an association with Rev. Wright in 2008.

The Dream Writing Team

2008-08-25T14:42:00.000-07:00

So, I was sitting around The Big Tent in Denver and in walks Ted Sorensen, billed as one of the greatest presidential speechwriters of all time. Note elsewhere in this blog my analysis of presidential speeches including JFK's. Well, Mr. Sorensen worked for JFK for 11 years, up until the assassination on November 23, 1963. Its not often a political junkie, speaking coach and writer ends up in a Q & A session like this. Mr. Sorensen recounted Kennedy's activities from early June, 1963 and the several months that followed--the legislation, speeches, Berlin included, he hot line with Moscow, equal pay and so on.

Then up got Johnathan Alter to recount some events from his new book on FDR, including how FDR the candidate didn't have many detailed plans for the New Deal, other than the catch phrase. He also equivocated on many issues to placate press baron, Wm. Randolph Hearst.

The panel was introduced by Rachael Maddow of Air America and MSNBC.

The Place to Be

2008-08-25T13:08:00.000-07:00

How was I to know that there was a North and a South Broadway? Does this happen in other cities? By the time I arrived at my actual hotel, kept the cabbie waiting and went downtown for credentials, the meter read $133.00 or so. I lucked out with the last honest and honorable man as my cabbie and he charged me $110.

Denver is a sprawling Western city, like ours, but it has a European style tram and a pedestrian mall on 16th street.

This is the land of entrepreneurs. Remember that a real estate speculator bought up the site of the fist battle of the civil within days (hours?). You can't walk five paces in this town without happening upon an Obama action doll, buttons, Obama water, bracelets, T-shirts, bumper stickers and so on.

I have not yet made it to the Pepsi Center. I got sidetracked at The Big Tent--a haven for bloggers, Youtubers and other tributary (not mainstream) types. I lucked out.

The Tent is running a series of panel discussions. I walked into Robert Kennedy Jr.'s remarks on coal, oil, energy policy and national security. They're all connected. He speaks in soundbits. He wants free market solutions--no subsidies to oil and coal. He wants everybody to have access to the grid to turn every home into a power plant. He wants a modern grid so electrons from mid-western wind and solar don' deteriorate by the time they get to the Mississippi. He wants a lot and is on a roll.

The thing I was struck with was that he was not on MSNBC, CNN, Fox (not surprising) or mainstream media. He may well be before the convention is over, but he pointed out that the mainstream media are not covering these issues and that these alternate fora and media are very important. He was in a small group of 50 or so, hoping to reach the rest of the world on Youtube.

On carbon tax, he wants to tax carbon out of existence. And Canadian Liberal Stephane Dion, you want yours to be revenue neutral?

I may have the privilege of commenting on the Canadian election if we have one in the fall. I am usually asked to review party and leader web sites. I'll be interested to see if any of them have twigged to The Big Tent kind of event.

Coming up---T. Boone Pickens...Ted Sorensen, Dan Rather, Arianna Huffington.

Further Study

2008-08-24T19:43:00.000-07:00

I am studying in this remarkable political season in America. The Museum of the City of New York has a great exhibit on that city and state’s role in national politics. The presidential libraries have been a great source of information. I’m lucky that
circumstances took me to California and Texas for visits to the libraries of presidents Nixon, Reagan, Johnson and George H.W. Bush. On that route was also Dealey Plaza where JFK’s life and goals ended.

Earlier I had the opportunity to visit the Clinton Library in Little Rock and the JFK and FDR libraries for the second time.

I’ve turned to the Internet to search campaign speeches, Inaugural Addresses and State of the Union Addresses to see how the current campaign compares to historical discourse. I also wanted to see what I should watch for in current candidate speeches.

Over the years I’ve read a lot of great political biographies, academic books and memoires. Not many stay on my shelf. I don’t return to many books. Most linger on the shelf for a while and then find a home with students or in a women’s shelter.

But I’ve kept a few and pulled them out this political season. One is Gil Troy’s See How They Ran: The Changing Role of the Presidential Candidate. In this 1991 book Troy documents how new campaign techniques have been considered unprecedented for 100 years after their inception. My references to the “front porch” campaign, writing letters and other technical campaign matters are informed through my reading and continued reference to this book.

James David Barber, in The Pulse of Politics Electing Presidents in the Media Age speaks about the ebb and flow of political campaigns.

Elsewhere in this blog I cite two great political trivia books I found late in this campaign. Also late in the campaign, I found Michael Cohen’s Live from the Campaign Trail. It’s a great analysis of top campaign speeches. I’m grateful that I found this volume, and doubly so that the author spent some time with me to discuss what makes a great campaign speech.

But now is the time to confess to my not so secret way of understanding America and American politics and American culture. This story goes back a few years. I’ve heard it said that you cannot understand America without understanding New York. I remedy that by doing business every couple of months in New York and learning while I’m there.

I’ve also heard it said that you can’t understand America without understanding The Civil War. Well, I cam to this issue far more reluctantly than I took to Sardis, The Palm, Broadway, museums and galleries and the other New York attributes. But, after years of procrastinating, I finally decided to bite the wadding and study The Civil War. I ordered an audio course from The Teaching Company. When the course arrived I listened attentively to a gifted military historian explain the politics, economics, industrial capacity, military tactics, social implications, legal aspects and every other possible perspective on the events that took up to 700,000 American lives. These events help define American domestic, foreign and military policy to this day. I learned such esoteric matters as the fact that Union troops left New York with beef sandwiches from Delmonico’s Restaurant in their kits, and that George Armstrong Custer was a showboat in those days too. I learned of military tactics, the economics of the cotton trade and how the entire world’s navies became obsolete after the battle between the ironclads Merrimack and the Monitor. I learned of Lincoln’s inability to command General McClelland (later Democratic Presidential candidate) to do much of anything. In retrospect, almost anything at all might have ended the war years earlier.

I also learned about time and chance. Ulysses S. Grant had failed at several careers before having greatness thrust upon him. His penchant for liquor and cigars killed him eventually, but (paraphrasing Lincoln) it was better to have Grant drunk than several other Generals sober.

But I digress.

The Civil War was the first war in people’s living rooms. No, not Vietnam—The Civil War. People would pack a lunch and watch battles. Tens of thousands of pictures were taken, but destroyed when the glass reproductions were turned into greenhouses after the war. I learned of the horrors inflicted on civilians by General Sherman, long before this was used to great effect in World War II.

But The Civil War only illuminates some of the American experience. There is also the religious history of a country really founded on religious intolerance. There’s also the several Americas which were founded and colonized. There’s the Massachusetts colony founded for religious freedom (or intolerance), New York for mercantile affairs, the Carolinas to populate the continent and the South for agricultural interests.

Then there’s religion in American political affairs. There’s the Christian right, the fundamentalists, the economic right and the social conservatives. They’re as fractionated as the Democrats were in 1968. Teaching Company courses on American and world religions showed me where faith fits into politics and world history.

Then there are the Presidents. How does one begin comparing any of the modern Presidents whom we can hear and see on audio and video recordings, with the great ones whom we can’t? Is it apples and organs anyway—style vs substance?

Then there’s the times. How to compare Lincoln at Gettysburg and Carter’s “malaise” speech? Is our impression of Kennedy tainted by our knowing of his tragic end? Is our impression of Nixon’s excellent domestic policy tainted by knowing of his tragic end?

Yes, of course.

The antidote for me was the books cited above and The Teaching Company’s course on Great Presidents.

Then there’s the very, very difficult tentative conclusion I reached after listening to the legacy of Jefferson, the history and cycles of American political thought and the vigorous and intelligent discussion leading up to the American Revolution. I came to the conclusion that there was an “American mind”. The American mind and American ideal and “idea” of America may be partly fiction, but it is a phenomenon.

By fiction, I mean respectfully, that America is excellent at myth-making. The battle of Tippecanoe, lead by future President William Henry Harrison, was not a victory—the Americans losing one more person than the combined British, Canadian and First Nation forces. The Liberty bell in Philadelphia has little to do with liberty--it’s just an incompetent bell, having cracked, been melted down and cracked again. Paul Revere shouting “The British are Coming” was rather ridiculous—the British having been there for about 150 years. The battle of Bunker Hill was lost by the Americans and commemorated in the wrong spot.

But I digress.

The painful conclusion I’ve come to is that America has a socially and politically intellectual history that Canada does not. I will soon review all US presidential states of the union addresses, but I suspect our Throne Speeches will not measure up. Moreover, I’m not sure if a Prime Minister’s maiden speech in the house of commons, campaign speeches or ministerial statements when a minister or PM will measure up. I’m happy to be prove wrong, but that’s my guess.

And now to my point.

Below is a bibliography of audio and DVD lectures I use on planes on the 9 hour drive to New York and in hotel rooms while laying over for the next assignment. It’s a great political season to be interested in America and I hope you are too.

Taylor, Timothy. “Economics: Part 1,2,3.” The Teaching Company. Chantilly, Virginia. (2005)

Guezlo, Allen C. “The American Mind: Part 1,2,3.” The Teaching Company. Chantilly,Virginia. (2005)

Mancall, Peter C. “Origins and Ideologies of the American Revolution: Part 1,2,3,4.” The Teaching Company. Chantilly, Virginia. (2005)

Koterski, Joseph. “Natural Law and Human Nature.” The Teaching Company. Chantilly, Virginia. (2005)

Allitt, Patrick N. “American Religious History.” The Teaching Company. Chantilly, Virginia. (2005)

Ehrman, Bart D. “The New Testament.” The Teaching Company. Chantilly, Virginia. (2005)

Oden, Robert. “Great World Religions.” The Teaching Company. Chantilly, Virginia. (2005)

Lichtman, Allan. “Great Presidents.” The Teaching Company. Chantilly, Virginia. (2005)

Starbird,Micheal. “Meaning from Data: Statistics Made Clear.” The Teaching Company. Chantilly, Virginia. (2006)

Taylor, Timothy. “Contemporary Economic Issues.” The Teaching Company. Chantilly, Virginia. (2006)

Gallagher, Gary W. “The American Civil War.” The Teaching Company. Chantilly, Virginia. (2006)

Shenton, James. “The History of the United States.” The Teaching Company. Chantilly, Virginia. (2005)

Stloff, Darren. “Thomas Jefferson: American Visionary.” The Teaching Company. Chantilly, Virginia. (2005)

Kobylka, Joseph F. “Cycles of American Political Thought.” The Teaching Company. Chantilly, Virginia. (2006)

Sugrue, Michael; Ford, Andrew; Hollander, Robert; Thurn, David. “The Bible and Western Culture.” The Teaching Company. Chantilly, Virginia. (2006)

Childers, Thomas. “World War II: A Military & Social History.” The Teaching Company. Chantilly, Virginia. (2006)

Fears, Rufus J. “A History of Freedom.” The Teaching Company. Chantilly, Virginia. (2006)

Taylor, Timothy. “A History of the U.S. Economy in the 20th Century.” The Teaching Company. Chantilly, Virginia. (2006)

Presidential Trivia

2008-08-24T06:43:00.000-07:00

Abraham Lincoln authorized the largest mass execution in American history--38 Sioux who were hanged.

Thomas Jefferson lived until he was 83 in an era when it was lucky to make it past 50. His secret: Cold foot baths. For 60 years he’d soak his feet in cold water every morning.

Jefferson had a pet mockingbird that would take food from his mouth.

Martin Van Buren liked lavish furnishings. Even his spoons were made of gold.

Rutherford B. Hayes removed all alcohol from the White House. The one and only time he allowed it is in 1877, when the Grand Duke of Russia visited. Every meal was served with wine.

Hayes’s wife Lucy supposedly owned the first Siamese cat ever in America. It was given to her from the American consul in Bangkok.

Theodore Roosevelt (TR) was a sporting president. He broke his arm during a fox hunt, again in a stick-fighting bout and even suffered a serious eye injury when he went up against heavyweight champ John L. Sullivan in a boxing match. He was able to keep the injury a secret for years.

TR wanted to take the “In God We Trust” phrase off the American currency. He believed that it was blasphemous that people could use money with such a meaningful phrase to buy alcohol as well as other immoral services.

TR’s dying words were, “please put out the light.”

Herbert Hoover didn’t like to socialize with White House servants. They were under strict orders to hide when he walked by. If they didn’t they were fired. Even when Hoover needed them, neither he nor his wife Lady Lou Hoover would speak. They communicated with the staff through sign language. For example, when Lou touched her hair, it meant dinner were to be served to the guests.

There’s no period after the “S” in Harry S Truman. That’s because it doesn’t stand for anything. When he was born, there was a disagreement whether his middle name would be Shippe, or Solomon. The compromise was the single “S.”

Dwight Eisenhower played golf for up to 150 days per year during his presidential tenure. He even had a putting green installed on the White House lawn, which was eventually plagued by squirrels.

Eisenhower and his wife Mamie were avid card players. The two were so obsessed with bridge and canasta, that in the event that they didn’t have enough people to play, they’d fly their friends in to the White House.

John F. Kennedy grew up with a series of maladies. Because of a back injury, he sometimes walked with crutches when he was out of the public eye.

Although there have been former military officers elected as president, JFK was the first Navy man to occupy the Oval Office.

JFK may have been a sex addict. He reportedly told one confident that he got a migraine headache if he didn’t sleep with a new woman every day. JFK was regularly treated for chlamydia.

The media always seemed to be around for Gerald Ford’s less-than-stellar moments. All of Ford’s clumsy moves were put into the news, like the time he locked himself out of the White House while walking his dog at night.

“I’m a Ford, not a Lincoln.” – Gerald Ford.

Ford is the only model to become president.

Ford had a habit of blaming his loud flatulence on Secret Service agents who surrounded him.

Jimmy Carter is the only president to report a UFO. It was apparently silent and as bright as the moon.

Carter was a born-again Christian. He would tell staffers to marry their significant others and stop “living in sin.”

Willie Nelson performed at the White House during the Carter administration. Nelson ended up sleeping over and steered clear of the Secret Service. Nelson is quoted as saying, “The roof of the White House is the safest place I can think of to smoke dope.”

Aside from being the first actor to become president, Ronald Reagan is the oldest man to become president.

Reagan’s father was an alcoholic. He once had to be dragged into the White House from the front lawn.

Reagan showed his old age when he would repeatedly fall asleep during meetings (famously with The Pope) and address people (including his top officials) by the wrong names.

The word ‘Bushusuru’ is Japanese meaning, “to do the Bush thing.” It’s slang for vomiting. It originated after George H. W. Bush’s visit to Tokyo in 1992, when he hurled on the Japanese Prime Minister’s lap.

Clinton was late for many of his appointments. Air Force One once had to hold up air traffic because Clinton was getting a $200 haircut.

Although the rumours of George W. Bush’s cocaine use have never been proven, he was a heavy drinker back in his college days. Bush was once arrested and taken into custody for DUI. He had his license suspended and was hit with a $150 fine.

George Bush Jr. is the first and only president to have an MBA. He founded his own oil and gas firm Arbusto, although he was forced to sell it because it nearly went bankrupt.

A few presidents have their share of bad vocals, but Bushisms (W’s) take the cake:

“I understand small business. I was one.”

“Reading is the basics of all learning.”

“There is madmen in the world, and there are terror.”

“There is old saying in Tennessee - I know it’s in Texas, probably in Tennessee – that says, fool me once, shame on – shame on you. Fool me – you can’t get fooled again.”

To the president of Brazil: “Do you have blacks, too?”

Source: Secret Lives of the US Presidents

Campaign Secrets, Tactics & Dirty Tricks

2008-08-24T06:25:00.000-07:00

Adlai Stevenson had to deal with rumours that he was gay. He also had a secret in his past that Republicans were able to discover and capitalize on. One Republican leaflet read that Stevenson killed a 13-year-old girl in a jealous rage. This was not true, but based on fact. The story was that around Christmas time as a child, Stevenson and his friends were playing with a .22 rifle. A girl named Ruth Merwin was accidentally killed. Stevenson kept this secret so hidden, those closest to him, including his wife didn’t know.

Texas Senator Lyndon B. Johnson and John F. Kennedy hated each other, but JFK needed Johnson as his running mate to boost his votes in the south. When a friend asked Johnson why he took the job, he said, "one out of every four presidents has died in office. I'm a gamblin' man, darlin' and this is the only chance I got."

After the 1960 election when Nixon lost to Kennedy, The New York Herald Tribune published a series of articles outlining fixed votes. In Chicago (ran by Democratic Mayor Richard Daley) and Lyndon Johnson's Texas, ballot paper was stolen and dead men were voting. The reported amount of phony votes totaled in the thousands.

After taking over as president, Lyndon Johnson would use his former running mate's martyred status as a way to get the voters on his side. Johnson would ask the crowd whom they think Kennedy would want to see in the white house.

The Johnson campaign made books to damage the Goldwater campaign. One was titled Barry Goldwater: Extremist of the Right, and even a children's colouring book was made with pictures of Goldwater in KKK robes.

During the 1972 election, Nixon sent letters supporting his campaign to a Washington television station under fake names. The station had a public opinion feature that aired the letters of its viewers.

Just a couple of weeks left until the election, George H.W. Bush had this to say about Reagan: “I am proud to be his partner. We have had triumphs, we have made mistakes, we have had sex, I mean setbacks!”

During Michael Dukakis’s tenure as governor of Massachusetts, a convict named William Horton fled to Maryland after a weekend pass out of prison. He raped a woman and stabbed her fiancée. When Dukakis was campaigning for president, the Republican party created attack ads that were mailed to 400,000 Texas voters. The ads were modeled after the Monopoly Get Out Of Jail Free card and read, “Michael Dukakis is the killer’s best friend and the decent honest citizen’s worst enemy.”

Bill Clinton was a young, charismatic and promising candidate for presidency, except for his history with women. Republicans spread rumours that Clinton was a rapist, had a child with a black woman and groped a woman in the bathroom at his own wedding. However the biggest strike against him was Clinton’s supposed relationship with nightclub singer and former Arkansas state employee Gennifer Flowers.

After Clinton’s 13-point lead on Labour Day, Bush Sr. became desperate and verbally attacked Clinton and Perot with comments like, “my dog Millie knows more about foreign affairs than those two bozos.”

Republicans accused Clinton of smoking marijuana while he was in college. Clinton responded with the now famous phrase, “I didn’t inhale.”

