[Dialogue] {Disarmed} The Uphill Struggle

[FacilitationFla at aol.com]

From a conservative  columnist 
New York  Times  
The  Uphill Struggle  
By _DAVID BROOKS_ 
(http://topics.nytimes.com/top/opinion/editorialsandoped/oped/columnists/davidbrooks/index.html?inline=nyt-per)  
Published: July 27,  2007 
The  biggest story of this presidential campaign is the success of Hillary 
Clinton.  Six months ago many people thought she was too brittle and calculating 
and that  voters would never really bond with her. But now she seems to offer 
the perfect  combination of experience and change.  
She’s demonstrating that it really  helps to have lived in the White House. 
She can draw on a range of experiences  unmatched by her rivals. She’s 
dominated most of the debates. She’s transformed  her position on Iraq without a 
ripple. Her measured,  statistic-filled speeches rarely inspire passion, but always 
 confidence. 
Her success has put incredible  pressure on Barack Obama. He continues to 
attract huge crowds and huge money,  but he also continues to make rookie 
mistakes, like saying he’d talk with Hugo  Chávez. He’s forced to campaign on the 
defensive now, knowing that each misstep  reinforces the “He’s too young” story 
line. 
Clinton’s performancewill also have an  effect on the Republican race, though 
many Republicans are only now beginning to  realize it. When you ask 
Republican presidential candidates about Clinton, a smile of  professional respect 
comes over their faces. 
But their world is transformed.  The one thing Republicans had going for them 
was the head-to-heads. Bush, the  war and the party could all be unpopular, 
but individual G.O.P. candidates beat  Clinton because  her negatives were so 
high. But she is changing that. People who’ve said they  would never vote for 
her will take a second look once they see her campaign.   
That means in 2008, Hillary won’t  save the G.O.P. An orthodox Republican 
will not beat an orthodox Democrat. If  Republicans want to have any chance next 
year, they have to go for broke.   
You can see hints of the bad  environment at Republican campaign events. A 
city councilman in Franklin, N.H., introduced  Mitt Romney by saying that 
America is looking for a leader “to  take us out of the shadows.” A questioner in 
New London asked how Romney will bring honesty  back to the White House. A 
questioner at a McCain event in Keene charged, “We’ve had  16 years of draft 
dodgers in the White House!”  
These are Republicans talking  about seven years of Republican rule. 
Then there’s the issues.  Iraq will still be a shooting war in  2008. Health 
care is emerging as the biggest domestic concern. This is natural  Democratic 
turf. So as I travel around watching the Republican candidates, I’m  looking 
for signs that they’re willing to try something unorthodox. Eighty  percent of 
the time, what I see is the Dole campaign: Republican candidates  uttering 
their normal principles — small government, military strength, strong  families —
 and heading inexorably toward defeat. 
But there are flashes. There are  times when they break out of the 
conventional trench warfare and touch the anger  and longing that define this historical 
moment. 
One occurred at a McCain event  Wednesday. In Washington, the McCain campaign 
is considered  dead, but somebody seems to have forgotten to tell the people 
up here. A man at  one packed event rose to vent his outrage at Washington. He 
ignited something in McCain,  who started talking about what he’d learned 
from the failure of immigration  reform. McCain worked himself up, recounting one 
failure and disgrace after  another, culminating finally with an angry 
bellow, “Nobody trusts us to do what  we say we’re going to do!”  
It wasn’t a Howard Beale “Network”  moment, but it touched something. The 
crowd was with him all the  way. 
The other flash I saw was at a  Romney event at the Lincoln Financial Group 
in Concord. Romney had slipped away from the  policy chunks of his stump speech 
and was talking about his success in business  and in running the Olympics. 
He was talking about how you assemble a team of  people with complementary 
skills. How you use data and analysis to replace  opinion. How you set benchmarks 
and how often you should perform  self-evaluation. 
It wasn’t impassioned or angry (he  doesn’t do anger). But it was Romney 
losing himself in something he really cares  about, and it opened up a vista of 
how government might operate.   
The McCain and Romney flashes  weren’t about policy. They weren’t part of 
the normal Republican vs. Democratic  dynamic. They were about leadership, honor 
and intelligence. If Republicans are  going to have a chance, it’ll be 
because, by focusing on the state of American  politics, they reshape the 
battleground under everyone’s feet.   


Cynthia N.  Vance, M. A.
Strategics International Inc., Miami, Florida
305-378-1327;  fax 305-378-9178
Venice, Florida Office: 941-483-9165
_http://members.aol.com/facilitationfla_ 
(http://members.aol.com/facilitationfla) 

Want  to build your own facilitation skills? 
Want to meet facilitators from around  the world and in your own backyard? 
Mark your calendar for the International  Assoc. of Facilitators Conference 
2008
Atlanta, Georgia -- April 10-12, 2008  See _www.iaf-world.org_ 
(http://www.iaf-world.org/) 




************************************** Get a sneak peek of the all-new AOL at 
http://discover.aol.com/memed/aolcom30tour
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: http://wedgeblade.net/pipermail/dialogue_wedgeblade.net/attachments/20070727/f18ab71c/attachment.html