Nothing But Words

Ths will be my last blog entry until Januaray. Kai and Maria left yesterday for Denver, and I’m following them tomorrow. We’ll be staying with her folks for the holidays. I’m looking forward to skiing again for the first time in at least 10 years! I think we’ll end up having to rent a freight truck to bring back all the presents they’ll give Kai

My reading material for the flight is Philip K. Dick’s A Scanner Darkly, which is currently being adapted into a film. This will be the 8th story of his that has been made into a movie (I believe the list should include a 9th – it’s my guess that The Truman Show was “inspired by” Time Out of Joint). The movie adaptations generally steal the concepts of his stories and use them as hooks, and then just layer standard action/thriller storylines on top. But I’m not a purist – most of them have been enjoyable films, even if they’re not faithful to the source material – and it’s good to see my favorite author getting some recognition. A Scanner Darkly is being hyped as faithful to the book, so I’m particularly intrigued to see how it turns out (after I finish the book, of course!).

A sampling of recent Kai moments:

• Using his fingers to form the shape of a triangle, Kai declared: “triangles are just like squares, Daddy, only pointier.”
• In a particularly affectionate moment, he said, “I love you Mommy, I love you Daddy, …and I love myself.” No self-esteem problems here.
• There’s a pizza shop down the street from our house that Kai and I go to fairly regularly. It’s run by a couple of burly Italian guys. We went the other night, and Kai was excited, so we were running down the sidewalk. He tripped and fell, and scraped his hands, but he wasn’t bleeding. But he screamed and cried as if he had broken both his legs. So I carried him the rest of the way to the pizza shop. When we got to the door, he howled through his tears, “Daddy, don’t let the guys see me like this!” He’s 3 years old and already worried about his macho image. I didn’t wait long though, since it was cold out. So he was still crying when we stepped in, but the guys weren’t around. Instead there was a high school girl behind the counter. Realizing this, Kai then felt free to continue bawling.
• Kai is very affectionate with his friends at school. The kids are usually outside playing when we pick him up, and he usually goes aorund and hugs his friends good-bye before leaving. They seem to think it’s a bit strange, but they don’t seem to mind.
• He’s supposed to nap with the other kids at school, but recently he’s decided not to nap anymore. But he’s good and lays down quietly. However, his eyes are open, and he’ll notice something like a toy block tower, and he’ll notice the blocks aren’t lined up perfectly. So he’ll say, “Miss Dana, can I straighten out the block tower?” She’ll say yes, he’ll get up, line up the blocks perfectly, then lay back down. Then he’ll notice all the kids’ shoes aren’t lined up perfectly…and repeat. (He gets that from me, by the way). Luckily, come January, nap time will be eliminated.

Japanese ‘lap pillow’ offers solace to lonely men

And a couple more fun links:

• A Japanese video demonstrating how to fold a shirt in only two moves.
• Engrish.com – The Japanese have a unique talent for unintentionally mangling the English language, often with bizarre, hilarious results. This site collects the best examples.

Reviewing the debate between the Left and the Right on Social Security reform leads me to conclude that both sides are handling it irresponsibly. Paul Krugman and Kevin Drum are good representatives for the argument from the Left: that it’s a false crisis, as Social Security will be solvent until 2042, even if we do nothing. Bush makes the opposite case, arguing we will hit a financing crisis in 2018.

What both sides are dancing around is the real problem: Al Gore wasn’t elected in 2000, and we didn’t get his Social Security “lockbox.” The following excerpt from this January 2004 Slate article makes clear why the Republicans don’t want to talk about the real reasons for Bush’s plan:

Back in 1983, as part of a deal to save Social Security from impending demographic doom, Congress enacted legislation to essentially increase payroll taxes and reduce benefits. As a result, the government began to collect more Social Security payroll taxes than it paid out to beneficiaries each year. The theory was that the government would use these surpluses to pay down the national debt. That way, when baby boomers retire—and comparatively more people are collecting benefits while comparatively fewer people are working—the government would be in a better position to borrow the necessary funds to provide the promised benefits.

