flights

I’ve just been reading some Jeff Jarvis’ recent posts about Senator Obama (like this one), and it’s a clear reminder that even a lot of smart people will ultimately cast their vote based on a general gut assessment of the candidates.

I don’t know where Jarvis sits on the political spectrum, but he dissects and parses Obama’s speech along all the same lines as the stream of other conservatives who criticized it. Jarvis makes it very clear that he doesn’t want to give Obama the benefit of the doubt – which is fair. But like the other pundits who criticized Obama’s speech, Jarvis takes some pains to manufacture the doubt.

The bottom line seems to be that people who see the world in very black and white terms (not speaking of race now) didn’t like Obama’s speech. Black and white thinkers need to push things toward one end of the spectrum or the other – a thing is either right or wrong, good or evil, us or them. These are the “J” types in Myers-Briggs. They wanted Obama to disown or denounce pastor Wright, because Wright is clearly a wrong-headed person.

Maybe conservatives tend to be “J” types, because conservatives tend to frame things this way. Tax cuts are good. Illegal immigrants are bad.  There’s an axis of evil, and these countries are part of it. Black and white thinkers don’t appreciate people who push things toward the middle, who try to highlight complexities and nuances. They think these people are weak, equivocating, slippery, untrustworthy.

Gray area thinkers are the “P” types in Myers-Briggs. We (yep, I’m a “P”) see black and white thinkers as crude, simple-minded, judgmental, prejudiced. We were exuberant in our praise of Obama’s speech because we’ve had eight years of Bush. Yes, we’ve had it. Had it with his brand of black and white thinking. It was refreshing to hear a politician talk about something in honest terms and not try to boil it down to right and wrong.

Obama loves a man who is deeply flawed. He has striven to understand the nature and origin of the man’s flaws.

Who among us is not flawed? Who among us hasn’t loved someone who is flawed? I don’t know about you “J” types out there, but we “P” folks understand that everyone is flawed.

My stepfather had a mean streak in him. He used to call me a “fag” (among other things) when he got angry, because I liked to draw and paint and cook, and because one of my high school buddies sported an earring. He pushed my mom around a couple of times. On the other hand, he taught me a lot, gave my family a lot.

He was a guy who’d had a really rough life in some ways, a guy who’d been deeply hurt and betrayed a few times. Understanding this about my stepfather helped me dismiss his verbal abuse and put it in its own box, so to speak. Should I have dismissed (or disowned) him and not just his abuse?

That’s not how love and family and friendships work. Anyone who thinks these things are black and white is kidding himself.

I didn’t see Obama’s landmark speech today, but I read the transcript. I admit I was moved by it, and although there was certainly a practical or tactical element to it – in the context of his presidential chances – I think it’s important to look past that and consider his actual words.

I wish CNN agreed. Unfortunately, the whole focus of their coverage was to discuss whether the speech would work, and by “work” they meant only whether it would put to rest questions around Obama’s association with pastor Jeremiah Wright. They used Rush Limbaugh’s response of all things, to raise doubts, as if Limbaugh’s response wasn’t determined before the speech was even made, as if Limbaugh at this point is anything more than a washed up, irrelevant joke on the outer fringes of the media, preaching to an ever-smaller choir.

They didn’t talk about whether the speech would “work” in the sense of whether it will remind us that individuals are complex, that the issue of race is complex, that none of this is black and white – in any sense of the phrase. They didn’t talk about whether the speech would “work” in the sense of whether it will help us shift our attention to more concrete and ultimately solvable issues like the economy, healthcare and the environment – where people of all races share the same concerns.

It’s bullshit cynical coverage CNN, and you will lose more and more of your young audience as long as you pollute the airwaves with this kind of crap. No amount of fancy touchscreen infographics and talk of “liveblogging” will change that fact.

“Dear Citizens of America,

In view of your failure to elect a competent President and thus to govern yourselves, we hereby give notice of the revocation of your independence, effective immediately.