When John Kerry ran against George W. Bush, the Republicans branded him as a ‘flip-flopper’. Kerry initially for the voted the $87 billion for additional military in Iraq, but voted against it afterwards. Bush on the other hand said, “You may not always agree with me, but you’ll always know where I stand.”

A photo was placed on the Internet with Kerry and Jane Fonda together at a Vietnam anti-war rally. It was later proven to be fake.

Democrats put out a rumour that Bush would institute a military draft if he were re-elected.

Source: Cummins, Anything for a Vote

You Know He's Right

2008-08-23T18:15:00.000-07:00

One of the greatest political writers and travel writers in history, Alexis de Tocqueville, pointed out that political discourse was circumscribed in America. Writing in the early 19th century, he noted that people with views outside the mainstream quickly became marginalized.

That’s probably still true today. The political discourse in America is now of the right. How it got that way has its roots in the fluctuating definition of American liberalism, and most recently in the 1960s ideological wars. What follows is a look back at those roots.

Barry Goldwater, who now looks like a moderate, signaled the unraveling of the New Deal Coalition and the near universal agreement on activist government. In the mirror image of Dixiecrats walking out of the 1948 Democratic Convention, the right was front and centre in the Republican convention, even bating moderates, spitting on Black delegates and interrupting moderate candidate, NY Governor Nelson Rockefeller almost two dozen times with booing and gearing. Worse, planks in the platform supporting civil rights and rejecting extremist groups were voted down. Candidate Goldwater wore all this as he was accused of extremism, even fascism and mental instability. His acceptance speech was criticized by leaders of both parties.

This disastrous speech has to be seen in historical context. It’s a lesson in the value of the work of historians and political scientists versus journalists. It’s also a great example of the definition of journalism by Phil Graham of The Washington Post—“the first, rough draft of history.” In the first, rough draft review of Goldwater’s speech and campaign, he is a sad figure, railing against civil rights and big government and advocating spreading democracy around the world.

But as the years went by, we could see that this was the beginning of the successful conservative movement in the US. Success came through a more effective playing of the race card in 1968. There was a revolution going on in America in the late 1960s, and it’s clear that the right won.

In short—no Goldwater, probably no Nixon, no Reagan, no Bush. So, Goldwater may have been a success, but in a different time zone.

But a more disturbing equation may be—No Wallace, probably no Nixon, no Reagan, no Bush. This is disturbing because Wallace was famous for his 1963 gubernatorial inauguration in which he said “Segregation now, segregation tomorrow, segregation forever.” Speeches attached the “black-robed despots” on the supreme court, the 1964 Civil Rights Bill, the “do-nothing Congress”, the “liberal left-wing press”, “pinknik” Washington bureaucrats.

Wallace did surprisingly well in the primaries, which was a signal that there were frightened, angry white voters out there up for grabs. In came Richard Nixon to capitalize on what he saw. Nixon was able to speak to this disaffection in code—talking about law and order, the “forgotten majority” and states’ rights.

But he was also a smart enough politician to touch certain other bases to signal that he was not the extremist that Wallace was. He paid homage and respect to the courts, while bemoaning that some decisions “have gone too far in weakening the peace forces as against the criminal forces…”. He bemoaned the loss of American prestige and military power in the world, but held out “the hand of friendship” to Russia and China. He supported civil rights, but pointed out “that the fist civil right of every American is to be free from domestic violence.” He criticized government programs, but promised new ones. Nixon walked this coded minefield to victory, helped by some Southern Democrats who took electoral college votes away from Hubert Humphrey.

But the real pay off for the right was with Ronald Reagan. He tempered the language of the right, appealed to women and used humor to diffuse controversy. His anti-government message was “that government is never more dangerous than when our desire to have it help us blinds us to its great power to harm us” thus adding fear to the distrust of government.

His aphorisms were honed through reading Readers’ Digest on planes to countless speaking engagements and perfecting the sound bite with Johnny Carson as a guest on the Tonight Show. Typical was, “when government spends our money it isn’t inflationary, but when we spend it, it is.” This is intuitively true, despite not standing scrutiny, since government might waste on a mega-project or spend on health care. An individual might buy government bonds, school tuition or candy.

Affable talk show talker, and former speechwriter for Nixon and Reagan, Pat Buchanan, ran in the primaries against sitting president Bush in 1992. He earned a prime speaking spot at the convention. But he was not affable in those days. He was speaking about a “cultural war” in America. He mocked environmentalists and appealed to those who “don’t read Adam Smith or Edmund Burke.” But his real message was that ”There is a religious war going on in this country for the soul of America.” The right won that one too.

Ironically, America was founded on liberalism. But the definition of liberalism has changed many times over the years. Liberalism can mean the exercise of the rights of the individual. State liberalism can result in public policy designed to help improve the conditions of individuals and even paternalism. Group liberalism can try to strike a balance among competing interests and arrive at the greatest good for the greatest number. Candidates have used and defined this word quite differently to suit themselves and appeal to the electorate.

In the 1928 campaign, Herbert Hoover said that ”false liberalism…interprets itself into the government operation of commercial business.” “[B]ureaucratization of business…poisons the very roots of liberalism—that is, political equality, free speech, free assembly, free press, and equality of opportunity.” Hoover’s definition was in opposition to what FDR would do just a few years later. Hoover said “Liberalism should be found not striving to spread bureaucracy but striving to set bounds to it.”

In 1932, Roosevelt said ”Ours must be a party of liberal thought, of planned action, of enlightened international outlook, and of the greatest good to the greatest number of our citizens.” He also bragged that the Democratic party “is the bearer of liberalism and of progress.”

There still is an American Liberal Party, but it’s been marginalized. John Kennedy was not only the nominee of the Democrats in 1960, but also of the New York Liberal Party. He defined a liberal in his speech to those liberals as “someone who looks ahead and not behind, someone who welcomes new ideas without rigid reactions, someone who cares about the welfare of the people…” “I’m proud to say I’m a ‘Liberal’” he said, and, foreshadowing author Francis Fukyama, he added, “…liberalism is out best and only hope in the world today. For the liberal society is a free society.”

Kennedy also put a certain perspective in America’s frontier spirit. “The pioneers of old gave up their safety, their comfort and sometimes their lives to build a new world here in the West. …Their motto was not ‘every man for himself’—but ‘all for the common cause’.” Sociologist SM Lipsett would later refer to this as Agrarian Socialism, a concept a modern politician could not bring into a campaign.

Even as late as the 1980s, Ronald Reagan spoke of the pilgrims who “formed what they called a ’compact’; an agreement among themselves to build a community and abide by its laws”. Surely this is collectivism.

Mario Cuomo is gifted rhetorician and empathetic speaker. He also has great credibility, being the embodiment of the American dream. But when your policies are out of touch, rhetoric won’t help. “The Republicans believe that the wagon train will not make it to the frontier unless some of the old, some of the young, some of the weak are left behind by the side of the trail. …We Democrats believe that we can make it all the way with the whole family intact.” But by 1984 Americans thought they were better off with Reagan if they weren’t among the tens of millions who had joined the middle class in previous generations, they were in the millions who thought that transition might be just around the corner.

In one brief, but clear back of his hand, Obama references “wide-eyed liberals” in his best known 2008 campaign speech. Doing much more than deriding liberalism is now political suicide in America—the country founded on liberalism.

Touching the Bases

2008-08-23T16:21:00.000-07:00

Political and public speakers need to research the history and values of the office they seek, the jurisdiction they offer themselves to and their predecessors of all parties. Themes will arise. Even politicos of a different stripe may have been taping into sentiments that will motivate voters today.

The other phenomenon worth considering is the polarization of the electorate. In America, we sometimes forget that almost as many citizens joined Loyalist militia to fight for England as joined the Continental Army. So, America was polarized long before the Civil War or the close election of 2000.

Below is a few thoughts on how some previous presidential candidates have tried to appeal to the undecided voter, and use symbolism to appeal across party lines.

A consensus grew pretty quickly in this extraordinary political season that Barack Obama had made one of the great campaign speeches of all time. It’s too soon to tell how history will view the “more perfect union” speech the candidate made at Constitution Center in Philadelphia in March of 2008. We know what commentators said at the time. We think we know what the electorate may have thought at the time.

Candidate Obama was partly reacting to the second wave of controversial and racially incendiary statements by his pastor, Reverend Wright. The campaign couldn’t ignore this a second time. They would have risked Obama’s marginalization as a militant or fellow traveler. Obama’s skill in delivery and the message was rightly praised for leading America in a discussion of issues that don’t get discussed on the airwaves and in public.

The speech brought race out of the barbershops and into the streets. Obama also did some unpleasant business by distancing himself from his controversial pastor.

But in addition to how history will view this speech, I wondered whether Obama and his speechwriters had viewed history. In other words, there are certain bases to touch in content and style to make a speech and a speaker contenders for greatness.

Many observers, including some in the Kennedy family have compared Obama to JFK. They may be reluctant to compare a democrat to republican Ronald Reagan. But there are other, more apt comparisons to make as well. A case can be made that the oratory and rhetoric of John Kennedy would not have existed without Adlai Stevenson. They even used some of the same speechwriters. All democrats can trace some of their populist lineage to William Jennings Bryan and their faith in activist government and reform to Teddy Roosevelt.

But I think that the most apt comparison is with the father of plain political speaking—FDR. He was also the first media president—adopting a kind of speech well suited to radio.

Many comparisons can be made by comparing great campaign speeches to Obama’s. I think he comes out about average, with very strong competition from FDR, JFK, Reagan and Clinton. But that’s for you and the electorate to decide. For me, Obama needs to move his rhetoric and delivery up a notch to secure a place in the top ten percent of presidential speakers in history.

Where he also needs to move up a notch is in his reference to the Bible. It’s mandatory in US politics. Ironically, God is in the Canadian constitution and absent our political and electoral discussions. God is left out of the US constitution, but ever present in electoral politics.

God, and the inspired word of God, is also in most important political speeches. FDR referenced “faith, hope, and, above all, charity” from First Corinthians

In his nasty 1948 campaign, Harry Truman picked a violent metaphor from the Bible to indicate he wanted to “drive the money changers from the temple.” At the convention that year Hubert Humphrey observed a “spiritual crisis” about civil rights and appealed for remedies based on this reference to religion.

JFK had to go a little light on the Bible because his religion was a potentially contentious issue. Being Roman Catholic has scuttled New York Governor Al Smith’s campaign in 1928. But JFK did work in the Biblical quote, ”Be strong and of a good courage; be not afraid, neither be thou dismayed.” In his addressing of the contentious religion issue, he contended that “every man has the same right to attend or not to attend the church of his choice.” Defending the latter might be political suicide in America today.

Barry Goldwater brought God into his acceptance speech in 1964—“The Good Lord raised this mighty Republic..”. McGovern paraphrased Pete Seeger, The Byrds and Ecclesiastes all at the same time when he referenced the “’music of our children’—to everything there is a season and a time to every purpose under heaven.”

Bill Clinton’s quote was “Where there is no vision the people perish.” This brought the Bible into his campaign and allowed him to move on to emphasize the need for the president to have a vision.

It’s too soon to pass any judgment on George W. Bush. After all we’re constantly revising our views of past-presidents. But he did inherit the various factions of the right and win two elections, albeit the first in the Supreme Court. He put his own stamp on the right by referring to being a “compassionate conservative.”

Obama references his “faith in God” and says “Let us be our brother’s keeper, Scripture tells us. Let us be our sister’s keeper.”

In politics, where you make a speech, can be as important as what you say. Symbolic venues and counter-intuitive venues can work well.

Teddy Roosevelt chose Osawatomie, Kansas to unveil his New Nationalism doctrine in opposition to his opponent’s (and protégé’s) conservatism. The rift in the republican party created by disagreements between Teddy Roosevelt and Taft in 1912 has not entirely healed to this day. Osawatomie was fitting for a reformer because this is the town where abolitionist John Brown began his war on slavery in 1856.

Adlai Stevenson went to the American Legion to say, “we are Americans first and veterans second.” So, when Obama points out that he made his speech about the need for more environmentally sound technology in the auto industry, he rightly pointed out he made the speech in Detroit.

JFK used the Houston Ministerial Association meeting to speak about his Roman Catholic religion. But given the intense feelings about the issue in those days and that place, he also referenced the popular Texas story of the Alamo. He cited the famous names in the battle—Bowie, Crockett, Fuentes, McCafferty, saying “no one knows whether they were Catholics or not. For there was no religious test there at the Alamo.”

In Ronald Reagan‘s1980 campaign, he attacked big government and welfare and used the code of “states’ rights” to bring alienated white Democrats into the fold. He began states’ rights campaign in Philadelphia, Mississippi where three civil rights workers were killed in 1964.

These issues of race, religion and ideology have the power to unite as well as divide. This has been true since the founding of America. It’s no wonder that astute candidates try to appeal to independents and members of the other party while campaigning and while in office. FDR did it by trying to transcend politics. At the convention in 1932 he said “This is more than a political campaign; it is a call to arms.” Then, in his speech to the Commonwealth Club in San Francisco, he made several distinctions—“I want to speak not of politics but of government. I want to speak not of parties, but of universal principles.”

In 1912, Woodrow Wilson went to Buffalo, NY and said, ”I am not here to commend one party above another. I am here to commend one purpose rather than another.”

JFK’s acceptance speech spoke of “a choice that lives not merely between two men or two parties..” In 1992, Bill Clinton point out that ”The choice we offer is not conservative or liberal. In many ways, it is not even Republican or Democratic. It’s different. It is new. And it will work.”

Ironically, given the excitement around his campaign, Obama hasn’t really touched this base. But he has bigger fish to fry. He’s trying to remove race as an issue and unite the electorate behind economic and equity issues. So, de-racification is more Obama’s goal. In his speech on race he first tries to make a link among the struggle for “…a more just, more equal, more free, more caring and more prosperous America.” For those not entirely comfortable about all elements in the list, there is at least prosperity which surely appeals to all. He cites “problems that are neither black or white or Latino or Asian, but rather problems that confront us all.”

Obama reaches out to aggrieved whites. “Most working-and middle-class white Americans don’t feel that they have been particularly privileged by their race.” He then mentions “the white woman struggling to break the glass ceiling, the white man whose been laid off” in order to create the commonality of economic need, not divisions among racial or political lines.

His only political reaching out comes when he mentions the “Reagan Coalition” and the “quintessentially American—and yes, conservative—notion of self-help.”

It will be the reaching out and continued appealing to those undecided voters that will make the next presidential term a success.

Limited Government

2008-08-23T15:42:00.000-07:00

You can't get elected wanting to enlarge government.

Even FDR said, “Government…costs too much. …We must abolish useless offices. We must eliminate unnecessary functions of Government.” He also, ironically, indicated that “The government should assume the function of government regulation only as a last resort.”

His activist relative Teddy lost in 1912, in part by asserting the federal role in local affairs. In fact, his “New Nationalism puts the national need before the sectional or personal advantage.” He did not want “local legislatures … to treat national issues as local issues.”

Warren Harding noted that societal problems “are not to be solved by a transfer of responsibility from citizenship to government.”

Herbert Hoover combined two great themes of the US culture. His “rugged individualism” elevated the common person in the 1928 campaign and he also warned of the dangers of letting the government become a player in the economy rather than an “umpire”. Hoover worried that extending “the mastery of the government over the daily working life of a people” makes it “master of the people’s souls and thoughts.”

Even Kennedy saw the need to advocate small government, and he did so at the New York Liberal Party meeting that nominated him, perhaps so nobody thought he was the wrong kind of liberal. “I see no magic in tax dollars which are sent to Washington and then returned. I abhor the waste and incompetence of large-scale bureaucracies… I do not favor state compulsion when voluntary individual effort can do the job…”

Ronald Reagan added a twist to the notion of limited government. He wanted “a government that will not only work well, but wisely.” Using the kind of juxtaposition that JFK might have, he said, “…We are going to put an end to the notion that the American taxpayer exists to fund the federal government. The federal government exists to serve the American people.” He called wasting taxpayers money, ”a theft from their pocketbook.”

Mario Cuomo was only partially on side in 1984 when he said, ”We believe in only the government we need, but we insist on all the government we need.” The electorate decided that however much that was, it was too much.

Bill Clinton framed his approach to limited government by saying America needed “a government that offers more empowerment and less entitlement…a government that is leaner, not meaner. A government that expands opportunity, not bureaucracy…” He also attacked “brain-dead politics in Washington.”

Other Boogey People

A version of the frontier spirit, having the common touch and the distrust of powerful interests, including government results in bashing Washington, big business and other straw targets. Successive elections have featured these boogey people who mainly live in Washington, DC.

Woodrow Wilson began his 1912 campaign bemoaning politicians who “have allowed themselves to become so tied up in alliances with special interests that they are not free to serve us all.” As for the personification of public sector boogies, he noted that a “little group of men sitting every day in Washington City is not going to have a vision of your lives as a while.”

It is ironic that from 1896 through Truman’s 1948 campaign, the great enemy seemed to be capitalism’s excesses, not so much the competing ideologies of Fascism and Marxism or Communism. The impression I’m left with after reading all the great campaign speeches is that it wasn’t until post WWII, when America disengaged from it’s wartime ally, the USSR, established the North Atlantic Treaty Organization and began waging the Cold War with Communism that foreign boogey people dominated campaign rhetoric. By 1952, to be taken seriously, Stevenson had to declare simply, “Communism is abhorrent. It is the strangulation of the individual; it is death for the soul.” But he had to walk a fine line to avoid identification with McCarthy’s red-baiting with the disclaimer, “…it is never necessary to call a man a communist to make political capital.”

So the successful candidate can't like government too much, even if s/he wants to run one. Experience is not something learned in Washington or a corporate board room. The successful candidate attacks big government and perhaps even finds a foreign enemy to rail against.

Metaphor and Morse Code in Convention and Campaign Speeches

2008-08-23T15:01:00.000-07:00

Shakespeare has Juliet say “a rose by any other name would smell as sweet” and that may be true. But Juliet was in love and trying to reconcile her love for a name who had the wrong last name.

In politics we call roses by lots of other names, and for good reason. Politicians are sending signals to supporters and voters and sometimes need to make points without making points, as it were.

Well, here are some recent examples.

