Tokenism is Strangling the GOP

Some Republicans do not understand their failure to organize and relate to voters had as much to do with the GOP’s loss as did anything their opponents did to win. It can be hard to digest the fact one’s own shortcomings are to blame while the bitter taste of defeat is still fresh, but Republicans would be wise to choke down a sizeable helping of self-evaluation before leaving this table. If they want things to change, Republicans must fix what is broken within their party.

Governor Terry Branstad isn’t looking inward, he is lashing out. In a Register interview last week, he said this, “If you really analyze this, it’s a tribute to the community organizer and campaigner-in-chief. He had a terrible record, he knew he couldn’t run on it, and they ran a very effective campaign, really. If you look at the nuts and bolts, they didn’t win this on issues. They spent the entire year in advance trying to make Mitt Romney this ogre and somebody that people wouldn’t trust.”

With a straight face, Governor Branstad says President Obama didn’t win on issues and then concludes, “If Romney had won, I think there would have been a mandate for change.”

‘If my guy wins, the electorate supports our agenda – if the other guy wins, the voters got duped’ is not intellectually honest. Believing what they wanted to believe while ignoring all evidence to the contrary led many Republicans to predict a landslide victory. Similar election results will happen again unless Republicans cease the self-comforting spin. It may be hard to swallow, but Republicans lost, in part, because voters did not agree with them.

Governor Mitt Romney proved he is unwilling to accept why he lost. He told large donors participating in a campaign wrap-up call the Obama team bestowed “gifts” on loyal Democrat constituencies to sway the election.

“In each case, they (Democrats) were very generous in what they gave to those groups,” Romney said. He went on to say while President Obama was, in effect buying votes, Mr. Romney was “talking about big issues for the whole country: military strategy, foreign policy, a strong economy, creating jobs and so forth.”

Romney refuses to admit his own message was the heart of the problem. He believes in himself and his message so completely, the only conclusion Romney draws is that voters rejected him because of some sleight of hand by the silver-tongued Obama.

By telling donors others are to blame without accepting any responsibility for his own actions, Governor Romney reminds me of the guy who tells his wife a tree fell on her truck, the truck he parked next to the tree he was about to cut down. The tree fell on the truck, but that does not make the incident the tree’s fault.

There is some hope. A few Republicans including Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal appear to be looking the right direction. In response to Romney’s comments to donors, Jindal said this, “We have got to stop dividing the American voters. We need to go after 100 percent of the votes, not 53 percent. We need to go after every single vote. … So I absolutely reject that notion, that description. I think it’s absolutely wrong. I don’t think that represents where we are as a party, where we’re going as a party. That has got to be one of the most fundamental takeaways from this election.”

Republicans need to develop a plan for leading and attracting new voters. This starts with constructing two essential components of a winning campaign, organization and message. Developing an effective organization and a motivational message requires an understanding of voters: the who, where, why and how elements of the electorate.

The Obama campaign redefined the mechanics of campaigning. Their ability to identify likely voters, to create and disseminate nearly individualized messages based on data collection and to get out the vote by making the most of today’s technology has set a new standard. They thought about how voters communicated, where they got information and what influenced their thinking. But, most important, they inspired voters to act. Inspiration is the magic ingredient of a winning campaign formula.

The Romneys and Branstads of the GOP are missing the point.

Women, Latinos, African Americans and others are not target groups to be purchased with what Romney describes as “gifts.” They are a part of a diverse electorate interested in ideas that will make the country, their communities and their families stronger.

If they wish to again connect with voters, Republicans must break free from those who think tokenism substitutes for inclusion.

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Graham Gillette can be reached at grahamgillette@gmail.com 
This entry was first published as a Des Moines Register online essay.

The Register and Romney Sittin’ in a Tree

With the exception of the political punditry, most Americans are relieved the 2012 election is over. Understandably, the talking heads and opinion writers are toughing out the cold sweat of withdrawal by analyzing voting statistics, parsing speeches and speculating about the maneuvering to come. Pointing the finger of blame at those who lost and theorizing about devious plans the winners must have employed to dupe voters are popular detox treatment methods used by many of these addicts.

As a regular contributor to these pages, I am going to purge my system in another way. Since I have already written about how this election demonstrated the great need for campaign finance reform, the changing demographics of the electorate and why candidates from both parties should talk less and listen more to voters; I am going to turn my gaze away from the politicians and toward the media covering them.

The rise of the Internet and social media has sent news organizations like the Des Moines Register scrambling to hold together and rewrite a once solid business model. Selling newspapers and the ads inside was never easy, but the business of news coverage has never been harder than it is today. More and more people expect to get their news for free, on their schedule and in the format that they choose. Waiting for news to be delivered in the paper is something unfathomable to today’s smart phone toting, digital consumer. Providing a place of value for advertisers in a world of news on the run is a daunting challenge.

