Politics Played like a Football Game

Bill Cosby in his early days on the comedy circuit had a skit where he asked the audience to consider looking at war as being waged like a football game. In the revolutionary war you have Captain Colonial and Captain British; Captain Colonial wins the coin toss and sets the rules. The referee explains to the British Captain that his team must wear red coats and march side by side across open fields; Captain Colonial’s team can wear regular home made clothes and may hide behind trees and rocks and never needs to walk in straight lines or expose themselves to direct fire. Well we all know how that worked out. Now let’s take that idea to the 2012 Presidential race.

Captain Republican is Mitt Romney and Captain Democrat is President Barack Obama. Opening the game, Captain Republican will have all the money necessary to cover TV with more advertising than he ever dreamed and absolutely no charisma. One other burden he must carry during the campaign is absolutely no firm position on any crucial policy matters except tax cuts for the wealthy and repealing Obamacare. Under no circumstances will he be allowed to behave like a regular person that other people can relate with.

Captain Obama will have all the loose charisma in the country but will have to carry the burden of a wobbly economy that could turn at any moment into a disaster. Everyone will believe his is likeable but not effective. When the country looked to you for leadership they couldn’t find you, and you seemed to cave on every key issue, Speaker Boehner boasted that in his dealings with you he got 98% of what he wanted. Your task will be to convince the voters that a second term will be better managed than your first. That will take more than slick commercials and good speeches.

The final decision is six months away but the slings and arrows of vicious campaigning are flying already. There will be issues yet undiscovered that will have to be dealt with and negative campaign ads that will give everyone nightmares as well as lead them to envy or distrust or in some cases to hate their neighbors. This is what passes for war in America 236 years after those clever Colonialists got the British to march in straight lines and wear red coats.

Identity Crisis or What I Want to be When I Grow Up

Casual TV viewers have seen the recent commercial where the middle aged business man on his way to the office sees a street musician and says “I want to form a band when I grow up.” Watching the current political campaign it seems that one candidate, Mitt Romney is struggling with a similar identity question.

This issue comes up because of his history of drastic reversals on policy issues. What image does he want to project, the highly successful venture capitalist from Bain Capital, or the folksy guy who worried about getting a “pink slip” a few times in his working life.

Two movie stories illustrate his dilemma, Wall Street and Other People’s Money. In the first, Michael Douglas’s Gordon Gekko proclaims to all “greed is good” and proves it by every ruthless and crooked means possible. In the other film Danny Devito plays Larry Phelps also known as “Larry the Liquidator” because he buys companies that have fallen on hard times and then closes them down and sells off their assets, thus making a profit while putting the employees of the company out of work.

The difference between the two venture capitalists is understanding human nature. Gordon Gekko understands the cost of everything and the value nothing while Larry the Liquidator tries to turn each painful experience into a win-win situation for all. The Danny Devito character does the trick by turning the employees to his side by making the experience profitable for them too.

The characters represent two approaches to selling off things that represent people’s livelihoods and employment. One way is to do it quick and without any sentimental wussiness while the other way is try and demonstrate some concern for those who will be affected but do not lose sight of the profit anticipated as a consequence of your deal.

Mr. Romney is trying to demonstrate that he can do both methods well. “I enjoy firing people” he says, conjuring his inner Gekko, and “planned parenthood, we are going to get rid of that.”

But as a political figure Mr. Romney must make his ideas palatable to a majority of the electorate and thus achieve his goal of becoming President of the United States. So we hear about his plan to give tax breaks to “job creators” who he thinks get the economy growing at a faster rate. 

The task is daunting, blending the expedient effective coldness of Gordon Gekko and the warm rotund likeability of Larry the Liquidator. Mr. Romney’s awkwardness at merging those two approaches is manifest in his public appearances. He has the Michael Douglas role down pretty well but perhaps he could call Danny Devito for some help on the warm fuzzy part.

History Remembered

Everyone says something outrageously false at some time in their lives and then immediately shuts up and hopes no one will challenge the truth of what they just said. For the average prevaricator the hope is for a forgetful audience, but for some politicians the lie becomes a springboard for more egregiously hyperbolic falsehoods.