Her Sovereign Majesty, Queen Elizabeth II, will resume monarchical duties over all states, commonwealths and other territories (except Kansas, which she does not fancy), as from Monday next…”

The headline caught my eye today on the Digg front page. I clicked, and the first few lines of what I read next were immediately familiar. A quick Google search confirmed that it originated in an email that was widely circulated just after Bush won (or didn’t, I suppose) the presidential election in 2000. I’m sure I received it more than once.

It’s also important to note that John Cleese did not actually author the letter.

No doubt it was submitted and voted up by thirteen-year-old kids who don’t remember much about the year 2000, like most everything else on Digg, although in their defense, the version of the supposed Cleese letter they so recently swarmed around has been updated by someone who changed Tony Blair to Gordon Brown.

None of this was lost on the larger Digg audience, who were typically merciless in their comments: “This letter was discovered in a fossilized pterodactyl nest,” said one MJ Dub.

The letter in question apparently originated on an internal newsgroup at the U.K. office of a multi-national company. It’s unclear who the original author is, but it quickly took on a life of its own and has undoubtedly drawn contributions from numerous people.

The earliest version I was able to find on the magic Internet is very brief, containing only four points:

London, 8th November 2000.
To the citizens of the United States of America,

Following your failure to elect either a half decent candidate or man-monkey as President of the USA to govern yourselves and, by extension, the free world, we hereby give notice of the revocation of your independence. Her Sovereign Majesty Queen Elizabeth II will resume a monarch’s duties over all states, commonwealths and other territories. To aid in the transition to a British Crown Dependency, please comply with1 the following acts:

1. Look up “revoke” in a dictionary
2. Learn at least the first 4 lines of “God save the Queen”
3. Start referring to “soccer” as football
4. Declare war on Quebec

Tax collectors from Her Majesty’s Government will be with you shortly to ensure the acquisition of all revenues due (backdated to 1776).

Thank you for your cooperation and…have a nice day!

Funny, but hardly rising to Cleese’s genius. Later revisions both tightened it and lengthened it considerably, however, and the incarnation that drew the recent flurry of Diggs goes like this (continuing from the quote at the top of this post):

Your new prime minister, Gordon Brown, will appoint a governor for America without the need for further elections. Congress and the Senate will be disbanded. A questionnaire may be circulated next year to determine whether any of you noticed.

To aid in the transition to a British Crown Dependency, the following rules are introduced with immediate effect:

1. You should look up “revocation” in the Oxford English Dictionary. Then look up “aluminium,” and check the pronunciation guide. You will be amazed at just how wrongly you have been pronouncing it.

2. The letter ‘U’ will be reinstated in words such as ‘colour’, ‘favour’ and ‘neighbour.’ Likewise, you will learn to spell ‘doughnut’ without skipping half the letters, and the suffix “ize” will be replaced by the suffix “ise.”

3. You will learn that the suffix ‘burgh’ is pronounced ‘burra’; you may elect to spell Pittsburgh as ‘Pittsberg’ if you find you simply can’t cope with correct pronunciation.

4. Generally, you will be expected to raise your vocabulary to acceptable levels (look up “vocabulary”). Using the same twenty-seven words interspersed with filler noises such as “like” and “you know” is an unacceptable and inefficient form of communication.

5. There is no such thing as “US English.” We will let Microsoft know on your behalf. The Microsoft spell-checker will be adjusted to take account of the reinstated letter ‘u’ and the elimination of “-ize.”

6. You will relearn your original national anthem, “God Save The Queen”,
but only after fully carrying out Task #1 (see above).

7. July 4th will no longer be celebrated as a holiday. November 2nd will
be a new national holiday, but to be celebrated only in England. It will be called “Come-Uppance Day.”

8. You will learn to resolve personal issues without using guns, lawyers or therapists. The fact that you need so many lawyers and therapists shows that you’re not adult enough to be independent. Guns should only be handled by adults. If you’re not adult enough to sort things out without suing someone or speaking to a therapist then you’re not grown up enough to handle a gun.

9. Therefore, you will no longer be allowed to own or carry anything more dangerous than a vegetable peeler. A permit will be required if you wish to carry a vegetable peeler in public.

