I think it was Chris Matthews who referred to the word "assasination" as the third rail of American politics. So, the reaction to Hillary Clinton's remark that Robert Kennedy was assasinated in June was understandable, if a little overblown.
Of course, most would agree that Hillary misspoke except for those who really want to "demonize" her. Senator Clinton has been devoted to improving the lot of everyday citizens for her entire career, and any suggestion that she would want to put the nation through another trauma, just for her personal ambition, is really beyond the pale.
But beyond all the hoopla, a closer look at the role of assasination in American politics may be in order. Sometimes, it seems our best leaders, the ones who try to buck the system, are the ones who get killed. Think about Lincoln, the Kennedy's, Martin Luther King. All were strong leaders who were willing to stand up for their beliefs come what may. In this respect, Senator Obama, and his campaign to transcend partisanship, and fight vested interests, seems to be particularly vulnerable.
My hope, and we can only hope, is that the science of personal protection in the 21st century has become largely foolproof. There were no serious assasination attempts against Bill Clinton or either of the Bush presidencies, and I believe improved secret service techniques may be credited for that.
Of course, Senator Clinton was right to apologize for her statement, and she seemed genuinely contrite about the situation. Again, she is better than her campaign as many of the staff members are now trying to take the offensive and blame Obama for the controversy. Hillary should keep doing what her heart tells herself instead of listening to those clueless campaign consultants.
If she had done so from the beginning, she would have received the Democratic nomination herself. It was only at the behest of advisors on political positioning, that a woman had to appear strong to be trusted as Commander-in-Chief, that she cast that vote for the Iraq war in the first place.
Tuesday, May 27, 2008
Saturday, May 17, 2008
Politics and Public Relations
As the Democratic campaign season winds down to a close, and there is a lull before the full-throated fall contest, it may be useful to look back at the role public relations and campaign strategy played in the primaries. As the owner of a PR firm (see Cut-It-Out Communications, Inc.), I am particularly sensitive to the relationship between empirical facts and image, or spin.
Hillary Clinton and her campaign made two fundamental miscalculations leading to their current demise. The first was her attempt to look strong as a potential commander-in-chief by voting for the war in Iraq. The idea was to counterattack any attempt to portray her as a woman, inherently unable to send soldiers to their death.
The result of this vote, and her subsequent refusal to apologize for it, gave impetus to her opponents in the early stages of the campaign. She wanted to project a strong image, and it was the wrong one to emphasize given the bent of the activist base of the Democratic Party. She adopted a general election stance, assuming the nomination was hers.
The second failure involved campaign strategy, and that was to adopt a theme of experience (I'll be ready on day one!) when the voters were primarily hungry for change. She was pre-empted on the "change" message by Barack Obama and could never get it back despite some belated efforts to do so.
Hillary Clinton was much better than the campaign she ran. She tried to create a PR persona of strength and experience when the voters wanted peace and change. As a result, Barack Obama was able to outflank her almost every step of the way and built a remarkable organizational structure to win the caucuses, the fulcrum in deciding the contest. In fact, Hillary Clinton was the one who had all the organizational advantages, but her campaign's focus on incorrect images led to their dissipation.
Hillary Clinton and her campaign made two fundamental miscalculations leading to their current demise. The first was her attempt to look strong as a potential commander-in-chief by voting for the war in Iraq. The idea was to counterattack any attempt to portray her as a woman, inherently unable to send soldiers to their death.
The result of this vote, and her subsequent refusal to apologize for it, gave impetus to her opponents in the early stages of the campaign. She wanted to project a strong image, and it was the wrong one to emphasize given the bent of the activist base of the Democratic Party. She adopted a general election stance, assuming the nomination was hers.
The second failure involved campaign strategy, and that was to adopt a theme of experience (I'll be ready on day one!) when the voters were primarily hungry for change. She was pre-empted on the "change" message by Barack Obama and could never get it back despite some belated efforts to do so.
Hillary Clinton was much better than the campaign she ran. She tried to create a PR persona of strength and experience when the voters wanted peace and change. As a result, Barack Obama was able to outflank her almost every step of the way and built a remarkable organizational structure to win the caucuses, the fulcrum in deciding the contest. In fact, Hillary Clinton was the one who had all the organizational advantages, but her campaign's focus on incorrect images led to their dissipation.