Take for instance the statement by candidate Rick Santorum about former President John F. Kennedy. Kennedy asserted that there must be a separation between the church and the state and it must be maintained by the President as he carries out his duties as leader of the country.

It is a historical fact that this country was started by people fleeing religious persecution. In England, Henry the 8th made himself the head of the church, thus deposing the Pope and depriving the Catholic church of any influence in the country. In Europe the head of the church was the Pope and he influenced the kings and princes of the various countries with an almost absolute power.

In that mindset the founding fathers developed America’s constitution so that it made clear, for all time, that there was to be no mixing of religion and government. Catholicism was early identified as a threat in the minds of some. The faith of Catholics seemed to have a certain dictatorial quality because the Pope had the infallibility of judgment in matters of faith and morals. Many interpreted this as meaning that Catholics took orders from the Pope and thus were under the influence of a foreign power, the Catholic Church.

There were many hate groups aligned against Catholics, including the Klu Klux Klan.  During the 1800s Catholics were discriminated against in employment. Until the presidential election of 1928 there had never been a Catholic candidate for President. Then Al Smith from New York ran and the fear and hatred of the general public came to the fore. It was so prevalent that a rumor started one day that the Pope was arriving by train at Grand Central Station and a mob quickly formed and assaulted an innocent old man whom they thought was the head of the Catholic Church coming to assist Mr. Smith in taking over the government.

In this politically toxic environment 11 year old John Kennedy sat at the family dinner table and discussed politics. His father Joe Kennedy was an avid political observer and his children were quizzed each night at the table about political happenings. Rose Fitzgerald, John’s mother was the daughter of the former mayor of Boston, so the Irish Catholic point of view was drilled into young John as well as the need to be aware of how much Catholics were viewed with suspicion. Thirty-two years later John Kennedy, candidate for President knew that his Catholic faith would be a point of difficulty in his candidacy so he resolved to take it head on. His speech in Texas to the Protestant ministers was designed clarify and to reassure them that his Catholic faith was a matter of internal spiritual strength not a political driving force. The specificity with which he delineated his position irritated current presidential candidate Rick Santorum without provoking Mr. Santorum to check the historical context of the speech. Don’t vomit because of JFK’s words Mr. Santorum. Instead, take the opportunity to understand why he said them.

Anniversary Year

2012 has some historic events to remember. On April 12 it will be the 100^thanniversary of the sinking of the Titanic. Later in the summer will be the 100^thremembrance of the 1912 Olympic games triumph of the great Jim Thorpe, the only Native American ever to be declared by the King of Sweden the Greatest Athlete in the world and November will be the 100^thyear since Teddy Roosevelt and the Bull Moose party’s unsuccessful effort to win a third party effort for the Presidency.

The last event is especially nostalgic because Roosevelt was known as the “trust buster” for taking on the power of corporations to dominate our political system. He was a giant in the land of Lilliputians but just a hundred years later and the Lilliputians, with the aid of the Supreme Court have triumphed. Nothing is as graphic to demonstrate this fact as is the revolving carousel of Republican Presidential hopefuls, each with their own billionaire to fund their efforts.

The results so far is a political toxic dump of negative advertising, the merits of the candidates’ positions is lost in a tidal wave of ad-hominum attacks that leave the viewer questioning why that candidate is not in jail let alone running for President.

Now the issue of abortion, contraception and birth control has entered the dialogue. Trailing in the shadows is the whole issue of “personhood” the idea that any fertilized egg is at the moment of fertilization a “person” and thus protected by the laws against abortion. It does not matter if the fertilization was by rape or incest, the very occasion of an egg being penetrated by sperm at that moment becomes not a biological process but a divine act, an expression of the intent of God to make a human being.

In the middle ages there was a theory that the fertilized egg contained a complete miniaturized human person that was called a “homunculus” and thus was a human being in the view of the believers. It seems we are coming back to that point of view. Not so different from what happens when we get lost in the woods: we tend to wander in circles and eventually end up back where we started.