Warren Harding was a very bad speaker and deserves his own book. Harding’s speeches were marshmallows, pumped full of hot air, loose of their tethers in the wind. Once or twice they looked nice in the breeze or lighted somewhere. In one of his short bursts of clarity in the 1920 campaign he said American needed ”not heroics, but healing; not nostrums, but normalcy; not revolution, but restoration; not agitation, but adjustment; not surgery, but serenity; not the dramatic, but the dispassionate; not experiment, but equipoise; not submergence in internationally, but sustainment in triumphant nationality.”

His text used the word normality. Harding said normalty on the spur of the moment and the press reported he’d said normalcy—a word is born. These coded phrases were a backlash against WWI and America trying to play a role in the world.

FDR gave a gift to Democrats that lasted into the Reagan years. He mocked the Tory’s hope that “prosperity will leak through, sift through, to labor, to the farmer, to the small business man.” This, of course, became the “trickle down” criticism of Reagan’s supply side economics.

By 1936, FDR spoke of “Economic royalists” to tar some business people with the same brush as the British monarchy that America had fought to escape. By the 1940 campaign, FDR still has the oratorical magic, painting Republicans as isolationist enemies of the common person. One of his major weapons was circus metaphors. “Republican orators swing through the air…turn new somersaults…seized their trapeze with the greatest of ease, and reversed themselves in mid-air”

Bill Clinton killed a few birds with one stone with a quote from the Pledge of Allegiance—“One nation, under God, indivisible, with, with liberty, and justice, for all.” He brought God into his campaign, used the Pledge as a metaphor for his patriotism, since the allegation of his being a draft dodger had been raised in the campaign. He also distanced himself from his predecessor, Michael Dukakis, who had vetoed a Bill in Massachusetts requiring teachers to use the Pledge—an issue successfully used against him by George Bush in the 1988 campaign.

Obama’s code here has a long lineage and is tricky. Start with the cadence. There are distant echoes of the rhythm of a Baptist preacher. There is a great American pedigree for black inspirational speakers that includes Dr. Martin Luther King. If you listen closely to Dr. King’s “I Have a Dream” speech, you can hear members of the audience responding as in the call/response format used in a traditional Baptist sermon. Two years before Dr. King’s speech in Washington, Sam Cooke recorded one of the definitive blues songs, “Bring it on Home.” Lou Rawls sings the response lines. Some considered the song controversial in that the convention of the church was used in a secular song.

This allusion to Church and other traditions is used to great effect by speakers. For example, in Martin Luther Kings’ famous speech, he not only used his Church-based oratorical skills, but also referenced religious teaching and the American political liturgy—the constitution, the declaration of independence, patriotic songs and other such references.

Dr. King hit all the bases and several home runs. The second sentence of his speech begins by referencing the emancipation and Lincoln’s construction in the Gettysburg address--“Five score years ago…”. He quotes several long, complex and metaphorical passages from the Bible. He uses both a negro spiritual line, “free at last” and a long quote from the patriotic song, America, ironically sung to the tune of God Save the King:

My country 'tis of thee, sweet land of liberty, of thee I sing.

Land where my fathers died, land of the Pilgrim's pride,

From every mountainside, let freedom ring!

Dr. King then repeated the quote “let freedom ring” ten times—just as many times as he repeated “I have a dream.”

Repetition is an important rhetorical technique and this speech is the gold standard. American political rhetoric must be rooted in faith and this speech and speaker are the gold standard in that category too.

But, what may have been even more important than repetition is Dr. King’s use of the secular song “My country ‘tis of thee” as a beacon and shield. Coupled with the references to the constitution, the message is that if listeners believe in their cherished secular documents and songs, they must also believe in the message of equality in the speech. That’s the compelling beacon—come to where these words can be implemented. The shield is provided in that those who might have criticized Dr. King’s message risked being accused of defacto criticism of America’s Constitution, Declaration of Independence and patriotic song.

Dr. King was not making a political speech, but he was on a campaign.

Obama’s most famous campaign speech references the preamble to the US Constitution for a similar purpose. Referencing “a union…perfected over time” is a twist to the preamble which states, “We the people of the United States, in order to form a more perfect union…”. Later he references the issue of race, “a part of our union that we have yet to perfect.” Much later he refers to “the path of a more perfect union.” Conceding that “This union may never be perfect” he then ends his speech with a final reference to how “our union grows stronger” and “where the perfection begins.”

A net result is that if you disagree with Obama, you are disagreeing with the Constitution.

In a way, George McGovern, did much the same in his time. In his 1968 call to “come home” and deal with domestic issues, suggested forming “a more perfect union here at home.”

John Kennedy used the presidential oath of office as a shield to protect him from criticism on the religion issue in 1960. He ended a speech quoting from the oath of office—I “solemnly swear that I will faithfully execute the office of President of the United States, and will to the best of my ability preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution—so help me God.”

In a bit of logic that might have been understood more instinctively than analytically to many in the audience, JFK was tacitly saying that if they were worried about his loyalty to his Roman Catholic Church and God, his oath of office, made in a sworn statement to God, required him to his constitutional duties and requirements of office.

Finally, it’s sometimes ironic how a word can change is connotation. Barry Goldwater spoke glowingly about “the brisk pace of diversity…a cherished diversity of ways, diversity of thoughts ” perhaps as a code word for states’ rights, which may be another code word for racial inequality. Today the word is used to advocate for racial and other forms of equality.

So, buried in successful political speeches, sometimes not too far below the surface, are often treasures that serve as beacons for voters and shields against attack.

The Bomb Squad

2008-08-23T14:55:00.000-07:00

All campaigns have lit fuses hanging around. We just never know what’s at the end of the fuse—big bomb…little bomb…no bomb.

Some candidates walk into a room and change the temperature. Others walk in, take the temperature of the room and then decide what to say or do. In Canada, it was said that Pierre Trudeau would walk into a room and that room would change. His conservative rival, Joe Clark would walk into a room and someone would send him out for coffee.

Similarly, some candidates light fuses that may have bombs at the end. Others are one-person bomb squads who can defuse difficult situations. Republicans thought they had something on FDR in the 1940 campaign and began saying that the president had left his Scotch terrier, Fala, on an Aleutian island and sent a Navy ship to retrieve the dog at taxpayer’s expense. Apparently the Republicans got the story wrong and FDR said Fala’s “Scotch soul was furious.” Defusing what could have been a serious ethical controversy, he said “I am accustomed to hearing malicious falsehoods about myself…but I …resent … libelous statements about my dog.”

It’s hard to decide if Harry Truman lit or defused bombs, or both. He was not thought well of, in great part because he was not FDR. In 1948 the Dixiecrats on the right and Henry Wallace’s Progressive Party on the left eroded some Democratic votes. The media, the money and the polls leaned toward Dewey. Truman began his “Give ‘em Hell, Harry” campaign at 2:00 am at a raucous convention by pledging, “I will win this election and make these Republicans like it.” But he also ran a bitter campaign. Where FDR turned a witty phrase, Truman referred to “gluttons of privilege…silent and cunning men…puppets of big business…bloodsuckers who have offices in Wall Street” and the Republican congressmen who would “cut the throats of the farmer and the laboring man.” He provided a turning point in nasty campaigning.

Richard Nixon’s several careers and comebacks qualify him to be in several categories as a speaker. His “Checker’s” speech was a defining moment and turned some memorable phrases. More importantly, without his diffusing potential scandal, there would have been no vice-presidency and perhaps no Nixon presidency. This was also the moment when political speech turned from intellectual oratory to expedience and creating media sound bites and quotes to salvage or win a campaign.

Nixon was 39, a one-term senator who found himself on Eisenhower’s ticket as VP and facing a news story about his having a secret fund of $18,000 from rich supporters in his home-state of California. But, there was no evidence of peddling influence. Other candidates in history had supporters contribute to a fund. However, the story wouldn’t go away and some eastern newspapers started calling for Nixon to get off the ticket. Nixon was not entirely sure what to do, but got a shot in the arm from wife Pat who suggested fighting to stay on. Former candidate Thomas Dewey suggested a national broadcast. Eisenhower then advised his VP to tell all.

Nixon prepared to speak to the largest political audience to that date. Dewey called an hour before air time and advised that Nixon resign from the ticket at the end of the broadcast. Pat bucked Dick up in the dressing room.

Nixon turned few eloquent phrases, but got the job done. He referenced the fact that his opponent, Adlai Stevenson had a similar fund and that the Democrat’s VP had his wife on the Senate payroll. Ironically, given his later performance in the 1960 debate, Nixon was a great TV performer for the time, using eye contact with the camera, and moving around the living room set with skill. In the end he asked viewers to write the Republican National Committee with their ruling about whether he should stay on the ticket and support was overwhelming.

Few people remember the money issues involved or the laundry list of personal assets Nixon cited, but may have been impressed with the candidate’s use of an auditor’s report and a legal opinion about his fund. What is normally remembered is the quote that “Pat doesn’t have a mink coat. But she does have a respectable Republican cloth coat.” But it was the little dog, “Checkers” who gave the speech it’s short hand name. In a melodramatic moment Nixon confessed to receiving a gift—“a little cocker spaniel dog in a crate … sent all the way from Texas. …And our little girl—Tricia, the 6-year-old named it Checkers. And you know the kids love the dog and I just want to say this right now, that regardless of what they say about it, we’re going to keep it.” Nixon would not face a bomb in the 1950s, but would in the 60s and 70s.

Few bombs have been as big or diffused as skillfully as the religion issue in the 1960 campaign. JFK used all the rhetorical techniques he could muster. In a speech to newspaper editors he said, “I do not speak for the Catholic Church on issues of public policy, and no one in the church speaks for me.”

When influential protestant minister and author, Dr. Normal Vincent Peale said religion should be an issue in the campaign, Kennedy needed to do more. The ironically named National Conference of Citizens for Religious Freedom, lead by Dr. Peale, said Kennedy would be captive of his Church which would influence his government.

Kennedy spoke to the Houston Ministerial Association and clarified—“no Catholic prelate would tell the President … how to act, and no Protestant minister would tell his parishioners for whom to vote.” Today, a presidential candidate would have to proclaim his faith and how it influenced his public policy, rather than stating,” I am not the Catholic candidate for President. I am the Democratic Party’s candidate for President who happens also to be a Catholic.”

George McGovern not only blew up in 1968, he also made the bomb, lit the fuse and made sure there was a nice, dry place for the fires after the explosion. The image of Democrats as weak on national security and big spenders has undermined the party to this day. Having to deliver his acceptance speech at 3:00 am detracted from the party image too. If they couldn’t run a convention, how could they run a country? He pledged a full withdrawal from Vietnam in 90 days. He said it was time for America to “come home” and deal with domestic issues. This sounded like many as an abandoning of the fight against Communism too.

Much the same is true of Walter Mondale in 1984. In his acceptance speech he said “Mr. Reagan will raise your taxes, and so will I.” That’s exactly what happened, but nobody wanted to hear that it would happen.

Candor, humor and timing can diffuse bombs. Bombast, ego and wishful thinking make them go off.

This Magic Moment

2008-08-23T13:31:00.000-07:00

It’s not fair, but frequent that campaigns and candidates are defined by a moment of indiscretion, the wrong turn of a phrase, bad luck or timing. Defining moments can be for both good and ill. Campaign workers have some control over them, but world events, the economy and happenstance sometimes play a bigger role. Consider the examples below.

JFK playing at Hiannisport, LBJ picking up his Beagles by the ears, Nixon’s slumped shoulders, Muskie shedding a tear (or just snowflakes on his face) in New Hampshire, Eagleton admitting to having had electroshock therapy, Ronald Reagan saying “I am paying for this microphone” in order to be heard in a primary debate, John Kerry windsurfing and George HW Bush being mystified by supermarket checkout technology (the reporter who broke the story wasn't there), among many, many other political moments are seared into our minds.

Presidential candidates have to campaign against their opponents. But they also sometimes campaign against past candidates. They also occasionally campaign against foreign interests, other nations, big financial interests and the congress. FDR campaigned against Congressmen Martin, Barton and Fish, which rolled off his patrician tongue as if they were Wynken, Blynken and Nod or the famous triple play in baseball—Tinker to Evers to Chance—the Chicago Cubs triple play squad.

It’s hard to imagine a more important defining moment than Hubert Humphrey’s speech to his Democratic Party’s convention in 1948. It’s hard to imagine how popular the future VP to Lyndon Johnson and candidate in 1968 was at the time. He had been a popular Mayor of Minneapolis and considered so capable of delivering barn-burning speeches that recordings of his speeches were circulated like treasures. His address on the civil rights plank in the party platform, after much debate and his own hard work on the text, attacked the issue head on, advocating, ”no hedging…no watering down of …civil rights.” He pointed out that America would have limited credibility promoting civil rights around the world without promoting them at home. “To those who say that we are rushing this issue…I say … we are 172 years too late.”

In this powerful speech, Humphrey quoted Lincoln's Congressional address from 1862, which tied the freedom of slaves to the quality of life and freedom for us all—“In giving freedom to the slave, we assure freedom to the free…”. Today, we often hear an echo of this thought in the phrase that society is judged on how it treats the least fortunate among us.

After this remarkable speech, most delegates began a ten minute demonstration supporting Humphrey, but the South walked out. This helped solidify African American support for Democrats, rather than Lincoln’s Republicans who emancipated slaves. Millions of Americans changed parties and the parties modified their positions over the next decades, culminating in Richard Nixon’s solidifying the Republican appeal to white Southerners, based on race. Many of the alienated union members and white voters eventually became so-called Reagan Democrats. The change of allegiance among African Americans began in the 1920s and wasn’t fully realized until the 1960s, but 1948 was still a defining moment.

By the time Eisenhower was campaigning in 1952, 20,000 young Americans had died in Korea. Half the electorate cited the war as their main focus. Ike was General MacArthur’s former speechwriter and he skillfully blamed the Democrats for losing China and signaling that the US would not defend Korea (similar to the lead up to the first Gulf War). When he said “I shall go to Korea” it signaled his commitment to end the war and reminded all of his credibility in military matters.

Accepting his nomination, JFK addressed his Roman Catholicism by pointing out his support for public education and the separation of Church and State. In a nice turn of a phrase he also said that he hoped that no voter “will waste his franchise by voting either for or against me solely on account of my religious affiliation.”

Ronald Reagan’s defining moment may have come as early as 1964, when he gave, ”The Speech.” Actually titled “A Time to Choose” it was a fundraiser which laid out conservatives thought in an nonthreatening way by an “ah shucks” kind of a guy. Reagan then travelled the country delivering a version of this speech hundreds of times.

Jimmy Carter’s “malaise” speech painted him as negative and vacillating. Coming after a few days hiding out at Camp David, punctuated by quick trips to the kitchen tables of ordinary Americans, the president went on TV to denounce the “crisis that strikes at the very heart and soul of our national will.” He warned that “The erosion of our confidence in the future is threatening to destroy the social and political fabric of America.” No one remembered Carter’s energy policy from this speech, just the hectoring and negativity. A few days later the president demanded the resignations of all his cabinet members. Then came the Iranian hostage crisis and it was all over for Carter.

Ronald Reagan asked the best “ballot box” question of all time at the 1980 Republican convention—“Is the United States stronger and more respected now than it was three-and-a-half years ago?” That simple question had a simple “No” answer that lead to victory. Hammering the point, Reagan asked, “Can anyone … say, ’Well done”? Can anyone … say, “Keep up the good work”? Can anyone … say “Let’s have four more years of this”?

Reagan also referred to “welfare queens” in 1980 and an independent group ran the Willie Horton ads painting Democratic candidate Massachusetts Governor Dukakis as soft on crime. Horton, a convicted murderer had robbed and raped while out on a Massachusetts weekend furlough.

Bill Clinton was handed among the best defining moments in campaign history. Rapper Sister Souljah told reporters that perhaps there should be a week where black people don’t kill each other, but only white people, or words to that effect. Bill Clinton spoke to Jesse Jackson’s Rainbow Coalition in June of 1992 and denounced Sister Souljah, while defending her right to free speech. He said, “If you took the words white and black and reversed them, you might think that David Duke [former Grand Wizard of the KKK] was giving that speech.”

Inexplicably Jackson defended Sister Souljah and attacked Clinton. This helped Clinton doubly. He at once positioned himself and the Democratic party as tough on crime, against racist statements and liberated from being captive of special interests.

Honorable mention must go to Dr. Howard Dean’s scream which ended his candidacy and Mormon Mitt Romney’s speech on religion. Unlike Kennedy calling for both religious tolerance and the right to not attend Church, Romney said that “freedom requires religion just as religion requires freedom” in the 2008 campaign.

You can’t really pick defining moments, you can only manage them the best you can.

Let Me Repeat That...Again

2008-08-23T07:06:00.000-07:00

When FDR became the first candidate to fly to a convention to accept his nomination, he used repetition to illustrate his unconventional approach and bridge to a criticism of his opponents. In Chicago, on July 2, 1932, the candidate began “…I broke traditions. Let it be from now on the task of our Party to break foolish traditions. We will break foolish traditions and leave it to the Republican leadership…to break promises.”

In addition to the transition to criticism of his opponents, he skillfully attacks Republican leadership, not membership, to leave a candle in the window for those in the other party.

Eisenhower is not thought of as a great speaker, but he had the advantage of his reputation as a soldier and the issue of the Korean war to help him. He used repetition to emphasize that he was the best qualified to deal with that issue. “One tragedy challenges all men…One word shouts denial to those who foolishly pretend that ours is not a nation at war. This fact, this tragedy, this word is: Korea.” Later that issue is “a symbol—a telling symbol…a sign—a warning sign…a measure—a damning measure…”

1964 Republican candidate Barry Goldwater used the words ”free…freedom…[and] liberty” more than three dozen times in his acceptance speech. He built up momentum by repetition as well—“…this party, with its every action, every word, every breath and every heartbeat, has but a single resolve, and that is freedom.” Turning repetition into an art form he indicated his opponents, ”talked and talked and talked and talked [and] failed and failed and failed.”

George McGovern used repetition is his 1968 acceptance speech. It’s known at his “come home” speech and those two words appear six times in the closing minutes of the address.

Ronald Reagan used repetition to illustrate his compassion in 1980. He used the phrase “For those without…” and followed up on how he’d help those who needed skills, jobs and hope.

