A Letter to the Democrat Nominee-Elect, Sen. Obama

DO NOT GET TAKEN INTO THE TOWN-HALL PROPOSAL, please!! In the campaign speaking coming up, you WILL NOT (FACT #1) be speaking to a “town”. You WILL (FACT #2) be speaking to the people of the world, with some significance for every person near and remote. You WILL NOT (FACT #3) be speaking in a “hall”. You WILL (FACT #4) be speaking through the global conduits of many types, your words being picked up in every medium of communication everywhere.

Herewith, I am asking you to do something that will “evolve” political speech. It’s not an easy point to make. Bear with me.

Do not fall for the “folksy” trick of Sen. John McCain. That’s what he knows works best for him. You, Sir, will know better because you have a different intelligence, more youth, more in touch with world tendencies, more capable of learning, study, inquiry, and having a propensity for giving and taking instruction. I conclude that on the strength of your education and experience, you must stand against your opponent in a public communication and formal framework.

“TURN THE PAGE!” You said that and, I am sure, comprehended the full significance of that catchphrase.

Our ancestors have “turned the page” many times over the past four millions of years. The machinery of evolution is inexorably still in effect, a law that will never be repealed. (Check that: except perhaps through human blundering. H-m-m-m.) I wish to invoke the operation of that theory for this campaign and your presidency to follow. I mean, REALLY, REALLY turn that page. You must be up to it.

In these present times, there are more and more pressures to act under threats sensed as global, and immediate, like climate change and fossil fuels, hunger, poverty, overpopulation, the sinister changes in the nature of terroristic underground warfare. The list is very long.

People of the world will not be reached through a “town hall” of folksy “conversation”, a few sentences followed by a few sentences, skimming over the great number of issues. Presidential messages must be directed at the thousands of cultures and billions of people to be affected by the advocacy. Our president is a world leader. Messages must have a diplomatic style and a technically correct content. The special nomenclature for Presidential speaking dictates, mandates, requires an important distinction of forms and styles, requiring leaders who are carriers of the “social mutation” in the “genes” for public speaking at a higher level of consciousness. I am just saying that the next President should show qualifications to speak at a higher level of awareness, which should be apparent to us all. That carrier of the duties and skills that match the global job will be favored in this changing global environment, a change in political speech leaving behind the old model of politician in George Bush and John McCain. I sense that you, Sen. Obama, have the right stuff which will be revealed in your judgments and decisions about these campaign meetings.

Citizens must also turn the page in their attentiveness, lengthening their attention to a level of concentration that their experiences in this current society do not encourage. The citizen in any world democracy must have the opportunity and ability to receive longer, more technical speaking presentations. I am not talking about a magazine article standing on two legs. I am talking about a “communicator” with style, a higher level of diction. (Diction is a large trunk of mental and physical abilities.) The listeners’ attention must be controlled and pressed beyond a few sentences of “conversational” talk to a higher level of ability to concentrate on policies for future action in the world society.

For that reason, on those bases, we must have the presidential campaign “debates” at a higher level of structure and performance, involving a higher level of presentation and reception. “My friends” audiences are a thing of the past. “My friends” speakers are outmoded. The intent to speak down through that mode of address is not of a higher order of diction. The volume and reach is not there. The speaking amateurism of Bush and McCain can no longer be the model, can no longer be tolerated..

Audiences should be given what they should be expected to handle.

I would ask Barack Obama to lead the world with that new intellectual approach that can make some turn-the-page distinctions: it’s the formal principles of “discussion” and “debate” and “deliberation”. Your political communication is now PUBLIC and GLOBAL, DIPLOMATIC and TECHNICAL, STYLISH and FORCEFUL, HISTORICAL and FUTURISTIC. Conversation is not suitable! The TOWN HALL FORUM is not suitable. What should the new communication become? “One-across-cultures-to-many”. Not “one-on-one”.

I believe that there was some body wisdom operating in the body politic that nominated you, Barack Obama.

Here is the evolutionary context for my turning-the-page point. The global society gives the competitive advantage to that person with the ability to string together lengthy and complex explications of national and international policy in such a manner of speaking that nearly everyone gets to message clearly and enjoyably. That audience which survives will have had the advantage of articulate leaders who have risen to a higher concept of their communicative role. And citizen-audiences will complement their president with their abilities to concentrate being challenged and found capable. Chattting with an audience as you wander around a stage is a lower order of confrontation with the listeners and topic. The urgency of the problems demands more.

I see the wretched model of leadership we have had the past eight years. Unfortunately, a society that may be amusing itself to death and that has a poor record of electing sub-standard leaders has a long way to go to accept, understand and operate in a new communicative context that is equal to the challenges in the global context of threats to our survival. Amusement is fine, but it is the tail, not the dog.

