Author: brittblaser

As I write this, Dubya is addressing the UN General Assembly. Here’s the view from the back of my monitor:

The General Assembly Hall is on the left with the Headquarters building straight ahead. But what’s most interesting to me are those 41 official vehicles in the UN circle, which is normally empty. At some subconscious level, it’s also what’s most interesting to the people at the top of the New World Pecking Order. Those conveyances are an important part of what makes them important. A portent. When lights flash and sirens wail and traffic stops, you know you’re important. And importance outbids utility every time.

We live a block west of the UN. When there’s a big meeting like this, the east side of midtown Manhattan devolves into an orgy of inconvenience thanks to the Important People who are authorized to tie up traffic, vs. the N’Yawkers who wish they’d just get over themselves.

The vibe we all live with in our little Tudor City ‘hood is the silly self-importance of all the clean-cut white guys with wrist mikes and earnest demeanors defending their precious charges against . . . what? Korean deli and nail salon owners? What you take away from these shows of force is that the whole show is about . . . the Show. The Pecking Order. The Authority to fuck up a high-functioning East Side neighborhood with a show of force out of all proportion to any real threat.

The Expert Threat

It’s not actually the Important People who are the problem, it’s the Secret Service and cops and SWAT teams and the neighborhood restrictions we suffer. When the heads of state are in town, you get it that what’s really at work here is a full employment program for security professionals. Who do we think designs the security protocols? Do we believe that the Presidents and Secretaries of State and Diplomats sit down and lay out the security measures they require? Of course not. They hire experts who, like all experts, design a system that requires more of whatever the experts are selling. How likely is it that any security expert is going to design a reduction in security based on, for example, Reality? Rather, officials are protected more and more, cost us more and more and, essentially, are driven by their handlers at 45 mph in the fast lane of the lives of the rest of us.

That’s the part that’s grating: the unstoppable full employment program for cops and security professionals. But since their bosses have no say in the design of the protocols, it’s a self-fulfilling prophecy: “Sir, you need more of us because we need more of you.”

The dirty secret is that there’s a Security-Industrial Complex that’s a superset of the Military-Industrial Complex that Ike warned us about a half-century ago, and we’re all hostage to the Security-Industrial Complex. When we accept the judgment of experts who are in the business of defending us against incalculable force, we are agreeing to starve our children to pay for the incalculable burden of an unlimited effort to counter an unknown threat. It’s an open debit we bequeath to our grandchildren.

Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and not clothed. This world in arms is not spending money alone. It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children. This is not a way of life at all in any true sense. Under the cloud of threatening war, it is humanity hanging from a cross of iron.
                                                                               — Dwight Eisenhower

Of course, any politician worth the pejorative will use incalculable threats to dominate our national agenda. Maybe that’s what Samuel Johnson meant when he said that “Patriotism is the last refuge of scoundrels.” The architect of that refuge may be the defense imperative.

That’s why we need to beware of pre-emptive attacks on nations that are not an obvious threat to us because in those circumstances it’s more likely that the danger is from within than from without. But there’s a question unanswered. Why don’t we recognize this endless charade we’re paying for so dearly? It’s because we’re no more clued than the officials who fall for the security shell game. All of us have bought into the seduction that life can be without risk and that there are experts who care only about protecting us from real bad guys.

Once we make that Faustian bargain, we get the burden we deserve. We start to rely on anyone who represents that they can defend us from the indefensible.

OK. I know, There’s a real threat out there. How could I so quickly forget the tragedy of the Twin Towers that killed 3,003 of our fellow citizens? Would I be so uncaring as to suggest that that attack was an anomaly, that there is no terrorist threat? No, of course there’s a terrorist threat. Just as there’s a second hand smoke threat. The EPA reports that 3,000 people die annually from second hand smoke. But that’s not as dramatic a threat, since it’s not spectacular and there are no foreign “evildoers” involved. On the other hand, we don’t lose 3,000 civilians annually from terrorists. Over the last five years (the latest five year period for which we have data), we’ve lost 600 civilians a year, on average, from terrorist attacks. A lot fewer than from recreational boating (714 in 1996). Over the last ten years, we’ve averaged 300 civilians per year lost to terrorism, about the same as from campylobacter–bacteriological reactions to chicken.

As my two remaining readers may remember, I’m more interested in the odds of death than the romantic themes involved. That’s partly from my experience on my first night mission in Viet Nam, when a fellow C-130 pilot flew into a large mountain avoiding small bullets. I want to suggest that we have elaborate cultural rituals which focus on trendy threats rather than actual threats. Call me a hard ass, but I have no sympathy for people who die of obvious threats while distracted by inconsequential ones. Far more women die of heart disease than from breast cancer, but we wear pink ribbons for fashion, not effect.

We’ve made a cultural fetish of stupidity because there are lots of visible people who want to leverage their visibility into more power. That includes politicians and talking heads and evangelists who are, essentially, stamping their feet petulantly and demanding to be paid at
tention to. When our attention wanes, they come up with a new threat to stoke our angst and hold our attention. If you’ve ever had a two-year-old, you know what I’m talking about.

12:29:57 AM    

Dana Blankenhorn, via email:

Two words.

Dwight Eisenhower.

A lot of people are going to misread this history over the next few months.

They will write that the “moderate” Clark is going to overwhelm the candidate of the “ideologues,” Howard Dean.

They have their roles reversed.

The 1952 campaign was the first true TV campaign, and Ike was the first true TV candidate. TV adored celebrity. Ike delivered it. And he capitalized it, with the very first effective political commercial on TV.

The Robert Taft campaign was directed by old party pros, who distrusted Eisenhower. That’s exactly what the DLC is doing with General Clark. Listen to what they say, their reasoning for pushing Clark. It’s all based on TV, on images — on what is now the old politics.