Saturday, May 10, 2008
The Legacy of Senator Clinton's Campaign
The article below describes the real glass ceiling Senator Clinton has broken in her valiant effort.
The New York Times
May 9, 2008
Op-Ed Contributor
The Fight Stuff
By SUSAN FALUDI
San Francisco
NOTABLE in the Indiana and North Carolina primary results and in many recent polls are signs of a change in the gender weather: white men are warming to Hillary Clinton — at least enough to vote for her. It’s no small shift. These men have historically been her fiercest antagonists. Their conversion may point less to a new kind of male voter than to a new kind of female vote-getter.
Pundits have been quick to attribute the erosion in Barack Obama’s white male support to a newfound racism. What they have failed to consider is the degree to which white male voters witnessing Senator Clinton’s metamorphosis are being forced to rethink precepts they’ve long held about women in American politics.
For years, the prevailing theory has been that white men are often uneasy with female politicians because they can’t abide strong women. But if that’s so, why haven’t they deserted Senator Clinton? More particularly, why haven’t they deserted her as she has become ever more pugnacious in her campaign?
Maybe the white male electorate just can’t abide strong women whom they suspect of being of a certain sort. To adopt a particularly lamentable white male construct, the sports metaphor, political strength comes in two varieties: the power of the umpire, who controls the game by application of the rules but who never gets hit; and the power of the participant, who has no rules except to hit hard, not complain, bounce back and endeavor to prevail in the end.
For virtually all of American political history, the strong female contestant has been cast not as the player but the rules keeper, the purse-lipped killjoy who passes strait-laced judgment on feral boy fun. The animosity toward the rules keeper is fueled by the suspicion that she (and in American life, the regulator is inevitably coded feminine, whatever his or her sex) is the agent of people so privileged that they don’t need to fight, people who can dominate more decisively when the rules are decorous. American political misogyny is inflamed by anger at this clucking overclass: who are they to do battle by imposing rectitude instead of by actually doing battle?
The specter of the prissy hall monitor is, in part, the legacy of the great female reformers of Victorian America. In fact, these women were the opposite of fainting flowers. Susan B. Anthony barely flinched in the face of epithets, hurled eggs and death threats. Carry A. Nation swung an ax. Yet they were regarded by men as the regulators outside the game. Indeed, many 19th-century female reformers defined themselves that way — as reluctant trespassers in the public sphere who had left the domestic circle only to fulfill their duty as the morally superior sex, housekeepers scouring away a nation’s vice.
While the populace might concede the merits of the female reformers’ cause, it found them repellent on a more glandular level. In that visceral subbasement of the national imagination — the one that underlies all the blood-and-guts sports imagery our culture holds so dear — the laurels go to the slugger who ignores the censors, the outrider who navigates the frontier without a chaperone.
Certainly through the many early primaries, Hillary Clinton was often defined by these old standards, and judged harshly. She was forever the entitled chaperone. But that was then. As Thelma, the housewife turned renegade, says to her friend in “Thelma & Louise” as the two women flee the law through the American West, “Something’s crossed over in me.”
Senator Clinton might well say the same. In the final stretch of the primary season, she seems to have stepped across an unstated gender divide, transforming herself from referee to contender.
What’s more, she seems to have taken to her new role with a Thelma-like relish. We are witnessing a female competitor delighting in the undomesticated fray. Her new no-holds-barred pugnacity and gleeful perseverance have revamped her image in the eyes of begrudging white male voters, who previously saw her as the sanctioning “sivilizer,” a political Aunt Polly whose goody-goody directives made them want to head for the hills.
It’s the unforeseen precedent of an unprecedented candidacy: our first major female presidential candidate isn’t doing what men always accuse women of doing. She’s not summoning the rules committee over every infraction. (Her attempt to rewrite the rules for Michigan and Florida are less a timeout than rough play.) Not once has she demanded that the umpire stop the fight. Indeed, she’s asking for more unregulated action, proposing a debate with no press-corps intermediaries.