The context for ideas for “turning pages”, to take you seriously, follows. It is certainly considerably more complex than John McCain’s understanding of “change”.

Turning pages goes back to the evolution of consciousness in human history on Earth. Certain variabilities in human development over millennia were selected by environmental pressures and proved to be advantageous for survival. Isn’t that true in our present global environment? If nature changes, human nature must change. Evolution is the mechanism. Those (people, nations) adapted to the old nature will probably not survive. Those (people, nations) adaptable by their nature will find the new environment no threat.

The hunter-gatherers developed a simple instrumental communication serving their tribal affairs, with no need of consciousness (as defined below).

In an advance toward, but falling short of consciousness, language and speech was necessary to cope with the increasing population and the complexity of larger societies wherein the voice of a leading spirit gave the rules and laws to a people in an extended social unit no longer tribal. Everything was done without consciousness, for after the chief’s death, his voice authorizing behavior would still bind together the population-at-large under stress to determine some course of action. The hallucinated voices of dead kings became gods maintaining that higher-power to authorize behavior. Even in early Greek times, the heroes were still closely tied to the commandments of the gods.

At the next turn of a page, there followed a higher-order ability of human beings to be self-directed by their own inner narratives of self-authorization. Consciousness was thus obtained. There was, of course, an overlap of those people proceeding with consciousness and those maintaining the mentality of god-speak. (The theory rests on the differential functioning of the two hemispheres of the brain.)

Presently, the number of worldwide threats to human survival creates more and more pressures to behave differently, to grow a new mentality to cope globally involving a world consciousness that surpasses the egoistic narrative. We are at a place where the self recedes into the background as global threats must be met, climate change, hunger, poverty, overpopulation, terrorism, and so on.

President-nominee Obama has to lead the world with a new intellectual focus that can make some turn-the-page distinctions: it is now “discussion” and “negotiation” and “debate” and “deliberation” and “argumentation” and “rhetoric” (finding the possible means of persuasion in any given case—a definition not commonly understood: “Oh, that’s just rhetoric!”).

Your presidential political communication is now PUBLIC and GLOBAL, DIPLOMATIC and TECHNICAL, STYLISH and FORCEFUL, HISTORICAL and FUTURISTIC. Conversation is not suitable! The TOWN HALL FORUM is not suitable. What should the new communication become? “One-across-cultures-to-many”. Not “one-on-one”.

You, Sen. Obama, as President, will stand on the threshold of a new regime to teach a new way of proceeding to a new set of policies. Start now by avoiding the traps set by the old fashion of communicating.

TURN THE PAGE!

Reporters Are the Death of Political Debate. Why?

Political “debate”. The Democrat candidates, 4-16-2008. Moderaters: two television reporters, George Stephanopolis, Charlie Gibson. Why did that “debate” become a non-political bicker?

1. Headlines and by-lines are the major concerns of reporters. The first hour was all about the headlines, not the issues that are supposed to be the substance of policies for improving our society.

2. Reporters do not know what “debate” is. They intruded in the direct clash between the candidates, for direct clash is the main marker of any debate, direct clash, pros and cons, affirmative and negative, constructive and rebuttal, on the points at issue. IT CAN BE DONE.

3. The personalities and styles of the candidates that occasioned the bicker making the headlines will come out in their handling of the substantive points at issue as collateral information, and do not need the direct focus. Ah, yes. There are people who need that stuff of trivial pursuits which the reporters felt compelled to dwell on for so long at the beginning. It used to be that newspapers gauged their diction to the sixth grade level of readability. Is that “gossip” level to be the norm of substance and ideas?

4. The reporters turned what was supposed to be a “debate” into a press conference. That’s what is in their blood, what they do by habit. They know no other way. They do not know “debate”.

5. I do not blame them for doing what comes naturally to them. Then who is responsible for that programming? He or she does not know “debate”.

6. Who should be responsible for a “debate” between political opponents, debate that is truly debate? There are people in the colleges and universities who specialize in debate, just as there are specialists in biology, history, sociology, They know debate. They know how to moderate and deliver a meaningful debate. They have produced great leaders in society who have extensive knowledge about debate. They would not be the celebrity journalists that are now dominating the process, to the death of debate. A celebrity is not essential for the moderator role, but a good critic who is master of the criteria is mandatory.

7. SEE: National Communication Association. The experts are there.

WILL WE EVER LEARN!

Ralph Nader’s declaration to run for President

I arose before a very large audience in a very large auditorium on the campus at Indiana University in 1950 (or thereabouts) where Ralph Nader gave a speech. I asked him if he would consider running for president of the U.S. He dismissed the idea because of his “Nader’s-raiders” type of work, which was driving big business and industry nuts. He was a muckraker in the vein of a Michael Moore, and still may be.

