George Corneliussen
The strategy needed to win a political election really is this simple:" When running for political office, all a candidate needs to do to win an election is to present an image that is more attractive to the voters than their opponent's image is."
The rub in executing this seemingly simplistic strategy is the fact that identifying and presenting an image that the voters are attracted to is as elusive as predicting what the next cultural fad will be . Being a civic-minded kind of guy, I'd like to offer to anyone, from any party, my suggestion of what, I believe, we voters will swallow hook, line, and sinker in the next major political election if offered to us in the form of an image by a candidate .
I should note that this suggestion is not based solely on what would be attractive to me as a voter, but rather on patterns we, as a culture, seem to follow when looking for guidance from our authority figures .
First of all, it occurs to me that in today's America, the definition of what we, as a nation, consider an authority figure is in a state of flux. For most of our country's history, we have thought of authority figures as individuals that we assign the responsibility of being surrogate parent-figures to us. Let's face it, as much as we claim to demand our individual right to grow up and be in charge of our own lives, most of us never grow up in the literal sense of the word. Most of us ( not unlike teenagers who still live at home ) want to act as if we are in charge and responsible when actually what we really want is for someone else to keep the ship on course so that we can play shuffleboard on the party deck, while we enjoy drinks with tiny paper umbrellas in them.
It appears as if we, as a nation, are beginning to realize that delegating our responsibilities lock, stock, and barrel to our elected authority figures is no longer working. It appears that we may be waking up to the fact that our authority figures have been using our desire to delegate our responsibilities away as an excuse to pay those responsibilities "lip service" rather than actually addressing them. Maybe it's beginning to dawn on us that even those we have "elected" to steer our ship are up on deck playing shuffleboard with fancy drinks in their hands. Maybe we, as a nation, are in the initial phases of realizing that if everybody is up on deck, the ship might end up in a very bad place.
If this is true, what will our first course of action be ? Will we all rush to take control of the ship and get it back on the correct course ? Not if somebody steps to the front of the crowd and yells,
" You guys keep playing shuffleboard, and I'll go down below and get the ship back on course". If this person demanded to be elected the new captain of the ship before they went down below, how would we vote ? Would we distrust the former captain's "work ethic" enough to go below deck ourselves to make sure the ship got back on course, or would we give in to the temptation to keep playing shuffleboard while partying and simply vote for the person whose image seemed to give us the ability to do that ? I hate to say it, but I believe the vast majority of us would quickly give the thumbs up to the idea of sending someone to "make things right" while we continued have a good time.
So here's my suggestion: If you want to win the next major political election, present the following image;
* appear to be as ticked off as everyone else is about how messed up things are
* speak in language that is articulate, but not pompous
* continually tell voters how hard they work and how much they deserve a better system of government
* never refer to yourself as a politician
* give the appearance of being self-sacrificing
* always manage to remind voters that you will do their politcal work for them, if elected
* admit to any mistakes you may have made in the past
* never bad-mouth your opponent, but instead shake your head in disbelief at how badly they mucked things up
Anyone who follows these simple guidelines and sticks to them will win the next major political election. Of course, if they then simply fall into the same "party-hardy" pattern of behavior the rest of us have, I would suggest that they play shuffleboard on the deck opposite of the one we're playing on. After all, what we don't know can't hurt them.
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Comments: 34
H-m-m-m, the following is a real article:
Fox tests nation's fifth-grade knowledge
Associated Press
PASADENA, Calif. - Every parent's nightmare - being exposed for not knowing what's in your kid's school textbook - will soon play out on national television.
Fox announced Saturday that it is making a new game show, "Are You Smarter Than a Fifth Grader?" that will air sometime later this year, perhaps as early as the spring.
Adults will compete in a quiz based on questions from elementary school textbooks. Actual elementary school students will be on hand as "experts" for the adults to consult with.
"While most game shows measure how smart you are, this is a show that will measure how dumb you are," said Peter Liguori, Fox entertainment president.
Fox won a competition with other networks to buy the idea from Mark Burnett, executive producer of "Survivor," perhaps because Liguori - not too modestly - said he was the only chief network television executive to answer all six questions from the show correctly.
For example, he made some promises about things he'd do. When he got into office, it was disclosed that Mitt Romney, the outgoing Governor, misled us on the actual state of the state's finances. Rather then dance around the issue, Patrick disclosed the actual state of things and said, sorry, I won't be able to do all those things until we get the revenue back. Many politicians would be reluctant to say "not gonna do it" so soon after taking office. But I think it was the right thing to do given the fund shortfall. Management often requires decisions that may run counter to your own dreams. A good manager does what must be done.