Bill Clinton used repetition for emphasis, but also to mock our habit of blaming others. “Them the minorities. Them the liberals. Them the poor. [the list went on] …we’ve nearly them’d ourselves to death. Them, and them, and them. But this is America. There is no them; there is only us.” He also “We can do better…I do…[and] I will” as he made repeated contrasts between himself and sitting president Bush and repeated promises to the electorate.

Obama uses repetition on enough occasions to get full marks. He also uses it in a slightly different way. Most repetition just restates a concept for emphasis. Obama restates an aspect of a concept for further illumination. He refers to “…our Constitution—a Constitution that had at it’s very core the ideal of equal citizenship under the law; a Constitution that promised its people liberty, and justice, and a union that could be and should be perfected over time.”

The first reference to the Constitution introduces a topic audience members either know or think they know. The next two references illuminate another aspect of that apparently familiar concept. Note the triple promise of liberty, justice and a union--elements that are joined under the umbrella of the Constitution.

Obama speaks of “a march for a more just, more equal, more free, more caring and more prosperous America.” The repetition of the word “more” is the traditional way to use repetition. So is Obama’s standing by Reverend Wright—“I can no more disown him than I can disown the black community. I can no more disown him than I can my white grandmother.”

So the prescription for better campaign speeches starts with lots of speaking, especially in venues where there will be tough questions. Speakers get better with practice and challenges. Repetition is a must for emphasis and so that audiences will remember what you said. And you’ll also sound like a real person—not a politician.

The Presidential Tone

2008-08-23T07:03:00.000-07:00

The instant you turn on most radios or TVs, you can tell whether you’re listening to a professional announcer hosting a program, or a guest trying to get her message across. It it’s a host, it only takes a second or two to know if it’s news, weather or sports.

The same is true of political candidates, especially presidential candidates. What follows are some thoughts on what makes this tone so distinctive in US presidential campaigns, and what to do about it.

I think the ability of American politicians to soar in political rhetoric is hobbled by their system of government. Unlike the parliamentary system, American politicians do not face their political foes every day in question period. Legislators stand and intone their remarks to a neutral chair and sit down. Presidents don’t debate anyone, and even the media show undue respect for the combination head of state and head of government.

During elections there is a debate, but that’s once or twice in a political career. The first presidential debate was in 1960 and all candidates were so scared of a potential career limiting move, there wasn’t another one until 1976.

Culturally, there is a respect for the office of the president as head of state that we don’t show in the parliamentary system. Our heads of state and government are separate. A result is that a US president or presidential candidate may be booed or a crowd may chant slogans at them. But in the parliamentary system, an audience member may should a reasonably intelligent question that the candidate has to field.

These two factors—political and cultural—often lead to an officious, disembodied and even pompous delivery. John Kerry may be a good example. Yet, Ronald Reagan is a good example of an ability to combine dignity with humor and a conversational tone. The same is true of JFK. It can be done, but it’s hard.

On this issue, Obama has some work to do. He’s “up-talking.” It’s not exactly a “valley-girl” affectation, but it is short phrases, pauses at inappropriate times and regular upward inflections for no apparent reason. This sing-songy quality can irritate and detract from the message.

The presidential tone can even be dangerous. When Obama is presented with a simple and challenging question, he often reverts to elevated-sounding, up-talking oratory:

“I think the American people…especially with the challenges facing us today…need and want…something better from their candidates than…uh…this. And that’s why…I am asking Senator McCain to…”

On this goes when what he should try is saying, “this charge is not true” or give a short, powerful, definitive answer. He could even do what Pierre Trudeau did when he was offended by a question—he’d harrumph and walk away.

Conversational Style

It was Franklin Delano Roosevelt who provided the demarcation line and transition to plain speech for presidents. To be fair, Calvin Coolidge did declare simply that “the business of America is business” and others could tell good stories and keep audiences captivated. But in terms of sustained short sentences, common-man rhetoric, ordinary yet memorable turns of phrases, I think FDR is the beginning of the sea change.

In his famous “New Deal” speech to the 1932 Chicago convention he asks rhetorical questions—“What was the result? …Where…did those surpluses go?” Naturally he answered his own questions concluding with, “Those are the facts. Why blink at them? Then came the crash. You know the story.”

In complimenting the audience for knowing the facts, he became one of them and brought them into his tent. In making stories out of public policy, he made events more memorable and accessible.

Short Sentences

Julius Caesar apparently said, “I came, I saw, I conquered” and that’s just three words in Latin. But most other politicians go on and on. A short sentence is like a jab in boxing—they make an impact, if you throw enough of them some will connect, they’ll get to your opponent in the end, and they can set up the knock-out punch. Consider this culmination of FDR’s discussion of conditions in his “New Deal” speech of 1932:

“Credit contracted. Industry stopped. Commerce declined, and unemployment mounted. And there we are today.”

Obama gets a passing grade on this by asking rhetorical questions and then answering them with a simple “Yes”, “of course”, or “Absolutely…”. Several other sentences comprise just a few words—“We can do that” and “Not this time”. He has a ways to go to catch up the FDR, but he’s in the right ball park.

Some of JFK’s sentences are actually long. But, despite the actual punctuation on the page resulting in a 23 word sentence, the following sounds like four sentences of 5, 5, 4 and 9 words respectfully:

“The times are too grave,
the challenge too urgent,
and the stakes too high—
to permit the customary passions of political debate.”

JFK often marked up his speeches to remind him of emphasis and pronunciation—especially in Berlin when he spoke some phrases in German. He probably treated the commas as periods and the dash as one too. This allowed him to act like a volleyball team, setting up the ball with three short, even dainty hits, and then following through with the longer, powerful smash to make his point. This would not necessarily suite every speaker, but it was a Kennedy trademark.

Nixon has the shortest sentence in any campaign speech I’ve read—one word—punctuating three short phrases and a short sentence—“Just to be alive in America, just to believe at this time is an experience unparalleled in history. Here is where the action is. Think.

Echoing Martin Luther King’s, “I Have a Dream“ speech, Nixon used the phrase “I see a day…” eight times to express his vision for America.

Reacting to Nixon’s plans for peace in Vietnam, his opponent George McGovern said, “I have no secret plan for peace. I have a public plan.” It was a nice turn of a short phrase, but didn’t work.

Being conversational, hitting the right high-minded tone without being pompus or false and using short sentences for emphasis is the key to successful political speaking.

Quotable (not potable) Quotes for 100, Alex

2008-08-23T06:36:00.001-07:00

Abraham Lincoln was wrong. He thought nobody would remember his speech at Gettysburg. Reviewers at the time were wrong. It was a good speech, albeit very short for the time—about two minutes. Lincoln said “The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here…”.

It’s hard to tell sometimes what will constitute a memorable moment in a political speech. A few that fit the category follow.

Hoover, in 1928 wanted the government to be “an umpire instead of a player in the economic game”—a nice turn of a phrase. Emphasizing the insidious quality of government intervention, he said “Free speech does not live many hours after free industry and free commerce dies.” He also noted the need for oversight of business activities—“businesses must be conducted with glass pockets.”

FDR called “private economic power…a public trust” and derided “not businessmen, but princes of property”. In 1936 he said “This generation of Americans has a rendezvous with destiny.” In the same speech, going into his second term, he was still campaigning against previous Republican administrations. Under these, the country was “afflicted with hear-nothing, see-nothing, do-nothing government.”

Echoing his own inaugural of 1932, he used alliteration and repetition to recount the past—“In those days we feared fear. That was why we fought fear. And today, my friends, we have won against the most dangerous of our foes. We have conquered fear.” If you hear that patrician accent in these quotes—a sort of Thurston Howell III from Gilligan’s Island—they are much more memorable and effective.

Also in the 1936 campaign, FDR said “private enterprise, indeed, became too private” as he described the past flaws in the capitalist system. He advocated the ability of a person to make “a living which gives man not only enough to live by, but something to live for.”

In a message relevant today, Adlai Stevenson said, “…patriotism is not the fear of something; it is the love of something.”

Barry Goldwater’s catch-phrase in 1964 was “extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice … [and] moderation in the pursuit of justice is no virtue.” His opponent in that election, LBJ, was no great speaker and had little charisma, but occasionally turned a good phrase. His “Great Society” foreshadowed Ronald Reagan’s “shining city on a hill” in that Johnson proceeded to describe in detail this fictional society worth working towards.

Ronald Reagan promised in 1980 to “put an end to the notion that the American taxpayer exists to fund the federal government.” He also quoted FDR on the need for a smaller, efficient government.

Jesse Jackson is not so much quotable as mesmerizing. You can’t quote Jackson, because only he can speak in rhyme and alliteration that is sometimes poetic and over the top at the same time. “My constituency is the damned, disinherited, disrespected and the despised” Jackson said.

Presidential speechwriter and now talk show talker, Pat Buchanan quipped in the 1992 campaign that Bill Clinton’s experience in foreign policy amounted to having “breakfast once a the International House of Pancakes.”

Bill Clinton knew he was up against the right and the Republican’s family values—entrenched during 12 years of Reagan and Bush. He turned the notion on its head by saying, ”Frankly, I’m fed up with politicians in Washington lecturing us about ‘family values.’ Our families have values. But our government doesn’t.” He also attacked dead-beat dads who don’t pay child support—“governments don’t raise children; parents do. And you should.”

Obama turns a few alliterative phrases, such as “the pulpit and in the pews” and says that ”the most segregated hour in American life occurs on Sunday morning.” But otherwise, Obama has a few more good speeches and memorable phrases to deliver before surpassing some of his predecessors’ oratory.

Obama--a Pirate?

2008-08-23T06:30:00.000-07:00

Good artists borrow and great artists steal, it is said. To get elected and be a good president, you have to be a good thief.

The generation of pols reading this know John Kennedy’s “ask not what your country can do for you - ask what you can do for your country” from memory or from David Letterman’s “Great Moments in Presidential Speeches” comedy routine. What may not immediately come to mind is the next sentence, “My fellow citizens of the world: ask not what America will do for you, but what together we can do for the freedom of man.”

But where did this famous quote come from? Everywhere.

18th century French philosopher Jean Jacques Rousseau said "As soon as any man says of the affairs of state, What does it matter to me?, the state may be given up as lost."

The Mayor of Haverhill, Massachusetts said in a eulogy, "Here may we be reminded that man is most honored, not by that which a city may do for him, but by that which he has done for the city." Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, in 1884 stated: "It is now the moment when by common consent we pause to become conscious of our national life and to rejoice in it, to recall what our country has done for each of us, and to ask ourselves what we can do for our country in return."

Author Guy Emerson in The New Frontier: A Study of the American Liberal Spirit italicized this quote late in the book--"...men and women are born to put more into their country than they take out of it."
Even JFK had used a version of the phrase before. At the Democratic National Convention he defined his "New Frontier" saying: "It sums up not what I intend to offer the American People, but what I intend to ask of them." On September 5, 1960, in Detroit, he said: "The new frontier is not what I promise I am going to do for you. The new frontier is what I ask you to do for your country."

In 20th Century American political life, it was reformer Teddy Roosevelt who put these ideas on the table in 1910. “…O my fellow citizens, each of you carries on your shoulders not only the burden of doing well for the sake of your country, but the burden of doing well and of seeing that this nation does well for the sake of mankind.” Not content with that, he emphasizes a few paragraphs later—“Equality of opportunity means that the commonwealth will get from every citizen the highest service of which he is capable.”

Warren Harding edited and polished the lines for the 1920 campaign—“If we can prove a representative popular government under which a citizenship seeks what it may do for the government and country rather than what the country may do for individuals…”. But Harding was calling for isolationism and limited government, not the activism of Kennedy.

In 1928, Herbert Hoover foreshadowed the second aspect of the JFK inaugural quote when he spoke of an individual’s ”opportunity for greater and greater service, not alone from man to man in our own land, but from our country to the whole world.”

Then, in 1932, FDR reworked the thought to be “The issue of government has always been whether individual men and women will have to serve some system of government or economics, or whether a system of government and economics exists to serve individual men and women.”

Other Pirates and Thieves

In 1968 George McGovern quoted from Pete Seeger (then The Byrds) Turn, Turn, Turn and from Woody Guthrie—“from California to New York island, from the redwood forest to the gulf stream waters—this land was made for you and me.” He didn’t credit either.

Bill Clinton brilliantly stole the Republican mantra of the “forgotten” middle class, pro-police, tax-cuts, small government and anti-welfare in 1992.

Obama turns a Bill Clinton line on its head when he bemoans those who would elevate ”what is wrong with America above all that we know is right with America.” He may also provide a faint echo of a Bobby Kennedy line from the night Martin Luther King was assassinated when he states, “…we have a choice in this country.”

There’s an echo of Winston Churchill’s fighting them in the beaches speech in Obama’s ”protests and struggle, on the streets and in the courts, through a civil war and civil disobedience…”. But, Churchill got the format from the kids book he read as a child—The Jungle Book.

Then there's Joe Bidon's controversial reworking of other people's quotes in his first presidential campaign.

To succeed you can't just borrow, you have to steal and make the line your own.

The New Obama

2008-08-23T06:28:00.000-07:00

America is fixated with newness.

Teddy Roosevelt’s New Nationalism and Woodrow Wilson’s New Freedom after the turn of the 20th Century meant activist government to improve the human condition. This may have been a substitute for the individual’s ability to move west or to a new industry to improve personal conditions.

FDR sold the New Deal and conquering fear in four successive elections, starting in 1932.

In the 1960 campaign, Kennedy wisely harnessed the concept of newness and the frontier spirit with the “New Frontier”. As recently as 1992, Bill Clinton was speaking of his “New Covenant.”

Obama needs to hit a few new themes and the word new in his speeches from now on.

Obama--Put on a Happy Face

2008-08-23T06:21:00.000-07:00

People elect the positive. Obama's acceptance speech and campaign speeches will be judged in historical contect. Consider:

When President Taft mocked Wilson, Roosevelt and activist government in the 1912 campaign, he said “A National Government cannot create good times…It cannot make the rain to fall, the sun to shine, or the crops to grown.” The president was rewarded with 23 per cent of the vote and eight electoral votes.

Formidable speaker and “egghead” Adlai Stevenson tried a little tough love in 1952. He said “Let’s talk sense to the American people. Let’s tell them the truth, that there are no gains without pains, that we are now on the eve of great decisions, not easy decisions…” He was not a successful politician winning only one of his campaigns—for Governor of Illinois.

And then there’s Kennedy. He attacked the boring 1950s American society and asked for sacrifices from voters. In fact, he said his “New Frontier…holds out the promise of more sacrifice instead of more security.” He mocked those who promised “a golden future” and hectored the electorate by saying “too many Americans have lost their way, their will and their sense of historic purpose.” The reason this worked in a squeaker election was that the stakes were high in the Cold War. Moreover, Kennedy’s charm and wit tempered his tough love message.

Barry Goldwater was not a happy man, but he was a happy warrior in 1964. He pointed out Democratic failures at the Bay of Pigs, Laos, Vietman and at the Berlin Wall. He criticized “rules without responsibility and regimentation without recourse” and the “bullies and marauders” who roam the streets. Despite the fact that 50% of Americans said they were conservative, they didn’t elected this negative messge.

Jimmy Carter’s “malaise” speech made while he was president was a stark contrast to Ronald Reagan’s sunny outlook on America’s capabilities, and Carter paid the price.

Mario Cuomo found out that it was hard to criticize Ronald Reagan in 1984. He asked the electorate to “look past the glitter, beyond the showmanship” and “to separate the salesman from the produce.” It didn’t work. People liked Reagan. Then, Cuomo rubbed America’s nose in its problems, speaking of —the “elderly people who tremble in the basements…people who sleep in the city streets…ghettos where thousands of young people…give their lives away to drug dealers.” America didn’t want to focus on the negative.

In 1984 the electorate did not want to hear Jesse Jackson say that “In Detroit…babies are dying at the same rate as Honduras, the most underprivileged nation in our hemisphere.”

The presidential candidate who embodied the positive and the possible as much as FDR, Kennedy and Reagan is Bill Clinton, whose 1992 speech was called “I still Believe in a Place Called Hope.”

Newness

Teddy Roosevelt’s New Nationalism and Woodrow Wilson’s New Freedom after the turn of the 20th Century meant activist government to improve the human condition. This may have been a substitute for the individual’s ability to move west or to a new industry to improve personal conditions.

FDR sold the New Deal and conquering fear in four successive elections, starting in 1932.

In the 1960 campaign, Kennedy wisely harnessed the concept of newness and the frontier spirit with the “New Frontier”. As recently as 1992, Bill Clinton was speaking of his “New Covenant.”

PUT ON A HAPPY FACE

When President Taft mocked Wilson, Roosevelt and activist government in the 1912 campaign, he said “A National Government cannot create good times…It cannot make the rain to fall, the sun to shine, or the crops to grown.” The president was rewarded with 23 per cent of the vote and eight electoral votes.

Formidable speaker and “egghead” Adlai Stevenson tried a little tough love in 1952. He said “Let’s talk sense to the American people. Let’s tell them the truth, that there are no gains without pains, that we are now on the eve of great decisions, not easy decisions…” He was not a successful politician winning only of his campaigns—for Governor of Illinois.

And then there’s Kennedy. He attacked the boring 1950s American society and asked for sacrifices from voters. In fact, he said his “New Frontier…holds out the promise of more sacrifice instead of more security.” He mocked those who promised “a golden future” and hectored the electorate by saying “too many Americans have lost their way, their will and their sense of historic purpose.” The reason this worked in a squeaker election was that the stakes were high in the Cold War. Moreover, Kennedy’s charm and wit tempered his tough love message.

Barry Goldwater was not a happy man, but he was a happy warrior in 1964. He pointed out Democratic failures at the Bay of Pigs, Laos, Vietman and at the Berlin Wall. He criticized “rules without responsibility and regimentation without recourse” and the “bullies and marauders” who roam the streets. Despite the fact that 50% of Americans said they were conservative, they didn’t elected this negative messge.

Jimmy Carter’s “malaise” speech made while he was president was a stark contrast to Ronald Reagan’s sunny outlook on America’s capabilities, and Carter paid the price.

Mario Cuomo found out that it was hard to criticize Ronald Reagan in 1984. He asked the electorate to “look past the glitter, beyond the showmanship” and “to separate the salesman from the produce.” It didn’t work. People liked Reagan. Then, Cuomo rubbed America’s nose in its problems, speaking of —the “elderly people who tremble in the basements…people who sleep in the city streets…ghettos where thousands of young people…give their lives away to drug dealers.” America didn’t want to focus on the negative.