So much for theory. The reality? For the first 15 years, every penny of the surplus was spent, first by Republican presidents and then by a Democratic president… It was only in fiscal 1999 and 2000, when the government ran so-called on-budget surpluses, that excess Social Security funds were actually used to retire debt… Bush (who had the good fortune to take office at a time when the surpluses were growing rapidly) and Congress used $480 billion in excess Social Security payroll taxes to fund basic government operations—about $160 billion per year!

By so doing, Washington spenders have masked the size of the deficit. For Fiscal 2004… if you factor out the $164 billion Social Security surplus, the on-budget deficit will be at least $639 billion [not the approx. $500 billion claimed by Bush]…The accounting for Social Security surpluses has always been dishonest. But in the past few years, the Bush administration has made this shady accounting a central pillar of its fiscal strategy.

I think the Left has correctly ascertained the motivations of the conservatives: the eventual abolition of Social Security. While they’re right to call them on it, the Left has made a mistake in denying there’s a problem. Buying Krugman’s and Drum’s argument requires you to either not know what I’ve just reviewed, or to believe that there’s some magical way the payroll tax revenue already spent to mask the size of the federal deficit can be repaid to Social Security beneficiaries without assuming a crushing load of debt.

If the Democrats acknowledged the problem, of course, that would lead to the requirement of offering a counter-proposal to Bush’s. Unfortunately, at this stage it would be difficult to come up with one, because once again the Republicans have beat them to the punch in framing the debate. Given the misuse of the payroll tax money for the past 20 years, the only options at this point are either reducing the government’s long-term commitments to the program (which is essentially what Bush is proposing, but with massive transition costs to a private accounts scheme along the way), ballooning the federal debt to an unprecedented and unsustainable degree down the road, or coming up with a new tax scheme and saying “trust us to not blow it this time.”

The Democrats could have gotten out in front on this issue – it’s not like they didn’t know Bush was going to move on this in his second term. If they had, they could have framed it as an issue of overall fiscal responsibility, and laid much of the blame where it belongs: at Bush’s feet. Then they would have had a shot at making the case for an overhaul of Social Security funding: with a real “lockbox” and revenue from something like a VAT (as Kevin Drum suggested). The American people can handle – and would respect – some straight talk, but neither side is giving them that right now (and the press has been particularly abysmal, merely parroting what each side is saying). I mentioned in an earlier post that the Democrats must become the Party of fiscal responsibility, since the Republicans no longer are. If they talked frankly about how we got into our current mess, and offered some real ideas on what to do about it, that would start giving them some real credibility on fiscal matters. But as far as Social Security is concerned, I’m afraid they may have already missed the boat.

Looks like somebody’s taking my advice Senate Dems Plan Investigatory Hearings:

[Senators] Reid and Dorgan said they [GOP-led congressional committees] fell short of fulfilling the role of Congress to oversee executive branch excesses. They said issues that “cry out” for closer investigation, in addition to contracting abuses in Iraq, include the administration’s use of prewar intelligence and its reported effort to stifle information about the true cost of the new Medicare prescription drug benefit.

I had suggested the idea of such investigations as a 2006 campaign theme. I didn’t contemplate launching investigations now, as panels led by the minority Democrats do not have real teeth, in that they lack subpoena power. But “Dorgan said there are plenty of whistleblowers ‘anxious to tell their story.’” If there’s anything to his assertion, hopefully doing these investigations now will amount to more than just empty political theater.

I want to write about what is relevant to me, what I can see in our landscape. The music brings this to mind anyway. We live in a rural area of England where the presence of the past is strong. Here, like in many parts of Italy, the past and the present exist side by side. I like my lyrics to drift backwards and forwards through time.
- Simon Jones, And Also The Trees singer and songwriter

Sometime during my first year of college (1988), I found the first And Also The Trees album, Virus Meadow, in a used record bin. I looked over the lyrics sheet and was dazzled by the strange, dreamlike imagery, so I paid a couple bucks for it and gave it a spin. I’ve been a fan ever since.

