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Thu - December 21, 2006How to write an Effective Political Platform[The following article from Centroids was solicited by PetitionSpot,
apparently because they were impressed by my petition to Elect Jon
Stewart].
Inspired by what I considered excessive solutions, I thought I should actually write down what I think a good, actionable Platform would look like. Or, more precisely what we'd need to do in order to do the job effectively in the context of the Unity08 movement. The basic process would be to: A. Identify the audience we want to connect
with
B. Determine what kind of message would resonate
with them
C. Figure out which of our principles would suit
that message
D. Articulate them with sufficient specificity
to attract an audience, but not so precise as to foreclose debate or generate a
negative reaction
Make sense? So, let's see how far I can get. A) Audience So, the nominal audience for our Platform is anyone paying attention to Unity '08, which includes students, participants in the forum, the Decision Makers and Funders behind Unity '08, and ultimate the candidates who will compete for the vote. The total audience is enormously diverse, and it is impossible to articulate anything that everyone would agree with; if we try to please everyone we'll alienate everybody. On the other hand, we can't be so radical that we please nobody. The 'radical middle', if you will, would be to articulate a minimal platform that a solid core of people could fully back, that most others would at least grudgingly support, and that alienated only the fringes. This requires having some understanding of what draws people to Unity '08, in order to help us decide whom to target. Let me posit a few attributes that the bulk of Unity '08 participants share: a. They have above-average interest in
politics
b. They are frustrated by partisan
gridlock
c. They don't identify strongly with one party
over the other (but may have once)
d. They believe that the "other side" has at
least a few good ideas
e. They consider "compromise" a positive, not
negative term
f. They feel there is a fundamental crisis with
our two-party system
Obviously not everybody involved feels this way, but I think anything that targets this hypothetical voter would probably go a long way. B) Message Given the noise levels (and our small size), I believe that we need One Big Idea as the core of our platform. The reason is that we have no leverage -- by default, we have to rely on word of mouth, which means we need something so concise that people can intrigue their friends with a single sentence. We can (and should) address a wide range of topics, but they all need to logically support each other. The other reason for such internal coherency is that we need a united movement. Ideally, we want something so well-constructed that if you accept the core principle, you'll immediately be comfortable with the whole enchilada; otherwise, we'd waste all our time infighting _within_ our core base. C) Principles Given that goal, there's several possible concepts that might provide such a foundation; • The Radical Middle (interpolating between
two extremes)
• Systems Theory (positive and negative
feedback)
• Communitarian (balancing individual and
society)
• Radical Centrism (humility, justice, and
love)
and there may be others. The challenge is to find something simple enough to easily convey, yet fertile enough to support a broad platform. D) Articulation As I said before, I think our Core Agenda has to have 10 or so points; otherwise nobody can remember enough of it to decide whether they like it or not. In addition, we need to keep our high-level statements vague enough (but no vaguer :-) that people focus on the broad principles instead of quibbling about details. Ideally, I'd like there to be three over-arching themes which encapsulate 9-12 major initiatives. Not only does is that easier to memorize, it would also enable us to provide a useful graphical summary. Remember, the key is to make people feel *empowered*. That is, we want them to feel comfortable that they grok the essence of our platform, so that they feel safe supporting and endorsing us. Does that sound like a plan? To be sure, we could take the easy way out and wait until Unity '08 comes up with their list of questions, and merely respond to those. But what would be the fun in that? :-) Sincerely, Ernest N. Prabhakar, Ph.D. Posted at 02:41 PM |
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Total entries in this category: Published On: Dec 29, 2006 10:15 AM |
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