By Bradford Queen, Managing Editor, on Mon Nov 12, 2012 at 1:30 PM ET
You had to be buried in the sand if you didn’t hear the bombshell news of the weekend: David Petraeus, retired four-star general, resigned as director of the CIA following a lengthy affair with his biographer uncovered by an FBI investigation.
The Politics of Media
Petraeus’ exit came as a shock to many in Congress and it appears some (as high up as House Majority Leader Eric Cantor) did know of this affair and its possible — now real — ramifications. [Roll Call]
It wasn’t his first “affair.” Howard Kurtz said his first affair — “other seduction” — was with the press. [CNN]
Following strong election coverage, MSNBC is gaining ratings ground on Fox News. [NYT]
The Christian Science Monitor asks: “Is the death of newspapers the end of good citizenship?” [CSM]
Post-election infighting has begun on the right. Which sides will win out over the future of the GOP? [POLITICO]
By John Y. Brown III, on Mon Nov 12, 2012 at 12:00 PM ET
You are going to want more cow bell with that laptop.
Years ago in my MBA class I remember learning that the extra warranties that a certain unnamed tech store was offering customers had an 80% profit margin. They got sued and changed their policy—in part.
But since then I have never been able to bring myself to purchase one of these. You know the ones. You buy a new laptop and for another $150 the store provides an extended warranty on top of the manufactures warranty.
It’s always an awkward moment for me when I get to that point with the sales clerk. I know it’s coming. “Sir, have you heard about our extended safety coverage opportunity? It’s a great deal…”
I usually stop them and act like I don’t have the authority to make such an executive decision (either in my home; or my business, which I own). I say something like “I need to run it by my firm and let them decide. But not right now.”
But last night I had an unusually pushy sales clerk. After my standard response he said, “No. You can’t wait. It’s pretty much a point of purchase opportunity and that’s it.”
I shook my head and said, “I understand. I’ll just pass for now.”
And then after a pregnant pause I heard, “May I ask why you are not taking advantage of this offer? It’s really smart to do.”
“Huh?” I thought to myself. “Is he calling me stupid? Do I have to justify everything in the store I’m not buying today? Gee. Seems a little heavy handed. What could I say that would be clever but also make this point? Hmmmm. How about, “Look. I’m gonna come clean with you. I’m an idiot and need you to explain the warranty to me really slowly so I can understand this time.”
Or, “Look, I’m an adrenaline junkie and love to try to beat the odds in every area of my life—but especially with Bungie Jumping and with laptop warranties.”
And then I settled on it. “I think —if I hear you correctly—what you are trying to say….is to tell me, ‘Dude, you are going to want more cow bell. Am I right?” Hinting that the “good deal” warranty was about as helpful as a clanging cow bell in the background of a 70’s rock song.
But by this point the sales clerk had already walked away. And the only place I can share my somewhat clever– but way too late–quip is to post it today on Facebook.
Just hope he sees it. And get’s my cow bell reference.
We are proud to introduce our latest “reinvention” expert: Saul Kaplan. Saul is a nationally-recognized recognized expert on entrepreneurship and is the author of The Business Model Innovation Factory and founder and Chief Catalyst of the Business Innovation Factory. Saul’s column will be dedicated to advising members of the RP Nation who are in the midst of, or are considering, a second (or third, or fourth) act as an entrepreneur. Enjoy and learn:
Learn by doing. Constantly test new ideas. Learn, share and repeat. The world is ever changing — stay ahead of the curve. Embrace the art of discovery.
We need to try more stuff. Innovation is never about silver bullets. It’s about experimentation and doing whatever it takes, even if it means trying 1,000 things, to deliver value. Business model innovation requires a lot more experimentation than we are comfortable with today. Tweaking existing business models won’t work. Technology as a sustaining innovation may improve the efficiency of current business models but will not result in the transformation that we all want and need. We need to learn how to leverage technology for disruptive innovation and to experiment with new business models.