On “Meet the Press” (2-24-200 today he announced his candidacy again, for the second time in recent years. Tim Russert asked him if he would be a spoiler and wreck the Democrat party’s chances as he did in the last election which made Bush the president instead of Al Gore. Nader cited a bunch of culprits who bore the only responsibility for that debacle. Not he! It was believeable, convincing.

He presented in a nut-shell statement his agenda, and it was all encompassing in the failures of both the Democtrat and Republican parties.

Why now, I would ask. That was not discussed. But I believe that he has waited so long because he may have wanted to hear the candidates out before deciding that they now can be judged to have revealed their shortcomings.

Just as  in his speech at IU so long ago, he was speaking the views that I and all true progressives would support. I believe that he should be included in a three-way debate with Clinton and Obama. I WANT TO HEAR THAT DEBATE! It would be a good test of the two main candidates and have a sharpening effect on the cutting blade of the Democrat platform or agenda that will dispose of the corrupt and incompetent undergrowth of the Bush administration. Let them deal with the heretofore under-discussed issues spanning all the problems we will confront.

It’s not for him; it’s for us! For our own good! PICK HIS BRAINS in a crucial meeting of minds!

BUT…! People in politics are not that creative, courageous, curious—liberal, progressive, free. Perhaps he would be too tough to handle for ultra-sensitive candidates who have too much at stake. But they have not gone far enough to live up to their oft declared first interest in us, “we the people”.

Nader does not favor the two-party system and its philosophy of producing a majority winner—that’s clear. A philosophy I believe in if I can conclude that all the issues were adequately discussed and debated. Most now will call for an end to the debates. I believe, after hearing the views of Nader this morning, that calling an end to debate now will be prematutre, against our own best interests.

Whoa! Hillary! Whoa!

We have a runaway horse and carriage here. Somebody grab those reins! I sense a disasterous crash is imminent. And it’s no accident. Hillary! Don’t attack the words! By attacking “words” you have paid a great compliment to your opponent. You have recognized what he is doing is the horse pulling his carriage, and you are not competing in this race if you feel you are behind him in the words department. A president’s stock in trade is words. The words are the contents of the mind. They stand above the deeds, which you say is your strength. Most of us do not see what you are doing or have done. How would we know? Unless you tell us, but when you do tell us, make it sound real good. And as you do would your deeds legislate for the whole world? Are you the model of a great citizen? How does your mind work at processing problems toward solutions? Not so much “what” as “how”! Please do not underestimate the strength of a leader in his power of the use of language to move people.

After the Bush incompetence as a model of communication, I welcome any leader who is a model of persuasion in the use of words. What a magnificent change that would be! When you speak to the nation, your speech is a language link to those whom you would direct and solve problems. THAT’S WORDS! I crave eloquence in our presidents. Look at the sorry model of speaking now in office. The butt of much satire. A regular cartoon character. A truly sad creature. You must be wary of how the political cartoonists will caricature you. I lived in West Texas for some years. There is there only a charm West Texans can appreciate, but it does not have national currency.

With your current turn of direction, you have gone over the hill and around the bend, and soon out of sight. Find a speech writer, or a bunch of them, who will give you a colorful set of words, not window dressing, but words that do justice to the breadth and scope of the vision you may have for our future as a great nation.

Debate Innovations

In addition to the reforms I suggested previously, we should have a reporter used as a summarizer, a clarifier of each debaters position on, say, health care, a summary from a disinterested point of view of any section of the debate, to the satisfaction of each debater, just to get it right. That is the best test of any good active listener, which every reporter should be. Just make a simple statement of what was said. “Did I get it right?” Don’t ask a question. Just report the content. Do that for each candidate statement, and move on to the next set of statements.

That procedure would certainly help the listeners/viewers.

The reporters should also be able to frame a debateable proposition, a resolution, clarifying the proposal for a policy of action by the deliberative body (Congress). The president usually makes proposals to be enacted by the legislators. What should be the policy (policies) we should enact to mitigate, for example, global warming?

We should insist that these debates among candidates for office be more efficient, productive, illuminating.

The journalists have not done the job.

Journalists as “Debate” Moderators

I wish I could find the right words for the opprobrious behavior of the journalistic habits that deleteriously affected the progress of the “debate”. Poor Wolf! Out of his element! He insisted on coming between the interactions of the two candidates, interposing new questions before each candidate had a chance to respond to the previous speaker’s remarks, which is called a clash of views that constitutes “a debate”. GET THE DAMN JOURNALISTS OUT OF THE DEBATE BUSINESS!!! That is not their province. Am I the only one who hates to hear the journalist sputtering in the background attempting to gain control of the interchange. Wolf announced there’d be no rules. I guess that means time rules, also. I have seen only two attempts by candidates to put the moderator in his place. They should have asserted more leadership about the procedures, and responsibility and self-control for such elements as the time.