Knowing some about this changing environment and as an outsider who gets an occasional look inside the Des Moines Register’s newsroom, editorial offices and business operations, I remain intrigued by the Register’s decision to endorse Governor Mitt Romney in the final days of the race. I did not agree with the argument the Register made – it seemed to me they reversed course on much of which they have supported in recent years. But, I know those who made this decision. They are principled people who take editorial writing as seriously as they do investigative journalism.

That being said, one cannot deny the Romney endorsement turned the lights of the national media toward the Register. These lights would have never shone so brightly had the paper endorsed President Obama as most had expected. The editorial created a buzz that sells.

I am not suggesting the Register’s publisher and editor let marketing drive the endorsement. They are people of integrity. Beyond that, they are savvy enough to understand such gamesmanship would, in the long run, do more harm than good to the institution they pilot.

However, the impact of the Romney endorsement has been interesting and a little fun to watch. More than a few Republicans have long insinuated the Register was a Democrat biased institution. Many would call it the Red Star and take pride in cancelling subscriptions every time they felt trod upon. The Romney piece left them gobsmacked. One Romney supporter nearly hugged a Register reporter when she came to cover an event telling the reporter she finally felt as if the Register was again Iowa’s paper. The Register has even gained subscriptions in the days following the endorsement.

Meanwhile, a group of Democrats raised $15,000 to place a full page Register ad containing another paper’s endorsement of Obama. The irony of Democrats muttering about cancelling subscriptions while raising the equivalent of 125 yearly subscriptions to pay for an ad was kind of humorous.

Here’s my take away from all of this. There is much to learn from the 2012 campaign. First, we voters have the power to change the tenor of debate. Every time we react to a negative attack ad and ignore serious policy discussions, we make campaigns the shallow things we despise. When we rush to judge a person because of the party label she wears and overlook the ideas she espouses because of her party choice, we sell ourselves short. And, as important, we have the same power to control the media who report and comment on those running for office. We need to be equally careful about rushing to accuse them of bias. If we demand more, newspapers and other media outlets will rise to the call and in the process they will be profitable and healthy businesses.

Give candidates and the media your attention and, in doing so, hold them to a standard that helps chart a better course for our communities, state and country. Sure, we can gripe about the losers and accuse the winners. We can cancel subscriptions and yell about bias in the media. But, those things can be as childish and pointless as songs about kissing in trees. It is we who determine what sells and what doesn’t. We are the ones who must act. If we do not, when things go wrong, the blame will be ours.

I want an editorial board that calls it as they see it, not as I want them to call it. Even though the Romney piece made me cringe, it looks like they upheld their part of the bargain this time. I’m fine with that.

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Graham Gillette can be reached at grahamgillette@gmail.com 
This entry was first published as a Des Moines Register online essay.

Which is Worse, Campaign 2012 or Hurricane Sandy?

The storms slamming the east coast are tragic, costly affairs that have and will continue to cause misery and suffering. With God’s grace, the communities in the wake of this storm will emerge safely from the wind, rain, floods and snow and lives will return to normal quickly. I do not want to minimize the human misery Sandy is bringing. My thoughts and prayers are with those living through it and those who have lost it all. However, Hurricane Sandy should serve as a powerful reminder. Life is fragile and, all too often, we spend too much of our mortal breathing moments focusing on the unimportant.

My Buddhist friends tell me a storm like Sandy is further evidence everything is connected – the good, the bad, today, yesterday, tomorrow, you, me, people we will never meet, animals, insects, earth, air, sea; you get the point. Standing witness to earth’s natural power does help one understand this. The Sandys force us to stop in our tracks and reflect. That is good. It is kind of a shame it takes devastation or calamity to force us to do something so simplistic and basic to life.

Campaign 2012 will be over next week. This race has been nasty and, in many ways, counterproductive to our national progress. We voters have allowed billion dollar campaign machines to divide by distracting us from that what binds the American people in the first place, a belief every person deserves freedom. We have focused on the negative, the accusations, and disagreements.

Here’s hoping when the political storm clears and media chatter returns to non-election year banter, Americans will think more about what unites, than what divides. We must replace choosing sides with working together to build something better.

Elections – this one in particular – resemble hurricanes. They destroy and devastate until they run out of energy. But, much of what causes a hurricane is beyond our control. We can construct stronger buildings and fortify our coastlines, but beyond that, the best we can do is hunker down and wait a hurricane out.

Elections are an invention of man fueled by money. We have the ability to interrupt the campaign path of destruction by demanding candidates rise above the squabble. Candidates respond to voter reaction. It is time we voters tell candidates we expect ideas and integrity, not blame and marketing gimmicks. Most of all, we must cutoff the fuel source feeding this destruction by limiting campaign funding.

