Dear David Axelrod

Mailed: February 13, 2009

Mr. David Axelrod
Senior Presidential Advisor
The White House
1600 Pennsylvania Avenue NW
Washington, DC 20500

Dear Mr. Axelrod:

It has been very discouraging to see the administration so badly out-sold these past few weeks in the battle over the stimulus bill.

Your team focused on the message that it was important to do something, which was a little like telling consumers that it is important to brush their teeth. They may know it’s the right thing to do, but they have to be convinced that your brand is the best for them.

Meanwhile, the Republicans dropped easily understood, sensational, nuggets ridiculing plans to buy condoms, sod and other silly line items funded in the bill.

In my humble opinion you should have been selling the benefits of the big items in the bill; for example, the power grid, or the computerization of medical records. I try to follow this stuff closely, and while I accept that these are good things, I certainly couldn’t explain the cost/benefit relationships of them, or extol their virtues in a very detailed, persuasive manner to someone else.

Conversations with many well-educated people have convinced me that the country’s understanding of these issues is very superficial in general -- but people want to know more.

So I am writing to offer a modest suggestion: Take those two issues, identify the benefits they will bring to society (number of jobs created, money saved in the future, new capabilities, etc.), and put those benefits into plain, everyday language the average American can understand. Give those bullet points to a good PowerPoint creator, add some engaging graphics, and then send the finished product as a self-running file via email to everyone on your considerable address list.

It would be on more than 50% of all Americans’ computers in a matter of hours. Heck, people will send all manner of silliness to everyone they know. With the country in such desperate shape people would welcome the chance to help inform their friends, families and neighbors of ways to dig ourselves out of this economic hole we are all in, if the tool were simple, engaging, and non-partisan.

You guys were brilliant at this sort of viral messaging during the campaign. In fact, it was one of the big reasons I voted for President Obama. Solving the huge problems the country faces is going to require new social coalitions, and great communications. The motivated, grassroots organization you built was so impressive I felt this could make the difference between success and failure.

I know it’s early, but these skills seems to have abandoned you since taking office, but now they are needed more critically than ever. Even the best of ideas have to be sold.

Yesterday was the birthday of Charles Darwin and Abraham Lincoln. Many people believe they were selling two of the most powerful ideas ever articulated by man, and yet 200 years later they still have to be sold.

I wish you the best of luck.

Sincerely,

d'blank

The Greatest American

Abraham Lincoln's Second Inaugural Address Saturday, March 4, 1865

Weeks of wet weather preceding Lincoln's second inauguration had caused Pennsylvania Avenue to become a sea of mud and standing water. Thousands of spectators stood in thick mud at the Capitol grounds to hear the President. As he stood on the East Portico to take the executive oath, the completed Capitol dome over the President's head was a physical reminder of the resolve of his Administration throughout the years of civil war. Chief Justice Salmon Chase administered the oath of office. In little more than a month, the President would be assassinated.

Fellow-Countrymen: At this second appearing to take the oath of the Presidential office there is less occasion for an extended address than there was at the first. Then a statement somewhat in detail of a course to be pursued seemed fitting and proper. Now, at the expiration of four years, during which public declarations have been constantly called forth on every point and phase of the great contest which still absorbs the attention and engrosses the energies of the nation, little that is new could be presented. The progress of our arms, upon which all else chiefly depends, is as well known to the public as to myself, and it is, I trust, reasonably satisfactory and encouraging to all. With high hope for the future, no prediction in regard to it is ventured.

On the occasion corresponding to this four years ago all thoughts were anxiously directed to an impending civil war. All dreaded it, all sought to avert it. While the inaugural address was being delivered from this place, devoted altogether to saving the Union without war, urgent agents were in the city seeking to destroy it without war—seeking to dissolve the Union and divide effects by negotiation. Both parties deprecated war, but one of them would make war rather than let the nation survive, and the other would accept war rather than let it perish, and the war came.