The song I picked for this week is from the 1998 album Silver Soul (the band has recently released another album, but I haven’t heard it yet). The lyrics of And Also The Trees songs are sometimes sung, and sometimes – like in this week’s song – delivered in a spoken word style. What makes this song for me is the last half, where the tempo quickens, a rhythm guitar is suddenly introduced, and the fragmentary, dreamlike narrative of the lyrics grab your attention:

I take a draught of beer from a clouded glass and look around the room:
Pawschien talking with brothers…
The men have self-made tatooed grids on their forearms
in which there are sanskrit letters.
They tell me all that they know is the obvious,
and that if I stay with them, maybe I will learn it, too.

Suede-head girls with grey eyes and clear skin,
One has a crescent scar on her cheekbone,
She looks at me with an air of smiling anticipation,
as though she’s expecting me to recognise her at any second.
Something turns inside me like a tickling thirst…
Others are watching me, too, same expression,
Then look away, laughing, shaking heads…
It’s okay, you’ll remember.

Back in the dark streets
the scent of the human night seems to hold me,
Steps muted by onion skins.
Old women sleep curled in the roots of houses,
coiled around bales and bundles of fresh herbs and babies.
Walking the wooden tunnels out of town,
All I can think is – remember your way back here -
As in the darkness, all has vanished.
Remember your way back here.

Not many bands can hold my attention year after year. But these guys have because their sound has matured and changed with each album. A fan wrote up a good summary of the phases they’ve gone through:

I think their musical career can be divided in some phases; a first one, soaked with quite typical (but very original at the time) sonorities of the cold-wave post-punk period. Sharp but never aggressive guitars, lots of chorus, delays and reverbs, powerful rhythms…The second phase of their career is a very long trip backwards into the centuries; the look (riding-boots, ruffle-shirts, vests, cut pants, scarves and long coats) and the sound both change. Keats, Byron and Shelley are awakened from their long sleep…The guitars turn into harpsichords…In 1992 Green Is The Sea is released; it is a new phase, a new musical change for the band…Within the album is placed a big piano; its chords are the basis for every song…[The 1996 album] Angelfish, a brand new musical path. Simon tells us: “Justin found this 50′s [American] guitar sound and somehow we then continued in this direction.”…Angelfish takes the listener through a long deserted street across endless open spaces; a big convertible car across the United States, town after town, leaving behind rocky mountains, dry deserts, green flatlands, muddy rivers, chaotic metropolis’ and quiet provincial towns, bars flooded with cheap beer.

Here’s the band’s official site.

You can tell from my last post that I like the campaign model exemplified by the Republican’s 1994 Contract with America: it nationalized traditionally local House races, unified the Republicans around an easily understood, crystal clear picture of what they stood for and what they wanted to accomplish, and actually invited Americans to keep score on how much they delivered within the promised 100-day time frame.

Compare that to the House Democrats’ Partnership for America’s Future (in PDF format) that they ran on in this election. It had two major shortcomings. First, nobody’s ever heard of it. Second, it’s organized around a series of amorphous terms like “Prosperity” and “Fairness,” each of which is followed by a big, unsorted barrage of fragmentary ideas that’s more a wish list than a legislative agenda.

Preparing for the 2006 midterm election is a greater imperative right now than worrying about possible 2008 Presidential candidates. A crucial element in Bush’s November victory was that the Republicans re-took the Senate in 2002. If the Democrats had maintained control, they’d have had a crucial platform for reaching the public. They could have made counter-proposals to the Bush agenda (they wouldn’t have made it into law, but the Democratic positions would have been much more in the public eye). They could have launched investigations of not just intelligence failures, but of intelligence abuses by the executive branch. If Kerry had won without a popular majority, and with hostile Republicans controlling both houses, he would have spent all his time fighting for his political life, with little hope of advancing an agenda. Retaking the Senate in 2006 is crucial for laying the groundwork for the 2008 Presidential campaign.