The American spirit will be evident as people from across the country selflessly step forward to help those trying to regain their footing after being knocked down by the storms. It will take an even larger and longer cooperative effort to bridge the partisan divide formed during campaign 2012. I would like to think Americans are up to the task.

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Graham Gillette can be reached at grahamgillette@gmail.com 
This entry was first published as a Des Moines Register online essay.

Issue # 2 Not Heard on the Campaign Trail: Cutting the Fat (and that means you)

Last week I wrote about how candidates ignore criminal justice reform – we are creating a criminal class in this country with costly and ineffective prison-centric policies. To a point, I understand why politicians steer clear of criminal justice reform. The problem is not foremost in most Americans’ minds and the steps to correct the problem are not always clear-cut.

This week I want to address another issue. The reasons to focus on this one are crystal clear. It looms in front of us every day, costs our nation hundreds of billions of dollars and directly contributes to the killing of Americans. Yet, not one candidate talks about this national security crisis, even though it is one of the most costly and potentially deadly threats. They have opted to leave the topic to a person not on the ballot, Michelle Obama.

The fat issue, the American obesity epidemic

Before you dive into that plate of chili cheese fries with a dismissive ‘this has nothing to do with me’ wave of your napkin, indulge me.

If we put our heads together on slowing, if not solving the obesity problem, we could save hundreds of billions of dollars a year (yep, billions, with a ‘b’) and save hundreds of thousands of lives. Unlike other issues of this magnitude, we can do something about it without sending soldiers into harm’s way, raising taxes or impinging on a single person’s rights.

You’re going to want to throw your weight behind this initiative, pardon the pun.

The Data
The Trust for America’s Health issued a report this week showing that if obesity rates continue on their current trajectories, by 2030, 13 states could have adult obesity rates above 60 percent, 39 states could have rates above 50 percent, and all 50 states could have rates above 44 percent. This means the number of new cases of type 2 diabetes, coronary heart disease and stroke, hypertension and arthritis could increase 10 times between 2010 and 2020—and double again by 2030.

America’s wallet will take an (g)astronomical hit because of this.

By 2030, medical costs associated with treating preventable obesity-related diseases are estimated to increase by $48 billion to $66 billion per year in the United States, and the loss in economic productivity could be between $390 billion and $580 billion annually by 2030. While the Trust admits the medical cost of adult obesity in the United States is difficult to calculate, they estimate we already spend $147 billion to nearly $210 billion per year.

Iowa should fair somewhat better than the rest of the country – Mississippians face a fat induced killing rate of genocidal proportions. The numbers are sobering. If the average Iowan’s body mass index (BMI) were lowered by just 5 percent, Iowa could save 7.1 percent in health care costs, which would equate to savings of $ 5,702,000,000 by 2030.

The number of Iowans who could be spared from developing new cases of major obesity-related diseases includes: * 77,783 people could be spared from type 2 diabetes * 67,065 from coronary heart disease and stroke * 60,940 from hypertension * 34,635 from arthritis * 5,849 from obesity-related cancer

The Solution
It starts with us.

It is time to get off the couch, exercise a little and to begin to make an effort to stop shoving the calories down our gullets. It really isn’t hard. You don’t have to join a gym, buy a pill, or begin some strict diet found in the latest best-selling diet book. Take a few small steps. Walk around the neighborhood every other day. Put down the fork. Eat less.

If we were to collectively exercise 5% more and eat 5% less we would see immediate results as a nation. That’s it.

It is a national disgrace the candidates fail to champion this cause. They could begin a national movement guaranteed to brighten our future. Fighting the fat will make us healthier, stronger and better able to face our country’s challenges. We could save an obscene amount of money that is destined to be flushed down the toilet in the form of rising health care costs. Fighting the war on fat is our patriotic duty.

Obesity should be front and center in this season’s political debate.

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Graham Gillette can be reached at grahamgillette@gmail.com 
This entry was first published as a Des Moines Register online essay.

Issue #1 Not Heard on Campaign Trail, Criminal Justice Reform

Campaign 2012 has overtaken us. We are awash in messages approved by candidates and flooded with others produced by political action committees that are not. Think about those ads for a moment. Now, consider the news reports you have heard, read and watched about the candidates. Recall the convention speeches in Tampa and Charlotte. If you subtract all of the talk about the economy, jobs, and health care, you will find education gets mentioned occasionally, as do broad-brush issues relating to energy, foreign policy and taxes. Missing is a serious discussion about many of the significant issues standing in the way of America’s future.

To make my point, let’s focus on just one painfully glaring omission from today’s political debate, criminal justice.