The turning point in the 1952 campaign came at that year’s Republican Convention, when Taft forces tried to engineer rules changes that would stop Ike’s steamroller, and they were put down by a convention that suddenly knew it was on TV.

Today the Internet and TV stand at the same point as TV and newspapers stood 51 years ago. Few believe that an Internet campaign can succeed. They prefer the TV campaign, the manipulation of simple images. But here’s my main counter-argument. The Democrats cannot win a TV campaign. It’s hopeless.

Democrats can only win by changing the game, and Dean is changing the game. By the time Republicans and DLC Democrats realize they need a real Internet strategy, based on nurturing the netroots, it will be too late.

(Blog this if you want. I didn’t realize how much I wrote until it was done.)

 

Wins of the Father

So that’s why I like Dean. He’s Ike, without the shoulder stars. My father was a big supporter of Ike, working tirelessly on his campaign. Here’s what I learned at my first meetup, in early June:

Eisenhower Republicans for Dean

George Morin was talking to a friend who, calling himself an Eisenhower Republican, said that Dean sounded to him a lot like Ike. Is Ike the bridge this country needs to return to civil discourse? Consider these quotes:

You do not lead by hitting people over the head-that’s assault, not leadership.

I hate war as only a soldier who has lived it can, only as one who has seen its brutality, its futility, its stupidity.

Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and not clothed. This world in arms is not spending money alone. It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children. This is not a way of life at all in any true sense. Under the cloud of threatening war, it is humanity hanging from a cross of iron.

We merely want to live in peace with all the world, to trade with them, to commune with them, to learn from their culture as they may learn from ours, so that the products of our toil may be used for our schools and our roads and our churches and not for guns and planes and tanks and ships of war.

In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist. We must never let the weight of this combination endanger our liberties or democratic processes.

Don’t join the book burners. Don’t think you’re going to conceal faults by concealing evidence that they never existed. Don’t be afraid to go in your library and read every book…

I like to believe that people in the long run are going to do more to promote peace than our governments. Indeed, I think that people want peace so much that one of these days governments had better get out of the way and let them have it.

I would rather try to persuade a man to go along, because once I have persuaded him he will stick. If I scare him, he will stay just as long as he is scared, and then he is gone.

Though force can protect in emergency, only justice, fairness, consideration and co-operation can finally lead men to the dawn of eternal peace.

No easy problems ever come to the President of the United States. If they are easy to solve, somebody else has solved them.

When you appeal to force, there’s one thing you must never do – lose.

When you are in any contest you should work as if there were – to the very last minute – a chance to lose it.

A people that values its privileges above its principles soon loses both.

Farming looks mighty easy when your plow is a pencil, and you’re a thousand miles from the corn field.

We succeed only as we identify in life, or in war, or in anything else, a single overriding objective, and make all other considerations bend to that one objective.

There was a time when politics required the ability to form, question and communicate such thoughts. It was once a virtual requirement to have led men into battle and to earn your humanity, as Dwight Eisenhower demonstrated. He governed well by governing little, and led a life so full that he really preferred not to be president. It’s a shame we must send people to Washington who want to go, but if we need an enthusiastic ambition, Dean may be our best choice.

By then, George Bush may have demonstrated so well what we do not want in a leader that we’ll recognize one when we see one. And that may be his contribution to history.

2:05:02 PM    

It couldn’t happen without the kids. The Dean Phenomenon is impossible by any conventional measure of how enterprises function, how work is completed and how power is transferred.

The campaign’s enabling technology is a bunch of twenty-somethings who do projects with little direction and no or little pay, usually with free software that took several hundred thousand hours to write, coordinating among themselves without memos or manuals but with instant, ephemeral indicators and descriptions.

Out of that bricolage they’re forging a revolution that’s as dramatic as the one the Founding Hackers programmed 227 years ago. If Jefferson, Paine and Franklin were alive they’d have found their way to Burlington and be sitting in here too, at two in the morning, hacking code, tweaking interfaces, configuring databases and exchanging staccato messages, woven into a web of shared awareness that’s like a busily productive hive.

The most important thing about this place is subtle but obvious once you get it. These kids know things together and work together in a way that’s fundamentally different from people just a decade older. Their information arrives in spare snippets, morphing and spreading constantly among the members of their collective, by IM, email, IRC, listserve, Wiki, SMS, cross-cubicle chat, RSS, cell phone, SlashDot and Google, but rarely recorded explicitly for private use. They share an assumption that whatever knowledge needed will be instantly retrievable and that the hive will produce required resources at the time needed, no earlier or later. If it’s not available, they just use what is and press on. They don’t theorize that perfect is the enemy of good, they live it.

My generation, and probably a couple after me, was taught that each of us is responsible for all the information we encounter. We’re obligated to capture, archive, organize, index, format and present it, on demand, to whichever audience needs to be straightened out so they see things as we do. This is the process that’s been used since, like, forever, and look how successful it’s been. It never prevented one of the greatest intellectual societies in history, Germany, from savaging the world twice and suffer ignominious defeat both times. And it didn’t keep the US from its hubris-driven adventures in Viet Nam and Iraq.

(This morning on Meet the Press, Russert played a 1956 video of John Foster Dulles describing why it was so important to avoid engaging an indigenous force in the Middle East. He cited the French experience in IndoChina [Viet Nam] as his justification!) But then he hadn’t reckoned with the ability of Robert McNamara to Rumsfeld the country into a war that killed 58,000 Americans with no significant geopolitical payoff.

No, it’s clear that the top-down, hierarchical model of social organization has failed us consistently.