In 1984 the electorate did not want to hear Jesse Jackson say that “In Detroit…babies are dying at the same rate as Honduras, the most underprivileged nation in our hemisphere.”

The presidential candidate who embodied the positive and the possible as much as FDR, Kennedy and Reagan is Bill Clinton, whose 1992 speech was called “I still Believe in a Place Called Hope.”

Johnny Mercer and Harold Arlen hit the right notes in the song, Accentuate the Positive:

You've got to accentuate the positive
Eliminate the negative
Latch on to the affirmative
Don't mess with Mister In-Between

You've got to spread joy up to the maximum
Bring gloom down to the minimum
Have faith or pandemonium
Liable to walk upon the scene

VP Biden

2008-08-23T06:19:00.000-07:00

Good Choice

He will be a great campaigner and mop the floor with the Republican VP. He can do lots of dirty work and keep Obama above the political fray. But he is also very knowledgeable about the foreign policy and other files that he will add gravitas to the ticket. He has almost as compelling a personal story as McCain, who is now blunting his. Remember the Saturday night live skits during Ted Kennedy’s run (forgot, you’re not that old). A cast member playing Teddy would answer every question with a quavering voice referring to the “sacrifices” his family has made and the “commitment” his family had to America, and the “pain” his family had endured. On every answer, another young cast member playing reporter would ask “What do you mean by that Senator?” and the Kennedy character wouldn’t answer. That did as much damage as the Roger Mudd interview, I think.

But I digress.

America is so paranoid of government that one of Joe Biden’s major qualifications is that he does not sleep in Washington. First of all I don’t believe it. There must have been many an evening meeting or morning event that caused him to sleep over—big deal. But, this is a tradition in the speeches and campaigning I’ve studied right back to the beginning.

But, I digress.

I was worried that Obama would lose a good secretary of state if he chose the Senator as VP. But, with the power and influence of the VP office increasing lately, Obama can give VP Biden lots of substantial work to do.

The Common Touch

2008-08-21T20:12:00.000-07:00

Campaigning is like dating. We have unrealistic expectation. We want our candidates and our mates to have a combination of contradictory traits. Nowhere is this more true than in Presidential politics.

The historical distrust of the Monarchy and big government means a US presidential candidate must have the common touch. But, the fact that the office is a combination of head of state and head of government means that the person must have an aura and stature above the electorate. Candidates are also compared to some of the great political thinkers and actors of history—Washington, Jefferson and Lincoln.

This is a tough, and high calling. Below are some of the touchstones a modern candidate must keep in mind to succeed.

The rugged individual seems to have always been an American metaphor. In fact, FDR even spoke of “…the individual against the system.” Teddy before him had simply stated that ”The object of government is the welfare of the people.” For his trouble the press said New Nationalism was “an outburst of Marxian madness.” So siding with the little guy is like walking a tightrope in the US. It’s the right approach, but you can’t go to far left.

In a piece of public policy relevant today, Teddy Roosevelt wanted laws “passed to prohibit the use of corporate funds directly or indirectly for political purposes.”

Later, FDR went farther than any other president in questioning the role of large corporations in American life. “The financiers who pushed the railroads to the Pacific were always ruthless, often wasteful, and frequently corrupt; but they did build railroads” he said. It’s still a little shocking, almost 80 years later to read his remarks outlining the plight of the common man, “equality of opportunity as we have know it no longer exists…we are now providing a drab living for our people…the independent businessman is running a losing race” and that the US is being run by a “dozen corporations.” He challenged businessmen to “assume the responsibility which goes with the power” and he warned that the government “must be swift to …protect the public interest” if the power of business is misused.

In 1936, FDR used among the most egalitarian, even socialist language, of any serious candidate in history. His criticism of those who would “regiment the people” and bemoaning that “[i]ndividual initiative was crushed in the cogs of a great machine” would have fit in to a socialist workers meeting in the UK in the 1920s or a Students for a Democratic Society rally in the mid-sixties in the US. In the same speech he used repetition to make his point that a “small group had concentrated into their own hands an almost complete control over other people’s property, other people’s property, other people’s labor—other people’s lives.”

Even Herbert Hoover touched the base of the common man—“The very essence of equality of opportunity and of American individualism is that there shall be no domination by any group or combination in this republic…”

Obama takes the common touch to another level. He not only advocates for common people, but also takes us by the hand into Black Churches with “the doctor and the welfare mom, the model student and the former gang-banger.” He also takes us into the bastion of black political discourse—“the barbershop.” He has also reached out to “Most working-and middle-class white Americans [who] don’t feel that they have been particularly privileged by their race.”

Obama softly touches the corner of the populist base by attacking “a corporate culture rife with inside dealing, questionable with inside dealing, questionable accounting practices, and short-term greed.”

This is mild compared to the rhetoric of the past.

Presidential Dirty Tricks

2008-08-18T11:29:00.001-07:00

Presidential Campaign Dirty Tricks

Documented as early as 1792 and for countless elections after, candidates running for election would get voters drunk so they’d vote for whoever bought them alcohol.

Both Richard Nixon and Lyndon Johnson bugged their opponent’s headquarters.

Thomas Jefferson called politics “a useless waste of time” –not a dirty trick, but it did sully the profession.

When John Adams tried to get financial backing for the US Navy, the Republicans called him a war monger. And when Adams tried to negotiate with France, the Republicans said he was an appeaser.

Jackson’s wife was put under scrutiny after a clerical error made her a bigamist. One year after she split with her previous husband, Rachel married Jackson, only to find out two years later that the divorce wasn’t final. She was deemed as a “whore” and a “dirty black wench,” by a Republican campaign pamphlet.

During the war in Mexico, Franklin Pierce fainted on the battlefield. His opponents capitalized on this by calling him the “Fainting General” and asked voters if they’d like a coward for their next president.

James Buchanan suffered from a congenital palsy that made his head tilted to the left. John Fremont supporters said the tilt was from Buchanan’s failed attempt to hang himself.

Because of his daunting appearance and above average height (especially for his time), Abraham Lincoln took a lot of hits from the media. Democratic papers would say he was a “horrid-looking wretch” and claim that he only changed his socks once every 10 days.

James Garfield bribed voters in Indiana during his presidential campaign--with $4000,000 worth of two-dollar bills.

When Grover Cleveland was out of town, he supposedly had an affair with a 36-year-old widow named Maria Halpin. Halpin later had a son, who Cleveland supported, although he’d never say if he was the father. Republicans capitalized on this and called Cleveland a “coarse debaucher” and a “moral leper.” They even went as far as to comment on his weight by calling him “an obese nincompoop.”

Source:

Cummins, Joseph. Anything For A Vote. Philadelphia, PA, Quirk Books, 2007

Presidential Trivia

2008-08-18T11:29:00.000-07:00

Fascinating Presidential Facts

Warren Harding lived in fear of his wife while having an affair with his mistress in the White House.

George Washington had a short temper.

Lyndon Johnson drank scotch out of a paper cup while driving.

George Washington bought leopard-skin robes for all of his horses.

George Washington preferred to be called Mr. President instead of the Senate’s original name: His Highness the President of the United States of America and the Protector of Their Liberties.

Thomas Jefferson greeted ambassadors in his pajamas.

When James Monroe and Secretary of Treasury William Crawford got into a heated dispute, Crawford advanced towards Monroe with his cane. Luckily Monroe was standing near the fireplace where he grabbed a pair of fire tongs and chased Crawford out the door.

James Monroe had financial issues in his later life. He even demanded reimbursement from Congress for all the things he paid for out of his own pocket during his presidency.

John Quincy Adams would set time aside to swim in the Potomac River, in the nude.

Ben Franklin wrote books and pamphlets, including one that was titled Fart Proudly, where he discusses the possibility of sweetening the scent of one’s flatulence.

While he was in Tennessee as a prosecutor, Andrew Jackson struck a tax-dodger with a piece of wood.

During his term in the military, Jackson would execute those who didn’t follow his orders.

Martin Van Buren suffered from chronic stomach aches, which he would take his personal remedy: Soot, charcoal and water.

Commanding military officer later president Dwight David Eisenhower, was raised by parents who were part of the religious sect called the River Brethren. The sect believed in strict pacifism.

Franklin Roosevelt was the only paraplegic to be president.

Roosevelt was very superstitious. He never sat at a table set for 13 and never started a trip on a Friday. Ironically, the train that took his body back to Georgia took off on a Friday the 13.

Source:
O’Brien, Cormac. Secret Lives of the U.S. Presidents. Philadelphia, PA: Quirk Books,
2004

Boeing Boeing

2008-08-12T08:40:00.000-07:00

The Shaw Festival

2008-07-21T15:30:00.000-07:00

Andrew Bunker as Eric Berling, Peter Hutt as Arthur Berling, Graeme Somerville as Gerald Croft and Benedict Campbell as Inspector Goole in An Inspector Calls.

Not really a whodunit, but one patron quipped at the end that he was expecting Rod Serling (TV's Twilight Zone) to come out and explain what happened. This is J B Priestley's way of creating a situation and dialogue that exposes the audience to social issues--working conditions, sexual politics, class and so on.

Priestley was a British socialist and chaired the Common Wealth Party. Also a radio essayist, he was almost as popular as Winston Churchill.

Ironically, the play first opened on August 6, 1945, the day the atomic bomb was dropped on Hiroshima. There's a film version staring Alistair Sim. When the play was revived in 1992, it was thought to be a critique of Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher's policies.

This is intelligent dialogue, well delivered about issues that are as important today as they were when written.

History

J.B Priestly wrote An Inspector Calls during the last winter of the Second World War in 1944-50, when victory was inevitable but the climatic events of 1945 were still in the future. Priestly’s BBC radio broadcasts during WWII made him a popular propagandist second only to Churchill. He served as chairman of the newly formed and rather ad hoc Common Wealth Party, which was to win several wartime by-election victories against Conservative candidates.

An Inspector Calls is a play centered on an investigation regarding the death of a young woman. The story begins to unravel as an inspector arrives to investigate that death, although the investigation is not of the conventional, forensic nature. Instead, a different kind of responsibility is investigated as the audience and the well-heeled, self-righteous Birlings are led through a series of revelations which pass on the moral blame for the girl’s death from one family member to another, and ultimately to a whole social system and a set of values.

Sharry as Alice Bridgenorth and Peter Millard as Reginald Bridgenorth in Getting Married.

What a shame Shaw is not taught in high schools much. Teachers rely on Shakespeare because that's the thing to do and there's limited time. But Shaw is more accessible and deals with topics that teenagers are fixated with--gender roles, sex, the nature of love, marriage and such.

To make a contemporary analogy, I liken Getting Married to the highest quality cable TV talk show. The guests are prominent women, men, clergy, a politician and a lawyer--all with perspectives on the institution of marriage. We see and hear a discussion about the history of marriage, legal aspects, sociology, gender politics, financial implications, psychology, love and sex for an hour and a half.

That's what we see on stage, but in dialogue in the hours before a marriage. The plot? Hi jinks, falling in and out of love, unrequited love, strong women standing their ground and all that. By the way, the strongest lines and sentiments are by and for the women. These great lines were written 100 years ago by a man! We do try to help on occasion.

So, these topics are a fixation of the teenage years today and central to an examination of public policy and voting in elections. This play should be taught and seen.

The Plot & History

Written almost one hundred years ago, Getting Married is a play that delves into the multifaceted aisle (as opposed to a spot of land surrounded by water) of marriage. At the heart of this play is a deep understanding of the human desire for love, companionship and children. Shaw recognizes that these needs are provided mostly through the conventions of marriage, however flawed the institution may be. While the problems of getting married are debated and discussed, Shaw realizes that these problems are irrelevant. Throughout the play we begin to understand that the terms of the marriage contract are less important –there is simply no marriage or service contract that will satisfy everyone. Instead mutual respect, understanding, tolerance and compassion take lead roles on the grand stage of marriage. Although marriage and divorce law has experienced an on-going wave of revision since 1908, the plays humorous acceptance of human nature and blissful certainty reinforces the idea that getting married may be a mistake, but avoiding the institution entirely may be an even bigger one.

Michaela Bekenn as Fredrika Armfeldt with members of the cast of A Little Night Music.

A whimsical look at love and relationships, A Little Night Music takes tangled romantic partners and braids them during a weekend in the country. This musical by Sondheim and Wheeler is influenced by both Bergman's Smiles of a Summer Night and Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream. You can see the the recurring pattern between the three stories: wry smiles-- better yet, chuckles-- at the game of courtship and romance between the young, the old, and the fool.

It is interesting that Sondheim extended the concept of "threes" beyond the story itself. Besides the love triangles and the three smiles of the night, most of the music is also written in 3/4 (or 6/8) time.

A Little Night Music--History

This is one of the six consecutive landmark musicals developed by composer-lyricist Stephen Sondheim and producer Harold Prince. They also worked on Company (1970), and Follies (1971), which capture the haste and anguish of modern urban life. The third project, A Little Night Music, is set in the turn-of-the-century Sweden and is inspired by Ingmar Bergman’s film Smiles of A Summer Night.

Prince & Sondheim met on while working on the musical West Side Story. Soon after the play opened on Broadway, they became interested in developing a new project, which Prince described as “A kind of courtmasque, a chamber opera, elegant, probably about sex, a gavotte in which couples interchange, suffering mightily in elegant country homes.”

Sondheim describes the innovative original concept of A Little Night Music as “a fantasy ridden musical” with and almost “game like structure.”
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A Little Night Music opened on Broadway at the Shubert Theatre on February 25, 1973. It ran for 601 performances and won a number of awards, including a Tony for Best Musical. Since the opening, there have been a number of revivals including a New York City Opera production in 1990 and a 2002 Kennedy Center Production. The British premiere in London on April 15, 1975 marked the beginning of an additional 405 performances. There have been London revivals at the Piccadilly Theatre (1989) and the National Theatre (1995), The Canadian premiere of A Little Night Music was the original Hal Prince production on tour at the Royal Alexandra Theatre in Toronto on April 16, 1974.

Send in the Clowns

“Send in the Clowns” is the humable hit from Little Night Music. Composer Leonard Bernstein describes it as both a real musical and verbal piece of poetry. Cabaret singer-pianist Bobby Short became mesmerized by “Send in the Clowns” while the play was still in previews out of town. Bobby's the well known cabaret singer and he put the tune in his act, making it a hit before the play actually opened. Frank Sinatra, Judy Collins, and Barbara Streisand also recorded it.

Thom Marriott as Wreck with members of the cast of Wonderful Town.

I see a lot of plays in New York, London, Toronto and The Shaw Festival. Usually, New York and London have a bigger talent pool on which to draw and it shows. But sometimes smaller venues produce better results. Christopher Plummer's Lear at Stratford is an example, as is the Toronto production of Copenhagen. In this case the set for Wonderful Town is truer to the original Broadway production and superior to the revival I say a while back in New York.

History

Bernstein and Chodrov wrote A Wonderful Town during the repression of communist witch hunts and red scares. They used Greenwich Village as a metaphor for freedom of expression. Despite coming from Middle America, the sisters Ruth and Eileen are not fazed by the fact that Wreck and Helen are “living in sin” and going to have a child. Bob Baker and Frank Lippencoutt –both from “uptown” and slightly repressed- discover themselves in the culture of the Village, as Shakespeare's characters did in the green world of Arden. Even the prim and proper Mrs. Wade is encouraged to let down her hair, while Chick Clark attempts to overcast his sleazy tendencies and make amends by the end of the play.
Wonderful Town is about the innocent personalities who arrive in New York to find that there is in fact happiness and warm romance to be found beneath the city’s brusque exterior. The music and lyrics are invigorating.

The stories were originally in New Yorker articles and there have been several movies made, notably My Sister Eileen.

The interior of the Royal George has been completely restored in the style of a mini-Edwardian opera house.

Imagine seeing Pal Joey, Frank Sinatra's favorite musical in a 328 seat venue? Bewitched, Bothered and Bewildered (not a law firm), is a great song anywhere, but a few rows back in such a small house is fabulous. This is the experience I had a few years ago--the same year famed New York critic John Simon attended. He didn't like Pal Joey, but I thought it was fabulous.

Simon said, "The Shaw Festival at Canada's Niagara-on-the-Lake is the best repertory theatre on the entire continent with standards that consistently aim high." There he's right. It's fun to see an actor playing several roles the same week and two int he same day. Simon goes on, "Whatever expense and effort it may take you to get to the Shaw Festival, they will be amply rewarded with blessings so numerous you'll barely be able to count them."

The interior of the Festival Theatre is warm and inviting.

Note the timbers on the wall and ceiling. I haven't sat in the balcony, but I don't think this theatre has a bad seat. Sight lines are great and the sound is rich.

Unless money's no object, stay in a bed & breakfast and wait for sales. Food is great at several places and reasonable.

Hillary Fights On

2008-05-20T19:20:00.001-07:00

Having not used the speech I wrote for her in this space, Hillary has decided to fight on. OK, but it is long past due that she lean to use a telepromptr or read 3x5 cards or even remember the names of her supporters.

Obama needs to inject more substance and stop up talking (upward intonation at the end of a sentence).

Hillary's End Game

2008-05-13T08:05:00.000-07:00

Hillary walks out to a forest of microphones and makes the following statement:

In my 35 years of public service I have always sided with democracy. It is children, the elderly and the disadvantaged that have drawn me to contribute. I am pleased today to accept the request of Dr. Howard Dean and his senior colleagues in the Democratic party to Chair the working group on our primary system.

We will work tirelessly to ensure our process is even more democratic in the future. We are surely more representative, assessable and democratic than our Republican colleagues. But I am going to seek out some of the best minds in our leading academic institutions and politics to move forward in how we select presidential candidates in the future. Our goal is "one person, one vote" with that vote meaning the same as the next person's vote. This is the promise of our constitution--"We the people..." The concept of "people" has been expanding for over two hundred years to include women and minorities, and my goal is to examine that definition
and expand it more.

I'm also gratified that my recent campaign has resulted in an agreement on how to seat delegates from Michigan and Florida and how to ensure that they participate fully in our great democratic process.

All my supporters can march to Denver with heads held high knowing that our campaign resulted in a greater franchise for hundreds of ordinary Americans. This is a great victory for democracy.

