Not all stories are words. Some are told visually, some
numerically. The right spreadsheet at the right time can speak volumes.
A headline like the one I woke up to in this Sundays L A
Times:
“Bailout to reach
$700,000,000,000”
(with every zero in there for emphasis) makes it crystal
clear that the Market Meltdown will be sucking up all the story oxygen for a
many news cycles to come.
So how can the McCain and Obama campaigns get ahead of the
story and roll it into their candidate’s vision of the future? I’m not talking about political spin or
partisan posturing. Any hint of that will probably prove fatal. I’m talking
about how the candidates can use their points of view – the empathic connection
they have been developing for months with the voters – to help us all get
a handle on this problem. That’s what heroes do – they bring us together for
the common good by giving us a common framework to solve our problems.
How should Obama and McCain do it? Interestingly enough both
campaigns should follow the example of Nancy Reagan and “JUST SAY NO!”
The reasons why they should say no are different for each
candidate because each candidates story is different but the fact that they
should both end up saying the same thing – NO – gives me bipartisan hope.
In the next day or two I’ll go into details on the story implications for each
candidates. But to get an overview of the situation I suggest you check out
this interview Bill Moyers just did with Kevin Philips.
Philips first major work – The Emerging Republican Majority – was done
while he was working in the Nixon White house and laid out what became known as
the Southern Strategy. Since then his analysis has crisscrossed back and forth
over party lines. His book “Wealth and Democracy” is as good a macro analysis
of the problems America now faces as I have ever read. In this interview Phillips makes it clear that
current financial crisis is a bipartisan problem long in the making, with more
than enough mud to go around if we want to start slinging. Hopefully we
won’t.
To stay up on breaking
news you might want to try out ‘The Big Picture” blogsite if you don’t use it
already.