Make no mistake, there are plenty of adults organizing things in traditional ways in Burlington, but the rapid give-and-take is the secret sauce, concocted by the kids. And we’re learning how to do it, though it’s a struggle.

The Higher Archy

Every age needs its -archy. The Greeks had their oligarchy, the Middle Ages their monarchy, the Industrial Age its hierarchy and McKinley’s assassin sought anarchy. Kids today follow an organizing principle with an instinct for the higher good while allowing any participant to take whatever role feels right. Those who do more do not look down on less spectacularly performing teammates any more than the quarterback disses his right guard.

This new way of dealing is totally natural to them and foreign to me. I’m barely able to even recognize the profundity of the differences in how we acquire and process information. I suppose it’s like the difference between a Jazz musician and her manager.

Zen Master

Joe Trippi is the Phil Jackson of Presidential campaigns. He doesn’t so much tell his players what to do as he tells them what to pay attention to. Like Jackson, he creates an environment and then works on his team’s attitudes and insights. On Wednesday he emerged into the bullpen outside his office where the web team and Media Miners, about a dozen in all, twiddle the bits that describe Howard Dean to the world, where they host the Web Application called the Dean Campaign.

“Listen up, people! Who can tell me what’s on Kerry’s page right now?”

Silence.

“What have I told you?! You need to know what’s going on out there all the time!”

That’s it. Back to the Bat Cave. You could almost hear Kerry’s server logs churning as the Dean Hive browsed to it and started diddling with a silly little Flash widget that gives you access to the Contribution Page only after hitting a carnival bell with a hammer.

Joe’s point wasn’t that the animation was lame, though it was. His point was that all his people need to be thinking like a Campaign Manager! He didn’t hold a meeting with his Commanders to produce policy for the Lieutenant Commanders to brief the company commanders on the directions to give to the troops. No, this campaign hasn’t time for that. Everything will work out fine if everybody keeps thinking like the coach.

Holographic Intelligence.

Hive Mind.

The Smartest Network Wins

…as David Weinberger said.

Trippi said in his Lessig interview that this is an open source campaign. He spoke freely Thursday night at a classic Vermont-style town meeting in Waterbury with folks who came to hear Joe and Zephyr describe the campaign and the cultural struggle that lies behind it. Joe spoke passionately (counter to type) about a three-decade decline in individual influence, as people power was ceded to corporate interests. He told these Vermonters that they have an obligation to do what’s possible to bring their old American values to a nation that has forgotten how to come together and thrash out the issues and disagree on core principles for hours, but still get coffee afterwards. These people have known Howard Dean for decades, some have been his patients. Their admiration for him is immense and their passion to right the wrongs they perceive has them cheering for his Campaign Manager and Internet Outreach Director like the rock stars they’re becoming.

The lessons we’re learning from this network is not that hive mind diminishes the intelligence of its individuals. Rather it amolifies their capabilities, just as a hive is so much smarter than the bees are.

So if you’re wondering what the Dean buzz is really about, it’s about the hive. 412,791 and growing.

11:59:51 PM    comment [commentCounter (201)]

Startups are fun. They attract people who want more than a job, they want meaning. As I suggested months ago, we all want to be of consequence. When I catalyzed the Dynamac project in 1987, we had people who came to work for free just because it was so new and exciting and well-publicized.

The Dean Campaign vibe is the inspiring tech start-up, cubed. Smart people, so committed to the mission that there’s no visible friction between a good idea and a better idea. The tactics of retail politics and the overarching passion for a better society are all jumbled together into a collage of issues, ideas, tech, fundraising, friendraising, organization, User Interface, Campaign laws, fiscal responsibility, health care, best practices and everything else that a West Wing viewer could ask for.

It’s 2 in the morning, and here’s Zack and Gray and Andrew and Josh being interviewed by Samantha Shapiro of the New York Times Magazine:

Samantha’s trying to figure out all the threads and interconnects among bloggers, campaign staff, Internet tools and all the rest. How does Emergent Democracy and Cluetrain and Social Software and free software and what’s open source and what do you do for the campaign, and how is Joi Ito and Andy Rappaport and Music for America and David Weinberger and Larry Lessig and Jock Gill and Michael Cudahy and how’d you meet Zephyr and Josh and Zack and What are you doing here anyway?

And Josh, could you explain again how you found Britt on Doc’s site and connected with Zack and the 20 or so people working on DeanSpace and can this really be the fastest development and deployment of a few hundred dynamic content sites?

Pulling the Thread out of the Sweater

Imagine if you were in the dead tree publishing business with one of the best publications in the world. That’s Samantha. You’re smart, educated, connected, and young enough that you use Google and the web and email a LOT and you’ve read some blogs but you’ve not been following the blogging echo chamber. Or open source software or smart mobs or all the rest. How the hell would you even begin to connect all the dots? I suggested to Samantha that her situation is like Tom Wolfe’s when he wrote The Right Stuff. He wanted to write about the cultural phenomenon of the original seven Mercury astronauts and found that, to those guys, being an astronaut was fine, but what was really important to them was that they were Fighter Pilots. And so he had to learn what that meant and discovered the entire world of the right stuff, which was more important to the heroes than the cultural event.

It’s impossible to understand the Dean campaign without understanding blogging. You can’t understand blogging with out looking at the issues that bloggers care about, and Samantha’s starting cold. I’m glad that’s her problem and not mine.

It’s a Quarter to Three…

And there’s no one in the place except you and me and a dozen or so high-energy people doing what most people who sign up on DeanLink say they’ll do: “Whatever it takes.”

Time to go home. But it looks like these guys aren’t going anywhere. Miles to go before CPUs sleep.