One-eighth of the whole population were colored slaves, not distributed generally over the Union, but localized in the southern part of it. These slaves constituted a peculiar and powerful interest. All knew that this interest was somehow the cause of the war. To strengthen, perpetuate, and extend this interest was the object for which the insurgents would rend the Union even by war, while the Government claimed no right to do more than to restrict the territorial enlargement of it. Neither party expected for the war the magnitude or the duration which it has already attained. Neither anticipated that the cause of the conflict might cease with or even before the conflict itself should cease. Each looked for an easier triumph, and a result less fundamental and astounding. Both read the same Bible and pray to the same God, and each invokes His aid against the other. It may seem strange that any men should dare to ask a just God's assistance in wringing their bread from the sweat of other men's faces, but let us judge not, that we be not judged. The prayers of both could not be answered. That of neither has been answered fully. The Almighty has His own purposes. "Woe unto the world because of offenses; for it must needs be that offenses come, but woe to that man by whom the offense cometh." If we shall suppose that American slavery is one of those offenses which, in the providence of God, must needs come, but which, having continued through His appointed time, He now wills to remove, and that He gives to both North and South this terrible war as the woe due to those by whom the offense came, shall we discern therein any departure from those divine attributes which the believers in a living God always ascribe to Him? Fondly do we hope, fervently do we pray, that this mighty scourge of war may speedily pass away. Yet, if God wills that it continue until all the wealth piled by the bondsman's two hundred and fifty years of unrequited toil shall be sunk, and until every drop of blood drawn with the lash shall be paid by another drawn with the sword, as was said three thousand years ago, so still it must be said "the judgments of the Lord are true and righteous altogether."

With malice toward none, with charity for all, with firmness in the right as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in, to bind up the nation's wounds, to care for him who shall have borne the battle and for his widow and his orphan, to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace among ourselves and with all nations.

One man's pork...

One man’s pork is another man’s infrastructure redevelopment program. The President was good last night. One of the things I like best about him is his patience. He handled the lack of bipartisan support issue very well by pointing out that it will require a long-term effort, and that we have just started the journey.

I’d still only give him a “C” on selling the stimulus plan. He was overly focused on convincing people that a stimulus plan is necessary (which I believe most people are willing to accept, even if they aren’t really sure), rather than selling the benefits of this particular plan.

I’ve come to believe that we need to act, and that it has to be big. And while I’d prefer that Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid be prohibited from having any input at all, that isn’t how the system works. As the President has said, “Of course this is a spending bill. What else do you think a stimulus is?” Pretty much any spending will stimulate something. The bill won’t be anybody’s idea of perfection. In fact, the fact that so many people are taking shots at it gives me a little hope that it might be the right plan.

Now let’s see what’s in store for Wall Street. Geithner talks in a few minutes. Tomorrow the CEOs of the big banks appear before Congress. Read Ross Sorkins’ recommended questions for a good laugh (or cry).

Obama press conference tonight @ 8:00

I have nothing more to say until I hear what the President has to say tonight. I'm hoping for a more effective sales job on the stimulus package. Everything I've seen and heard so far has been long on platitude and short on specifics; for example, his most recent Weekly Address.

I'd like to see him pick one thing and go into it in some detail. What is the new electrical grid they keep talking about? Why is it good, and how many jobs will it create? And don't be afraid to throw a couple of charts up there. If we heard more about the really meaty things we'd be less likely to be distracted and angered by the parochial pork-barrel stuff that Congress added.

Obambi

BHO has got to get tougher. It’s time to Cowboy-up and kick some bootie; there’s no time to even take names. He’s just been too nice.

The TGIF party for the Republicans a couple weeks ago was a good try, in the spirit of bipartisanship and all. Much good it did him, but it was smart to try. He went the extra mile.
And it was good to hear him get a little froggie with the GOP yesterday. They don’t need to be reminded that he won the election, but the American people probably do. I don’t really understand it, but Democrats, regardless of who they are or how big they won, seem to be always on the defensive. The Republican brand may only represent the way 40% or fewer of Americans affiliate themselves, but they always act like winners – as if they know they are the smartest and their ideas are the best. Democratic politicians are always explaining subtleties and apologizing.