This brings us back to where we started. Already a great ocean liner has sunk off the coast of Europe, thankfully with 1,400 people rescued and not as with the Titanic lost. The Olympic Games will be held this summer and this fall there could be a third party candidate, but not one of Theodore Roosevelt’s stature. Instead of encouraging people to look beyond narrow self interest, the current group of discontented is one that encourages politicians to pander to the lowest and the slowest and asks no sacrifice to some higher ideal, lest the mob turn on them.

 On the darker side of our history in 1912 the KKK was in ascendancy and crimes were committed against some in the name of hatred and bigotry. This is an anniversary year but let us not make it an anniversary of Jim Crow and the hatred of 100 years ago.

— Pat Gogerty

The Dog and the Poor

As one who owns and loves his dog I found it difficult to reconcile Governor Romney’s treatment of his dog with a dog lover’s perspective of humane pet treatment.  But at the time I did not see how that incident fit into election year politics.

For those who do not remember the dog trip incident it seems that Governor Romney was taking a vacation with his family and the car was crowded with kids and camping stuff and they took their Irish Setter, Seamus, along by tying his dog carrier on the car roof and having Seamus ride up there. According to the Governor it was something Seamus was used to and enjoyed doing.

The journey was several hundred miles and during the trip Seamus experienced gastric distress to the point that liquid dog poop began trickling out and down the back window. When his children alerted their dad that Seamus was in trouble the Governor pulled the car off the road at a gas station and borrowed a hose took the dog and the carrier down and hosed them both off returned them to the roof and proceeded on. A good outcome for the family trip but not necessarily for Seamus, Such is the dog’s life. What does this have to do with the Presidential primary?

Yesterday the Governor said he is not concerned with the very poor or the very rich but rather with the vast “middle of America.” In his statement he said the very poor had a safety net and “if it is broken I will fix it.” The expeditious economy of effort implied in that statement harkened back to hosing off Seamus and cleaning up the dog carrier. There was an implied disconnect between the problem and the remedy, just as there had been between the cause of Seamus’s distress and the mechanics of cleaning up the result of his illness. The problems of the long term unemployed are not easily remedied.

 A word about long term unemployment and its impact on our social order: The idea of the dignity of work is so important to our cultural well-being. Not just the paycheck but the idea that one is making their own way, earning the food they eat, paying for the shelter they need, and by doing so achieving the cohesive family pride that is so necessary to a vibrant productive Democracy.

The negative impact of long term unemployment is well documented. There is a rhythm to one’s working life that unemployment destroys and thus causes a slow diminishment of one’s job readiness along with the self-esteem and confidence necessary to maintain a competitive edge. No, this is not “nanny state government” but a concerned and aware government that wants its society to remain strong and healthy. The impact of such extended unemployment is well documented and an understanding of those impacts should be included in any developed remedies.

Governor Romney is obviously a man of many virtues, but if he wants to be President he’d better polish up his pet transportation skills and awareness of the poor. 

— Pat Gogerty

Death by a Thousand Commercials

We have all heard the line about “death by a thousand cuts,” but in the Republican primary race it is “political destruction by a thousand negative commercials.”

It is a self evident truth that vitriol begets more vitriol until a trickle of negativity becomes a Niagara Falls of hateful political rhetoric. Sadly it is not new; Thomas Jefferson was attacked for his relationship with Sally Hemmings. Abraham Lincoln was caricatured as a baboon and during the cold war many were accused of being communist sympathizers. The end result of such campaigns of personal destruction leaves all of us wondering where it leads us as a nation.

During the cold war the United States and the Soviet Union practiced a foreign policy based on the concept of Mutually Assured Destruction (M.A.D. for short): the idea that life as we know it could be eradicated. This almost came to pass when the Russians tried to put nuclear weapons in Cuba in 1962.

In 1968 during the Presidential campaign the concept was used as a threat against the North Vietnamese by third party vice-presidential candidate, retired air force General Curtis Lemay, when he said “we should bomb North Vietnam back to the stone age” using nuclear weapons. Today the Republican candidates are practicing the political equivalent of Mutually Assured Destruction. When the eventual winner drags their lacerated political backside into the convention they will be forced to do a strategic one hundred and eighty degree turn or risk losing the election. Appealing to the darker angels of the primary voter will have to be discarded for more balance, positive language and attitude.