10. All American cars are hereby banned. They are crap and this is for your own good. When we show you German cars, you will understand what we mean.

11. All intersections will be replaced with roundabouts, and you will start driving on the left with immediate effect. At the same time, you will go metric immediately and without the benefit of conversion tables… Both roundabouts and metrification will help you understand the British sense of humour.

12. The Former USA will adopt UK prices on petrol (which you have been calling “gasoline”) – roughly $8/US per gallon. Get used to it.

13. You will learn to make real chips. Those things you call french fries are not real chips, and those things you insist on calling potato chips are properly called “crisps.” Real chips are thick cut, fried in animal fat, and dressed not with catsup but with malt vinegar.

14. Waiters and waitresses will be trained to be more aggressive with customers.

15. The cold tasteless stuff you insist on calling beer is not actually beer at all. Henceforth, only proper British Bitter will be referred to as “beer,” and European brews of known and accepted provenance will be referred to as “Lager.” American brands will be referred to as “Near-Frozen Gnat’s Urine,” so that all can be sold without risk of further confusion.

16. Hollywood will be required occasionally to cast English actors as good guys. Hollywood will also be required to cast English actors as English characters. Watching Andie MacDowell attempt English dialogue in “Four Weddings and a Funeral” was an experience akin to having one’s ear removed with a cheese grater.

17. You will cease playing American “football.” There is only one kind of proper football; you call it “soccer”. Those of you brave enough, in time, will be allowed to play rugby (which has some similarities to American “football”, but does not involve stopping for a rest every twenty seconds or wearing full kevlar body armour like a
bunch of Jessies – English slang for “Big Girls Blouse”).

18. Further, you will stop playing baseball. It is not reasonable to host an event called the “World Series” for a game which is not played outside of America. Since only 2.1% of you are aware that there is a world beyond your borders, your error is understandable and forgiven.

19. You must tell us who killed JFK. It’s been driving us mad.

20. An internal revenue agent (i.e. tax collector) from Her Majesty’s Government will be with you shortly to ensure the acquisition of all monies due, backdated to 1776.

For more information on this urban legend and the provenance of the Notice of Revocation…, I suggest this article at About.com.

President Bush is touring the Middle East right now, and he has made sure to bluster about Iran’s fictional nuclear ambitions at every stop, but oil has been the main topic on his agenda. Yesterday he met with Saudi leader, King Abdullah and tried to persuade him to up his country’s production, in order to stabilize prices.

Bush argued that high oil prices will cause the US to import less oil, and therefore less money will flow from American wallets into royal Saudi Arabian wallets. The problem with this argument (other than the notion of protecting the exchange of our cash for Saudi palaces and ponies) is that the increasing demand for oil in China, India and the rest of the developing world will more than offset any decrease in US imports.

Saudi Arabia shrugs.

In the 1970s, before the Ayatollah overthrew the Shah, Iran was one of our main sources of imported oil. The Iranian Revolution of 1979 triggered an energy crisis when in November of that year, President Carter cut off oil imports from Iran. This marked the beginning of the end for Carter, who famously proposed to the American people that the solution to the crisis was to conserve. “Wear sweaters,” he told us.

The thing is, we’re addicted to oil, and to conserve is… well… un-American. The Reagan administration saw the light, and Saudi Arabia became our new best friend in the Middle East.

Fast-forward to 2008. Iran is still chock full of oil, so it should come as no surprise that our current president has steadfastly ignored the U.S. Intelligence Estimate finding that Iran stopped pursuing its nuclear ambitions in 2003. Iran has oil. We want it. We need it. Therefore we need Iran to be a threat, just like we needed Iraq to be a threat, because President Bush needs to guarantee access to oil.

Consider the following:

• Current US consumption of oil is 20.7 million barrels per day.
• The US strategic reserves contain 689 million barrels.
• Factor in our domestic production, and without imports we have about 60 days of oil to burn before it’s all gone.