It’s easy to understand why campaign staffers hate the subject. Prisons and crime never make the top ten list of hot-button issues as determined by pollsters. For instance, the latest Quinnipiac University/CBS News/New York Times poll indicated the economy, health care, Medicare (how this differs from health care baffles me), the budget deficit, taxes, foreign policy and housing were the issues we the voters care about most. Campaign strategists and special interest insurgents hired to craft messages and make ads won’t touch criminal justice because the gospel according to the polls says the topic doesn’t resonate. It should.

The United States is the most incarcerated country in the world. Our failing criminal justice system is costing billions of dollars and destroying lives. And, to top it off, instead of making our communities safer, our lock ‘em up and lock ‘em out approach may be exacerbating the problem by creating a permanent criminal class of Americans.

According to the Pew Center, one in 31 American adults were in the correction system in 2009. This means just over 3% of Americans were in jail, prison, on probation or under supervision of some sort. This figure has more than doubled over the last 25 years and nearly quadrupled since 1980.

There are some 2.4 million people in jail and prison. Over the past 20 years, the fastest growing part of state budgets after healthcare is criminal justice. State spending on criminal justice has increased more than 300% during this time to an estimated $51.7 billion in 2008. Add in what the federal and local governments spend and that figure is an eye-popping $200 billion a year.

That’s real money and we aren’t getting much in return.

Let’s consider the social cost of our justice policies. Just over 9% of black adults are in the correctional system, as are about 4% of Hispanic adults, and 2% of white adults. The chasm between us grows. Moreover, our system locks offenders away and strips them of their rights while taking few steps to steer these offenders away from a life of crime. The numbers above will not improve unless we change course.

Ponder this; some estimates show it costs $29,000 per year to house an inmate and $9,000 a year to send a student to high school.

If a candidate for office were serious about making a difference, he would be talking about criminal justice reform, not because the issue polls well, but because it is an issue that almost more than any other is significantly limiting our national progress.

Campaign 2012 is full of candidates willing to feed us soundbites they have been told we want to hear. Sadly, this field of candidates is lacking leaders willing to address difficult topics that aren’t popular. If we hope to ever overcome the barriers blocking the way to a better tomorrow, we will need to put people in office more interested in solving problems than winning votes. Let’s start with criminal justice reform.

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Graham Gillette can be reached at grahamgillette@gmail.com 
This entry was first published as a Des Moines Register online essay.

We Get What We Vote For

Like any political nerd, I love election years. The drama, the excitement, the staging, the speeches, I like it all. I am a sucker for soaring words about what’s possible. Elections can be a period of renewal, reminding us for what we stand and helping set a vision about how to tackle the obstacles standing in the way to our collective greatness.

Stop snickering; a good debate over issues can be both healthy and interesting.

As the Republican Convention wound down in Tampa last week and the Democrats began to gather in Charlotte this week, I began to grow concerned the high-minded was losing to the lowbrow. The candidates were going to choose character assault over vision building. Having determined the easiest way to amass votes was to tear down their opponent, they were opting against the more arduous task of inspiring people to aim higher. Campaign 2012 was beginning to make even this nerd weary.

I have been around politics for most of my life. I accept the well-proven fact negative campaigns work – fear sells, to a point. However, 2012 began with that. Too many candidates appear to be stuck in a nonproductive cycle of blame, smear and repeat. It is time for the candidates to put the mud down.

Nerds and non-nerds alike need to hear what candidates will do should they win. Saying the other guy is miserable is rarely a strong foundation upon which to build a victory platform. Americans are looking for leaders interested and capable of doing the job.

Theodore Roosevelt said “It behooves every man to remember that the work of the critic is of altogether secondary importance, and that, in the end, progress is accomplished by the man who does things.”

I have always liked that quote both for what it says and because it includes the word ‘behooves.’

As we enter the home stretch of this political cycle, both the nerd and the patriot in me remain hopeful the candidates will spend more time talking about the future and less about how bad the other guy is.

Don’t misunderstand, it can be important to draw distinctions between what one candidate has done or will do and what the other’s record or plans are. That is the healthy and interesting debate I talked about earlier. But, that is entirely different than a candidate standing at a podium and degrading his opponent without offering an alternative.

I like what John F. Kennedy said; “I look forward to a great future for America – a future in which our country will match its military strength with our moral restraint, its wealth with our wisdom, its power with our purpose.”

We need candidates who are committed to this, who are willing to pursue and capable of constructing a vision to take us there.

In the end, the candidates rise to the expectations of the voters. It is a cop-out for me, for any voter, to accept this election year is lost – that modern campaigns are not capable of producing strong leaders. We get what we vote for. If we cast votes for those who finger-point and run on fear, we shouldn’t expect much from them when they assume office.

I do expect much and I know America is capable of even more.

The tenor of this campaign can change, but will only do so if we Americans demand something different.

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Graham Gillette can be reached at grahamgillette@gmail.com 
This entry was first published as a Des Moines Register online essay.