Before any action can be taken, there is always the temptation to avoid change. I really do believe people are waking up and smelling the coffee. But at the same time we will all be tempted to let someone else do the heavy lifting involved with getting things back on track.
Career politicans know how to read the crowd. While there most certainly are good hard-working politicians out there, there is also an abundance of crowd readers. I'll bet we get more than a slight dose of hearing what we want to hear from those who think getting elected, not setting things straight is the goal of the next election.
I agree with you 100%. Your governor sounds promising. I hope the people of your state can "handle the truth ".
A child "really does believe" in the tooth fairy, does that make it real?
If what you suggest were "true," I would suggest the voting public would be much larger, even for the most trivial of local elections.
We the people have always been the true source of power in this nation, and while I recognize the "deep sleep" the nation seems to be in, I see no evidence in great numbers of anyone "waking up."
In the next presidential election the Democrats will win the presidential race by a landslide. A witch who can forsee the future tole me that. She is right more times than wrong.
Before people do something they must first realize that something needs to be done. Then comes the proverbial "fork in the road" . In other words, after realizing that something needs to be done, the choice has to be made whether to do something or hope the problem will go away on its own.
I do believe that people are beginning to realize that something needs to be done. I do not believe they have made the decision to do something about it or not. We may , as a country, decide to take action or we may decise to ignore it and hope it will all go away.
In the mean time, we have a mixture of career politicians and politicians who want to do something constructive leading us. You can bet the farm that the career politicians out there will try to read how we, the people, feel about things and tell us pretty stories based on those beliefs in order to get our votes.
Our challenge is to pay enough attention to reality to be able to tell the good guys from the good-for-nothings in elected office.
Good eye. That is Mr. Haney from "Green Acres", whose talent was selling Mr. Douglas everything he had "on the back of his truck ", whether Mr. Douglas needed it or not.
Thanks, vote for driving the boat.
And the situation that we are being forced to pay a little more attention to the effects that Crown Party corruption has been increasingly having on our freedoms and lives means it's less and less likely another actor puppet (no matter how much they read the right lines written for them) will fit the bill unless they actually accept and embody the semi-strong man, "Return to your homes people, I'll take care of this" persona.
Still, any suit who does that will only last until the issues at hand are taken care of in favor of the party and it's significant supporters if those solutions again treat citizens as second tier priorities. Sooner or later we will catch on be it, 8, 12, or 16 years hence.
Taking the parties out of their position of excessive influence in the process of governance is the major step that needs to be taken to turn party representatives, back into citizen ones. Of course, if you're a status quo party animal that's just crazytalk.
Isn't it interesting how much nervousness calling for involvement creates ? I would hope that I will always be my own "harshest critic", because none of us live to be inconvenienced, we all tend to want things to go away on their own, but that's not the way things work. If we all stuck our noses into the business of this country every once and a while, things would run pretty darn smoothly, over all.
It seems like if people could accept that we are us and that's still the way our world is divided up in nations us/them, and it's in our interest to act intelligently in our interest as a community (family) not against others but among others of other nations, that we have to take responsibility for that as individuals. Being aware of what's going on around us and amongst us, supporting the good and recognizing and terminating the bad is the basic building block of that. That requres not just participation but a group valuation of what "progress" looks like.
And there's the rub, in a society where difference is valued (and it should be in the stringest of societies) the range seems to have been extended to tolerance of almost anything including the pursuit of unlimited dollars, no matter the cost to others, as a good in and of itself. Or say, getting a free luch from everyone else is a "smart" course of action. I could go almost anywhere with this, the point being that fun and looking good are excessively overshadowing responsibility and doing the work in a society that rewards that sort of irresponsibility. We all have to be our own parent if we don't want to be treated like children by those with the resources to impose their will on the rest of us. The value that it's better to look good than feel good may be exciting and fun but it's not functional in the long term even if the short term rewards to individuals are easy to see and compelling.
I think the point is that we still structure our daily lives and long term measuring sticks around family (whatever that means to a person). And, in families, we generally see the negatives of pitting one member against the other for the significant justice and resource allocation issues, certainly basic justice and equality questions are clearly shown to be optimized when basic levels are met for each memeber.
So in my opinion, we need to start looking at our national, state, local society in more of a light of family and our responsibility to it rather than a corporate capitalist model where cogs are interchangeable and the goal isn't measured by the success and freedom of the people participating but by something which equated to something else, usually dollars.