Bush’s commitment to keeping oil lines open is not sinister in itself. The reality is, our economy would cease to function without foreign oil, and that would hurt every single one of us, probably more than we can imagine. If Bush had simply told the truth – we need a steady supply of oil from Iraq in order for our economy to function, therefore we need a more stable and sympathetic regime there – he would not have gotten the necessary support from Congress or the American people. So he used terrorism as a pretense.

Now Bush is trying to do it again, with Iran.

The war in Iraq is about oil. Few people would dispute that. Some would say it was waged simply to take the oil, while others argue that it is being waged in order to create a stable regional ally who will reliably sell us oil. It’s probably the latter, but it doesn’t really matter. The war is about oil.

To ensure access to Iraq’s oil, we are paying $275 million per day. How much would it cost to expand the war to Iran?

So, to summarize, we consume an enormous amount of oil. We have dangerously little oil of our own, so we need everything we can get from the Middle East. To maintain this dynamic of dependence, we are willing to invest $275 million per day and hundreds of thousands of American lives (because it’s not just the lives lost that we are investing, but the hard work of all the soldiers) in a war.

This is the true cost of oil, which is not represented at the pump. The $3-plus that you pay per gallon does not include the costs of tax subsidies to the oil industry, the subsidies for the extraction, production, and use of petroleum, the military costs of protecting access to oil supplies – not to mention health care costs for treating respiratory illnesses ranging from asthma to emphysema, or finally, the costs of climate change. If we factored all this into the price of gasoline, it would cost about $15 per gallon, according to a study (pdf) by the International Center for Technology Assessment.

Are we getting a good return on this investment? Does it have a future? What else could we do with $275 million per day and the hard work of hundreds of thousands of people we’re spending just on the Iraq war?

$275 million per day works out to about $100 billion per year which, according to one study, could pay for…

• Reforesting the earth (6 billion)
• Stabilizing water tables around the world (10 billion)
• Restoring all the world’s fisheries (13 billion)
• Protecting topsoil on the world’s croplands (24 billion)
• Providing universal basic health care to everyone on the planet (33 billion)
• Providing universal primary education to every child on the planet (12 billion)
• And finally, for good measure, closing the condom gap (2 billion)

Before you get into a tizzy, the figures above reflect additional money that would need to be spent on the various initiatives, rather than the total figures. These are all things, like the military, that only cost us money. They don’t generate any, which is why I didn’t compare the military spending on the Iraq war to money we could invest in, say, developing alternative energy sources. We’d actually make money if we did that.

It’s good to know we have our priorities straight.

Some kind of silly excuse for a Golden Globe Awards ceremony took place last night, with no speeches, performances or jokes – just winners announced by unknown non-celebrities who had the look of Star Search contestants in the “spokesmodel” category.

The impact of the writers’ strike on the event and activities surrounding it reportedly cost the Los Angeles economy anywhere from 75 to 100 million dollars. If the Oscars suffer the same fate – which looks likely – the blow will be much bigger.

The producers who are the target of the strike represent only a slice of that pie, but even if you consider the whole thing, $100 million is small potatoes compared to the amount the producers would give up by submitting to the writers’ demands, so a couple of missed awards shows probably won’t cause them to blink an eye.

The other problem for the writers is that the strike hasn’t had the expected crippling effect on the quality or quantity of television available to viewers like me. Sure I miss a couple of shows, but I was watching too many anyway. Now, with the writers’ strike going on, I can still watch my favorite reality shows (lately, Kitchen Nightmares, The Dog Whisperer, Survivorman, No Reservations and Top Chef), and I can watch other shows in reruns that I didn’t make room for before. With my favorite scripted shows on hold for a while, I’m enjoying my chance to give my second choices – shows like Friday Night Lights, The Office and Lost – their due.

The only show I was really painfully missing was The Daily Show with Jon Stewart, but that’s back on now. Woohoo!

The bottom line is, I’m not sure how much pain the strike is delivering to the wallets of the producers, which is why no one expects it to end anytime soon. There’s simply too much good TV left on the air for the strike to make much of a financial impact.