Looking at those still standing, one has perfected the deadly skill of political defamation and character vilification, and one is a reluctant dragon forced by the need to survive to counter each salvo of attack with an overwhelming counter attack. The net result of this process is to feed the anger of a small portion of the electorate while at the same time turning off a much greater number of the voters. Yes, negative advertising works as this campaign shows, but what is left when the primary is over?

The people want a positive leader who sees the good and the happy side of life – Reagan and Clinton are good examples – so when this campaign is over will the winner go forward to the General election contest hoping the same destructive techniques will win the White House? Governor Perry said “I’m not in the betting business,” but if I were, my money would be on the candidate with the positive campaign. As the old song says “Accentuate the positive eliminate the negative…”, or as Shakespeare reminds us in Othello:  

            
Good name in man and woman, dear my lord,
Is the immediate jewel of their souls.
Who steals my purse steals trash; 'tis something, nothing;
'Twas mine, 'tis his, and has been slave to thousands;
But he that filches from me my good name Robs me of that which not enriches him,
And makes me poor indeed.

— Pat Gogerty

P.S. View this 1964 LBJ commercial to see how history keeps repeating itself:

The Responsive Chord

Political rhetoric coming from the Republican candidates in Iowa, New Hampshire, and South Carolina etc. stress racial and class separation based on the threat of a giveaway Obama administration.

During the 2008 campaign Obama made an offhand remark to a man at a rally to the effect that wealth would be redistributed if he were elected. The man was “Joe the Plumber” and we know how that played out.

During his press conference in Iowa on caucus night Newt Gingrich said “most important for America is jobs not wealth redistribution, paychecks not food stamps.” That same night Michelle Bachman said “we will repeal his socialized medicine program.” Romney stressed the same themes with an additional emphasis on “job creators.”

By looking at the content of the speeches one knows the results of the research among Republican voters. Those points in the speeches were revealed in the polling and focus groups research carried on by all candidates. When mentioned by the candidates, the words are meant to touch that response in voters that says “you know how I feel, you know my concerns.”

Then there was the speech by Rick Santorum that shared the simple life experience of an immigrant family fleeing Italy’s fascist Mussolini that through hard work realized the American dream. His description of his grandfather’s hands, big and calloused by a lifetime of digging coal, struck another responsive chord not revealed by research: “He is like me, and he feels my concerns.”

Rick Santorum’s speech was a very powerful expression of political philosophy delivered in simple easy to grasp words. Santorum mentioned that his grandfather worked in the coal mines until he was 72 years old and had worked for a mining company that paid in coupons that could be redeemed at the company store, or if he wanted, could be paid in money but it was less than coupons. The message in that vignette is “we have been exploited too.”

The question ahead is if Santorum can move his success to New Hampshire and South Carolina and beyond. That will take money because he needs TV ads to make the jump to national contender. Santorum did what others didn’t: he humanized the message and made it personal.

Polls can tell you what voters want but it takes a real person to make it work.

For Democrats the night saw the end of the Michelle Bachman campaign and a further entrenchment of the far right political movement.

— Pat Gogerty

The Power of Words

In the early 20^th century a great African American singer/athlete named Paul Robeson changed the way he sang the lyrics to one of the favorite ballads of the day, Stephen Collins Foster’s “Old Black Joe.” Instead of singing “old black Joe” he sang it as “old old Joe.” Robeson was a powerful voice for civil rights and equal justice under the law for African Americans and all laboring people. He participated in coal mine strike marches in England and in America. Robeson believed “black” to be an insulting term like the “n” word and refused to use it. Fifty years later young African Americans changed that, saying they were “black and proud.” Robeson was ahead of his time in so many ways, the use of language was just one of them.

Frank Luntz is a skilled wordsmith who crafts ideas into language for the Republican Party. When Democrats cast the top one percent of the population as the “Greedy rich,” Frank Luntz reframes it as the “job creators.” So when Frank talks about being afraid of a word we pay attention.