Requiring participation in the process from everyone able, a minimal level of responsibility, and returning to a greater equality of influence all citizens based on their values not how loud they can shout them over their neighbors or pay for someone to carry them to the houses that decide action on our behalf ahead of everyone else, the all men are created equal standard, is the only responsible way we'll see excessive, special influence negated in favor of a more egalitarian, just society. Removing the political parties from their seat of excessive influence is a basic step in that process.
Unless people want the sort of neo-feudal society we're being driven toward by Crown Party commercial representatives. In whcih case I;'d argue for societal withdrawl or cecession by anyone who's values or freedom can't be bought by the highest dollar bid. Sorry if that came out a bit stream of consciousness, I hope I made the gist of a point.
In today's world, tolerance may ,in fact, be apathy in tolerance's clothing.
PS: I wonder if it's possible to require participation ? Maybe we need the old Tom Sawyer painting the fence approach .
Check it out at:
http://ensign.ftlcomm.com/people/TomNhuck/ted.html
1. That may be the case for quite a few people. It's also easier than thinking.
2. Maybe not today (I'm not sure given the current money and values based system rather than a more egalitarian ideas and values based one that it would even be a good idea today) but perhaps requiring it is the drastic step we need to take eventually.
Or offering an either or option, full citizenship, full acceptance of responsibility, just participate in the process or be held to a lower standard of cost, and benifit from society. That sure doesn't sound positive to me but if we can't say "look, voting is a part of being responsible for yourself and you matter as a human and a fellow citizen" then don't expect others to hold you to a higher value than you do.
It's the old "Catch 22" . You can only lead by example, but you can't lead without an example to follow.
I would like to point out that the results of the last election provides some proof that the votership has already realized things aren't working, that something needed to be done, and that they did, in fact, try to do something about it. We're not all getting tipsy and playing shuffle board.
Another point that I think really needs to be hammered is that the general populace are SUPPOSED to be able to count on the people they elect: TO run things.
John and Mary Smith are rather busy working, paying taxes, defending their country, raising their children, being involved in the community, volunteering at the school, attending regular services at the temple or sanctuary of their choice and spending their budgeted dollars at the mall.
The whole political system is supposed to be arranged as THE vehicle for adequately and competently manning the posts of government.
What this country could really use is a moral enema through its carpeted and marbeled halls.
We need to flush all the capitalist, consumerist and corporate crap off the framework and get the country back to the kind of democratic republic that champions the needs of the people, exclusively. The kind that the consititution framed; and that is implied in the Declaration of Independence.
Now that would be a course worth staying with.
I agree with Bill, above, but it ain't goin' ta happin'!
Get an election that has not been corrupted? Get back to the constitution? What would happen to the power we have allowed them to usurp from us?
Please do not take this as a partisan statement, but in the 90's Harry Reid, speaking to senior citizens made a statement that the constitution really did not mean too much.
The attitude of the elite. We are here to serve them.
When you find that guy, let me know. He has my vote too, but we are almost always forced to choose between the lessor of two evils, of late. Luckily, Bush has made that choice easy for me for the last six years, even if the results were bad until this last election. Everyone needs to remember though, if the election had happened the same month the software for the machines was delivered, the republicans would have won by a small margin. Paper trails are everything. Please help with the effort at http://www.votetrustusa. com
I agree the results of the last election prove that people are beginning to realize things are mucked up, but now comes the decision on all our parts as to whether we are going make sure the message sent through the voting polls get put into action, or will we be satisfied with the simple fact that we got mad enough to vote a certain way.
Get mad and stay mad.
Remember the line from the old Who song "Vote for me and I'll set you free". Beware of candidates handing out that line like it was a free sample at the mall.
" the last election did, indeed, indicate that many have realized their mistake of inattention and, chastened, have voted accordingly. "
While the tone of the votes cast in the midterm election was refreshing, votes, in and of themselves, don't get the job done. I guarantee you, there are some politicans that won that election who are expecting the public to be satisfied with the fact that there was big upset in the election.
While, no doubt, some of those who won ( remember members of both parties won in that election ) fully intend to do a good job, others expect to be able to slide right back into the old way of doing things.
Unless the public continues to voice their demand for reform it will not happen.
Sounds like Jimmy Stewart to me.
Third time the charm ?
Get mad and stay mad.
Cool, it looks like you got mad and stayed mad. I tip my hat to you.