6:49:34 PM    

Josh Koenig and I are headed for Burlington Vermont for the week. We’re the first installment in the IT Nirvana program, under which a pair of geek volunteers spends a week with the campaign to help out with whatever the campaign’s support staff needs to do but which they’re too busy for.

All this week, Josh and I will be co-blogging on  our own sites and on correspondences.org and greaterdemocracy.org. If there are particular issues IT and Web/Blog issues, let us know.

A little background’s in order.

Josh and I met in May when we noticed each other’s passion for the Dean phenomenon. That’s when I learned about the DeanSpace project that Zack Rosen and Neil Drumm and Josh were brainstorming.

Driving While Aware

After Josh and I first spoke last May, I checked out his blog, OutlandishJosh, where I discovered an open and honest young man dealing with being aware and involved and without much of an outlet for his political sensibilities and energy. It made me realize that there are many life situations that set you up for, well, more than the usual challenges, and awareness is as great a barrier to a peaceful and happy life as the one that so many people face: Driving While Black.

Fast-forward 4 months and Zack is working full time at Dean HQ in Burlington, Josh is working full time for Music for America and I’m being drawn into the Dean campaign gravity well.

And the Sun Shone Third Forth

We had a great drive up to Burlington, Vermont, which is in the far north of the state. It was cloudy all the way up with occasionally heavy rain. But as we drove down the west spine of the Green Mountains into Burlington, the skies brightened dramatically with lemon light flooding the Champlain valley, Jesus rays everywhere. It’s easy to see how a doctor who’d spent his career caring for people in this valley would see answers where others see problems. It’s a place that seems to encourage optimism.

Josh and I have great conversations, riffing on each other’s points and finding themes in stories that sound merely reportorial. We stopped for a while in Middletown, CT, where I attended college at Wesleyan University. I described to Josh what it was like to be in that place in the early 60’s, before all the institutional structures were de-organized. Like Burlington in 2003, Wesleyan forty years ago was a place where all things seemed possible, where issues were taken seriously but not too solemnly. It seemed a contrast to his experience at NYU in the late 90’s.

On the Champlain Trail

We stopped by campaign headquarters about 8:30 and found it easily in a four story office building notable for its collection of employee cars and bikes after dark on a Sunday night, and the pizza truck heading back for more rations.

Zephyr and Zack joined us for dinner at a quite good Italian restaurant with outdoor seating on the pedestrian mall. The food was great, the conversation geekily stimulating and the weather perfect. I expected to hear Sinatra warbling Autumn in Vermont, which seems to have the same tune as Moonlight in New York.

Afterward we went to one of the campaign’s several Staff flop houses to watch Howard Dean appear on the first K Street episode. This crowd would have loved him if he’d sat on a whoopie cushion, but he actually was entertaining and impressive.

And so the odd couple’s wonky Adventure Camp begins.

1:08:04 AM    

As I’ve said before, the donors to any political campaign own their candidate. In the age of Broadcast Politics, the donors were the big donors–corporations and their masters–and we see now how that turns out. 400,000 people have registered at the DeanforAmerica site, made hundreds of thousand donations, buying hope one month at a time. Dean’s in the pockets of his donors, like any candidate, but the good news is that he’s beholden to us all, and not to large interests.

This weekend, Josh Koenig and I are driving to Dean HQ in Burlington as part of the IT Nirvana effort . We don’t care if we’ll be pulling wires, hacking code or developing analytical models, we’re just there for a week to fill in where useful.

And we’ll hang with the campaign people we’ve come to know, respect and value. If the opportunity arises, we’ll talk about stuff that’s important to us. Maybe we’re forgetting something. If there’s a question or issue you’d like us to have in mind, please post it here. With any luck, your concern will be more important than ours, so we can nudge it to the top of the stack.

There’s no way to know if we’ll have time to mention anything, but it would sure be great to have a list.

Thanks.

12:35:33 PM    

Among the many reasons to blog, one of the greatest is to expand one’s reputation and, unless you’re Mother Teresa, a prime reason for improving your reputation–your personal brand–is to get more business. Any prominent blogger is implicitly available to speak or consult on the areas she discusses on her blog.

This crass reality seems to deserve more play than it’s getting. In commerce we discover how to value each other in the way that matters most: exchanging the fruits of our labor for someone else’s. Can there be any greater way to honor another?

So we arguably blog to be worth more and to earn more. What if there were a sophisticated form of trackback that aggregated the details of our transactions and presented them objectively so our trust of each other might extend beyond how we speak of ourselves, but also captured how others speak of us, and explicitly how they rate us?

An Xpertweb page is basically a web log that keeps track of your words and comments of course, but extended with a commercial form of highly structured trackback. Every time the buyer submits a form, any data saved on the seller’s site is duplicated on the buyer’s site, by the buyer’s trusted script, in the form of an order confirmation page. Then, as the transaction progresses, the mirrored data store is enriched, culminating with each party’s grade and comment, which is the point of the whole system.
In the agora, everyone can watch each other shopping. The citizens are on display like the melons.

BloggerCon

Roland Tanglao and I will be attending Dave Winer’s BloggerCon, and will be demonstrating the Xpertweb tools at the Hotel@MIT. If you’d like to have a look, please contact me through the little envelope icon, or contact Roland directly.

12:00:24 AM    

Michael Cudahy has posted another stirring piece on GreaterDemocracy.org: A Declaration of Conscience. Many were moved by Michael’s first piece, “To Dare Mighty Things,” quoting Teddy Roosevelt. Again Michael details his reaction to watching the Republican party leave him, causing him to campaign for Governor Howard Dean.

A transformative event for Michael was his experience as the Director for the Republican Coalition for Choice (it’s remarkable that the organization should sound like an oxymoron). Finally, he had to leave the position because he was receiving death threats, and Security would not allow him to open his own packages. The immense insight came when this man, who campaigned hard for George H. W. Bush, realized that the people who wanted to kill him were fellow Republicans.