Geoffrey Canada, the inspiring founder of the Harlem Children’s Zone in NYC, reminds us of the importance of constant experimentation. Everyone wants to know the one thing that makes a program like Harlem Children’s Zone successful. What is the silver bullet that will allow the program to be replicated with ease across the country? We are always looking for an easy answer. There is no silver bullet and it is not easy to transform any business model or social system. According to Canada, at Harlem Children’s Zone it is doing 1,000 things with passion to help those children succeed. It is about focusing on the customer, in this case, the children within 100 city blocks in Harlem and doing what ever it takes to help them secure a bright future. There is no one thing.
Saul’s new book. Click on image to review and/or purchase
Business model innovation is all about experimentation. It is about combining and recombining capabilities from across silos until something clicks and value is delivered in a new way. It is never just one thing. It starts with a big idea that gets the juices flowing and attracts others with similar passion to the new approach. The big idea has to be translated from the white board on to a real world test bed to demonstrate that the idea is feasible. Starting small and demonstrating progress is key to building credibility and expanding a network of interested stakeholders. An ongoing portfolio of small-scale experiments to fail fast on those without merit and to prioritize those with the potential to scale is critical.
We also must get far more comfortable with hacking capabilities. Capabilities are the amino acids of innovation. They are the building blocks that enable value delivery. Innovation is a better way to deliver value and is often the result of repurposing existing capabilities. Locking capabilities into rigid organization structures and proprietary closed systems gets in the way of unleashing new sources of value and solving many of the important challenges of our time. Innovation is about hacking capabilities. Business model innovation happens when we enable random capability collisions resulting in new and unexpected ways to deliver value.
A good example of the power and potential of hacking capabilities is Microsoft’s (MSFT) Kinect. Microsoft introduced Kinect in November 2010 as a product extension to its Xbox franchise. Kinect adds a very cool capability for Xbox game players by getting rid of the hand held game controller and turning players into their own controllers. Microsoft and cool haven’t been used in the same sentence for a long time. Kinect is cool.
Microsoft predictably launched Kinect with it’s deeply ingrained proprietary product mind set. You could buy Kinect as a bundle with an Xbox or as a separate component to attach to an existing Xbox for $150. While Microsoft views Kinect as a product the global geek community views it as a capability. To geeks, Kinect is a powerful capability screaming to be hacked and repurposed for exciting new uses beyond its use as an Xbox extension. What a bargain for only $150. It’s a hackers dream.
And hack they will. A crowd of makers, programmers, roboticists, and other assorted and sundry geeks are having at it to explore what Kinect can enable beyond Microsoft’s initial intention. It’s only a matter of time before we see new gesture based applications and platforms. How about gesture based health care and education applications to start?
Read the rest of… Saul Kaplan: Experiment All the Time
By Michael Steele, on Mon Nov 12, 2012 at 8:20 AM ET
I am certain at some point during the past 18 months you found yourself feeling like that kid riding in the backseat of the family car on what is supposed to be the “great adventure” to “someplace special.” But the only thing you can muster after about 15 minutes is, “Are we there yet?” Well, kiddies, Tuesday night we arrived, and the trip that was Election 2012 was finally over.
When this journey started many of us had high hopes for an engaging battle of ideas, but what we got instead was more a battle of super PACs and their negative campaign ads. By the time of the first debate in early October, many voters were fed up and tuned out.
But a funny thing happened that night: President Obama finally got to meet Mitt Romney — not the caricature of the “rich white guy” or the plutocrat from, well, Pluto, but the husband and father, and the former governor of Massachusetts. It was this night, on the biggest stage of his political career, that Romney found his voice. He didn’t talk process or sound indifferent to the concerns of 47 percent of Americans, nor did he concern himself with the misdirection and bright shiny objects offered up by Democrats (e.g. campaign ads) but instead, looked every voter in the eye and talked to us with specifics and reminded us that we are not better off just because “it could be worse.”