I’m not yet sure of the right name for it, but for 2006 the Democrats need their equivalent of the Contract with America. It should be used for both House and Senate races. While reading through my ideas below, keep in mind the car advertising analogy in my last post: emotional touchpoints, crisp terminology, and real improvements that the public can easily measure. But that doesn’t mean every element of it has to be something big. Like the Contract with America, some elements are symbolic measures of what you stand for, while others are substantial legislative proposals.

Saving Infants: astonishingly, there are 40 countries in the world with an infant mortality rate that’s lower than ours (and for blacks in the US, the rate is twice as high as whites’). Countries like Japan and Sweden have an infant mortality rate that’s two times lower than ours. Even economically moribund Cuba does better than we do. The Democrats need to re-frame the abortion debate, and this is how to do it. The anti-abortion movement is not pro-life – it is merely pro-pregnancy, and they need to be called on it. What’s been brilliant about the Republican approach to social issues is that they deliberately single out issues like abortion and gay marriage – things you can oppose at no financial cost to yourself. The Democrats can start to advance their long-held goals about child health care while at the same time laying plain the hypocrisy of the Republican position. In terms of specific legislation, I’m not a medical expert, but I’m sure some bullet-point proposals could be drafted which would outline how to make improvements on this front.

Independence from Middle East oil: this has floated out there for some time, but the Democrats have yet to really embrace it. The intent is to advance green power technologies, make us more of an honest broker in Middle East affairs, and remove our economic dependency on this very unstable part of the world. Such achievements would garner rich rewards for the Party. What’s held the Democrats back is that pursuing it would put them in a political bind in regard to domestic drilling for oil. Frankly, I think we have to allow for that (and over the next two years of Republican control, it’s likely to happen anyway). Even if there were massive funding for alternative energy research starting tomorrow, it’ll be a long time before we lose our dependence on oil.

I think an effective case can be made within the Party that it’s better to make some short-term sacrifices on this front for the sake of brightening the future of the Middle East, securing the stability of our economy (i.e. jobs), and advancing the long-term, global cause of environmental protection. The parallel example is how the GOP has dealt with the Department of Education. In the 1990s they tried to abolish it, and they got slapped back hard. Now Bush is pouring money into it, but under a set of guidelines he’s dictated. The lesson is, if you have to live with something you don’t like in order to achieve broader goals, at least do it on your own terms.

No indicted party leaders: this is a no-brainer. The GOP repealed it’s own rule on this in anticipation of an indictment against Tom Delay. The Democrats have instated such a rule for their Party, but they didn’t get much press attention for it. They need to bring it up again for the 2006 races. This isn’t a one-off though. It ties into the next three items, which can be used to construct a narrative about the responsibilities of power.

Honesty in legislation: the Democrats should propose a rule that any amendments to a piece of legislation must be relevant to it. This would serve to both highlight the massive pork barrel spending occuring under Bush’s watch, and attempts at abuse of power (such as the amendment that recently almost made it into law, granting the Chairs of the Appropriations Committees the power to disregard privacy rules and read anyone’s income tax return).

Legislation for the people, not lobbyists: the Democrats should make a pledge that they will have a publicly transparent process for writing legislation. It wouldn’t be hard to portray the current House leadership as a cabal of industry lobbyists and Republican frontmen, because that’s what it is. Industry lobbyists are literally writing legislation (this and much more is covered in the book The Hammer: Tom DeLay: God, Money, and the Rise of the Republican Congress).

No more living on the credit card: with unprecedented deficits that have more to do with tax cuts for the wealthy and massive increases in discretionary spending than they have to do with Iraq or the war on terror, the Republicans have ceded their touchstone of being the party of fiscal responsibility. The Democrats must claim it. Politically this is a tough nut to crack, which is why Kerry didn’t pursue it too vigorously. But I think the American people are more open to some tough love than the Democrats give them credit for. It must be framed first and foremost not in terms of taxing and spending statistics, but in terms of the nightmare our children will inherit if we keep up what we’re doing now (as well as what might happen even sooner if the dollar continues it’s downward slide).

