“That’s not true.”
- President Obama answering questions at the Republican Congressional Retreat in Baltimore
On Friday, President Obama took the fight to the Republican Congressional delegation at their retreat in Baltimore. The Republicans have, over the past 30 years, been excellent in controlling their message and the idea markets. How else can they still be perceived as the party of fiscal responsibility after the deficits of Reagan and both Bushes?
So it was very surprising that they allowed the President’s speech and subsequent Q & A to be televised.
What the country then witnessed, was one of the few times in which the competing ideas of what America is and what America should be was debated in the open, outside the Kabuki theatre of a Presidential or a congressional “debate.”
There for all the country to see was President Obama meeting every Republican “talking point” with fact. Did you want to confront Obama on how much the deficit has grown since he had been in office? Then you better be prepared to sit and hear him recite how much the deficit had grown under Bush. Do you dare to make the same assertion on unemployment? Then you will have to listen to him layout unemployment figures for the first quarter of 2009 that could only be attributed to Bush.
The President’s successful week also underscored how fast the idea market can change. In less than three days, Obama went from being ridiculed for being too cool, to being shown over and over on television as a passionate and fierce advocate for his ideas. The Republicans went from being in total control of their message to having to defend their stance at every turn.
Obama put on a clinic in meeting the opposition head on and puncturing their own foolishness. It was a clinic for the Democrats as well, who have spent so much time since the Scott Brown election, cowering in the corner.
Democrats need to understand that they hold a fairly strong hand. They have a historic majority in both the House and the Senate and they have a popular President in the White House.
Voter Party identification also favors them.
In an NBC/WSJ poll taken between 1/23 and 1/25/2010 more voters identified themselves as “Independent” than either Democrat or Republican. There was a 16 pt. gap between the number of voters who identified themselves as Independent and those who identified themselves as Republicans, but only a 9 pt. gap between Independents and Democrats. (http://www.pollster.com/polls/us/party-id.php).
In order to win, if their base will allow it, Republicans will need to attract a lot more Independents than the Democrats do.
All Republican victories since Obama’s election have come with candidates (Brown in Mass, Chris Christie in NJ, and Bob McDonnell in Va) who were either moderates or hid their conservative roots while running against weak Democrats. All three won with support from Independents. The one candidate (Doug Hoffman in the special election in NY-23) who ran as an unabashed Tea Party candidate with heavy support from the Republican red meat base, lost.
The Republicans are caught in a major civil war. While the House Republicans were getting their facts checked by the President, the Republican National Committee was in Hawaii debating whether or not to enforce a purity test on their candidates. In the end they compromised and voted to “strongly recommend” that the Party support only those candidates who agreed with at least 8 of 10 statements of principle.
The only other headline from the winter meeting was Gov. Linda Ling of Hawaii begging her fellow committee members not to humiliate Michael Steele in her State.
So while the Republican National Committee was passing up a golden opportunity to rebut Obama’s rebukes in his State of the Union in favor of trying to decide who they should drum out of the Party, the Republican Congressional delegation was left to defend ideas such as their budget proposal from the previous year that did not contain any numbers, and health care proposals that they themselves refused to move forward when they were in power.
Like a good commander who stands up under fire to lead his trapped and frightened troops forward, Obama stood up and laid out for the Democrats the attacks they need to make over the next year, in order to move forward and stay in power.
In taking on the Republicans head on in Baltimore the President showed Democrats that the only thing they have to fear is fear itself.
Let’s hope Democrats come out of their foxholes and take up the fight.
Sunday, January 31, 2010
Sunday, January 24, 2010
Napping in Massachusetts
“It was a classic case of everybody getting caught napping.”
- David Axelrod
David Axelrod was wrong. The Democrats weren’t napping; they were in deep sleep in Massachusetts.
Even as the polls tightened weeks before the election, everyone seemed to believe that a Republican in “the Kennedy” was such a violation of the laws of physics that Scott Brown would fail. The voters of course are an angry and independent lot. They obey a, stronger, higher law of physics – the one that says if you don’t make things better we will try someone else.
Martha Coakley was a strong candidate on paper. She had good statewide name recognition and a high approval rating. She had also run several successful statewide races.
But she never really seemed to put much effort in the Senate race. Coakley spent a lot of time talking to party bosses and running a campaign that looked a lot like the “inevitability” campaign that Hillary Clinton ran - line up endorsements from the big wigs and use those endorsements to intimidate everyone else into falling in line.
When the polls tightened, Coakley did not change the style of her campaign. She kept running as if she were on a victory lap. Had Coakley responded when the polls first began to tighten three weeks ago she would a Senator elect. The lesson is every election counts, every time. It seems Obama may be learning this lesson. He is gathering the core of his 2008 team to work the mid-terms to prevent any more damage.
To succeed this group is going to have to look beyond popular myths.
One myth is “Massachusetts is the “bluest” of states.” Everyone got so caught up in the myth of the Democratic registration that they missed the outsider in the pick-up truck traveling around the state listening to what voters had to say.
The truth is Massachusetts is more of a purple state. Mitt Romney was Governor there for eight years. Democrats are the second largest voter registration in the state. The largest voter registration by far is Independents. Democrats got so taken in by the “bluest state” myth that they forgot to win you have persuade the independent voter.