His announcement has inspired the kind of spontaneous expressions of hope that you see at Howard Dean’s Blog comments. (Doc liked my conclusion that Dean’s thousands of donors are buying hope, one month at a time.)

He Gets Letters…

Michael has agreed to let me post some of the many messages of support he has received. I gain more from the character of people’s writing than from all the useless news drivel. When emotions like these are stirring, what can a narrow bigot like Rove do to counter it?

The Old Party is lucky to have someone like Michael Cudahy to help it be Grand again.

09-06-2003 02:42 PM ET (US) I posted “…To Dare Mighty Things…” on a local internet discussion forum usually dominated by progressives. The post resulted in a lively discussion between several self-described conservative Republicans. Two of them repeatedly posted comments that sounded like Fox News soundbites, which is consistent with their usual tone. The third conservative, however, repeatedly challenged their inaccurate statements and faulty arguments. He finally stated that he didn’t know much about Howard Dean yet, but he’d vote for Nixon’s corpse before he’d vote for Bush again. Lala
	Sep 8th @ 10:42:08 PM Subject: Balance You have generated quite a bit of hope here Mr. Cudahy, both by your presence on deanlink and with your statement at GreaterDemocracy. Sincerely, Tony Dorsano Minnesota, MN
Sep 5th @ 05:14:33 PM Subject: Many Thanks I have passed your inspiring – as always – piece on to as many people as I can think of right now. Daniel Carr (aka Long Haul)
	Sep 5th @ 04:42:25 PM Great! Thanks for the Update! Michael, this is fantastic. You are *truly* a patriotic American. Thank you for taking such a strong stand. May other Republicans follow in your footsteps. Best, Patty in VT
September 04, 2003 7:02 PM Subject: Re: “To Dare Mighty Things” (2) Roger Wilco… I’ve posted the email at Greater Democracy.org   If it’s possible, I’d appreciate it if you could let us (…our name is legion and we are many) know when you post your next piece.   Once again, thanks for what you’re doing – having spent many years working for outfits like Smith & Harroff I have some appreciation of what it means and tremendous respect for your courage.   Regards, Mike
	Sep 4th @ 02:54:45 PM Subject: Independents for Dean Michael, It is a pleasure to be able to talk to you in person. As a fellow moderate conservative I was greatly moved by your statement at Greater Democracy last week and linked to it at our website, Independents for Dean (www.deanindependents.org) Good luck with the campaign and I hope to talk with you soon. Scott Gamel (DeanIndependents.org)
Sep 4th @ 05:22:04 PM Subject: Greater Democracy It was only after the irrepressible Patty in VT sent out an email disclosing your correspondence with her that I even thought it might be possible to contact you personally. I keep telling people what a significant piece it is that you wrote for Greater Democracy. For some time now I have been strongly advocating the concept of a Republicans for Dean site/group. Long before the Dean people got around to it, though I don’t know if I had much influence on its creation. The idea actually came to me from a video I saw of Dean speaking at a house party in Vermont back, I think, in June. He at leasting half-jokingly mentioned the idea and it caught fire in my hot little brain. 😉 Just so you know, I was raised a Democrat, evolved into a political radical in the late 60s (the only other Presidentail candidate I ever worked for was Eugene McCarthy in 1968) and then basically made politics a very secondary part of my life. I agonized through the mess of the 2000 election but then put it out of my mind until the aftermath of 9/11, when I began to see our country veer onto a dangerous course. In short, I was as surprised as anyone that I would suddenly feel this…affinity?…for Republicans. They were, after all, the life-long “enemy.” Right? Wrong. If there is one thing I have really begun to see and understand since 9/11, it is that we really are a community. And in order to continue as such a community and to continue to be a beacon of hope and promise for people of the world, we have to commit ourselves to the difficult process of finding common ground and working even more closely together. That is one of the great promises I see in Howard Dean’s candidacy. Thanks for what you said. It deepens the hope I already feel. Your voice is a very important one in this time. Please continue to speak out. Daniel Carr (aka Long Haul)
	September 03, 2003 Dare Mighty Things Below is a letter I wrote to Michael Cudahy in response to his essay “… To Dare Mighty Things …” . Mr. Cudahy, I’ve just read your essay posted to Greater Democracy and I thank you. Your essay served to fuel my conviction that, buried beneath so much partisan noise, there remains a rational public that recognizes the value of reasoned debate. More than that, you re mind us that we are all Americans and the vast majority of us share common goals and values. For a long time I never thought of myself as a Democrat or a Republican. I hold opinions on a variety of issues, some conservative and some liberal, so putting a label on it always seemed overly restrictive. I, like Eisenhower, often answered that I am an American. However, I have become chagrined of late at the reprehensible behavior of my fellow – Republican – Americans. The refusal to enter into rational debate, the unwavering certainty, the rejection of facts that do not support positions, faith-based foreign and domestic policy – these actions are antithetical to the deepest values of American society. While still claiming to be an American, the sheer divisiveness and rancor that’s been generated by the radical politics of the party in power compelled me to choose sides. The Republicans make poor winners. They have taken their majority position and abused their new-found power. Rather than ‘compassionate conservatism’ we have been handed a radical agenda that is clearly at odds with the will of the people. For the last two years I have called myself a Democrat in order to distance myself as much as possible from what I viewed as a poisoning of the American political process. But your essay has given me hope. And your words remind me that the defense against radical partisanism is not a dose of the same, but rather to stand firm on the principles in which we Americans hold so dear. So I shall continue to engage in reasoned debate with my fellow Americans. I shall not throw the baby out with the bathwater, but recognize that we have differences of opinion and the essence of political endeavor is compromise. I join you Mr. Cudahy, not as a Democrat or a Republican, nor even an independent, but as an American. May each one of us share in your courage to stand up for what is right and dare mighty things. Thank you, Jon Wiley Austin, Texas