Read the rest of… Michael Steele: Are We There Yet, GOP?
We welcome our newest contributing recovering politician to the RP: Steve Levy, who served as a Suffolk County Executive from 2004-2011, a New York State Assemblyman and was a Republican candidate for Governor of New York in 2010. Steve currently is President of Common Sense Strategies, a political, governmental and business consulting firm.
1. Occupy Wall Street
This movement, which started as a grassroots, diverse consortium of the disaffected and ultimately morphed into a cabal of old time anarchists and communists, is what gave Obama his sense of direction. Obama handlers knew there were few accomplishments to harp on, given the stagnant economy, but by focusing public anger on the 1%, they could help galvanize their base while also pointing the finger at the greedy rich folks they could claim were the cause of the mess they inherited.
2. The Greatest Convention Ever?
History will show the 2012 Democratic Convention as being the best of this century and possibly any convention over the last fifty years. It played to every constituency in the base, motivating them in difficult times and used President Clinton to lay the blame for today’s woes on the Bush administration. Romney could easily have accentuate the hypocrisy of Democrats blaming the current problems on the Bush administration. Economists agree that Bush policies had little to do with the crash of 2008. The culprit was the deregulation of Wall Street by repealing the Glass-Steagall Act in 1999, ironically signed by Democratic President Clinton. The Romney campaign allowed the Democrats to establish traction on the term “Don’t Go Back.”
3. Define Your Opponent Early
Politics 101 is to seek to define your opponent in a negative way as early as possible. Politics 101A is for the affected candidate to respond quickly and forcefully. The Democrats wisely adhered to the former strategy, while the Republicans ignored the latter to their detriment. In the lull after the Republican primary, the Democrats spent a good share of their money pummeling Romney, defining him through his association with Bain Capital. He became the out-sourcing, job cutting, detached Daddy Warbucks who could not identify with the average worker, It took away Romney’s narrative that he was the sharp businessman who knew how to fix the economy. Romney could easily have defended himself as being the saver of jobs. Staples, Sports Authority and other companies survived because of his intervention. The initial jobs that were lost after Bain’s acquisitions would have been lost anyway. By the time Romney finally sought to aggressively erase this caricature at the debate, it was too late.
Read the rest of… Steve Levy: Top Ten Game Changes of the 2012 Election
Well before Bill Clinton mastered the skill of political survival, and became the most consequential ex-president since Theodore Roosevelt, he pulled off a more pivotal achievement. Clinton essentially restored the Democratic Party as an electoral force by shoring up its credibility on fiscal policy, social policy, and race, and in so doing, he drew two crucial blocs firmly back into his party: blue collar whites and suburban professionals. The modern electoral map, which allots most of the industrial north and Midwest to Democrats and in which suburb-heavy states like California and New Jersey have not been contested in a generation, is the legacy of Clinton’s restoration project.
Republicans face a comparable predicament to the one pre-Clinton Democrats faced in the late eighties, and to compound the analogy, it is a challenge along roughly the same fronts with a very similar alignment of voter blocs. If Walter Mondale’s Democrats seemed wedded at the hip to their union benefactors, today’s Republicans seem just as tied to corporate lobbies or billionaires. If the party that nominated George McGovern seemed mired in the grip of left-leaning activists bent on a radical redesign of social policy, Republicans appear to be under the sway of one network and a bevy of factions who are just as bent on a counter-cultural revolution from the right. The combination of money and noise exerted veto power on late eighties Democrats, much as contemporary Republicans are constrained by their own base.
And the blue collars and suburbanites whom Clinton strategized over are the very same slices of the electorate that allowed Barack Obama to run the battleground table with the exception of North Carolina (whose unpopular Democratic governor and nine percent plus unemployment should have made a 2.5 point margin much more comfortable).