A new myth that is being created is that Scott Brown’s win gives great momentum to the Republicans because America is ready for their message. But, Republicans are less popular than ever. Less than 20% of voters are happy with the direction of the Republican Party. Less than 30% of Republicans are happy with their party. If Republicans see this as a mandate to return the policies of Bush they will be in big trouble in 2010.
This election was less about Obama and more about how angry voters are with the government. Certainly to a voter who is one of the 10% unemployed, or over 20 million without health insurance, or one of the 33% of American homeowners who owe more on their mortgage than their homes are worth, not much has changed since the summer of 2008. Instead of fixing these issues, people perceive the Government has spent a year in a futile partisan war over health care with no results.
Obama was right when he said the same forces that swept him into office were the same ones that swept Scott Brown into office. The electorate is angry and volatile. They will take it out on whoever is seen as the party in power. Voters could turn on the Republicans just as fast as it appears to have turned on the Democrats.
The lesson for everyone in 2010 is the voters will only support candidates who look like they will get something done. It doesn’t matter if that candidate is a Democrat or Republican. Voters simply want the country fixed and their problems solved.
Massachusetts showed that we are tired of waiting.
- David Axelrod
David Axelrod was wrong. The Democrats weren’t napping; they were in deep sleep in Massachusetts.
Even as the polls tightened weeks before the election, everyone seemed to believe that a Republican in “the Kennedy” was such a violation of the laws of physics that Scott Brown would fail. The voters of course are an angry and independent lot. They obey a, stronger, higher law of physics – the one that says if you don’t make things better we will try someone else.
Martha Coakley was a strong candidate on paper. She had good statewide name recognition and a high approval rating. She had also run several successful statewide races.
But she never really seemed to put much effort in the Senate race. Coakley spent a lot of time talking to party bosses and running a campaign that looked a lot like the “inevitability” campaign that Hillary Clinton ran - line up endorsements from the big wigs and use those endorsements to intimidate everyone else into falling in line.
When the polls tightened, Coakley did not change the style of her campaign. She kept running as if she were on a victory lap. Had Coakley responded when the polls first began to tighten three weeks ago she would a Senator elect. The lesson is every election counts, every time. It seems Obama may be learning this lesson. He is gathering the core of his 2008 team to work the mid-terms to prevent any more damage.
To succeed this group is going to have to look beyond popular myths.
One myth is “Massachusetts is the “bluest” of states.” Everyone got so caught up in the myth of the Democratic registration that they missed the outsider in the pick-up truck traveling around the state listening to what voters had to say.
The truth is Massachusetts is more of a purple state. Mitt Romney was Governor there for eight years. Democrats are the second largest voter registration in the state. The largest voter registration by far is Independents. Democrats got so taken in by the “bluest state” myth that they forgot to win you have persuade the independent voter.
A new myth that is being created is that Scott Brown’s win gives great momentum to the Republicans because America is ready for their message. But, Republicans are less popular than ever. Less than 20% of voters are happy with the direction of the Republican Party. Less than 30% of Republicans are happy with their party. If Republicans see this as a mandate to return the policies of Bush they will be in big trouble in 2010.
This election was less about Obama and more about how angry voters are with the government. Certainly to a voter who is one of the 10% unemployed, or over 20 million without health insurance, or one of the 33% of American homeowners who owe more on their mortgage than their homes are worth, not much has changed since the summer of 2008. Instead of fixing these issues, people perceive the Government has spent a year in a futile partisan war over health care with no results.
Obama was right when he said the same forces that swept him into office were the same ones that swept Scott Brown into office. The electorate is angry and volatile. They will take it out on whoever is seen as the party in power. Voters could turn on the Republicans just as fast as it appears to have turned on the Democrats.
The lesson for everyone in 2010 is the voters will only support candidates who look like they will get something done. It doesn’t matter if that candidate is a Democrat or Republican. Voters simply want the country fixed and their problems solved.
Massachusetts showed that we are tired of waiting.
Tuesday, January 5, 2010
Connecting the Dots
[N(N–1)]/2 where N = Number of People
- Formula used to calculate the number of communications channels in a group of people.
The terrorist attempt on the Northwest Airlines flight into Detroit over Christmas has a lot of people talking about “connecting the dots.” Less than a day after the bomb plot was foiled by the flight’s passengers, Peter Hoekstra (R-Mi), the ranking member on the House Intelligence committee said “People have got to start connecting the dots here and maybe this is the thing that will connect the dots for the Obama administration.”
Hoekstra was just one of many officials from both parties who strutted across the TV talk show landscape in the week between Christmas and New Years discussing the United States’ inability to “connect dots” to foil terror plots. President Obama seems to agree with this assessment. On Tuesday he is gathering his security chiefs together to analyze what went wrong and what can be done to fix it.
But how realistic is all this talk of “connecting the dots?”