September 03, 2003 4:03 PM Subject: Re: “To Dare Mighty Things” As we say in this part of the country, you’ve got some cahones – so from all of us rubes in bib overalls, thanks for having the courage to stand up and say what needed to be said.   Keep it up!   M. Lamb Chimayó N.M.
	09-02-2003 11:53 AM ET (US) This was my letter to Michael Cudahy Dear Mr. Cudahy,   I was recently forwarded a statement attributed to you by a Howard Dean listserv that I’m a member of. I found it heartening and inspiring. I consider myself a small and large ‘D’ Democrat but reading your essay I was struck with a feeling that had been missing since my youth. When I was growing up I engaged in lengthy debates with various members of my family who didn’t necessarily share my outlook and yet, because we were grounded in a common respect and affection for the founding principles of this country, almost always came away having enlarged each others’ viewpoints. In short, I learned the valuable lesson that “honest men can disagree” and that respect is the key. As a person deeply committed to the insights about the internal workings of human relationships embodied in the struggle to create and maintain the Constitution of the United States I welcome you as a fellow participant in our common experiment in, as Lincoln said, “the last, best hope of mankind”. I look forward to celebrating the election of Howard Dean in 2004 with you. I’m sure we’ll have plenty of other things to talk about after that. All the best, Geoff DeWan Los Angeles, Ca.
08-31-2003 07:05 PM ET (US) Thanks Michael for posting this insightful piece on what’s happened to American Democracy today. Those who benefit most form dividing rather than uniting the American people will always come out ahead when the electorate is complacent, dumbed down, and disinformed. Rove, spokesman for the conservative think tanks is well informed in these matters, since they are schooled by the likes of Machiavelli and Goebbels. This is the last election “we the people” will have a chance to be heard. If Bush wins another four years, this country will belong to the highest bidder on his leave. You ask why I support Howard Dean? He is changing the face of contemporary politics by energizing the people into participating once again in the democratic process. Neither the media, nor the old style politicians know what to do with this US, Dean’s movement is coalescing together. One more point, media is also in danger of extinction. Blogs on the internet have access to real time news, as “we the people” communicate globally in ways never seen before. Journalists are already beginning to mine them for views and news. In the not so distant future, the world will belong to those who want people feedback, rather than those who want to extricate and exploit us. Kitty
	08-29-2003 11:16 PM ET (US) Thank you Michael for very eloquently expressing what I feel. I myself have never been active in Politics before. I am a 56 year old machine operator. The reason I got into politics is George Bush. I am very scared to see the direction my country is heading under his extreme right wing ideology. I do support Howard Dean. The DLC, DNL and all of the self important political whores on cable news just don’t get it. 1. “They” say that Dean supporters hate Bush because of Florida…..that’s not true for me, Even though I voted for Gore, I didn’t have much invested in the outcome of the race. 2. “they” say that when Deans supporters find out that he is not a liberal, we will desert him. We know exactly where he stands on the issues. We don’t even agree with him on some of them. 3. “they” say that Dean is too angry. Well I’m angry too! Angry and scared. Dean had a petition on his web site for John Ashcroft to stop trampling on our civil liberties. It was sad to find out that many people were afraid to sign it they were afraid of reprisals. Some remarked that their name might be put on the “no fly list” or they might be in for a tough tax audit. Scared of our own government-How did we come to this? The reasons I support Howard or HoHo as he is called in Vermont, is that he has a vision for the US that cuts across ideological lines. He’s proved in Vermont that he can work with all parties. He is also willing to compromise. This means that just perhaps everyone in government can work together and give us the community that we sorely lack now. You don’t know how heartened I was to read your post. It makes me feel that we will “Take Our Country Back” After all, it does belong to all of us. Thank you. dalek
08-28-2003 10:52 AM ET (US) Thanks for posting this. I spend too much time being angry because I am afraid, and at times hopeless. Words such as these are inspiring. We can do this..together! Thank you!
	Sep 4th @ 04:33:26 PM Hi Thanks for the article you wrote. That took some courage considering who you are and the people you know. I’m a Republican also. I’m a moderate. Gina Coleman
Sep 4th @ 04:30:54 PM Hi, I’m Gina in Indiana I saw your article and I wanted to thank you for it. I’m a Republican also. It’s easy for me to support Howard Dean. It can’t be easy for somehow of your background. What you did took some courage. Thanks for saying what needed to be said.
	Sep 4th @ 03:59:09 PM Michael, Thanks for the reply. Good luck to your efforts in the coming months. Guestblog whenever you’d like on Dean Independents. Scott Gamel (DeanIndependents.org)
Sep 4th @ 03:56:47 PM Hello Michael Saw your article and was incredibly moved! Welcome! Lisa
	Sep 5th @ 04:42:25 PM BRAVO! Michael! I was deeply moved by what you wrote on why you are supporting Howard Dean THANK YOU! If you haven’t seen it yet, you should know that there is another Republican — a blogger — who is reflecting on the light you shine on his/her blog. Take a look: http://www.blaserco.com/blogs/2003/08/28.html I would also like to invite you to the Republicans for Dean discussion group which can be found here. I know they would be honored to hear from you — http://groups.yahoo.com/group/republicans_for_dean Welcome to our merry midst! I hope we get to meet you in person someday — maybe at the Dean Inaugural Ball! Patty McIntosh (aka Patty in VT on the Dean Blog)

 

1:20:47 AM    

Dave Winer is asking PWB’s (People with Blogs) to point to his piece yesterday on how candidates should leverage the blogging world. It’s a good piece, and worthy of every campaign staff’s review:

“It’s not surprising to me, in a way, that weblogs have become such an important part of the early 2004 presidential campaign. I expect this campaign will take place more on the Web than it does on TV networks. That’s why I think candidates who use the Web to raise money for TV ads aren’t making enough of a bet on the Web, and are leaving the door open for those who do. But it must be hard to let go of a way of life. Politics has “always” worked that way, right? Anyway, it’s surprising when a vision comes true, no matter how strongly you felt it would.”