Even if this was not true, or even if the writers hold out long enough to dent the supply of good television, they still might not hit the producers where it hurts, because, as a product, television follows a demand curve much like that of a controlled substance. With television, as with cocaine or cigarettes, a reduction in supply has little effect on demand. Watching television is the default leisure activity for Americans. We do it out of habit. We’ll keep doing it whether or not there’s anything worth watching.

The thing is, the writers are in the right. They deserve a piece of the web revenues, and the producers are greedy bastards for not allowing that. Maybe the force of public opinion will ultimately be enough to sway the producers. Maybe the strike will hurt their moral sensibilities, and that will be enough.

Or maybe there are enough good people in Hollywood to eventually force a bottom-up victory. Maybe the string of isolated side deals already happening between shows and their respective writers will reach a critical mass and lead to an industry-wide agreement.

It has happened before.

File this under “random.” I’m not sure what to make of this, but as I was listening to the speeches of the various candidates after the caucus results were in, it occurred to me to count the number of times they used various pronouns.

Incidentally, I found no evidence that Fred Thompson actually spoke at all after his third place finish, so I substituted McCain – who was virtually tied with Thompson anyway.

Some things to note: I omitted instances of “you” in the numerous thank yous that started most of the speeches. McCain’s and Romney’s speeches were especially short – less than four minutes each. I believe Obama’s was the longest, although I didn’t time it. The applause he drew throughout certainly made it even longer. His 22 utterances of the second person pronoun was double Romney’s and nearly triple any of the other candidates. Clinton, perhaps not surprisingly, referred to herself quite a bit – using the first person singular more than any other candidate. Edwards – who also gave a long speech – referred to “we” and “us” more than the other candidates. It’s also worth noting that he devoted a significant part of his speech to stories about particular people (using third person pronouns for them).

For that matter, all the candidates used the third person numerous times to refer to family members and associates, to the other candidates and often in abstract references to “Americans” in general, as well as particular groups of American citizens. Initially, I was counting all the third person pronouns too, but the candidates used “they” to refer to such a wide variety of concepts that it became too muddy for my simple analysis.

Anyway, here are some key quotes from the evening:

Obama: “You said the time has come to move beyond the bitterness and pettiness and anger that’s consumed Washington.”

Edwards: “It’s our responsibility to ensure that we leave America better than we found it; that we give our children a better life than we’ve had.”

Clinton: “I am so ready for the rest of this campaign, and I am so ready to lead.”

Huckabee: “Ladies and gentlemen, I recognize that running for office, it’s not hating those who are in front of us. It’s loving those who are behind us.”

Romney: “We love you. We’re going to miss you for a few months, but we’re coming back. We’ll never forget what you’ve done for us. We love Iowa.”

McCain: “We can feel the momentum that — the same kind of momentum we felt in 2000. I’m very confident with a strong positive finish here that we’re going to win here in New Hampshire.”

A couple of years ago, I worked on a project that had me flying to LA on a weekly basis. I flew Southwest Airlines, and I had it down to a science: I would check in online exactly 24 hours before my flight (securing a spot in the coveted “A” group), then I would drive to the Oakland airport the next day, go through security and show up at the gate – usually – no more than five minutes before boarding.

One day, however, the website rejected my attempt to check in, and so did the kiosk at the airport. I had to go to an agent at the counter, who informed me that I was flagged because “someone with a similar name” was on the terrorist watch list. Noting my raised eyebrows, she helpfully added, “Don’t worry, it’s just your last name.”

For those who don’t know, my last name is Smith. To this day I believe that this itself was the act of terrorism – inconveniencing every Smith attempting to travel.

Now, apparently, the US Terrorist Watch List has grown to nearly a million names, which either means we’re all goin’ to Gitmo, or the list is almost completely useless.

There is an upside. The hysteria responsible for inflating the list is something the average person can exploit to address problems they might be having with friends or loved ones, like this guy did.

Seriously though, the super-sized list and shenanigans like that Swedish dude’s can’t be making things easy for the folks at Homeland Security. So how, you might ask, are they cutting through all the noise and nonsense?

