In the middle of an Albuquerque subdivision, a sixty something, grizzle bearded gentleman in a small brick house frowned to see the VOTE VOTE VOTE VOTE doorhanger I had handed him until I said "Just a reminder about voting in the election." He looked up, smiled mildly and said, "I always vote. Thanks for your efforts." As I turned away, looking at my printout to check the next address, he was saying to someone inside, "I always read up and carefully decide..." Was he saying this because he was going to vote against the Democratic slate or was he defending his reasons for voting for it? Was he objecting to being told what he knew perfectly well?
There was no time to find out, to discuss, to consider. We are in practical mode here. We have no choice but to do the work that has been defined over the course of decades of development. GOTV does work and does make the margin of difference. But...
A contradiction is a situation in which opposite observations can be true simultaneously. GOTV is a strength of the Democratic Party and most assures its grassroots orientation. But I wonder if it also gets in the way of thinking deeply. I wonder if a better ability to deeply engage in a national dialogue wouldn't produce better results over the long run if we could invest some effort to find a way to develop such a thing.
The first time I got involved in GOTV campaigning was about 30 years ago. After this much time, after many elections over the decades I have been asking more and more, where are we going?
It takes time to see the bigger picture and I am more and more concerned that considering this is beside the point.
If you want to find someone to talk to about tis, you find that no one has time- especially those who are in charge of strategic thinking.
When you find yourself participating in top level strategy sessions, with the candidates and consultants and the brainiest of the brainy, when the door is closed to the amateurs and volunteers, the thinking is not about the big picture and the long run over decades, how history leads to a future. Instead it is more like a huddle among football coaches with the game on the field and the scoreboard with time left to play the only issue that matters. Well, that's a campaign.
The problem is that societal leadership is not possible without every item of consideration viewed in the light of campaign thinking. Who is responsible for thinking outside this box? Possibly no one.
Elected leaders have to be keenly aware, if they want to succeed, of a very narrowly defined balancing act required of them that might as well be a tight wire over a waterfalls. Actually, that would be easier. That would be clearer. In our time, we don't even have a metaphor we can all agree on.
The media has to be brought into it at this point. Whatever you really thik, no words in public or into a microphone can be uttered without acute awareness of two different realities that we live in.
This is why political PR is a specialized skill set and why producers of TV commercials are so insanely well paid. It is a level of literacy equivalent to the ability to write movie scripts or award winning broadways plays, except that it is a different outlook, absolutely committed to winning a battle with the singleminded focus of a military effort. Words like "campaign," "strategy," "tactics," "objective," are derived from military history and this is not accidental or metaphorical.
Most people can't identify why it is that politics is irritating or why people in public life sound like they might be hiding something or lying.
This is because there is practically no way that the media will allow anyone to "let their hair down" and just brainstorm or think out loud. That would make anyone who engages in it vulnerable to the "gotcha" quote game that can destroy what many have worked their whole lives to achieve.
Because of this, the discussion about what is important has been reduced to a "Punch and Judy" show that bears only some resemblance to reality.
In a time when our problems are global and complex and potentially dangerous on a massive scale, it is a supreme irony that great communication power exists and yet actually prevents profound deliberation.
So as I walk along neighborhood streets with Halloween decorations creating a gayly black and orange atmosphere, I just try to walk as quickly as possible. I am just glad that two noisy pickup trucks following each other have prevented an apparently irritable pit bull dog from crossing the street just when I am passing.
He goes back to sleep and I go on to the next block.