The sentiment is good, but the details seem to advocate a top-down mentality that is contrary to the weblog world. Dave lists seven suggestions for campaigns that would leverage whatever power blogs may have:

1. Run a real weblog*
       “you must link to all articles about your candidate, not just favorable ones”
   Is this a good way to earn the respect of campaign professionals – start off by telling them what they must do? Is such inclusive linking even possible? Just how would the the Dean campaign could even identify all the Dean links? The official Blog lists 257 Dean-specific blogs alone. Inclusive linkage is a job for someone else, like Google or Technorati.
2. Get a pied piper*
        “Get an experienced blogger with a large community to write your main weblog.”
   A key revolution of the Dean campaign is to share the voices of the campaign staff, who have become celebrities in their own right. Why would a qualified blogger do such a thing? If you’re willing to do this, you’re stuffing your own voice for more than a year, or you’re limiting your editorial options. The great thing about blogs is that we do these things anyway, as independent voices.
3. Include independent bloggers*
       “On the press bus, include people who are…making their minds up, people who will ask challenging questions”
4. Publish advocacy guidelines*
       “Teach the people who represent you on the Web to do so with respect for others, respect for the candidate and the campaign, but most important, self-respect.
   Does top-down rules work anywhere? Self-organizing groups police each other based on the only standards they’re prepared to conform to. This stuff simply cannot be mandated by a campaign, any more than it can be managed for an RSS controversy.
5. Publish your schedule*
       “Make sure your candidate’s schedule is on your website and it’s current.
       Also, keep track of where your competition is, and consider publishing that as well.”
   Good idea.
6. Choice in tools*
       “The Dean campaign made a big mistake, imho, by getting into the software business. Now it looks like the Edwards campaign is following them. Software and the candidates should be separate.
   I feel particularly qualified to respond to this point, since much of the early thinking on the DeanSpace initiative took place in my apartment, and I’ve attended IRC meetings and participate on the Dec mailing list.
   Dave’s just wrong here. The campaign isn’t in the software business. Zephyr encouraged the open source volunteers to do what they wanted to do anyway. It’s not even clear that the volunteers are in the software business, since they’re simply customizing a special Drupal installation (“community plumbing“) and configuring it as a downloadable kit. Extending the Drupal toolset is precisely the act of “Building on what the weblog community has accomplished” that Dave recommends.
   Might the complaint be that they are building the kit on open source tools?
7. Speak about democracy*
       “Advocate the benefits of citizens participating in government. Use some of your campaign money to buy Internet presence for voters. Talk about Jefferson, the First Amendment, etc etc. Ralph Waldo Emerson.”
   Isn’t this a suggestion to do what’s criticized in item 6? The amazing comments section at the Dean Blog are full of deeper talk than has emerged from any think tank in the past 3 decades.

Dana’s Points

Dana Blankenhorn has also responded to Winer’s call for linkage to his post. Dana has posted some great stuff at GreaterDemocracy.org, including an insightful article yesterday on how and why military families may lead us to a better understanding of the problems of Bushism.

His take is also different from Dave Winer’s:

“One thing I disagree with Dave on is his advice against creating software tools, as the Dean folks are doing. (Here’s their latest.) In most cases, I agree with him…why reinvent the wheel? But in the case of a Presidential campaign, in a political world that lacks really useful industry-specific tools, I can’t argue against it.

One thing Howard Dean’s people have realized, that no one else (including Dave Winer) has realized, is that in a very short period of time they will become the Democratic Party. All candidates get temporary control of the apparatus once they are nominated. But this control is going to mean more this time, because the tools and sensibilities Dean is bringing to the Democrats mean more than Dean himself, and go beyond either him or his message. The Dean campaign brings lessons in social technology that every Democrat must have to compete, and a cadre of people who can teach those lessons. That will resonate long after Dea
n is forgotten.

Despite Dave Winer’s attempts to be fair politics is being changed today by only one campaign, that of Howard Dean. (And not by his home page, either — by this page .) And it’s not about him. It’s about an important lesson campaign manager Joe Trippi had to fight to learn some months ago, the lesson of letting go.

Give people the tools and they will make their own politics. That is your Clue for today.”

Yeah. That’s what we’re talkin’ about!

6:21:22 PM    

“Far better it is to dare mighty things, to win glorious triumphs even though checkered by failure, than to rank with those poor spirits who neither enjoy nor suffer much because they live in the gray twilight that knows neither victory nor defeat.”
                 —Theodore Roosevelt

I’ve known a lot of brave people. I’ve even got pieces of paper from the Air Force labeling me brave, but I never bought it; holding an airplane aloft with your sphincter muscle needs a different adjective. What young people do in combat is not courage of the greatest sort. Your buddies’ regard for you is more powerful than fear to a soldier. Fighting alongside each other is wired into young men, eclipsing any notion of courage or your own good sense. The peer group and its pecking order is the most powerful force in all our lives.

The highest courage would be to purposely alienate yourself from the peers with whom you have worked hard and won victories and whose respect you have earned. To do so on a matter of principle is the rarest form of courage.