Falafel. That’s right. Those clever FBI agents figure that if you follow the falafel trail, you’ll find the terrorists.

Brilliant! I feel safer already.

As I mentioned recently, I attended my 20-year high school reunion last month, and I enjoyed myself. I haven’t been very good about keeping in touch with people, and it was good to see friends I was once very close to.

One of my good friends from high school was (very) pregnant during the reunion weekend, and the other day I received the news that she gave birth to her fourth child, and first daughter. Four kids. A surprising number of my classmates are now parents of three or four kids. One of my classmates has six!

I have to admit I struggled with what to say to my friend with the new baby. On one hand, she is an amazing person, meaning there’s a good possibility that her kids will be amazing people. Probably already are. On the other hand, I’ve become acutely aware lately, for some reason, of overpopulation and the stress that humans are putting on this planet’s resources.

The world’s population is at 6.6 billion right now and rising by 1 million every four days. Whether or not you believe humans are causing – or at least exacerbating – global warming, or think it’s a problem, here are some other frightening factoids that have little to do with climate change:

The number of large fish in the world’s oceans is estimated to be just 10% of what it was in 1950, mostly due to over-fishing but also polluting of the oceans and rising water temperatures. That’s 90% depletion in just over 50 years, and scientists project a near total annihilation by the year 2050 without some radical intervention.

There is a swirling stew of plastic twice the size of Texas floating between California and Hawaii that didn’t exist in 1945, and it’s growing tenfold every decade.

The US has the resources to sustain less than half of its current population of 300 million. If all 6 billion people were to share the world’s resources equally, Americans would have to reduce consumption by 80%.

By 2040, we will need to triple the global food supply in order to meet the basic food needs of the 9 to 11 billion people who are expected to be alive. But doing so would require a 1,000 percent increase in the total energy expended in food production. Meanwhile, food production is expected to have decreased by then because of a variety of factors (water shortages, land shortages, energy shortages).

Even if projections like these are off by 15 to 20%, which is highly unlikely, it’s clear that much of the planet is screwed if we keep cranking out babies. And kids being born today are entering a world that won’t be able to support them.

Is there any one of us who doesn’t see with our own eyes how the nature we enjoyed as kids has diminished during our lifetime and given way to sprawling suburbs and industry?

By the year 2050, the earth simply will not be able to support an acceptable standard of living for hundreds of millions of the 9 billion people who will be using it. And you can be certain that when water and food become truly scarce, the privileged and wealthy of the world will go to great lengths to keep what’s left for themselves. The gap between the haves and the have-nots will become wider than you can imagine. Luckily, I suppose, we are among the haves.

I want to congratulate my classmates on their fertility, but the bottom line is if you have more than two children, you are part of the problem.

Simple as that.

The Republican party is a shambles, and a Democrat will win the presidency in 2008. So say the pundits. In fact, they don’t even say it anymore. They don’t need to because everyone knows it is a fact.

But I’m not so sure. And I’m worried.

I donated some money to Barack Obama’s campaign a few months ago, and now I get emails nearly every day requesting more. The most recent of these was entitled “Inevitable?” and highlighted the fact that Hillary Clinton’s campaign is a couple million dollars ahead of his.

Inevitable? It’s true that many voices in the media are already talking like Hillary’s nomination is a foregone conclusion, but does anyone remember Howard Dean in 2004? Here’s a snippet from an article in the New York Times, dated December 22, 2004, just before the Iowa and New Hampshire primaries:

One recent New Hampshire survey has [Kerry] 25 percentage points behind Dr. Dean, another has him 29 points back and a third has him 30 points down.

We all know what happened after that. Nothing is inevitable.

Incidentally, don’t take my donation to Obama’s campaign to mean he’s my choice for president. I don’t know whether he is or isn’t. I want to help keep this thing competitive for a while, and I like what he adds to the field.

But I’m getting off my main point, which is the money. I question the need for more money from someone who is only a couple million behind the very deep-pocketed Ms. Clinton.

