Candidates for President: LISTEN UP!

All of you:

GIVE US THIS: An operational definition of “change”,  “experience”, “democracy”, “conversation”, “the office of president”. You may need to refresh your understanding about “operational definitions”.  Such a definition describes all the actions you take, the behaviors that go into the word you are trying to define.

In the first order of business is the question, how will you behave as president, specifically? Pack those actions into an itemized statement of aims, goals and objectives (in order of increasing specificity).

I recomend this: FACE THE SCHOLARS!

The “conversation people”, the journalists, do not have the seminnal questions to ask. They are interested in the horse race of campaigning. They give us the conversational base. By their actions in moderation of the many forums, they do not know what “debate” is. They are focused on what is happening, what has happened, but ignore what will happen. Think of the word “politics”. The stem of that word is policy, policy setting, guides for future action. What will happen rests on a deeper understanding of history and human behavior.

The talk of “change” has been superfluous. The biggest change is the advent of candidates of race and gender, different from the past. What can a woman bring to the office that no man has ever brought? What can a black man bring to the office that white men have never brought? Must a woman be judged like a man would be? Must a black man be judged like a white man would be? Separate out those contributions that come in addition to the basic human qualities of intelligence and personality. Has our female candidate separated herself from male expectancies? And the same for our black candidate. What makes them, their perspectives, unique? Then add that uniqueness to their human qualities and we, as a nation, have a chance to break the ice for future people who may continue the shut-out.

We also need to change the forum as presently defined. We need to open the door for those among us who have book-length “opinions”, which are something greater than opinions, that is, reliable knowledge, not anecdotal.  We need our candidates to stop reading the tea-leaves of public opinion and answer the probes of questions on a higher plane, those posed by the scholars and scientists who are telling us what our solar system is really like now, how it was, and how it will come to be. We need our leaders to perform on a grander stage than that of journalistic, pulse-feeling, public opinion. Not just “who-what-when-where” but more on the “why and how”.  That higher plane is that of “discussion”, not “conversation”. In addition to the  scholars, we should ask the candidates to be tested in interaction with a circle of  foreign diplomats, for that is an important arena of presidential action.  How would they behave in a discussion of issues pertinent with scientists? CEOs? Union leaders? Financial experts? We were disappointed to hear that the incumbent does not ask questions when he is engaged with specialists, showing an absence  curiosity about problems.

Must we always have the journalists on stage!?

Is the gender disadvantage greater than the race disadvantage? I have seen the shameless and obvious ganging up of the male candidates on the female candidate, Hillary Clinton. I have seen her express sincere emotions with watery eyes. They have made her dress a topic. Need she play the men’s needling game? It does not bode well for her. That’s what happens when the issues for debate descend to irrelevancies, BECAUSE MOST PEOPLE DO NOT KNOW WHAT A DISCUSSION OR DEBATE IS, especially the journalists and columnists who play a major role in this campaign season.

We are not well served.

Face the scholars. Programs like Jim Lehrer’s, George Stephanopolous’s, Chris Matthews’s, Charlie Rose’s, Tim Russert’s, etc., need to impanel more scholars, and others,  for the stacks of history and scientific books they have written on the issues that most concern us. (Bill Moyers has done that.) Scholars and scientists have strong tendencies to proceed with tested and substantiated and qualified conclusions (reliable knowledge), compared to newspaper columnists’ anecdotal historical allusions and opinions, which may be selectively chosen or tinged with the medium owner’s bias; they may have read history or science but never conducted historical investigations or scientific studies. Perhaps an analogy comparing a butcher shop and to brain surgery is not a good idea here, but it is tempting. (Wouldn’t be prudent.)

Moderators should have credentials for moderating from, for example, the National Communication Association. Argumentation and debate is superior to “conversation” and different contexts for discussion would really test of a leader’s mettle.  After all, this is for the presidency of a world power. Our highest ranked leader should never shame the people she or he represents in all the contexts of this globe.

When the human race makes an advance, this is one area to watch in order to gauge the advance.

Political Danger

Having watched the tv news shows with a moderator and panels mostly of journalists, we should hold as suspect this major source of information and analysis. Why suspect? Its depth of deliberative discussion is probably, from a journalistic perspective, not of the highest quality.
I do not know how many people watch such “talking heads” programs. If they have some impact on the outcome of the election of a president, then the analysis and discussion might be better if the moderators chose those panel members who have the depth of book-length expertise, those who can be seen on C-SPAN’s Book TV programs. Those author’s usually appear in solo performances. It might make better programs if the journalist-moderators put together those scholars in one session and had them interact for the benefit of the citizen-voters.

I did see on one presentation on C-SPAN an author who was the worst public speaker I have heard in a very long time. But his message is essential for understanding his topic, “Children of the Jihad”, and I looked beyond the verbal static and thunderstorm twister in his manner of presentation to get what he had to say. I did so because I had been thinking along the same lines. There was a good book behind him. So I guess a powerful message trumps delivery.

Most authors of serious non-fiction are not so “cursed” in the delivery area. They should become the panel members, they and other scholar-specialists, instead of, or in addition to the journalist-columnists.

For instance, Randall Robinson spoke on the story of “An Unbroken Agony” in his book of that title, Haiti and the kidnapping of Pres. Aristide by the U.S. Have you ever heard Randall Robinson? I did, just before I saw the speaker described above, back to back. In Randall Robinson I heard a speaker in the opposite extreme. I have seldom heard a speaker of such high quality, fluency, articulateness, intelligence, eloquence, erudition, wisdom, all in one person in the service of a story that should be taken to heart by all U.S. citizens. How much the Haitians did with so little in their revolution which was hi-jacked by France and the U.S. How the U.S. does so little with so much. You don’t tear upthe constitution and overturn the checkerboard if you don’t like the person you’ve got. You go from election to election until you do get the leader you want and should have.

After that action of the Bush administration, it is essential to ask, what does America (U.S.) know about democracy. Our acts in the world against democracies, like Haiti had, indicate that the answer to the question is “Nothing!”