The particulars of the Clinton project are worth recalling. The adoption of welfare reform served as an antidote to voters who associated Democrats with the transfer of tax dollars to the irresponsible. The denunciation of a rapper for loose lyrics about police violence seemed to erase the pandering, excuse making side of the party’s DNA. The now forgotten middle class tax cut proposal may not have survived Clinton’s first budget cycle, but it did its job by linking his party to the economic fortunes of a group that hadn’t seemed needy enough to be a liberal priority.
My strong hope is that Republicans, my new party, are about to discover their Clinton instincts. Had those sensibilities surfaced in the last ninety days, Mitt Romney would likely be planning a transition now. It is not hard to imagine the impact of a well-timed denunciation of the Todd Akin/Richard Murdock mythologies on rape not as gaffes, but as wrong-headed efforts to have government substitute for the conscience and moral judgment of a victimized woman. A fleshed out plan to rescue homeowners underwater on ill-conceived mortgages would have reflected some of the smarter instincts in the conservative intelligentsia in the last several years, while paying dividends with voters who associated the GOP with the blocking of initiatives and little else. Grabbing and running with Senator Marco Rubio’s version of the Dream Act before Obama absconded with it would have made a difference in Florida and Colorado.
But the tactical missed chances by Romney’s operation are history. The current challenge is finding a GOP pathway to do on the right what Clinton did in the salvation of the left 20 years ago: first, restoring the party’s bona fides as an institution capable of thinking and governing and not just pawing under the commands of its base. Second, overcoming a resistance to smart, fiscally disciplined innovation and reform.
Read the rest of… Artur Davis: The New Republicans
By Nick Paleologos, on Fri Nov 9, 2012 at 3:00 PM ET
In their quest for the presidency, Barack Obama and Mitt Romney each spent a billion dollars. They debated each other three times in front of an average audience of 60 million Americans. In the process, they aired sharp differences on several major issues facing the country.
The people listened carefully.
On Tuesday November 6, 2012, Americans delivered their verdict.
They gave President Obama three million more popular votes–and 126 more electoral votes–than Governor Romney. By their votes, the American people settled the following questions:
1) National health care? YES. (Obamacare is here to stay.) 2) Tax cuts for the rich? NO. (Ryan Budget rejected.) 3) Roe v. Wade? YES. (Rape is never “legitimate.”) 4) Citizens United? NO. (Most expensive election ever.) 5)Balanced approach to deficit reduction? YES. (Grover Norquist sent packing.) 6) Privatize social security & medicare? NO. (Fix, don’t nix.) 7) More women in US Senate? YES. (Number climbs to 20–the highest ever.) 8) More Republicans in congress? NO. (GOP loses 2 seats in Senate, 5 in House.) 9) Bi-partisanship? YES.(Voters applaud Obama-Christie cooperation.) 10) Deregulation? NO. (Voters to top 1%: Greed is NOT good.) 11) Equal pay for equal work? YES. (Voters punish GOP for “war on women.”) 12) Self-deportation? NO. (Voters support sensible immigration reform instead.) Significantly, the proportion of young people voting in 2012 was up from 2008—as was the proportion of African-Americans and Latinos.
President Barack Obama–by virtue of 2 consecutive majority victories in the popular vote–is now the most successful Democratic presidential candidate since Franklin Roosevelt.
For a rare look into the man’s soul, I offer you this:
When all was said and done, this election did turn out to be 2004 again. A polarizing president with tepid approval ratings fended off a Massachusetts based challenger who proved surprisingly resilient, but whose tactical errors and vulnerabilities put an unbreakable ceiling on his appeal. The victory itself was a weirdly shaped bubble made partly of scaring up a base vote with ad hominem attacks on the persona and character of the opponent, and partly of one time, single issue alliances that lifted the beleaguered incumbent without gaining much for his ballot mates in his own party: In George W. Bush’s case, a same sex marriage ban that doubled the normal black Republican vote in Ohio, in Barack Obama’s, an adept use of Mitt Romney’s opposition to the automobile industry bailout to bolster Democratic white working class support in Ohio.