If anyone has been guarding the rules this election, it’s been the press, which has been primly thumbing the pages of Queensberry and scolding her for being “ruthless” and “nasty,” a “brawler” who fights “dirty.”
But while the commentators have been tut-tutting, Senator Clinton has been converting white males, assuring them that she’s come into their tavern not to smash the bottles, but to join the brawl.
Deep in the American grain, particularly in the grain of white male working-class voters, that is the more trusted archetype. Whether Senator Clinton’s pugilism has elevated the current race for the nomination is debatable. But the strategy has certainly remade the political world for future female politicians, who may now cast off the assumption that when the going gets tough, the tough girl will resort to unilateral rectitude. When a woman does ascend through the glass ceiling into the White House, it will be, in part, because of the race of 2008, when Hillary Clinton broke through the glass floor and got down with the boys.
Susan Faludi is the author of “Backlash,” “Stiffed” and “The Terror Dream: Fear and Fantasy in Post-9/11 America.”
The New York Times
May 9, 2008
Op-Ed Contributor
The Fight Stuff
By SUSAN FALUDI
San Francisco
NOTABLE in the Indiana and North Carolina primary results and in many recent polls are signs of a change in the gender weather: white men are warming to Hillary Clinton — at least enough to vote for her. It’s no small shift. These men have historically been her fiercest antagonists. Their conversion may point less to a new kind of male voter than to a new kind of female vote-getter.
Pundits have been quick to attribute the erosion in Barack Obama’s white male support to a newfound racism. What they have failed to consider is the degree to which white male voters witnessing Senator Clinton’s metamorphosis are being forced to rethink precepts they’ve long held about women in American politics.
For years, the prevailing theory has been that white men are often uneasy with female politicians because they can’t abide strong women. But if that’s so, why haven’t they deserted Senator Clinton? More particularly, why haven’t they deserted her as she has become ever more pugnacious in her campaign?
Maybe the white male electorate just can’t abide strong women whom they suspect of being of a certain sort. To adopt a particularly lamentable white male construct, the sports metaphor, political strength comes in two varieties: the power of the umpire, who controls the game by application of the rules but who never gets hit; and the power of the participant, who has no rules except to hit hard, not complain, bounce back and endeavor to prevail in the end.
For virtually all of American political history, the strong female contestant has been cast not as the player but the rules keeper, the purse-lipped killjoy who passes strait-laced judgment on feral boy fun. The animosity toward the rules keeper is fueled by the suspicion that she (and in American life, the regulator is inevitably coded feminine, whatever his or her sex) is the agent of people so privileged that they don’t need to fight, people who can dominate more decisively when the rules are decorous. American political misogyny is inflamed by anger at this clucking overclass: who are they to do battle by imposing rectitude instead of by actually doing battle?
The specter of the prissy hall monitor is, in part, the legacy of the great female reformers of Victorian America. In fact, these women were the opposite of fainting flowers. Susan B. Anthony barely flinched in the face of epithets, hurled eggs and death threats. Carry A. Nation swung an ax. Yet they were regarded by men as the regulators outside the game. Indeed, many 19th-century female reformers defined themselves that way — as reluctant trespassers in the public sphere who had left the domestic circle only to fulfill their duty as the morally superior sex, housekeepers scouring away a nation’s vice.
While the populace might concede the merits of the female reformers’ cause, it found them repellent on a more glandular level. In that visceral subbasement of the national imagination — the one that underlies all the blood-and-guts sports imagery our culture holds so dear — the laurels go to the slugger who ignores the censors, the outrider who navigates the frontier without a chaperone.
Certainly through the many early primaries, Hillary Clinton was often defined by these old standards, and judged harshly. She was forever the entitled chaperone. But that was then. As Thelma, the housewife turned renegade, says to her friend in “Thelma & Louise” as the two women flee the law through the American West, “Something’s crossed over in me.”
Senator Clinton might well say the same. In the final stretch of the primary season, she seems to have stepped across an unstated gender divide, transforming herself from referee to contender.