I am also looking forward to working tirelessly for our nominee and the next President of the United States, Senator Obama.

(Hillary exists without taking questions)

Obama Victory Party

2008-05-06T17:51:00.000-07:00

Remember 2000. George W. Bush and Al Gore were teetering in the balance for weeks. W had fewer popular votes. Yet, he looked and acted like he'd won. Transition team members, potential cabinet officers and others came and went from his Crawford ranch.

So why is Obama continuing to play into the media horse race narrative? To hear him speak about how he has to keep on keepin' on and such, you'd think it really was close.

Couldn't he meet with congressional leaders or Governors? Couldn't it get out that he had a committee looking at VP candidates? Couldn't he meet with foreign politicians if they were in the neighbourhood?

Baring the unforeseen and preposterous, he's the nominee and should start acting more so without being presumptuous or pushy.

BTW, I still think if you're going to schedule a convention with a vote in it, you should hold that convention and vote.

And that brings me to the only way Hillary can legitimately take the nomination--a vote of the delegates. They are instructed in Democratic rules to be guided by conscience, and if they change their votes on the first ballot, so be it.

Other than that, this is all TV ratings and talk. Very interesting TV & talk, mind you.

Obama's Victory Party

2008-05-06T17:07:00.000-07:00

Remember 2000! When the final vote was too close to call between George W. Bush and Al Gore, Bush acted like the winner, despite having fewer popular votes. Republican leaders gathered at the Crawford ranch. Statements were occasionally made. Potential cabinet officers came and went. A transition team seemed to be operating.

Why on earth is Obama continuing to feed the media narrative that this is a horse race. Realistically, and notwithstanding pledged delegates having to be guided by conscience, Obama has won.

He has to be careful not to look or act presumptuous. But, he need not um and ah about how he needs to keep working hard in this Herculean contest with Hillary. The average voter would think this is a contest and Hillary can win. Not really so.

I still think if you're going to plan and schedule a convention you should actually have one, complete with votes.

Which brings

The Denver Convention

2008-04-24T19:53:00.000-07:00

Just what wave is Hillary trying to catch? In just what way does Obama need to deliver the knock out blow or close the deal? Look back, way back to previous postings in this thread to see the myriad, spurious arguments that either democrat(ic) candidate could make for obtaining the nomination. Just a few for old times' sake:

I won more states, more votes, am ahead in the polls, would have won the early states I lost, have won more big states, have won more states in which we have to beat Republicans in the fall, would win more electoral college votes from states I won if I win them in the fall, I'm winning in key demographics in which we need to win, if we had the Republican winner take all process I'd have won by now and on it goes.

But there is literally no appellate court in which to make these arguments. The US Supreme Court has ruled that political parties (unforeseen and unwanted by the founding fathers) are pretty much free to run their affairs they way they want.

What the DEMs have wanted since the 1960s is to mainline democracy within the party. So, the main leadership the DNC provides is to require state parties to submit affirmative action programs. States are required to make all best efforts to include Native Americans, African Americans, Women, Hispanics, Asian/Pacific Americans, etc. There are rules requiring delegations of an even number to be 50% of each sex (gender, surely) and if the delegation is uneven (in number, not gender, surely), then the difference between men and women cannot vary -/+ one. Why shouldn't the convention reflect the demographics of the country?

They also wanted super delegates to vote in order to harness their knowledge of the electorate. Why shouldn't a long-standing Governor, Mayor, Senator, Congressional member who's in touch with her/his constituents have a vote on who leads the party?

But now here we are smack in the middle of democracy, which, like sausages, one should not see being made.

Don't blame the media--they love a horse-race and need ratings to survive. Don't blame the candidates--they're in it to win. All parties have to operate under the convention rules and the constitution/articles of association/letters patent or whatever other documents dictate how the party will operate.

I'm getting all the documents I can from the DNC and trying to make sense of the rules for you. Postings will follow, but for now, some intriguing elements include:

*The Rules & By Laws Committee relinquishes jurisdiction 58 days before the convention to the Credentials Committee

*Intervening parties who can challenge rules to protect their interests include a State party committee, a presidential candidate or any other person with a good cause

*"a presidential candidate" is not defined by year or election in which he/she ran or is running. One assumes Ross Perot could intervene

*potential delegates must have publicly declared their party preference--so much for the secret ballot

*I don't see reference to super delegates yet

*I don't see reference to bring in religious representation in appropriate percentages

*use of the web is not considered advertising

More to come, but what I really want to know is why not hold a convention and a vote if that's what your constitution says you plan to do?

For more information on the Denver Democratic Convention please visit:
http://www.demconvention.com/web/101/home.html

and

http://s3.amazonaws.com/apache.3cdn.net/f4225987fd9e438ef7_fqm6bev2k.pdf

For information on the rules and bylaws please visit:
http://s3.amazonaws.com/apache.3cdn.net/e824f455b24c7782dc_jjm6ib44l.pdf

Allan's Media Appearances

2008-04-11T23:20:00.000-07:00

Employee Skills Inventory

2008-04-04T12:23:00.000-07:00

John McCain's Credibility

2008-04-01T19:44:00.000-07:00

It's as if Kennedy had lived. If agent Hill had been a few seconds quicker in jumping on the Presidential limo, if it had it's bubble top on that day, had Oswald been just a little slower, if the limo had gone straight and not slowed down to turn right on Houston and left on Elm and on and on it goes.

If President Kennedy had made it to Parkland Hospital alive. Had he survived scared and Sainted, his perspective, projects and endorsement would have been enormously powerful until his death--probably sooner rather than later from general ill health.

Kennedy would have, like McCain, born the scars of battle. Kennedy's back and neck wound. McCain's ineffective arms and scared face from surgery. Endless loops of Dealey Plaza, like the endless loops of McCain we'll see in the months to come.

Regardless of your politics, McCain will be hard to attack. He toughened up in the Hanoi Hilton.

Hillary Clinton Under Sniper Fire

2008-04-01T19:19:00.000-07:00

I have held my tongue too long. I was not going to weigh into the Bosnian sniper fire story until the NY Times printed perspectives today (perhaps written days ago). This brought back a story that should have had a wooden stake in its heart.

1. Misremembering is not good.

2. Repeating the misrememberance for three months is worse.

3. Contradicting the account in your own book is not good. (Lawyers advise expert witnesses to re-read everything they're every written).

4. Ignoring media reports that contradicted the sniper angle is very bad staff work.

5. If the area was dangerous, taking Chelsea is inexcusable. It's like Minister Gummer feeding a hamburger to his young daughter in England to reduce fears of Mad Cow (didn't work).

6. Contradicting eye witnesses & TV tape is foolish.

However, and this is a big one, war zones are scary and dangerous. After flying seven hours from CFB Lahr in West Germany to Nicosia (sleeping on the stacks of mail), I was pretty disoriented. When I was told by peacekeepers to put on green combats (fatigues to Americans), I asked why. "Because one side or the other might get confused about why a civilian is walking the Green Line between them and shoot you."

"OK" said I.

On the green line, I asked if we could walk up a particular street.

"No" said my comrades.

"Why?" said I.

"Because you might get shot."

I was shown farm tractors blown up by land mines, booby traps with hand grenades on trip wires and watched peacekeepers roll up hundreds of feet of razor wire in minutes to get ready for a demonstration.

The most dramatic moment came in the old French Embassy though. The building was strewn with documents left on desks and the floor by fleeing diplomats. I picked up and read newspapers from 1974,

As I was drenched in thought and conversation, I heard gunfire in mid sentence. I finished a sentence or two and finally injected, "What the (blank) is that?"

"Gunfire," I was told.

After more questions, I was told that the Turkish rifle range was nearby and we were hearing training.

After all these years I can confirm several things:

1, It was scary.

2) I can't be sure it was Turkish Cypriots or Greek Cypriots.

3. I can't be sure who will pop out of history and correct this record.

4. I'm not running for President.

Clinton's Resignation Speech & Launch of Race for NY Governor

2008-03-28T17:23:00.000-07:00

I'm not a quitter. I've never been a quitter. So when my adopted home state of New York was thrust into crisis, I had not thought that I could help or play a role. But when my state had to schedule a special election to find a third Governor in about as many weeks, I wondered if there was anything I could do. Then I was overwhelmed to receive more than 100,000 cards, letters, emails and phone calls in one day. My constituents are asking me to serve. They're calling me back to New York.

(Hillary then goes on to thank all her supporters and delegates. She speaks of how wrenching the decision was. She says the only reason she felt she could leave the race was that Obama is head and shoulders above John McCain. She'll get the job done in NY and then see where she can serve at a later date).

This technicolor fantasy is floating tonight. They only problem is that Hillary already has a national platform in the Senate. She can also create any national platform she wants by founding or joining an NGO or think tank.

This rumour is clearly designed by her opponents to remind everyone that Hillary might need an exit strategy.

Democratic Convention

2008-03-28T07:50:00.000-07:00

Can someone explain to me why going to a party convention, speaking with other delegates, hearing speeches, having policy discussions, bear pit sessions with the candidates and then voting for the candidate to whom you are pledged, or voting independently if not pledged would be a disaster for the party?

How is disenfranchising the states that have not voted in primaries good for the party?

The American founders did not want government to work. They wanted checks and balances to the point of stalemate. There is a US government at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, in the Senate, in the House and even in the Supreme Court. The founders were distrustful of monarchy and big government.

But the founders did not stipulate that political parties should not function. In fact they didn't want political parties.

Sure, Wilson won on the 26th ballot and some acceptance speeches have been made at 1 am. But let democracy function, warts and all.

Q.E.D.

McCain & Lobbyists

2008-03-27T18:14:00.000-07:00

Under discussion right now is how close John McCain is to lobbyists. I'll let you decide as the coverage progresses. But I have a perspective on today's angle.

The minutiae of this tangled web involves the habit of lobbyists to lend congressional leaders and Senators private jets to go about their business. The spin is that these politicians are so busy that the use of the private jet is a welcome way to save precious time. The lobbyist spruces up the plane with a bar, snacks and attractive attendants. Better still, the lobbyist often sits in the plane too, so that after the several hour flight, the congressinal leader is chock full of the lobbyist's view of various important matters.

Well, first, small, private plane do not have the safety record of scheduled airlines. Next, if I were chief of staff to a Washington politician and somebody wanted between 30 minutes and 5 hours with my boss, that person would have to have a very, very good reason. I'd be weighing the 45 minutes wasted at Reagan, Dulles or BWI, 10 minutes at the other end (carry-on only) and 55 minutes on the return flight against the time in the private jet listening to lobbyiests.

My boss would be working in the car to the airport and most of the time in the airport iteself. S/he'd be reading, signing letters, listening to iPods and watching DVDs. I'd load the iPods and DVD players with relevant poplular culture from TV, Radio & Movies. I'd add network newscasts. I'd scan local or State media for shows to get the boss familiar with opinion leaders who will help in re-election. I'd make sure the boss knew what was happening on shows such as Project Runway, American Idol, reality shows and all the local and national playoffs.

A lobbyist would have to have a really good redason to interupt these tutorials.

But, here are the real goods on small planes. The first few flights are just too much fun for a person to have. The first time a client lent me a small jet, I felt like a million bucks. After getting airborne, I casually asked the pilot when we'd arrive in City X. The pilot turned back to me and asked if I wanted to go to City X. I said I thought that's where we were going. Wires were crossed and he'd assumed another destination. But the pilot was flexible and verified I wanted to go to City X. When I confirmed my preference, the pilot turned back to his instruments and made about a 45 degree turn, banking in the direction of the city I wanted to land in. His next question was whether I wanted a limo waiting at the private hanger. Well, that's as good as air travel gets.

One time a small plane saved a family vacation. I had an assignment in the middle of a ski trip. The route to the assignment via a scheduled airline involved flying several hours in the wrong direction to a hub airport, so that I could fly back several hours and more to my final destination. Coming back would be the same ordeal. I found that renting a private plane saved a day either end and thus the family vacation. Private planes have saved many a project over the years.

On my last trip, I decided to take some of the consultants and trainers who work in my company. The client picked two of us up in Toronto, flew to Ottawa to pick up another member of the troop. Next stop was the east coast for a client visit. Before hitting the meeting, I asked our driver to pick up a dozen lobster, packed on ice for the return trip. After our day of meetings we dropped one consultant off in Ottawa, found out we could land in Stratford, Ontario and then come back home to Toronto.

There were no snacks on the Jet Falcon, but lots of little bottles of alcohol.

Business class on a good airline features a decent meal, snacks, bottomless drinks and decent service. If you fly right, with a plan and a briefcase full of work, business or first class can be a lot better.

The Hill Times' Review of Tough Love at the Table

2008-03-24T18:36:00.001-07:00

Tough Love at the Table:

Power, Culture and Diversity in Negotiations, Mediation & Conflict Resolution

Dr. Allan Bonner

Sextant Publishing, 220 pages

Reviewed by: Charlotte Davis

In the course of his 20-year practice as a communications and dispute resolution consultant, Dr. Allan Bonner has come up against his fair share of powerful and tough-talking clients.

One, a senior executive in the resource sector who was facing a threat from Greenpeace to protest his plant’s emissions, issued the following order to Bonner:

“I want a meeting with the Minister of Economic Development, the Minister of the Environment and the Premier’s staff, in that order. These people have campaigned on a pro-business, anti-red-tape platform, and this is a case where they can live up to their promises.”

Before meeting the executive, Bonner did a little research and discovered that the executive had indeed contacted the government – by way of a strongly-worded letter to the Premier’s chief of staff in which he outlined what the government should do for his facility to keep their election promises and get Greenpeace off his back. To the government and political people who knew the executive, he was considered a loose cannon, or at best, highly presumptuous.

While Bonner felt confident he could arrange the requested meetings – and told the executive so – he also pointed out the need for current and precise plant emissions data as this would form the basis of the company’s negotiating position as well as inform its complete communications plan – from employee and community relations through to media and government relations. It was a struggle for Bonner to extract the data from the company but when he did, he discovered that the executive was operating a clean and modern plant downwind from another city with lots of industry. What Greenpeace was targeting for public protest was a clean plant in a dirty neighbourhood. Although Bonner was eventually able to broker a deal with Greenpeace, he points out that valuable time and resources could have been saved if the plant had a standard and ongoing communications policy in place and the technical record on the plant’s environmental record at hand.

This is one of many real-life case studies Dr. Allan Bonner presents in his latest book, Tough Love at the Table: Power, Culture and Diversity in Negotiations, Mediation & Conflict Resolution.

Another involves a government official who suggested Bonner run an accident simulation from the official’s Edmonton office rather than out in the field.

“Look,” the official warned, “If you have a bunch of people out there running around interrupting and playing reporters, you’re going to wreck a perfectly good simulation.”

“If I don’t have a crew out there interrupting and playing reporters, it won’t be a simulation,” Bonner countered quickly.

A host of others show how diversity – be it cultural, racial, gender or religious – can affect even the simplest of negotiations, much less complex international conflict resolutions.

What emerges from this collection of case studies are some simple, yet too-often ignored, lessons, which politicians, civil servants and CEOs alike would do well to heed. The “tough love” Bonner dispenses can be boiled down to the following: First, do your research, know your facts and be prepared to back up your statements with specifics. Second, don’t balk at spending the time and effort to create policies; these “just-in-case” policies can save your skin if even one incident covered by the policy occurs. Third, there is no substitute for preparation and rehearsal, and this includes simulations. Here, John F. Kennedy, Bill Clinton and Nicholas Burns, former spokesperson for the U.S. State Department, are offered as role models. This all sounds easy enough, but if everyone were doing it, Bonner would not continue to be as busy as he is.

Tough Love is structured in roughly two parts. Six short introductory chapters deal with such theoretical concepts as Process Design, Culture, Gender, Race and Power, and Reflection. These are followed by the 60 brief case studies. Finally, Dr. Bonner includes a glossary of terms, an extensive bibliography and a chart to assist others embarking on their own ethnographic studies of past cases and events.

While this structure may allow the reader to dip in and out as he/she pleases, I would have been preferred to see a stronger link between the theoretical concepts and the actual case studies.

This minor quibble aside, Dr. Bonner is a great teacher. With graduate degrees in political science, law, business administration and risk, crisis and disaster management, he clearly delights in learning and in sharing his vast experience with others. His writing reveals a passion for his craft, an intellectual energy and curiosity and, most importantly, the ability to evolve and adapt his thinking to changing times, situations and cultures.

Like Bonner’s previous books on communications, crisis management and media relations, Tough Love is written in clear, clean prose. Moreover, Bonner has an ear for dialogue, which enlivens every chapter and makes the reading not only instructive but so much fun.

Anyone involved in negotiations, mediation or conflict resolution – at any level and in either the public or private sector – will find Tough Love a useful and entertaining addition to their library.

Charlotte Davis is a lawyer and Director of Business Development in the Toronto office of Borden Ladner Gervais LLP.

Wine Tasting at Allan's Book Launch

2008-03-24T11:02:00.000-07:00

John Szabo, Master Sommelier
416.219.5873
jszabo@thecva.ca/
V.P. of the Wine Writers Circle of Canada
Member of the Court of Master Sommeliers
www.thecva.ca/www.johnszabo.com

John is Canada's first and currently only Master Sommelier, earning the title from the Court of Master Sommeliers in London, England in 2004. John was recently appointed Contributing Editor for Wine Access Magazine and Editor-in-Chief for the First In Line eReport highlighting new wine releases in Ontario. To sign up for the semi-monthly eReport, visit www.wineaccess.ca/first-in-line.

Dr. Allan Bonner’s Book Launch Tasting:
Tough Love at the Table-
Power, Culture and Diversity in Negotiation, Mediation & Dispute Resolution.

I have selected a short list of fine Ontario wines to be enjoyed during my friend Dr. Bonner’s book launch. These are wines that display the power and depth of flavour that is becoming more common in our local wines, as well as the diversity in style born of the multiculturalism that informs our great wine industry.