Recently in Florida at a gathering of Republican strategy creators he said “There is one word I am terrified of when I do focus groups and that word is capitalism.” His explanation was not as clearly stated as his fear of the word. However the Democrats also had some input to the concept of capitalism, one prominent Democrat sent an e-mail out that related the history of Abraham Lincoln’s thoughts on the subject of Capital and Labor. He quoted from a speech that Abraham Lincoln gave to a joint session of Congress in December of 1861:

“Labor is prior to, and independent of, capital. Capital is only the fruit of labor, and could never have existed if labor had not first existed. Labor is the superior of capital, and deserves much the higher consideration. Capital has its rights which are as worthy of protection as any other rights.”

Lincoln wrote those lines six years before Karl Marx published Das Kapital and given the connection newspaper wise, (ships carrying our papers  between America England) and the fact Marx was living in England one could speculate that he took those six words from Lincoln, “capital is the fruit of labor” to open his famous book. Lincoln wrote his words at the outset of the civil war and they were an economic argument based on the productive labor of both white and black men. Lincoln believed the wealth of the south was built on the fruit of slave labor.

Mr. Luntz might have justifiable concerns about having “capitalism” surface in focus group discussions. After all, the 99% group are asking for a more equitable share of wealth, a bigger slice of the prosperity pie. The 99% group could take a page from the Tea Party playbook and organize on the congressional district level; political power in America does not grow out of violence and noisy demonstrations but rather out of the ballot box. When they do calm down and begin talking about the stuff that Lincoln was talking about a century and a half ago, then the paradigm will shift and it will be a different ballgame.

— Pat Gogerty

Marriott Named Public Relations Professional of the Year

David Marriott is recognized by his peers as the 2011 Public Relations Professional of the Year. 

The award is presented each year by the Puget Sound Chapter of the Public Relations Society of America.

It recognizes an individual who makes significant contributions to the public relations profession and the community, acts as a mentor to other professionals and displays the highest degree of professional integrity.

David also received this award in 2001.

Congratulations from all of us here at Gogerty Marriott for all the great work you do.

Two is Company Three is a Crowd and Four is a Mob

The discontent flows from both sides of the political main stream. Could there be some tributaries branching out on both the left and the right? A third or even a fourth party? The Tea Party already stands waiting for a veto on the Republican choice for President and on the left bank of that mainstream there is the discontent manifest by the “occupy” movements.

The difference between the two groups is more than ideological. The legendary humorist Will Rogers once said “I belong to no organized political party, I’m a Democrat.”  Will Rogers would have been pleased with the Occupy movement for its focus is as diffuse and non -specific as its membership: multi-racial, multi-cultural, and embracing the entire spectrum of ages. Watching the two groups one feels the Tea Party is capable of causing the most disruption if things do not progress as they wish. Their discipline in support of the “no tax, shrink Government” goal will make the greatest impact.

The occupy movement is characterized more by flexibility and accommodation. They sit in collegial decision making circles, listen to each other’s’ points of view, and are much less disciplined and more likely to disagree on the details than their opposite number. Their binding principle is a demand for a fairer sharing of the riches of society. There is the rub, for in order to share more you have to collect more and that is unacceptable to the Tea Party.

So where would the strongest force come from for separating into a third party? The Occupy dissenters are much less likely to go to the extent of finding a candidate to carry their cause because they cannot all agree on a specific set of targets. Perhaps they could reach back to the Roosevelt era and ask for something all-encompassing like a “New Deal” or a “Fair Deal” or, as Harry Truman said, “Square Deal.” “Occupy the Street” just doesn’t do it.

President Obama enjoys a 92% support level among African American voters and anyone who seeks to challenge him from the left will have to take that into consideration if they hope for a political life beyond 2012.

The Tea Party, however, has elected people to the House of Representatives and the Senate and is most prepared to put their dissatisfaction into action. Governor Rick Perry is a possible champion for the unhappy right as well as Congressman Ron Paul, Congresswoman Michelle Bachman, Herman Cain and some who yet remain undiscovered.

— Pat Gogerty