What’s more, she seems to have taken to her new role with a Thelma-like relish. We are witnessing a female competitor delighting in the undomesticated fray. Her new no-holds-barred pugnacity and gleeful perseverance have revamped her image in the eyes of begrudging white male voters, who previously saw her as the sanctioning “sivilizer,” a political Aunt Polly whose goody-goody directives made them want to head for the hills.
It’s the unforeseen precedent of an unprecedented candidacy: our first major female presidential candidate isn’t doing what men always accuse women of doing. She’s not summoning the rules committee over every infraction. (Her attempt to rewrite the rules for Michigan and Florida are less a timeout than rough play.) Not once has she demanded that the umpire stop the fight. Indeed, she’s asking for more unregulated action, proposing a debate with no press-corps intermediaries.
If anyone has been guarding the rules this election, it’s been the press, which has been primly thumbing the pages of Queensberry and scolding her for being “ruthless” and “nasty,” a “brawler” who fights “dirty.”
But while the commentators have been tut-tutting, Senator Clinton has been converting white males, assuring them that she’s come into their tavern not to smash the bottles, but to join the brawl.
Deep in the American grain, particularly in the grain of white male working-class voters, that is the more trusted archetype. Whether Senator Clinton’s pugilism has elevated the current race for the nomination is debatable. But the strategy has certainly remade the political world for future female politicians, who may now cast off the assumption that when the going gets tough, the tough girl will resort to unilateral rectitude. When a woman does ascend through the glass ceiling into the White House, it will be, in part, because of the race of 2008, when Hillary Clinton broke through the glass floor and got down with the boys.
Susan Faludi is the author of “Backlash,” “Stiffed” and “The Terror Dream: Fear and Fantasy in Post-9/11 America.”
Monday, May 5, 2008
10 Reasons to Vote for Hillary based on the Gas Tax Debate
Why should the citizens of Indiana and North Carolina vote for Hillary Clinton tomorrow based on her call for temporary suspension of the federal gas tax? Here's a few reasons:
1) It demonstrates a real understanding of the plight of the working class where even $20 more at the end of the month helps ends meet and puts food on the table.
2) There is no reason for opposition to the tax if it is paid for by a windfall profits tax on the oil companies.
3) It does not prohibit or interfere with longterm solutions. In fact, many of these solutions, such as "green" jobs have been already proposed by Hillary.
4) Senator Obama has not proposed any other plan to reduce gas prices.
5) Targeted industries, such as truckers, suffer disproportianately from high gas taxes.
6) High gas prices increase the cost of food.
7) It represents a first step towards reducing gas prices and may be reinforced by other actions such as tapping the Strategic Oil Reserve.
8) It represents a reversal or a complement to our other tax policies, primarily aimed to benefit the rich.
9) The psychological benefit will boost the economy.
10) It will promote family outings during the summer driving season.
Finally, there is a clear, pronounced difference between the two candidates, so your vote will make a difference.
1) It demonstrates a real understanding of the plight of the working class where even $20 more at the end of the month helps ends meet and puts food on the table.
2) There is no reason for opposition to the tax if it is paid for by a windfall profits tax on the oil companies.
3) It does not prohibit or interfere with longterm solutions. In fact, many of these solutions, such as "green" jobs have been already proposed by Hillary.
4) Senator Obama has not proposed any other plan to reduce gas prices.
5) Targeted industries, such as truckers, suffer disproportianately from high gas taxes.
6) High gas prices increase the cost of food.
7) It represents a first step towards reducing gas prices and may be reinforced by other actions such as tapping the Strategic Oil Reserve.
8) It represents a reversal or a complement to our other tax policies, primarily aimed to benefit the rich.
9) The psychological benefit will boost the economy.
10) It will promote family outings during the summer driving season.
Finally, there is a clear, pronounced difference between the two candidates, so your vote will make a difference.
Tuesday, April 29, 2008
A Different Take on Reverend Jeremiah Wright
I'm not a conspiracy theorist, but I do have a significantly different take on Reverend Jeremiah Wright than those currently being disseminated on cable-TV and mainstream news media. Pastor Wright is nobody's fool, and his media tour, including Bill Moyer's Journal and the National Press Club in Washington, D.C., involves a shrewd calculation to help his congregant, Barack Obama.