So now we have a pretty bad stimulus bill that is bad because the old-school Congressional Dems loaded it up with local pork that won’t stimulate anything except reelection contributions from the home front. Then in a wimpy and unsuccessful attempt to appease the GOP, they layered in some more of the kind of tax-cuts Obama ran against. I don’t know if they are a good idea or a bad one, but everyone knows he doesn’t want them and that they are being forced on him, making him look weaker still.

Now the always-defensive Dems really have something to feel defensive about, but being members of Congress they are sociopathicly unable to actually fix it. Giving the appearance of a repair job in the joint committee is the best they are going to be able to do.

It is the Democratic Congressional leadership the President needs to invite -- not to cocktails in Williamsburg -- but to the nearest woodshed for a good, old-fashioned, south-side-of-Chicago, ass whoopin’.

He needs to do it so they’ll fix the bill, and to make everyone remember who won the election and who is in charge. It’s up to him, and only he can do it. Because no one in this country, regardless of political point-of-view, will be lead by Bambi. We prefer to be lead by the Duke or Dirty Harry.

1,000,000,000,000

The size of the new economic recovery plan is approaching one trillion dollars. I don’t know about the rest of you, but I’m having a hard time getting my head around this number. I often work with seven-figure numbers, and occasionally even eight; but that’s about it. A trillion is 13 digits.

I heard a trillion explain this way today:

One million seconds equals 11 ½ days

One billion seconds equals 32 years

One trillion seconds equals 32,000 years

Yiikes.

Tom Daschle, public servant

Tom’s “public” was Leo Hindery, the New York media rich guy who paid him a million a year, plus providing the now famous car and driver, in exchange for what appear to be some very ill-defined duties.

Of course he wasn’t lobbying, which would have required him to register as such, which would have brought certain vocational restrictions, included barring him from the Obama cabinet per BHO’s self-imposed ban on that particular strain of doxy.

Ah, but a lobbyist by any other name is not a lobbyist in the parlance of our government. It turns out that anyone can “engage in lobbying activities on behalf of a client” so long as said activities do not constitute more than 20% of one’s activities on behalf of that client. TD was the only one tracking his hours, so I guess it worked out OK for him.

I make a tab less than TD, but my employer supplies me with a few perks that sweeten the job a little. Despite never having served as the Chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, I am, however, fully aware that these perks trigger tax obligations. And my professional tax advisor reminds me just in case it slips my mind. But if it could happen to Charlie Rangel and Tim Geithner, I guess it could happen to Tommy D., too. He would have been a little more believable if he’d paid up in June when the “error” was discovered rather than waiting until he’d been nominated for the H&HS gig.

Ever since the news of his tax problems broke we’ve been hearing about what a popular guy he is on the Hill. I’m just wondering how much of his popularity stems from the $66,000+ he and his wife gave to various Senate, House and Presidential candidates last year. (Including, ironically, Charlie Rangel.) Full rundown here. Well, I’m sure those contributions will play no role in the confirmation vote.

Finally, don’t you love how Tommy quickly labeled his failure to pay his income taxes a “stupid mistake”? This is has become the de rigor response for all manner of political chicanery. I call it the Harrison Ford response, for the advice he gave the President (Donald Moffat) while playing Jack Ryan in Clear and Present Danger. The basic idea is you self-label yourself something terrible, but survivable (stupid), before your critics or the press can label you something worse and less survivable (e.g., thief, tax-cheat, influence peddler).

So somebody please tell me, why is it so important that Tom Daschle be the Secretary of H&HS that we are expected to overlook this pretty thievery which saps the morale of the country and dishonors genuine public service?