Could a vague warning that “a Nigerian” was being trained in Yemen for an attack really lead to the identification of Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab as “the” Nigerian involved? His father did warn US Embassy that he was worried his son had fallen under the spell of radical Islam and had dropped out of sight, but he did not have an idea where his son was. The UK did deny the bomber a visa, but not for terrorist activities, as some have implied. They rejected his student visa because he listed the name of a school that did not exist on his application – a not uncommon problem.
In reality these clues were not standout red flags. They were not in FBI reports of people on student visa’s paying cash for flight schools and saying they did not need to learn how to land a plane. They were not in an intelligence briefing titled “Bin Laden determined to Strike US.”
They were dots in a sea of dots.
In a sea of dots, how do you know which dots are important and which dots are related? Too much information is overwhelming. There is so much data that we miss what is important. In addition, the more people involved in handling information, the more complex the network for communicating that information becomes.
The formula at the top if the page, [N(N–1)]/2 where N = the number of people, expresses that complexity.
There are 16 agencies in the US collecting information on terrorist or potential terrorists, their plots and their plans. Let’s say for example each agency has only ten analysts reviewing data and communicating their individual findings to each other. This formula shows that there will be 12,720 distinct channels of communications between those 160 analysts. That is a lot of potential interagency pathways for a “dot” to travel before it can be connected to another dot seen by a different analyst. Once they are connected, these two “dots” will now have to travel those same potential pathways again before any warning is heard.
Obviously the US has more than 160 analysts working on identifying terrorists and foiling their plots, so the enormity of the task of connecting these dots is clear. The solution then, is not building a system to get more dots to connect, it is building a system that focuses on the important dots. The Obama administration took a step in the right direction by rolling back the security requirements for international passengers from all but a specific set of countries. Hopefully this sort of refocusing is happening throughout the intelligence gathering community. If that is true, then maybe Obama will also have the courage to roll back some of President Bush’s more intrusive domestic spying initiatives.
In the mean time all of this talk about failure “to connect the dots” trivializes the challenge we face. This is not the child’s game of connecting dots in a predetermined order to create an obvious picture. It is more like dumping large box of colored dots on a big table and asking us to assemble them into the correct painting by Pissarro.
What is truly amazing is not the number of times we have failed, it the number of times we have gotten the painting right.
- Formula used to calculate the number of communications channels in a group of people.
The terrorist attempt on the Northwest Airlines flight into Detroit over Christmas has a lot of people talking about “connecting the dots.” Less than a day after the bomb plot was foiled by the flight’s passengers, Peter Hoekstra (R-Mi), the ranking member on the House Intelligence committee said “People have got to start connecting the dots here and maybe this is the thing that will connect the dots for the Obama administration.”
Hoekstra was just one of many officials from both parties who strutted across the TV talk show landscape in the week between Christmas and New Years discussing the United States’ inability to “connect dots” to foil terror plots. President Obama seems to agree with this assessment. On Tuesday he is gathering his security chiefs together to analyze what went wrong and what can be done to fix it.
But how realistic is all this talk of “connecting the dots?”
Could a vague warning that “a Nigerian” was being trained in Yemen for an attack really lead to the identification of Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab as “the” Nigerian involved? His father did warn US Embassy that he was worried his son had fallen under the spell of radical Islam and had dropped out of sight, but he did not have an idea where his son was. The UK did deny the bomber a visa, but not for terrorist activities, as some have implied. They rejected his student visa because he listed the name of a school that did not exist on his application – a not uncommon problem.
In reality these clues were not standout red flags. They were not in FBI reports of people on student visa’s paying cash for flight schools and saying they did not need to learn how to land a plane. They were not in an intelligence briefing titled “Bin Laden determined to Strike US.”
They were dots in a sea of dots.
In a sea of dots, how do you know which dots are important and which dots are related? Too much information is overwhelming. There is so much data that we miss what is important. In addition, the more people involved in handling information, the more complex the network for communicating that information becomes.
The formula at the top if the page, [N(N–1)]/2 where N = the number of people, expresses that complexity.
There are 16 agencies in the US collecting information on terrorist or potential terrorists, their plots and their plans. Let’s say for example each agency has only ten analysts reviewing data and communicating their individual findings to each other. This formula shows that there will be 12,720 distinct channels of communications between those 160 analysts. That is a lot of potential interagency pathways for a “dot” to travel before it can be connected to another dot seen by a different analyst. Once they are connected, these two “dots” will now have to travel those same potential pathways again before any warning is heard.
Obviously the US has more than 160 analysts working on identifying terrorists and foiling their plots, so the enormity of the task of connecting these dots is clear. The solution then, is not building a system to get more dots to connect, it is building a system that focuses on the important dots. The Obama administration took a step in the right direction by rolling back the security requirements for international passengers from all but a specific set of countries. Hopefully this sort of refocusing is happening throughout the intelligence gathering community. If that is true, then maybe Obama will also have the courage to roll back some of President Bush’s more intrusive domestic spying initiatives.
In the mean time all of this talk about failure “to connect the dots” trivializes the challenge we face. This is not the child’s game of connecting dots in a predetermined order to create an obvious picture. It is more like dumping large box of colored dots on a big table and asking us to assemble them into the correct painting by Pissarro.
What is truly amazing is not the number of times we have failed, it the number of times we have gotten the painting right.
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