So it is with deep humility and amazement that I’ve learned that Michael Cudahy, a successful Republican Field Commander, has decided he can no longer tolerate the Neo-Conservative clique which has hijacked the Grand Old Party of my and Mr. Cudahy’s parents. This is no abstract event. Cudahy ran 8 states for Dubya’s dad, spending the 1988 Pennsylvania Primary season as a guest in the home of of his friend Tom Ridge. Go read his declaration, it’s more eloquent than any comments I have:

“Over the last 15 years this country has witnessed the emergence of the neo-conservative wing of the Republican Party. During this time traditional Republicans have witnessed a serious deterioration of respect for traditional party principles by GOP leaders. A great party once firmly rooted in the thoughts and policies of visionary presidents like Thomas Jefferson, Abraham Lincoln, Theodore Roosevelt and Dwight Eisenhower has lost touch with its history.”

It’s a stunning announcement. Imagine a German official declaring in 1934 that he no longer believes in the Nazi party; that he will instead be supporting Polish independence. Further, he announces his intention before he leaves for Warsaw or has been formally embraced by the Poles. Our hypothetical German would be notable even if he announced it standing on a podium before the Polish people, but to do so before your new partners even understand your motives is courage on a Hancockian scale.

Rescuing his Inner Idealist

That’s what Michael Cudahy did yesterday. Somehow his inner idealist won. There are two internal forces competing for the loyalties of successful people in any hierarchy. You are proud of your principles, which you nonetheless compromise more each day as you gain skill at working the politics of your workplace or worse, your government. You go along and get along as a trusted team player until the linkage between your youthful values and your mature realities comes apart. Usually it’s the idealist who drowns.

“This country is hungry to put an end to the partisan warfare that has consumed this nation for the last 15 years — at least.

That hunger, and a deep discontent with the status quo keeps reasserting itself. It raised its head in ’96 with the hope that Colin Powell might run. It reemerged with the McCain insurgency, and I believe that it will finally succeed with the candidacy of Howard Dean.”

The interesting part is that Cudahy’s not going to stop being a Republican. He understands the great things that Republicans have done for America, starting with Lincoln. He’s still proud of his party and should be. What he’s ashamed of is the behind-the-scenes insurrection managed by ingenious kleptocrats. Instead of becoming a Democrat, he wants to use his skills to attract Republicans and Independents to the Dean campaign:

“Do not be afraid of all Republicans, because there are millions of Republicans who are wonderful caring people. Citizens who embrace the traditions and policies of Abraham Lincoln, Theodore Roosevelt and Dwight Eisenhower . . . reach out to them . . . and create a radical center where all of us can work together — even when we disagree.

Please do not tar us all with the same brush. Like all Americans, we love our country, its values and the principles that have made it great. Equally important, we are committed to the vision of the founders of our party who believed, in the words of Abraham Lincoln that, ‘This country with its institutions belongs to the people who inhabit it.’

You should also know that those of us who dare to suggest to Republicans and Independents that there is a better way — have been threatened and harassed.”

Mystic Chords of Memory

“It is my hope that we can organize this effort with the sentiments expressed in the final paragraph of Lincoln’s first Inaugural address:

We are not enemies, but friends. We must not be enemies. Though passion may have strained it, it must not break our bonds of affection. The mystic chords of memory, stretching from every battlefield and patriot grave to every living heart and hearthstone all over this broad land, will yet swell the chorus of the Union, when again touched, as surely they will be, by the better angels of our nature.

That’s it! We’re all in this together! What a concept. On Tuesday night in New York, Howard Dean was introduced by Lowell Weicker, the legendary Republican-turned-Independent who taught everybody something about Republican principles as the young hero of the Watergate hearings:

“Republicans do not cover up. Republicans do not threaten. Republicans do not commit illegal acts. And God knows that Republicans do not view their fellow Americans as enemies to be harassed! But rather I can assure you that this Republican and those whom I serve with look upon every American as human beings to be loved and won.” 1.2MB CNN video clip (get QuickTime)

Apparently it now takes real courage for a Republican to base action on principles. Ask informed Americans if they’re willing to risk the personal wrath of Karl Rove and most will decline the chance to stand up for their principles. It doesn’t occur to practical people to ponder the real problem:

Anger an advisor to the President or his Attorney General and any American is in actual peril. How did that become part of the American experience?

Howard Dean’s early opposition to the Iraq War s
eemed courageous at the time but now looks like prescience. I’m sure Michael Cudahy is proud of his own courage but intends to attract enough others that his valor will also be transmuted into good sense. I’m convinced that the country is full of high-principled Republicans who will join him when called upon. If you know one, send them to Michael Cudahy’s Statement.

Circle the Welcome Wagons

If the Dean campaign wants to attract the radical center, as Cudahy calls the most of us, it has no greater opportunity than to embrace as many Republicans as possible, as fast as it can, using any means available. That requires profound cluefulness about how to make Republicans comfortable with a Democratic campaign.

Each of us has certain forms of etiquette which we expect and without which we feel dislocated. Among Democrats it’s tie-dyed shirts, women in comfortable shoes and 20 splinter-movement signs at every rally. Among mainstream Republicans, it includes a solid career, good grooming and a respect for the chain of command. Superficial profiling? Perhaps. But it’s a legitimate part of the complex calculus of managing a movement rather than a campaign.

It just never occurred to the Dems that the Rainbow Coalition might include people with shined shoes. This might be the party’s real test of its diversity.

Whether you’re an idealist nurturing a campaign into a movement, or a cynical operative coldly calculating electoral votes, you’d jump at the chance to build a Republican Safe House. You might even find a guy with proven principles and courage to run it.

4:52:22 PM