Nearly everybody does not know the distinctions among the forms, debate, conversation, discussion. Only one candidate used the word “discussion”: Hillary. A very brief glimmer, but then lost again in “conversation”. A conversation is aimless; a discussion is not. A discussion has a formal sequence of functions, as does debate. And though those functions are formally identifiable by research observers, they are functions that people in a discussion, without awareness, may go through, in order to solve a problem. If the people in a discussion have an awareness of the functions in advance, as part of their education (which currently is grieveiously missing), the solving of problems can be very efficient, less conversational and aimless and harmful to human relations. Tch! Tch!

More important, if they know the functions involved in a discussion or debate, then they are able to pick up on those functions not operating, being ignored, or slopped through, for every one of the functions is absolutely necessary for group problem solving.

Personally, when I find myself in any group discussion, I have work very hard to keep myself under control, and self-control is one of the functions. I see people operating with no awareness of what they are doing to destroy any opportunity for a meaningful, useful, practical, and democratic  outcome for all the time they are investing.  Education is missing, and needed. For everyone in a democratic society.  The totalitarians are everywhere wreaking havoc on group processes.

You who wish to be top operators in public discussion can inform yourself by reviewing or studying (Googling) the topic of “group dynamics”. Actually, and ideally, every “citizen” should be so desirous.

Journalists, do your thing, but do not step out of your most valuabe role as conduits for the news. And those who ask you to step out of your basic role to moderate a forum, are fools. And you, journalists, are fools to accept.

You are the copper wire, not the electricity.

Candidates for President: Democrats’ “Debate (?)” (1-15-08)

Journalists, reporters, are not trained in oral communication events, as judged by the overriding influence of their journaistic habits evidenced in this “debate” event. The process suffered by that fact. It is a “fact” to those who are knowledgeable in the special nature of debate. Reporters are questioners, and they should have had the understanding of debateable resolutions and direct clash on the issues inherent in the statement of the resolution. Journalistic questions are not policy debate propositions. Journalistic (gotcha) questions derive from muddled news reports and are not germane to the central questions of the campaign. Tim Russert, for whom I have the greatest respect as a digging, probing questioner and journalist, was not right for the “debate” among the three democrats.

Being constructive, I forsee an improved and matured future for this kind of campaign event. The candidates themselves will be asked in advance to prepare the resolutions for the event (“Be it resolved that…….”), adhering to what is generally recognized as the main issues in the campaign. A chairman-moderator will read the resolution and keep the responses to a timed limit. The advocate will speak, followed by the negative sides taken by the opponent candidates. Judges, qualified in the skills of argumentation and debate, will deliver a critique and a rebuttal round will ensue.

Then another proposition will be taken up.

Such a direct clash on the issues will accomplish a more clear-cut understanding of the following aspects of a candidate’s qualifications.

Does the candidate have a vision of the future that can be summarized in a “preamble” type of statement?

How well has the candidate analyzed the problem to be solved in comparison to the other candidates?

How well will the candidate act as a change agent, implementing the changes dictated by the propositions?

Another tack on the debates might be this: Micheal Moore has produced a documentary of the health care issue, “Sicko”. Summarize the main points of the documentary and state how you would resolve the problems. The same could be done with Al Gore’s prize winning documentary on global warming. Other well known treatments of the issues might also be used to stop the tattered and unraveled approach currently taken by “journalists”.

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.

HOW DO WE DEFINE DEMOCRACY?

I heard one commentator ask the question. I am continually surprised how often people who are supposed to know better bandy about words and never question for definitions. Amnesty, for one. How dumb can the wise be?

A highly compacted definition of democracy:

Democracy is a process of discussion and debate serving the ends of political, social and economic problem-solving. The discussion process must have leadership that understands the dynamics of people working in groups. The group process demands knowledge of the social, emotional, and intellectual enrichments and barriers in the problem-solving continuum. The democratic process must have participants who understand the nature of the discussion sequence from problem to solution and the symptoms of discussion breakdown that call for organized debate to resolve differences and attain the solution. The democratic process must have leaders and participants who, in a vast nation-society, are prepared to have their communication go through the process of mass mediation. All leaders and participants must have an understanding of the laws and ethical standards governing communication.

Democracy is discussion. The alternatives are, on the one hand, anarchy, and on the other, dictatorship. Our democracy lies in the middle, between the anarchy of conversation and the aristocratic demagoguery of the public speaker. Mostly we muddle through, greatly inefficient because we as a whole have not experienced knowledgeable discussion and debate with other adept people; we do not know the difficult means of navigating the rough waters of human emotion, habit and intellect. We are impatient with those slower to catch on and adjust to the trend of a discussion. The great problems: truncated discussion, premature debate, representative government.