Enhance small business opportunities: traditionally Democrats have seen the business community as a monolith. But it is not. Big business is often the enemy of small business, and small businesses need help. More on this can be found in the article Top Billings, which describes how super red-state Montana now has a newly elected Democratic governor. His advocacy for small business was a cornerstone of his campaign. This is the 21st century face of populism.

Those are some of my ideas. I have others too. Senate Democrats could keep the party engaged on foreign policy matters by formulating their own Israeli-Palestine peace plan, as a way of possibly building some momentum (even if it’s the Europeans who end up riding it) and highlighting Bush’s dithering in this crucial area. They could even come at the global warming issue by framing it in terms of preserving property values (who wants waterfront property that will soon be underwater?). But I’ll stop there. The point of all this is to illustrate that, as a Party, we surely have the brainstorming abilities to put together a winning agenda. It must be a bold agenda that reframes key issues. And it must have clearly defined goals, the achievement of which can be easily measured and publicized.

There are two things the Democrats must learn from the Republicans: the art of message crafting, and having some brass (defined in the dictionary as “a type of insensibility to shame: very bold or impudent”). Since the 1994 “Republican Revolution” the GOP have used these to dominate the political landscape.

A long time ago, message crafting was something the Democrats were good at. For example, they turned the “Negro problem” into the “civil rights movement.” See Kevin Drum’s piece on this for more. But there’s more to it than just slapping a good-sounding label on an issue. It’s about constructing a seamless narrative about what the Democrats believe in, and providing a clear message about where they want to take the country. This point is explained brilliantly in a post at Daily Kos:

Democrats and Democrat-friendly 527s spent a record $250 million (or more) on this election cycle. Does anyone have any idea how much money that is??? That’s more money than Sony U.S. spends marketing its products in a year. It’s almost as much as Burger King spends in a year, and significantly more than Taco Bell, KFC, Pizza Hut, Subway, Domino’s…Yet by all accounts the recall rates of all that advertising were abysmal. It was obviously unsuccessful in persuading enough people to vote for Kerry. After all the ads, the speeches, the talking-head spin-room appearances, the voters still didn’t feel they knew who Kerry was and what he stood for. Whereas they do believe Saddam Hussein had WMD’s and something to do with 9/11…

Auto manufacturers, some of the most sophisticated marketers going, do a lot of research–just like pollsters and politicians. But they don’t simply determine that drivers want better brakes, stick slightly better brakes in their cars, and hang up a sign that says “New and Improved: Now with better brakes!!!”. Unfortunately, I think this is about the level we’re at with Democrats today…

An auto manufacturer, by contrast, starts by identifying safety as a critical touch point on the car-owning consumer’s psyche, and uses that to back into features it can lead with as selling points. R&D spends real money making real improvements to the brakes, product managers create names like “anti-lock brakes”, and then they roll them out with sophisticated, repetitive messaging that communicates whatever combination of fear, vulnerable children, family camaraderie, and classical music they think will nudge their target audience one point closer to buying the safe car with the important safety features they are now confident will keep their family safe.

Take that understanding of marketing, combine it with a bold agenda and a flat-footed opposition, and you’ve got a winning recipe. The best example from recent history is the Republicans’ 1994 Contract with America:

Those who embrace its value as a political tool argue that the contract led to a swing of 10 million votes in favor of the Republicans between the 1992 and the 1994 U.S. national elections…

[It] was marketed with the tag line, “If we break this contract, throw us out. We mean it!”…By avoiding the use of political or bureaucratic lingo, the contract as presented was easily digestible..[the Republicans chose to publish it in] TV Guide…because the publication, while widely read, is outside the universe of U.S. electoral politics…

Running together on the contract’s commitment to eight major congressional reforms on the first day of a new majority and to bring 10 pieces of legislation to the floor for a vote by the end of the first 100 days, the GOP engineered the largest transfer of power in the history of the House of Representatives: The GOP picked up a net of 52 seats on Election Day…

Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich…said it gave the GOP the metaphorical “battering ram” the party needed to overwhelm Washington’s political old guard long enough for the GOP to come to power as a governing majority.