Malivoire 2006 Pinot Gris, VQA Beamsville Bench, Niagara Peninsula
- A fresh and vibrant example of this popular grape, with plenty of citrus and stone fruit flavours with more than a hint of minerality. Made in a restrained, old world style, and highly food versatile

Malivoire 2005 Pinot Noir, VQA, Beamsville Bench, Niagara Peninsula
- Malivoire is one of the pioneers of quality Pinot Noir. Here we have a wonderful, classic style from organic grapes grown on their Beamsville bench vineyard

Fielding Estates 2006 Unoaked Chardonnay, VQA Lincoln Lakeshore, Niagara Peninsula
- The trend away from oak is captured nicely here in this highly perfumed, exotic floral and peach-scented wine, with a soft, creamy texture and juicy finish

Fielding Estates 2005 Cabernet Franc, VQA Niagara Escarpment, Niagara Peninsula
- One of Ontario’s more successful red grapes, this Cab Franc delivers a delicate perfumed and dry, succulent and juicy palate with moderate, grippy tannins that will ensure 3-5 years of ageing

Vineland Estates 2006 Dry Riesling, VQA Niagara Peninsula
- Vineland is considered one of the originators of great Riesling in Niagara From some of the oldest vines, this one shows the benchmark style of vibrant acid, light, delicate body and deceptively long finish.

Vineland Estates 2006 Cabernet Franc, VQA Niagara Peninsula
- This wine is just plain fun and infinitely drinkable – the quintessential red fruit and fresh herb-scented picnic wine best served slightly chilled.

NAFTA...FTA...Obama & Clinton & Clinton

2008-03-24T09:31:00.000-07:00

Please. Both Obama & Clinton have voted for similar trade deals in the past. America cannot further tarnish its international reputation by reneging on signed treaties or trade pacts. I understand working men & women's concerns about exporting jobs, but Adam Smith pointed out that if we trade, both parties are better off--we wanted what the other had more than what we had.

BTW, this tough talk on NAFTA was for the benefit of Ohio voters, whose two biggest export markets are Canada and Mexico!

This tough talk also brought back memories of my working for the Alliance for Trade & Job Opportunities during the FTA and for the negotiating team during NAFTA negotiations. Here were the motivations then:

*4 or 5 million Canadian jobs depended on trade
*80% of our trade was with the US (now 84%)
*300 protectionist bills were in front of the US congress
*the world was breaking into large trading blocks
*average taffif with Mexico was 2%--highest 22%--we codified the status quo

Weaknesses with both deals?

*US access to energy at normal levels during a crisis
*border guards preventing goods, services and people from entering
*no big political cultural initiative in Canada to balance continentalism
*no rising of labour & environmental standards

Now that last point is important. One of the purposes of trade deals should be to improve conditions for workers in the labour market that is less well developed. Unions should get involved to insist on compensation, health, safety & environmental regulations. Lou Dobbs should be pushing for better conditions in Mexico.

The silver lining is productivity. Mexican workers may make less in a given field, but the more developed northern portion of North America has been making widgets longer and is more productive.

The other memory this brings back is of what I heard in Washington during the NAFTA--Clinton (Bill) could have either NAFTA or health care (Hillary's) but not both. Trashing NAFTA now is just politics.

Oh...Obama's going to call the President of Canada. Shall some moss-back up here call the Prime Minister of the Dominion of America?

Spitzer...I Hardly Knew Her

2008-03-18T19:32:00.000-07:00

How to apologize? That's the question Canada's National Post and CBC New Sunday asked. Here's my quick take:

*Four empathetic statements are needed to open the eyelids and earlids
*Four substantial statements are then needed to make an impact
*Apologies must have four times the weight and temperature as the offense
*Wait for forgiveness and then keep waiting
*It is the offended who decide if you are forgiven, not you
*Show the lessons learned
*Speak of the changes made so this might not happen again
*Do all this quickly--apologies are like rotting fruit on the shelf on a hot August day
*Don't use the wife and kids as a shield

If I left anything out, I'm sorry, really, really sorry.

Obama Enabling

2008-03-18T18:51:00.000-07:00

You have to hand it to him. Obama made a great speech that serves as one of those rare catalysts. Olbermann on MSNBC confessed that his grandfather had made a terrible racial remark the night Martin Luther King was murdered. My father and uncle have made terrible remarks and we all know that rhyme that kids used to recite. Obama as agent provacateur is a hit.

The speech was not the poetry of Theodore Sorensen who wrote for John Kennedy. Nor was it delivered in the style of Churchill, Kennedy, King, Reagan, but that's a quibble.

More on the quibble is that I didn't hear the remarkable and short turns of phrase of Sorensen:

Let the word go forth,
from this time and place,
to friend and foe alike,
that the torch has been passed
to a new generation of Americans
born in this century

And on it goes (in my memory).

We will pay any price
defend any friend
oppose any foe

No, Obama does not have Soresen as a writer, and neither is does he have the delivery of the greats. He is deliberate, confident, appropriately slow and pauses at intervals to allow the audience to participate and take in his words.

But hs is making two notable errors. First, he is up-talking. I will research to origins and reasons for this, but for now, just a few words. Perhaps with roots in the San Fernando Valley and Frank Zappa's daughter who released a parody song on the topic decades ago. Uptalking is also a mainly female trait which some linguists tie to female egalitarianism and seeking congruence with the audience. Males too often misinterpret this, and head nodding, as seeking approval and even subservience.

I have not given sufficient thought to this trait to do any more than mention it. More later. Do readers have input?

Obama's other error involes his technical skill with a Telepromptr. Take a look at the Kennedy inaugural, and political leaders as late as Reagan. Before the gizmo that projects speech lines on clear screens a few feet in front of and on both sides of the speaker's podium. Telepromptrs seem to be the answer for many speakers. But they are also a crutch, causing many to read like atomatons. Obama's not bad on this count, but does swing his gaze from side to side reading alternately from each screen. Kennedy didn't do this because he either didn't use the gizmo or it was new enough that speakers had not yet become slaves to it. Kennedy delivered several points to one side of the podium, punctuating the lines with his fist and finger. Ronald Reagan was not a slave to the gizmo because he was old enough to have had to memorize lines for film or TV without that help. He seemed to have the audience as his focus, not the clear glass with the words on it.

But these are details. Obama made a great speech and is the focus of our attention for this day and possibly this week.

Obama & Clinton in the Electoral College

2008-03-07T06:04:00.000-08:00

You read it here first weeks ago, and then heard it last night on CNN for the first time. The legitimate spin coming out of the Clinton campaign is that she has won dozens and dozens more potential electoral college votes in the states she's won. That translates to being the President as opposed to winning delegates, states, popular votes or airtime on MSNBC. You also heard here first, and then again last night on CNN that super delegates must keep in mind that the electorate's views have changed during the primary season. Those who favoured Obama early on may be having second thoughts, just like Texas and Ohio voters.

Check back on this thread. There are another dozen ways to spin this.

Joe Scarborough & Chris Matthews Campaign Advice

2008-02-18T06:21:00.000-08:00

I can't bring myself to say that two of my favourite US cable talkers have missed a point, so I'll just say their campaign advice for Hillary provoked thoughts that can be useful in the next few primaries.

First, their advice:

1) Mr. Matthews has said that Hillary should have campaigned as a change agent, not applied for George Bush's job as the best qualified candidate. Nobody wants anybody to do Mr. Bush's job, and the emphasis on experience reminds voters that Hillary's a Washington insider.

2) Mr. Scarborough's echo adds that Hillary should have campaigned as the potentially historic first woman President--and that's change.

Here's what's unstated. Presidential and Congressional candidates always campaign as outsiders and reformers. They also campaign as underdogs and as reluctant leaders. This goes back to the founding fathers' distrust of Monarchy and government.

Distrust of Monarchy has loomed in American campaigns, and I mean every single one from Gen. Washington's reluctant entry to Hillary's "conversation" as campaign. The conceit is that the candidate must appear reluctant to declare for fear of a sense of entitlement that smacks of Monarchy. Early campaigns were "front porch" campaigns where candidates wrote letters of concern to friends and newspapers. Active campaigning was considered gauche. Roosevelt was the first candidate to use a plane to fly to a convention and look eager to receive the nomination.

Distrust of government, especially big government, means every candidate has to campaign against Washington.

Distrust of the federal government and love of States' rights is intense. It is trite to say that America had a war over the issue, but how about this example? During the Civil War, the Governor of Georgia had 100,000 uniforms in storage, but would not release them to Confederate troops who were fighting in rags--they belonged to Georgia, not the Confederacy.

So, I discount the notion that Mr. Obama is doing something new and different by campaigning for change and as an outsider. I think Ms. Clinton should have campaigned as an historic change--the first potential woman president. Should Mr. Obama campaign as the first black president?

Here's another complexity to the discourse. Ms. Clinton moved away from (abandoned?) her gender and entered a male construct and discourse--power and knowledge. She must have felt this was a stronger card to play than gender, which has it's own bona fides.

But, Mr. Obama has moved away from (abandoned) his race, and entered an age-based construct and discourse--change & hope. Has he also entered a white discourse and construct.

Richard Nixon famously said that one must seek the nomination from the right, and once that's secured, run like mad to the center in order to win the general election. Now that we have an excellent female and excellent black candidate running, must they run like made to the gender and neutral ground in order to get elected?

For more on the complexity of the gender and racial discourse, Google "Whose
story Is It Anyway? Feminist and Antiracist Appropriation of Anita Hill", by Kimberle Crenshaw.

Mr. Scarborough also admonishes Bill for campaigning so hard.

On Bill campaigning, I draw attention again to previous postings explaining that America needs a Governor-General to act as Head of State to free up retired presidents to campaign as the politicians and party leaders they are. But I also point out that Bill campaigning is only different by degrees.

Teddy Roosevelt formed the Bull Moose Party and ran as a 3rd candidate after being President, Mrs. Wilson ran the country for a while, Eleanor Roosevelt was a de-facto cabinet officer, Jackie Kennedy has never received full credit for her diplomatic efforts which gave America a sophisticated image around the world. Lady Bird was a photo journalist and chronicler of her husband's campaigns who deserves a place near Robert Drew (inventor of the lightweight sound camera) and Theodore White, Rosalyn Carter was a de-facto cabinet officer, as was Hillary in her time.

BTW, it was the entire Carter family who got Jimmy elected. When family members couldn't staff the phones or visit primary states, the campaign used students with thick Georgia accents to great effect. But I digress.

Spin Obama--Spin Clinton

2008-02-16T07:49:00.000-08:00

As an inoculation against the greatest spin cycle politics will ever see, here are the lines you will hear leading up to and during the Democratic Convention. They can be used by either side, depending on the results of upcoming primaries:

1) I have more delegates.

2) I have a larger popular vote.

3) I won more states.

3) I won states with more electoral college votes.

4) I won states we have to win in November.

5) I won states with a larger population.

6) I won the state(s) that every winning Democratic candidate has won since FDR.

7) I have more super delegates.

8) If Michigan and Florida delegates were seated, I'd (pick your choice from
#s 1-5)

9) The situation has changed (domestic, world, economic, etc.) since the early primaries and polls now show I'd win the early states I lost.

10) I'm ahead in the national polls.

11) I'm ahead in the polls in states (regions) where we need to win.,

12) Polls show I can beat McCain.

13) Polls show I can beat McCain in (states, regions) where we need to beat him.

I'm exhausted just thinking about the possibilities. Imagine when we hear each one every week from both candidates until summer.

Primary Lessons--McCain, Huckabee, Obama, Clinton

2008-02-13T06:57:00.000-08:00

Here's the big, little and in between pictures at this stage in the primaries:

Democrats

One lead is that if Hillary loses, it's the end of the baby boomers who have dominated politics, advertising and social trends since Woodstock. When Madison Avenue saw 500,000 people in the mud on Yasgur's farm near Saugerties or Bethel (not Woodstock) in 1969, they knew they had a market to reach. Pols followed quickly thereafter.

These folks have set the trends and been catered to for about 40 years. But 10,000 of them are turning 60 each month in Canada and 8,000 per day in America. This may be their last chance for massive power and the torch may be being passed (future transitive tense?) to those born post 1965. Yes, Obama, born in 1961, is still technically a baby-boomer, conceived during the child bearing years of women married during or just after WWII, but that's a red-herring.

The other lead is on the Republican side. They guy with all the money dropped out (Romney). The guy with no money is leading (McCain). The guy who lead in the polls for a year is out (Mayor Rudy who now has a line of clothing which comes apart at the seams). Now the guy with only regional appeal and no money is bugging the old guy with no money and controversial views (Huckabee). This is all good for democracy.

The third lead is that we've been here before. In the late 60s & early 70s, the Democratic party was a home for diverse interest groups--gay lib, women's lib, black lib, environmentalists etc. etc. Now the Republicans are so fractionated along conservative, neo-con, born again, Christian right, pro-life etc. etc.

Ancillary leads:

1) Obama is leading on delegates and has dominated the news for a week, as predicted here.

2) Hillary's strategy is to ignore the primary results when they don't favour her and launch her campaign for the next state. This time it's Texas where she and Bill have great trench bona fides. Remember, other than acting class, there' s no more sexually charge atmosphere than a political campaign. Friends become lovers and friends are friends for life.

3) Obama is indeed not tested. It is axiomatic that the closer a candidate gets to power, the more media scruting s/he's under. It will happen as night follows day.

4) Notwsithstanding #3, Obama may have more legislative experience than Lincoln (the other man from Illinois) had. He certainly has won more campaigns. As for military experience, Lincoln had a brief time in the militia only. As for leadership, Lincoln knew his declaration as a candidate, let alone his victory would guarantee war. Obama will be less divisive, to say the least.

5) Hillary must rise above the vacuous political rhetoric, predictable big, surprised face as she looks out into the crowd, clapping back at people, head nodding and volume in lieu of concrete ideas to make this work.

6) Similarly, Obama's got to go to the butcher shop and get some beef. He does not need to emulate Southern Baptist preacher lingo or lilt. The word change is great, but what kind of change, when and why?

7) BTW, when Sam Cooke (1931-1964), the great R & B artist, formerly of the gospel group the Soul Stirrers & Highway HQ recorded Bring it on Home to Me (with Lou Rawls' backing vocals), it was considered controversial because it mimicked the "call/response" of a Baptist sermon. Note the same technique used by the audience at Dr. Martin Luther King's "I Have a Dream" speech. Modern audiences might not recognize this tradition.

8) Hillary's has to win future primaries with large percentages go get enough delegates to win.

9) Whoever wins the large states--Texas & Ohio for example, will declare victory.

10) As one looks down memory lane, one sees Richard Nixon running in every single primary in 1968 to show he could win elections. He considered this necessary after losing the Governorship of California in 62 and the Presidency in 60. This is at least as important and interesting an election.

11) Farther down memory lane, in 1948, nobody wanted Harry Truman. Not the party, not journalists, not donors--only the electorate. At that convention, Strom Thurmond ran as an independent on the right and Henry Wallace (FDR's original VP & cabinet member) on the left. Together they took a surprising 5% of the vote and Truman still won by about 10%. This is as interesting an election.

QED

Obama Beef?

2008-02-07T19:25:00.000-08:00

A recent speech by Barack Obama had the following line:

"We are the change we seek"

Does this mean anything? Will this work on inauguration day, in Berlin, about the great issues of the day. Will this work anywhere about anything?

Get some beef Mr. Obama.

McCain & Huckabee vs Obama & Clinton

2008-02-06T08:51:00.000-08:00

McHuckabee vs Clobama or O'Clinton

It could well be McHuckabee, but we're not quite sure if it's O'Clinton or Clobama. Gomer Huckabee, while not shootin' squirels with a musket, hopin' for some bubblin' crude to finance his campaign, is becoming the leader of the conservative party in the US. There are almost as many conservative parties in America as there are in Canada. Huckabee is of the Christian, fundamentalist, evangelical kind. He was a spender in Arkansas, but wants to abolish the IRS and is somewhat protectionist, so he has some bona fides in social and fiscal conservative circles.

John McCain has all the foreign policy and patriotic credentials that any three candidates need. His bona fides are so great he never has to mention his service to his country. Imagine volunteeering to stay in a prisoner of war camp?

If Huckabee stays in and rallies his regional support, it just could be that he becomes a mandatory part of the ticket.

Republican Delegates

McCain has 516 delegates as of today and needs 1191 to win.

Romney spend 100 million to get 207 delegates.

Gomer has 142.

Republican primaries are generally winner take all delegates, with some exceptions.

After the convention, ticket makers have to consider where the 270 electoral college votes will come from in November. That's the number needed to win. They are aportioned by state and have only a passing relationship with popular vote.

Shut-ins with little else to do might figure out how the electoral vote would go if delegate apportionment went the same way.

McCain's only error was to get into such a fight with Romney in Massechutics, draining some strength from his natural base in the west and southwest.

Democratic Delegates

I note that Hillary won in Ted Kennedy's Massachutics--so much for the Kennedy magic rubbing off on Obama. I note that Hillary is doing well among Latinos--so much for all people of colour voting the same way.

I note Missouri was 49-48% in popular vote for Obama. This is the state where east meets west and north meets south--home of the Missouri compromise on race when it entered the Union. This is a harbinger of things to come.

Most Democratic primaries apportion their delegates according to popular vote, with some exceptions. With lots more delegates, a candidate needs 2025 to win.

Clinton had 582 going into Super Tuesday

Obama had 485 going into Super Tuesday

Both now have about 840 or so with Obama possibly a little farther ahead.

This is far from over.

What's next?

Washington State, Nebraska & Texas have 150 delegates in play. Several small states vote this Saturday. Obama has done well in small states, so may take a couple. This could make it look as if Obama has momentum. But he has not won large states--only Illinois & Georgia. Texas, Ohio or doing well in California allows him to go to the electorate and say he can win in the big time--something Hillary is going to do. Texas & Ohio go on March 4, so we have almost a month of high drama.

Virginia, Maryland & DC have 168 delegates & are a go this Tuesday giving Obama the possibility of 8 or 9 days of favourable coverage.

Money, Money, Money

McCain is going very well without any. Two thirds of Clinton doners have given their limits. Obama doners (many in the 3 figure range) have lots more room go give.

SOCKO

2008-01-28T16:50:00.000-08:00

This is one of my first takes at the SOCKO system. I did this for an audio distance learning system some years ago. From the beginning of my business, I was interested in newsworthy angles to stories--journalism in reverse if you will.

Hardball Campaigning with Obama & Clinton

2008-01-27T20:01:00.001-08:00

Hardball campaigning? Really? You've lead a sheltered life.

Harry Truman was part of the Missouri Pendergast Machine for many years before his election to the Senate. Truman, to his credit kept aloof from the Machine's dirty dealings. The future President distinguished himself as a hard-worker and honest politician, especially on his 30,000 mile road trip to defense plants to ferret out corruption and waste.