But winning in uninspiring form counts just as much as the grand sweeps like 1980 and 2008. The Republican Party’s defeat unmasks deep liabilities beyond the expected demographic shortcomings with Latinos and voters under 29 (who against all expectations, maintained their slice of the electorate at 2008 levels in the midst of an appalling job market for new college graduates). The electorate rejected Romney even in the face of exit polls showing that voters trusted Romney to handle the economy better than Obama; that they overwhelmingly viewed the economy as poor or mediocre; that they favored repeal of Obama’s signature healthcare initiative; and that they rejected Obama’s strategy of deficit reduction through tax increases.
The conservative base is smaller than it has been in three decades, with its share falling to 35% while liberals edged up to 24%, a narrowing advantage further diminished by the fact that about a fifth of that conservative base consists of blacks and Latinos who still overwhelmingly voted for Obama. The Republican conservative base seems perilously close to shrinking to white southern evangelicals, senior white males, and upper income Protestants.
That Obama more or less maintained the 2008 foundation of his victory, with the exception of North Carolina and Indiana, is especially striking given the weak-kneed nature of the Obama recovery and the fact that close to half the country now views the president, a figure once ascribed near mythical powers, in an unfavorable vein. One unavoidable conclusion is that the country’s skepticism toward the last four years was outweighed by a marginally wider distrust of what Republican rule would look like. Another is that the electorate’s affinity for individual elements of the Republican agenda never coalesced into their approval of a broader GOP governing vision.
Hence the seemingly conflicted choice to pair Obama with a Republican House that surrendered few members of its majority beyond districts with a history of Democratic strength. Keeping the House red preserves the check on the unpopular aspects of Obama’s rule, while electing Romney would have meant sanctioning a policy course that remained nebulous or disconcerting to many swing voters and moderates.
To be sure, a better crafted campaign would have filled in Romney’s policy goals more convincingly than the ritualistic invocation of five point plans and generic references to cutting regulation and producing more domestic energy. But that failure is not just a marketing flaw on the part of Romney’s ad men: it is a symptom of a modern conservatism that seems spent and resistant to innovation on some days, purely oppositional and reactive on other days. And the weightiest part of the recent conservative agenda, Paul Ryan’s budget plan, was barely mentioned and its details only intermittently defended. (The details of Ryan’s budget had their share of political pitfalls, but the scant attention to it by the Romney campaign surely contributed to the impression that the Republican wish list was being kept deliberately shadowy.)
The other risk for Republicans, as Fox News’ Britt Hume noted last night, is that the axis of gravity is shifting leftward, and that a center right electorate is more predisposed than ever to a view that equates conventional conservatism with a middle aged backwardness. The hardening of the Democratic edge in affluent Northern Virginia, the white professional female gender gap, and the historically poor Republican showing with Hispanics can all be linked to a value judgment about the insularity of the Republican coalition. It is not hard to imagine that Democrats will exploit their growing cultural edge by pushing harder on issues that seemed marginal a cycle ago, like a fifty state right of same sex marriage, or more aggressive regulation of faith based institutions.
Read the rest of… Artur Davis: The Republican Dilemma
By John Y. Brown III, on Fri Nov 9, 2012 at 12:00 PM ET
Ultimate Friday questions …..of life, the universe and everything.
Most are never solved.
A few–from time to time–can be approximated. We get a handle on them. But no more. That’s about the best we can hope for.
As we get older and wisdom replaces impatience and impertinence, we can even celebrate those moments when we merely approximate the ultimate truth of some timeless conundrum.
Recently, I had a momentary insight, a breakthrough, if you will on one such timeless question that had forever remained and enigmatic and unsolvable riddle to me.
You’ll recognize it instantly. As well as be reminded of the mind-numbing circles the question has put your mind through over the years.
“How much wood does a woodchuck chuck, if a woodchuck could chuck wood?”
My answer?