The Contract with America was bold, but Bush has gone to a new level – he’s as bold as brass. His approach to environmental issues is a good example. He served the interests of polluters with his promotion of the cleverly marketed “Clear Skies” initiative, which actually rolls back environmental protections in the existing Clean Air Act. The “Healthy Forests” initiative is a similar story. Bush knows he won’t win over environmentalists with his plans, but he figures he can neutralize an issue where the Democrats are strong, and advance an industry-friendly agenda at the same time.

The lesson here for the Democrats is not dishonesty. As I mentioned before, most Americans agree with the Democrats on most issues, so unlike the Republicans they don’t need to craft messages that mask the real goals of their agenda. But they do need to learn to speak the modern language of marketing and branding, which the Republicans already have well mastered. They need to frame their issues in a bold manner and reshape the nation’s political dialogue, rather than continuing to fight and lose on the Republicans’ terms.

Up next: some ideas on how to do it.

It’s been a month since the election, and the web has been filled with ruminations about what went wrong for the Democrats, and what they should do now. Let’s see who’s making useless noise, and who’s got some real insight:

Useless Noise

The main stream media narrative: like most other political observers, I was initially taken in by the storyline endlessly parroted on the network and cable news: that a major factor in Kerry’s loss was the unexpectedly large role played by “moral values” voters. It took an analysis from a foreign magazine (the Economist), to set me straight:

…that 22% share [of the electorate citing 'moral values' as their top concern] is much lower than it was in the two previous presidential elections, in 2000 and 1996. Then, 35% and 40%, respectively, put moral or ethical issues top… all that this means is that the war on terrorism has not fundamentally altered, or made irrelevant, the cultural, moral and religious divisions that have polarised America for so long.
The Economist – The triumph of the religious right

While the Bush campaign did bring out born-again Christians in big numbers, he won because he increased his support across the board, even among those who never go to church: see
It Wasn’t Just (Or Even Mostly) the ‘Religious Right’. Aside from an effective bring-out-the-vote effort among the religious right, there was nothing new in this election about “moral values.”

The Republicans have fooled the voters: a book that many Democrats are studiously examining is Thomas Frank’s What’s the Matter with Kansas. Going back a few decades, Kansas was a solid Democratic state, but now it’s one of the reddest of the red states. A similar transformation has occurred in other states as well. How did it happen?

According to Frank, the conservative establishment has tricked Kansans, playing up the emotional touchstones of conservatism and perpetuating a sense of a vast liberal empire out to crush traditional values while barely ever discussing the Republicans’ actual economic policies and what they mean to the working class. Thus the pro-life Kansas factory worker who listens to Rush Limbaugh will repeatedly vote for the party that is less likely to protect his safety, less likely to protect his job, and less likely to benefit him economically.
Amazon.com – Editorial Review

While the Republicans certainly have shaped cultural grievances into very effective campaign wedge issues (like the marriage-protection initiatives), Frank is wrong in arguing that the Republicans are just paying lip-service to the conservative social agenda. Many GOP leaders, including Bush himself, take these issues very seriously, and I think you’ll see that very clearly when it comes time for Bush to make a Supreme Court appointment. To see Frank’s argument more thoroughly dismantled, see Witness – at New Donkey (a blog that unofficially represents the centrist Democratic Leadership Council). Like New Donkey, I’m concerned that the Democrats will take Frank’s argument to heart, and from there shape a losing, populist agenda for 2006 and 2008. This is why I think the Democrats would have done even worse if Howard Dean had been the nominee. While he wouldn’t have suffered from Kerry’s “flip-flopper” image, his brusque refusal to even consider “God, guns, and gays” as issues worth discussing would have utterly sank him in the red states. I can’t say it better than New Donkey:

…the whole point of cultural anxiety…has far less to do with abortion or gays than with a widespread sense that a whole host of traditional values are being threatened and perhaps extinguished by cultural forces ranging from globalization and commercialization to sex-and-violence saturated entertainment products…We’re the “wrong track” party when it comes to the cultural direction of the country, and we have to decide whether to bravely swim upstream out of loyalty to hip-hop and Michael Moore and Grand Theft Auto IV and Hollywood campaign contributions, or do something else, like at least expressing a little ambivalence about it all. Changing the subject is cowardly and insulting no matter how you look at it.
New Donkey – Witness

