Wednesday, November 03, 2004
The wrong lesson
But if you're dissatisfied with Bush—or if, like me, you think he's been the worst president in memory—you have a lot of explaining to do. Why don't a majority of voters agree with us? How has Bush pulled it off?
I think this is the answer: Simplicity, simplicity, simplicity.
Bush is a very simple man. You may think that makes him a bad president, as I do, but lots of people don't—and there are more of them than there are of us. If you don't believe me, take a look at those numbers on your TV screen.
Think about the simplicity of everything Bush says and does. He gives the same speech every time. His sentences are short and clear. "Government must do a few things and do them well," he says. True to his word, he has spent his political capital on a few big ideas: tax cuts, terrorism, Iraq. Even his electoral strategy tonight was powerfully simple: Win Florida, win Ohio, and nothing else matters. All those lesser states—Michigan, Minnesota, Wisconsin, New Hampshire—don't matter if Bush reels in the big ones.
Saleton's advice:
If you're a Democrat, here's my advice. Do what the Republicans did in 1998. Get simple. Find a compelling salesman and get him ready to run for president in 2008. Put aside your quibbles about preparation, stature, expertise, nuance, and all that other hyper-sophisticated garbage that caused you to nominate Kerry.
This is the absurd struggle of a Bush-hater trying to square his religious belief -- that Bush is stupid -- with the results of the election. Saleton believes that because Bush communicates simply he is in fact simple. Or maybe Bush is just an effective executive. Anybody who has run a large organization well, even an organization of very smart people, knows that all the static of the world that distracts at every moment will block or distort complex communications, confuse your people and demotivate the troops. Jack Welch ran an immense organization of very smart people, and succeeded because he communicated complicated ideas in fundamental, simple terms. This is not a bug in an executive, it is a feature. It is an absolute requirement in an America's chief executive. The Democrats no longer understand this because the national elite of their party is dominated by lawyers, professors and journalists, people who love complexity in communication and deploy it daily in their jobs.
In offering his advice to Democrats, Saleton forgets that this country twice elected Bill Clinton, a smart and nuanced man who communicates very simply and clearly. Americans would have elected him again tonight. Kerry's bug is not his complexity or his nuance, it is his personal obsession with communicating every little twisting anxiety in his brain. Nobody wants to hear such a tangle, and the compulsion to express it is a fatal trait in a successful executive. Our presidents need to be complicated, but speak simply. It is the only way to lead 300 million people.
7 Comments:
By 
, at
Wed Nov 03, 08:53:00 AM:
I made this point over and over and over again...
All the "smart people" misunderestimated the Shrub.
Again. They're not looking so smart now, are they.
One of the hallmarks of an intelligent person is the ability to express complex ideas in simple terms.
This doesn't mean you're an idiot. It may in fact mean you understand the concept well enough to dispense with extraneous claptrap and pare your prose down to the essentials.
What a concept.
I read several articles in the NY Times and WaPo that suggested that Kerry, like Carter, was unable to do precisely that. He gets bogged down in details.
He spent 4 weeks deciding whether to put an American flag on his campaign logo, ferChrissakes, but couldn't find time to attend national security briefings. This is a man awash in trivia, like Carter, who read every single thing that crossed his desk.
This is not effective time or information management. That is not an effective Executive.
It doesn't strike me as particularly intelligent, either.
How intelligent is it, not to be able to set overarching priorities?
Just asking...
There is such a thing as being overeducated. Take it from someone who got into an Ivy League school, attended, dropped out (not because of grades), went back to school as an adult, and found that an awful lot of those people (and this isn't aimed at you, Jack) think they are smarter - and better - than everyone else. That's a big part of why I left school. But in truth, they are not living in the real world.
They are enamored of the abstract. Pardon me if I prefer the concrete. The abstract is interesting, but it's the concrete that comes up and bites one in the a**.
By , at
Wed Nov 03, 08:54:00 AM:
Sorry, that last was me :)
Cassandra
By 
TigerHawk, at
Wed Nov 03, 10:16:00 AM:
Thanks for the nice comment, Cassandra! Congratulations.
By , at
Wed Nov 03, 11:07:00 AM:
It's Marketing 101. Come up with the right message or two, or three and then repeat it. Repeat it over and over - until you're sick of it, like the beating of a drum, because it takes 16-18 times to sink into the conscience of the average human.
Many marketing initiatives fail, not because they are bad, but because the "marketing people" get tired of hearing their message or they don't think its working (or their agency wants to make more dough so they suggest a new campaign) SO THEY CHANGE THEIR MESSAGE just before the average human is starting to hear it - and then message never makes an impact. Or, in Kerry's case, you just keep adding more and more messages, instead of just focusing on the few key one.
When he came to the farm at the end of my block last week, I watched this "simple" guy say the same things and even though we had all heard it from him before, it was great to hear again becuase 1) It was live and 2)they were the right messages.
Way to go George. A+ for marketing to you and your republican team.
- Crusader
By , at
Wed Nov 03, 12:20:00 PM:
Well, I haven't the patience to read the full shrill rant by Saletan, particular since his sub-title is "why you keep losing to this idiot", but I will say that if Edwards is so desirable, why did they do so poorly in North and South Carolina (Edwards current and former homes)? And when is it that the left is going to figure out that if you keep accusing Southern folk of being not just less sophisticated and educated than your average Massachusetts resident, but downright ignorant, you will have a hard time carrying the vote?
I am tickled pink that Bush not only won a decisive victory, but that he carried over 50%, won the popular vote by 3.5 million, and sent Tom Daschle packing to boot.
Let's hope the next Presidential debate occurs around a broader basket of issues that concern all of us (like Social Security), and at a level of honesty that enables us to understand what they are and the need to make the tough choices. That is, of course, if President Bush doesn't solve them in the next 4.25 years.
By Gordon Smith, at
Wed Nov 03, 02:14:00 PM:
Jack,
Guess your prediction was wrong, eh? I'll bet it never felt so good to be wrong.
My morale is toileted for the moment. I will soon look to the future, the progressive future, of the Democratic Party (Howard Dean for DNC etc.), but for now I'm going to take a couple of days to soak it all in.
This is it for y'all though - no more using 9/11 and Bill Clinton as excuses for a poor economy. The Bushies now have to own everything. And we'll be all over you to make sure you do.
Angry, depressed, betrayed, driven - that's me today. Thanks for your civility.
By , at
Tue Oct 04, 12:19:00 AM:
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