First, in the short run, it no longer matters because with the internet flattening our global economy there are now wood chucks on the other side of the world—hungry, talented and tireless wood chucks—who will do three times the work at a fraction of the pay. Making the American woodchuck more of a drain on our economy who will have to develop more diverse, creative and less routinized talents–just to survive.
The real question is what “value adds” and “intangible values” the American woodchuck can bring to his work in the future to even remain relevant. And as much as I don’t like even going there, we have to face the fact that most wood based products will soon be replaced by superior digital substitutes.
But now I’m over-thinking it.
I’m not saying this is “the answer.” I’m only saying it’s a approximate of “an answer.” But it’s something and will free our mind up to ponder other–even deeper–questions
Bradford Cummings — a former chairman of Louisville’s Republican Party, a leader in the Kentucky equine industry, and (I understand) the owner of a quite beautiful singing voice — published a very brave and poignant op-ed in today’s Louisville Courier-Journal that endorses marriage equality, as well as a general return to a more compassionate Grand Old Party. With his permission, we cross-post it here in whole:
It was about seven years ago that I witnessed an expression of love and devotion that has forever moved me. A dear friend had experienced complete kidney failure and needed an immediate organ donor. Without hesitation, his partner risked his own life to donate one of his two working kidneys. While I don’t see them much anymore, I know both have been given a clean bill of health. I still get choked up thinking about this story.
And yet, despite unequivocally expressing their love, these two cannot be celebrated equally with the many married couples in our society simply because they are of the same sex. The GOP must understand how important that inequality is to so many in our electorate.
Before this most recent Election Day, I believed that while gay marriage is an important issue, most people vote with their pocketbooks first. Logically, the Romney/Ryan ticket would have broad appeal, especially in this time of economic malaise. Mitt Romney, the turnaround artist, was a man uniquely created and placed here for this time in history.
And the exit polls show that most people agreed. Romney won on economic issues across the board and the American desire for smaller government was clearly communicated. But despite these advantages, the Republican nominee lost. Our country is shifting center/left on social issues. I miscalculated, and so did many others, by believing that when the ship is sinking social issues become less important.
But after some reflection, I see the error in that thinking. If the Southern Democrats of the 1860s or 1950s and 1960s, who were supportive of racist stances from segregation to slavery, were also the party of smaller government, I too would have had to vote against my economic ideals. Americans prefer limited government but not at the expense of limited social freedoms.
I also wonder exactly what we are fighting so hard to preserve. I’ve been pro-gay marriage for years but also respect that the original basis for marriage came from religious orthodoxy. Every day, I feel blessed to be married to my wife and our marriage grows stronger each year. But exactly how would that change if two men or two women held the same societal status?
The legalization of gay marriage wouldn’t force churches that disagree with homosexuality to perform marriage ceremonies or infringe on the rights of heterosexual couples. Marriage in our society has become a social contract first and should not be legally restrained through religious eyes. As a wise man once said to his followers, “Render unto Caesar what is Caesar’s.” I’m a follower of that man, but with the tax advantages and other benefits given to married couples in the United States, not allowing gay couples to participate immediately makes them a second-class citizenry.
But it’s not just the anti-gay marriage stance likely hurting Republicans in the future. While most people say they are pro-life personally, it is a simple reality the majority of Americans also want the option preserved and women especially find this to be a top priority. Personally, I find abortion as a form of birth control to be a sad and immoral act, while supporting the common exceptions of rape, incest and life of the mother. I tried to embrace a pro-choice stance in my youth, but could never get around the idea it’s ending a life. Despite this, sometimes you have to realize you are in the minority and work from within the existing realities.
Is my time better spent fighting a losing battle trying to end abortion in the United States and therefore risk losing every foreseeable national election? Or would I be better served to encourage other choices for unwanted pregnancies and not let this single issue derail the rest of my political ideology? It’s a tough one to swallow, but Republicans need to begin to ask themselves these difficult questions.
Read the rest of… Bradford Cummings: A GOP Leader Endorses Marriage Equality