Any pastor is immersed in the watchword of Christianity, "Do unto others as you would have them do unto you," and if Reverend Wright thought the publicity generated by his media tour would hurt Senator Obama, he never would have undertaken it. He knows that he is dredging up an issue that was fading away, and as a Christian, he would have willingly suffered persecution and mis-representation for the sake of someone else, as that is the model Jesus left for us.
No, Pastor Wright made a conscious decision to unfreeze the current situation, albeit without Senator Obama's coordination. The loop of his anti-American snippets had become embedded in our collective consciousness, and Mr. Obama was firmly linked to it. By re-opening the issue, and making more outrageous statements in the process, Revered Wright showed how helpless the Obama campaign was to control his actions. This effectively unlinked his congregant from the 30-second excerpts, and though it may cause some additional short-term damage to Senator Obama, in the long run, it will do him a world of good.
At the same time, of course, Pastor Wright is defending himself, but he would never sacrifice the possibility of the first black President for his own reputation. Just ponder the situation. Reverend Wright has been a public figure in the church for years, and his community outreach is widely acclaimed. He has been following the political debate as closely as anyone, and the most logical explanation for his behavior involves self-sacrifice not aggrandizement.
Any pastor is immersed in the watchword of Christianity, "Do unto others as you would have them do unto you," and if Reverend Wright thought the publicity generated by his media tour would hurt Senator Obama, he never would have undertaken it. He knows that he is dredging up an issue that was fading away, and as a Christian, he would have willingly suffered persecution and mis-representation for the sake of someone else, as that is the model Jesus left for us.
No, Pastor Wright made a conscious decision to unfreeze the current situation, albeit without Senator Obama's coordination. The loop of his anti-American snippets had become embedded in our collective consciousness, and Mr. Obama was firmly linked to it. By re-opening the issue, and making more outrageous statements in the process, Revered Wright showed how helpless the Obama campaign was to control his actions. This effectively unlinked his congregant from the 30-second excerpts, and though it may cause some additional short-term damage to Senator Obama, in the long run, it will do him a world of good.
At the same time, of course, Pastor Wright is defending himself, but he would never sacrifice the possibility of the first black President for his own reputation. Just ponder the situation. Reverend Wright has been a public figure in the church for years, and his community outreach is widely acclaimed. He has been following the political debate as closely as anyone, and the most logical explanation for his behavior involves self-sacrifice not aggrandizement.
Monday, April 21, 2008
Obama/Clinton versus Carter/Kennedy
As the media continues to drive the story for an ultimate victory by Barack Obama, it is instructive to look at the dynamics of some previous Democratic primaries.
Ted Kennedy, a media darling, contested the Democratic nomination against sitting President Jimmy Carter and was much further behind in pledged delegates than Hillary Clinton. Yet he rolled into the convention as a major force, with victories on the Democratic platform, raucous demonstrations and inspiring speeches.
Hillary Clinton is around 100 delegates behind out of a total of more than 4,000. The race is NOT statistically, or even practically, over as Barack Obama cannot reach the total required without superdelegate votes. If Kennedy was allowed to continue his campaign, shouldn't Hillary be granted the same courtesy?
Yet it is precisely because of the influence she is wielding, that everyone is pushing the story about getting her out of the race. And with the dynamics of round-the-clock cable coverage, they may just succeed at doing so.
But the underlying reality must be faced. Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton has captured the hearts of around half of the Democratic Party, and that must be acknowledged in some way to satisfy her supporters.
Ted Kennedy, a media darling, contested the Democratic nomination against sitting President Jimmy Carter and was much further behind in pledged delegates than Hillary Clinton. Yet he rolled into the convention as a major force, with victories on the Democratic platform, raucous demonstrations and inspiring speeches.
Hillary Clinton is around 100 delegates behind out of a total of more than 4,000. The race is NOT statistically, or even practically, over as Barack Obama cannot reach the total required without superdelegate votes. If Kennedy was allowed to continue his campaign, shouldn't Hillary be granted the same courtesy?
Yet it is precisely because of the influence she is wielding, that everyone is pushing the story about getting her out of the race. And with the dynamics of round-the-clock cable coverage, they may just succeed at doing so.