I’d like to see the candidates spend smarter, not harder. This is the Internet age. We live in a connected world, and there are lots of ways to make yourself heard on a limited budget. There are lots of ways to stand out from the crowd – and there does seem to be quite a crowd clamoring for the oval office – without breaking the bank.

These people do not understand marketing… at all. They don’t know how to boil a message down to its essence.

The always colorful [Democratic campaign strategist] James Carville once told a New York Times political columnist, “If you want reporters to write about hamburger, you give them hamburger. You don’t give them French fries and ice cream.”

The Democrats these days give you not only the fries and ice cream, they offer a salad bar, barbecue, tortillas and a dim sum cart. It’s impossible to know what the party stands for – or against. The Republicans might serve a terrible hamburger, but no one’s confused about what’s on the menu.

If you ask a die-hard Republican to explain why he or she sides with the G.O.P. you’ll hear some very clear and concise reasons. Many of them don’t make sense if you dig even a little, but that’s further testament to the G.O.P.’s success in marketing itself. Karl Rove and other very shrewd and savvy people have managed an astonishing level of control over the discourse by avoiding impromptu performances in favor of staged ones and avoiding any substantial discussion of “the issues” in favor of strategic repetition of a handful of soundbites.

Smart people on the left see right through this and point it out all the time, which almost always backfires. They end up looking like whiners and snobs and paradoxically reinforce the image they are trying to refute.

Someone by the name of Nathan Piazza wrote a smart essay after the 2004 election that looks at how the Republicans have controlled the discourse so effectively. It’s well worth the read.

The trouble is, since the smart people on the left have keen noses for bad hamburger, they don’t tolerate it from anyone – including members of their own party. We don’t let our candidates get away with staged appearances and repeated soundbites, and this is a huge challenge for them. We want substantive ideas, but ideas don’t spread like soundbites. They don’t lend themselves to the kinds of simple narratives the media depends on, so the media is left to its own devices, and we end up hearing about the Edwards haircut and the Hillary cackle over and over over again. In 2004, it was the Gore sigh because he was not able to hand the media something better. It didn’t matter that Bush came off as an idiot.

So what should the Democrats do?

Lately I’ve been thinking about Ross Perot who, running as an Independent, managed to grab nearly 20% of the popular vote in the 1992 presidential election. I remember his half-hour long television spots during the campaign months, where he would dive into an issue and explain in great detail what was currently broken and lay out his plan to fix it. He would flash through a series of infographics and illustrations and pepper his lecture – that’s what it was – with quirky Texas truisms. The thing is, it worked. People like pictures. Lightbulbs went on. People got it. It was a little dense perhaps, but it was 100% bullshit free.

The lesson here is that it’s possible to communicate substantive ideas in ways that people digest, remember and spread. And the Internet provides an incredibly cost-effective platform for reaching millions of voters.

Unfortunately, the Democratic candidates keep trying to walk an impossible middle ground between soundbites and substance.

William Drenttel posted his support for a Gore ticket at Design Observer today. I like Al Gore. I think he’d make a great president. I agree with William on all counts, but I was dismayed to see his post.

If the Bush presidency has done one good thing, it was to light a fire in the hearts of Americans. We were prosperous and apathetic before. Now we’re prosperous and passionate. We were asleep. Now we’re awake. Many of us are angry. It’s about time.

Still, I’m not sure the kind of firestorm the Design Observer post touched off (surely they knew it would come) has a place there. Politics is a taboo topic in certain environments (the workplace) for good reason.

We are aware that people disagree with our views, yet we persist in the fool’s errand that we can change people’s minds. Surely, one fantasizes, if I make a reasonable argument, then all reasonable people will be powerless against it.

But it never works that way. People interpret evidence differently. They dismiss the authorities and institutions we stand on. Shouting ensues. We end up resenting them for their intransigence. They resent us for our sanctimony.

Online, there is much less civility as the argument goes back and forth and sometimes wildly astray.

The polarity in this country right now is frightening. I don’t like seeing it here.

I understand where William is coming from, but I like Design Observer better when it provides respite from the kind of noise that has become almost unavoidable everywhere else.