Real Insight

The red-blue cultural divide: although the role of moral values in this election wasn’t new, it’s actually good for the Democrats that the media has forced them to take a hard look at how narrow their base of support has become. While it’s interesting to compare the 2004 electoral map with this pre-Civil War map, it’s important to not read too much into it. The real division in this country isn’t between states – it’s between urban and rural communities (with the in-between suburbs as the battlegrounds).

For example, in John Ashcroft’s home state of Missouri, Bush received 54 percent of the vote, making it a red state. But Kerry won the city of St. Louis by an overwhelming 81 percent; he also won the two other most populous counties in the state, St. Louis and Jackson counties, according to data from CNN.com.

With the exception of the uber-conservative states of Utah, Nebraska, Alaska and Oklahoma, nearly every “red” state with major metropolitan centers had pockets that strongly supported Kerry, including Colorado (Denver and Boulder), Georgia (Atlanta), and Indiana (Gary).
Alternet – Blue Islands, Red Seas

And Josh Marshall offers some insights on the nature of this cultural divide that’s unlike anything you may have read elsewhere. The last two Democratic Presidents have been southern governors, and the reason they succeed where others fail is because they can bridge this cultural divide.

The flailing Kerry campaign: I think it was in September – after weeks had gone by with no real counter-punch to the Swift Boat Vets – that Chris Matthews said something along the lines of “the Kerry campaign is the most inept in American history.” Howard Kurtz, in a recent Washington Post column, lays plain the two key problems: indecisive management from Kerry, and a lack of a coherent message. In regard to message:

That Kerry lacked a clear message isn’t just a convenient postelection critique. It was a mantra during the campaign…It was a problem that plagued the campaign as soon as they stumbled, penniless, from the primaries into the general election. ‘When we got into the general, nobody knew how to go against Bush,’ says a senior campaign official. ‘[Senior adviser Bob] Shrum and [pollster Mark] Mellman built this strategy against Bush, ‘Stronger at home, respected in the world.’ What does that mean? We never even had strategy memos.’ By the fall, things were no better. ‘If there was a clear message in September about why you elect Kerry and defeat Bush, most of the people in the campaign were unaware of it,’ says one senior strategist hired late in the campaign.
The Washington Post – Kerry’s Troubled Campaign

Salvation for the Democrats can be found in something that’s been discussed recently under a variety of labels: branding, framing, and message crafting. Polls consistently indicate that most Americans agree with the Democrats on most issues, but the Democrats have been failing for at least 10 years now to market themselves coherently to win their votes. Meanwhile, the Republicans have been brilliant at it. This dovetails nicely with something Howard Dean is right about, which is that the Democrats need to engage the Republicans nationwide, and cannot cede the South and Midwest to them. In my next post I’ll talk more about all this, and (unlike most of the other armchair-quarterbacking bloggers) offer some specific recommendations.

I recently came across this photograph from the Cassini spacecraft. Click on it for the full-size version. And see the explanation of exactly what it is you’re looking at. If I understood it correctly, the blue area is Saturn’s northern hemisphere, and off in the distance is the moon Mimas. The dark lines are caused by shadows from Saturn’s B ring. The really bright patch near Mimas is light streaming through the Cassini Division. The tan lines across the bottom are the actual A and F rings, which are further out than the B ring (leave it to astronomers to not put them in alphabetical order).

The space photography I’m used to seeing tends to be grainy. I was amazed by the vividness of this picture.

An interesting bit of trivia is the scale of the image: 14 miles per pixel.

Another bit of related autobiographical trivia: In 1999 I was hired as a webmaster at the NASA Ames Research Center in Mountain View, CA, but the position was cut for budgetary reasons before I even started. It wouldn’t have paid well, but it would’ve been a fantastic experience.