To be successful in national politics, it’s necessary to be “all things to all people”, at least to some extent. And in the era of instant communication it’s hard to say one thing to one group and a different thing to another as politicians have traditionally done. So it’s become difficult to appeal to diverse groups.
But technology gives us the means to solve this problem, as Karl Rove has divined. I think I’ve cracked the code on this as well, but I don’t want to go into detail just yet.
How would you package a politician so that he (or she) appealed to diverse constituencies? You might have a better idea.
Okay, I’ll bite. From the recent election, it seemed that the winning formula was one of choosing a message and sticking to it no matter what evidence popped up to the contrary. A major aspect was the Bush mantra about Kerry’s ‘flipflopping’, which the president used over and over, and made no attempt to deal with any evidence to the contrary, or of his own intransigence. Of course, it was necessary to manage the audiences to this act, and that was done no matter what legal niceties were ignored in the process.
It has continued in the social security ‘forums’, but again the president himself is peculiarly cordoned off from any contact with any element that might question him … except that as the propoganda plays out in the press, it is not accepted now.
My own reading of the tactic itself is that Rove has chosen the constituency the president can depend on and cut off the rest. Seemingly, this has stifled dissent because it has been declared irrelevant. Also seemingly, it has become just that.
OK, but isn’t the trick to make the moderates think your candidate is one of them even though he panders to the exremes occasionally and to make the extremes think he’s one of them even though he panders to the moderates occasionally?
It doesn’t seem that one message does that, unless it’s very carefully crafted.
This has little to do with moderates versus extremists – although could be employed that way.
Ben Gurion solved this decades ago realizing that he needed to appeal to diverse constituencies to build national unity of the fledging nation.
He simply made statements that were ambiguous from a strict interpretation but were interpreted differently by different constituencies. He didn’t clarify his statements but allowed each group to assume he was keeping his word. He also avoided the contentious decisions that would reveal a betrayal. Perhaps this would be the perfect definition of a moderate.
As an example of how to do this regarding abortion: declare your complete support for the rights of women and children. Never support either side directly of the controversy. If a vote is forced in the legislature, state that you will not overturn the will of the people as expressed by their representatives.
Still awaiting your concept.
But:
As a good example of straddling all constituencies see the proposal to devote social security mainly to the lower income recipients. Nice.
Except that it still is being used as a front for ‘private’ accounts which are going to cost billions to institute.
Also see Great Britain’s attempt at this measure, which mired its system in incredible financial disaster. Glenn Frankel of WaPo did a good article on this “For Many It’s Back to the State”, containing the statement: “A carefully regulated privatization program can help they (experts) contend, but don’t expect it to solve the most fundamental problems.”