But the underlying reality must be faced. Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton has captured the hearts of around half of the Democratic Party, and that must be acknowledged in some way to satisfy her supporters.
Tuesday, April 15, 2008
Democrats Acting Like Republicans
Republicans are famous for avoiding debates on the issues and instead distorting statements by opposing candidates or mischaracterizing their personality.
Last week, we saw two examples of this approach by Democrats. As the media magnified Hillary Clinton's statements about sniper fire in Bosnia, Barack Obama stayed mute, letting the drama play out. Hillary's plane did undergo a jarring emergency landing, and everyone acknowledges there were snipers in the hills. But as the media pushed the story of her "exaggeration" ad nauseum, Mr. Obama should have entered into the fray and said the issue was a non-starter; we should be debating national healthcare, Iraq and the economy instead. If he had done so, he would have been seen as a gentleman and the "new type" of politician he claims himself to be. Instead, he let the story play out with no comment.
The second example, Mr. Obama's characterization of "small town" voters has been distorted to portray him as an "elitist" and "anti-religion." I do not believe this is Senator Clinton's doing. Rather, it is a vestige of the type of campaign organized by Mark Penn who had a decided inclination to go negative, a self-destructive policy if there ever was one. This tactic will not rebound to her campaign's credit in the long run.
It is regrettable that Senator Clinton's advisors have chosen this course of action. The campaign is most successful when they just let Senator Clinton be Senator Clinton, not a typical pol who is behind in the race. As an example, think about the results in New Hampshire, when Senator Clinton found her "voice." The current approach is not Senator Clinton's true voice; it is not the type of person she is, a caring, forgiving, compassionate type. Every time, she yields to her political advisors, she suffers a setback.
Finally, what's going on with Bill Clinton? Bringing up the Bosnia story again when it was about to die down...I don't think this was such a big mistake as the media says it was. The characterization of her "stretching" the truth was out there and accepted, uncontested. Even though the news stories about it were decreasing, it had to be addressed. President Clinton's "blunder" meant that his entire statement was promulgated, about how the news media went crazy about this non-issue, and it also re-introduced the theory about bias in the news media against Senator Clinton and in favor of Barack Obama. This is not a bad thing.
Last week, we saw two examples of this approach by Democrats. As the media magnified Hillary Clinton's statements about sniper fire in Bosnia, Barack Obama stayed mute, letting the drama play out. Hillary's plane did undergo a jarring emergency landing, and everyone acknowledges there were snipers in the hills. But as the media pushed the story of her "exaggeration" ad nauseum, Mr. Obama should have entered into the fray and said the issue was a non-starter; we should be debating national healthcare, Iraq and the economy instead. If he had done so, he would have been seen as a gentleman and the "new type" of politician he claims himself to be. Instead, he let the story play out with no comment.
The second example, Mr. Obama's characterization of "small town" voters has been distorted to portray him as an "elitist" and "anti-religion." I do not believe this is Senator Clinton's doing. Rather, it is a vestige of the type of campaign organized by Mark Penn who had a decided inclination to go negative, a self-destructive policy if there ever was one. This tactic will not rebound to her campaign's credit in the long run.
It is regrettable that Senator Clinton's advisors have chosen this course of action. The campaign is most successful when they just let Senator Clinton be Senator Clinton, not a typical pol who is behind in the race. As an example, think about the results in New Hampshire, when Senator Clinton found her "voice." The current approach is not Senator Clinton's true voice; it is not the type of person she is, a caring, forgiving, compassionate type. Every time, she yields to her political advisors, she suffers a setback.
Finally, what's going on with Bill Clinton? Bringing up the Bosnia story again when it was about to die down...I don't think this was such a big mistake as the media says it was. The characterization of her "stretching" the truth was out there and accepted, uncontested. Even though the news stories about it were decreasing, it had to be addressed. President Clinton's "blunder" meant that his entire statement was promulgated, about how the news media went crazy about this non-issue, and it also re-introduced the theory about bias in the news media against Senator Clinton and in favor of Barack Obama. This is not a bad thing.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