But I digress.

The Pendgergast Machine was known for "facilitating" bootlegging, prostitution, gambling and even gangland style murders, according to some political scholars and historians.

So long as they're hurling words at each other and nothing else, it's progress.

Politician Bill Clinton

2008-01-27T18:47:00.000-08:00

America needs a Governor General just like Canada, or a ceremonial head of state like Israel. Then I would not have to watch endless discussion and commentary on the remarkable sight of a former President being political.

Come on!

The only reason Americans disenfranchise former Presidents is the confusion over the combined head of state and head of government function. When a former President such as Jimmy Carter, or a dead President such as Gerald Ford (via audio tape) injects himself into public policy, it is as if Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II did so in the UK.

It is indeed constitutionally and historically inappropriate for the Monarch to do so. That portion (50%?) of a former US President who was head of state is in a similar category--elevated, cleansed and detached from the political fray. But that portion of a former US President who was head of government is entirely political and should act accordingly.

Undignified you say? Perhaps and only perhaps.

Let's look at recent former Canadian Prime Ministers (Heads of Government only). John George Diefenbaker (whom John Kennedy called "that old bastard" in a marginal note on a memo) was a supreme pain in the rear end to the leader who succeeded him--Robert Stanfield. Diefenbaker stayed in the House of Commons as the member representing Prince Albert, Saskatchewan and unnecessarily overshadowed Stanfield. But, he was a very effective opposition member, asking great and partisan questions in the House of Commons.

Nobel Prize winning Prime Minister Lester Pearson kept pretty quite and to himself in retirement at Carleton University & elsewhere. He probably smarted from his successor (Pierre Trudeau) unceremoniously kicking him out of the PM's office asap.

Trudeau spoke out on the constitution after leaving office. Short lived Conservative PM Joe Clark ran, re-ran, became very effective in opposition in the house, supported at least one Liberal and may have squandered his reputation.

Short lived Liberal PM John Turner went back to the law and has judiciously spoken about public policy on rare occasion. Ditto Brian Mulroney, who has made a short pronouncement about customs union with the US. Jean Chretien has said less.

So, most retired or ousted heads of government are pretty mature about injecting themselves into public debates. I believe former US Presidents would be as well.

But there's another reason for failed, ousted or retired senior politicians to get involved. When a candidate loses a presidential election by less than a percentage point or a few hundred thousand votes (Nixon in 1960 & Al Gore in 2000) why does that person become a non-politician the day after the vote.

In Canada, this losing politician is still the leader of his or her party and thus leads her Majesty's loyal opposition in the House. On occasion, that leader does not win a seat in the House, but somebody resigns and a special by-election is held so the leader can take a seat.

Sure, many Democrats don't want to be reminded about John Kerry or lead by him. But when a President wins in a landslide and also wins a majority in both houses, who is the leader of the losing party? An obscure Congressional leader, committee chair or minority leader just doesn't have the stature of the presidential standard bearer--albeit a failed one.

America--keep perfecting your democracy--get a Governor General and a loyal leader of the opposition!

The McCain Gain

2008-01-08T21:22:00.000-08:00

If the McCain Gain is not a blip, glitch or one-night wonder, it is just possible that we are seeing something very positive in American politics. I'm speaking of a guy who speaks his mind, has no money (to speak of), had endured enormous hardship in politics, let alone as a prisoner of war. He did not make a good speech. He still has an awkward smile at inappropriate times.

So what's the positive? The fact that a guy with little money, some awkwardness, who says relatively unpopular things and has survived savage political attacks is on top. That's democracy!

Obama & Clinton's Speaking Style

2008-01-08T21:13:00.000-08:00

OK, Obama has found his voice. I've been critical of his "up talking" in previous posts, but I thought his speech in New Hampshire was great. He looked tired and if this improves his wooden and studied style, then I'd switch him to caffeinated coffee three times a day.

As improved as Obama was, so was Hillary. She was genuine and authentic during most of her speech. There were still too many empty phrases. One such phrase was words to the effect, "We're doing this for the American people". Is there a candidate in this for Latvians. However, her finding her voice and thankful demeanour were right on the money.

Clintons--The Comeback Couple

2008-01-08T21:04:00.000-08:00

The media killed off Hillary. They didn't mean to do it. They just wanted a horse race and whipped themselves into such a frenzy over Obama and his win in Iowa that when Hillary didn't lose in New Hampshire on cue, they went equally nuts over her massive win. Oh, sorry, the win was 2-3 points over Obama. But, when you want a landslide, a party, a horse race and a bandwagon, that will do.

On problems with polling, please consult this blog's post on research design issues & others.

Reputation Priorities

2008-01-08T08:43:00.000-08:00

Organizations get prematurely mired is business buzz words. I say prematurely because venturing into areas where research is in its infancy before a company has its fundamentals in order is foolish. Here are the classic wastes of time:

1) Benchmarking. This term used to refer to a craftsman putting a mark on the product to identify it or literally a mark on a worker's bench to help measure the next product being made. It means all kinds of things now, including in computing. The common usage seems to be to see what competitors are doing, or to copy a best practice. Why not lead?

2) The CEO as a reputation enhancer. The best work on this is Jim Collins in the HBR who shows what a detriment a highly visible CEO can be. I start a couple of steps before that. What consumer knows the CEO of the company that produced the good or service being consumed. Very few. This is normally an ego trip.

3) Branding. The origin or branding is to imprint a symbol on your cow to show you own it. I note there's not much brand-name meat in the marketplace decades after this practice began. Normally, your brand is your company name. The brand of car is "Ford" and a slogan, tag line or sub-head is "Quality is Job One". A slogan is not a brand. Adding another slogan doesn't necessarily enhance the brand. Not being able to perform as the slogan suggests can reduce brand equity.

4) Arbitrary drivers. Many corporations seek to improve their public rating on such matters as environmental performance, being a good employer and other matters. Many make Herculean efforts to improve these ratings. The trouble is the public has no effective way of knowing about these matters. Moreover, the public is only peripherally interested in many of them. Someone who is not likely to work at a company has a limited interest in what it's like to work there.

Universities like to be known for research. I've asked a few university grads what kind of research their school excel in, and they either don't know or cite what the perception was when they attended. Do high school students choose a university for it's post-graduate research?

5) Demographics. Some research companies invent arbitrary categories of consumers. I read the fine print and discover that there's considerable overlap in the half-dozen or so categories of people--empty nesters...high achievers and so on.

6) Other economic inputs. In consumer produces there are lots of reasons to buy or decide. Reputation may be one, but so is quality, supply, price, friends' purchases and so on. Reputation should be weighted accordingly.

7) Reality check. There is little overlap in the top 20 performing companies and the most admired. Several of the most admired corporations have been convicted of fraud in the past. What are respondents to surveys saying when they say they admire these companies? Is name recognition the major factor?

8) Media attention, which often constitutes 3rd party endorsement, is often cited as a reputation enhancer. Why do so many journalists still disdain the efforts made by organizations to get their attention? This is what motivated me to go into business 20 years ago and I don't see an improvement.

9) Awareness, Knowledge, Action. A consumer may be aware that you have a good environmental record. That top of mind awareness may become knowledge if s/he can cite specific things you do to reduce your environmental footprint. But if that consumer doesn't take the next step to action---buying and recommending--you don't get the benefit of your actions.

10) Features, Advantages, Benefits. It is a feature of a corporation that it has a good environmental record. What is the advantage to the consumer? Is it less packaging to throw out after the purchase? What is the benefit? Is it a lower price because of less packaging?

So, focus on the fundamentals. Price, service, quality, name recognition and whatever else your consumers value most.

Clinton Crying

2008-01-08T08:36:00.000-08:00

There is no story in Bill saying Hillary is who she is. It was a jocular moment that the press made too much of. They did so to gang up on the perceived front-runner who now has feet of clay.

There is no story in Hillary crying. Actually, she seemed to just well up, not blubber.

The amazing thing in these gruelling contests is that more candidates don't get emotional, given their schedules and what's at stake.

Anybody who isn't emotional as a result of considering the issues and their own personal position in an intense political campaign is too detached.

Clinton, Romney Challenges

2008-01-07T22:42:00.000-08:00

There are many axioms in politics. Previous postings have dealt with the horse race phenomenon.

An seemingly contradictory axiom is that the closer you get to power, the more scrutiny you're under.

Media have cut the tall poppies down to size.

Stand by Obama & McCain, you're next.

Obama McCain Horserace

2008-01-07T21:11:00.000-08:00

Horses like hay, I like Bombay Sapphire gin and reporters love a horse race in an election. The campaign trail is normally boring. Politicians hand out daily "gains burgers" -- a term used by reporters to describe the same old stump speech.

Here's how bored reporters get. In Canada Val Sears famous quote to his fellow journalists was , "Gentlemen, we have a government to defeat." In the US, Hunter S. Thompson comes to mind. He was reportedly the only reporter to cover the entire 1972 Nixon campaign. As Nixon supporters chanted "Four more years!" Thompson broke into a counter-chant--"Thousand year Reich."

Timothy Crouse, much-beloved author in this blog, recounts a variation in his famous book The Boys on the Bus. His take is that Thompson said, "''Go get 'em, Dick, throw the bomb! Fifty years more of the Thousand-Year Reich!" That's a better quote, whether right or wrong.

But I digress.

It is axiomatic that the longer the campaign drags on and the more the outcome (winner) seems pre-ordained, then the more the media cover the event as if it were a horse race. Reporters begin looking for a viable alternative to the front runner.

The viable alternative does not have to be viable or an alternative, just someone else.

Bobby Kennedy probably couldn't have won enough primaries in 1968 to become the Democratic nominee, but he was not LBJ.

This is how the media help manufacture candidates or front runners.

Stay tuned, the voters, not reporters, have the last word

Obama & Clinton in New Hampshire

2008-01-07T10:04:00.000-08:00

My shirttail relatives in New Hampshire are worried up to the wire about Obama's lack of international experience. Clinton has been criticized for saying she has 35 years of experience, when a lot of that is as First Lady of Arkansas and the US.

Both criticisms raise the issue of just what kind of experience should a President have?

In 1952 I wonder if Americans or General Eisenhower foresaw that the hero of WWII would end his presidency warning about the military industrial complex? Who could have known that President Kennedy would have to deal with the Cuban missile crisis? Could anyone have known that LBJ would have escalated Vietnam. Could anyone have foreseen that the master legislator could not marshal enough support to run for a second term.

Nixon, the cold warrior going to China...Carter & the Iranian hostage crisis...George H.W. Bush invading Iraq and being unable to get re-elected. Ronald Reagan breaking with detente and both out-spending the Russians and staring them down? Tax & spend democrat Bill Clinton leaving a surplus? George W. Bush re-invading Iraq and dealing with 9/11.

No one can predict the issues a president will have to face. All voters can do is pick the candidate who appears best able to deal with the unforeseen.

On Clinton's experience, we all talk with spouses about work. I think it's fair to cite working with a spouse as work experience.

Over to you...New Hampshire voters.

McCain & Biden

2008-01-05T23:38:00.000-08:00

Welcome to the Parliamentary system. Aren't Joe Biden and John McCain running for secretary of state and perhaps defense secretary respectively?

They'd both be good in either position.

But, with special prosecutors and threats of impeachment, the presidency is looking more like the prime ministership every decade. The chief executive can be ousted like his/her British, Canadian, Australian, New Zealand and other counterparts.

Now, if cabinet officers have to stand the test of electoral scrutiny those positions become Parliamentary too. What if, by convention, the President could only choose among those who had been elected, or worse, stood the test of primary scrutiny?

America could find there are variations on democracy that can work equally well.

Obama + Lincoln?

2008-01-05T23:33:00.000-08:00

OK, now good ink for Obama. The other man from Illinois, Abraham Lincoln, lot the first of his seven or so elections. The only military experience he had was the militia. He knew that declaring candidacy could result in secession. He could not order, cajole, browbeat, convince or otherwise make his commanding general attack a much weaker Southern force.

In the end, he did OK though.

Obama may actually have more judgement and experience.

Obama + Kennedy?

2008-01-03T23:10:00.000-08:00

I understand that commentators of a certain age are anxious to revive some golden age of politics.

But Obama as RFK?

Bobby Kennedy was counsel to the House Committee on un-American Affairs--Joe McCarthy's side kick. Then he battled organized crime--specifically Jimmy Hoffa of the Teamsters Union. Then he was John Kennedy's campaign manager. President Kennedy appointed Bobby Attorney General even over Bobby's objections. The president said he saw no reason why Bobby shouldn't get some legal experience before he goes out in the world to practice law.

Bobby toured Appalachia to expose the plight of the poor, while he made speeches telling the dirt poor to get the junked cars off their lawns.

He ran for president and quoted Greek poet Aeschylus the night Martin Luther King was shot. This speech in Indianapolis probably saved dozens of lives.

Barack is a good man, but no Bobby Kennedy.

Get your own traditions and leave historical ones un-sullied by such comparisons.

BTW

Huckabee, Romney, McCain

2008-01-03T21:10:00.000-08:00

I just wonder if Huckabee pulling the negative ads that either he endorsed or didn't have the leadership to know were being made will constitute his "jumping the shark." We'll see in the days ahead if he parallels the scene in the TV sit com "Happy Days" when the "Fonz" was water skiing and jumped over a shark. This marked the end of the show.

Note that about 50% of evangelicals did not vote for Huckabee. If you can't deliver your base, you're in trouble.

Was it him or his staff work that caused him to not know that he had to cross a picket line to appear on Jay Leno?

The fascination the electorate has with his mid-market radio station voice will give way to wondering where the beef might be. Huckabee must have an answer.

Romney didn't turn out the evangelicals as he might have liked or as might have been expected. Yet, as posted on this blog and written about in The Hill Times & Winning Campaigns, he still has the best campaign office and team in New Hampshire.

John McCain may make a great secretary of defense.

Obama, Clinton, Edwards

2008-01-03T20:28:00.000-08:00

Please. I want to parse out what exactly the Obama win in Iowa means. First it was a decisive win. Eight points is well beyond the margin of error (3-5). I also use the margin of error phrase to capture those who are parking votes for future reference. This is a real win.

But, there are commentators who are taking great import from the facts that Obama has international connections to Kenya and Indonesia. The chattering class is also taking meaning from his great oratory, and his being the first credible black candidate for president. Let me be counter-intuitive.

1) Obama's connections are relevant and timely to the new world order. But they are no more astounding than John Kennedy's in 1960. The young Senator had spent a semester working for the US Embassy in Paris and had travelled through Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union, including Moscow--in 1939!

2) As good as Obama's oratory is, he is still "uptaking" with intonation rising at the end of sentences. He ascends and holds a stage well, but as he gets closer to the presidency his actual words will be under greater scrutiny.

3) Black candidate? Yes, Dick Cheney's distant cousin is indeed unique in his candidacy. But considering he overwhelming # of young (57%) and female (35%) voters who went with the relatively inexperienced Senator, then his candidacy can also be viewed as a youthquake or "new broom" candidate. Few voters are single-issue or monolithic. They're reasons for voting are complex and layered. Obama is not just his race. He is also a man, husband, father, lawyer, etc.

4) Mrs. Obama may prove to be a liability when voters consider her contention that voters have a chance to vote for her husband because he's the smartest person to "deign" to run for president. Please.

5) You never want to be front-runner, until the convention.

6) Clinton & Edwards are in a dead heat for second place.

7) Obama will be subjected to more intensive scrutiny the closer he gets to power, as surely as night follows day.

Most Admored Corporations?

2008-01-03T09:05:00.000-08:00

Reputation research is in its infancy. The first conferences I attended on this topic featured speakers who did Internet surveys on attitudes about major corporations. At the time the Internet was used mainly by boys in their early teens.

Leaving that aside we now do surveys asking respondents about their attitudes about corporations they may never have heard of before. If they've heard of the corporation, they have little or no way of judging the environmental record, employee treatment and other matters they are asked about. They're guessing.

Then researchers add up scores that respondents give on these indicators they know little or nothing about and get an average number for each corporation and then rank them.

This is like asking people their opinion of a variety of fruits, including many they've never eaten. Then researchers add up all the scores and find bananas win! Next researchers may add up all the fruit and find that the average fruit in North America is the tomato. What shall we do with this fascinating fact?

For more literal readers, the statistical error is, of course, adding and averaging ordinal numbers.

(See also research design issues on this blog.)

Huckabee Pulls Negative Romney Adds

2007-12-31T23:21:00.000-08:00

First the background. The Christian preacher is determined to be above the fray. He finds out his staff has produced a negative ad or negative ads about Mitt Romney. His staff had produced DVDs for the press and a background kit on Romney.

All this happened without Huckabee knowing? Are we really to believe this?

Let's just say that this is believable for a second. If true, it is not Huckabee who is casting the first stone and being decidedly un-Christian, but the staff he has recruited and sanctioned to work on his behalf. Is he a bad manager? Is he duplicitous? Or did he approve of the negative ads, done by un-Christian staff?

Now let's move to the money.

A half decent TV ad can cost $100,000. One focus group to test it is $4,000. The media buy depends on markets, stations & share, but is lots more zeros. DVDs are $3 each to duplication and about a dollar to replicate. Decent staff time to do a briefing book on Romney is thousands. All this was thrown away at the last minute?

One thing's for sure. The news conference that Huckabee held to announce he'd instructed staff to pull the ads attracted more attention to the negative ads than would have accrued by running them. The second thing that's for sure is that the ads will make it onto Youtube and be seen by about the same number of people as would have seen them on TV. Thirdly, no money has to be spent on the media buy now.

I'm reminded of 1980. Edward Kennedy challenged incumbent President Jimmy Carter for the Democratic nomination. Carter pledged that he would not raise Chappaquiddick in the contest. He also mentioned that he hadn't "panicked" during the Three Mile Island nuclear accident--a reference to Kennedy panicking after his car accident at Chappaquiddick.

1980 was also the first election I recall in which all candidates were born again Christians--Reagan, Carter and independent John Anderson.

Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) & Reputaiton

2007-12-29T21:54:00.000-08:00

Here's a quick discussion about how trying to do good works might just really attack a pressing social problem. Here's how your good works might also serve as R & D.

Ever notice how you get as much out of giving as the recipient does? That's true in the corporate world too.