Category: Uncategorized

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    

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    

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    

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    

Doc’s been in North Carolina, saying his final farewells to his beloved mother. His cell phone is spotty. His email server’s hosed. Since I can’t get in touch with him, I’ll just put my thoughts here and let him pick them up when he can.

Hi Doc,

Sorry I haven’t been in touch for about a week. You’ve been so distracted with your mother’s illness and then your return for her memorial last weekend. I appreciate the updates on voicemail and, before it went down, email. I’ve been moved by your comments. I envy you your wonderful history with your mother, something I never had. I especially appreciated the picture of you and her at the beach, and the one with the whole family, you at six, holding the beer bottle. You had a wry look then and still do. Some people “get” irony at an early age and some never do. You’re my favorite “man of iron”-y.

Though you haven’t been able to update, I’m sure the interment and memorial went well, and that your eulogy was as eloquent as you always are. I’ll bet you even leavened it with humor from your deep reservoir of benevolent irony. I never asked if you agree with me (but I bet you do) that the most important element in grief is high mirth and the vital antidote to arrogance is an appreciation of our essential absurdity.

Things have been a little quiet here in NYC, but the weather has been magnificent, early fall, really. I’m spending every morning in Bryant Park, soaking up the WiFi, the good vibes and some sun, since the air’s cool enough to encourage a few rays. What a great place. As I write this tonight, they’re concluding the free film series with 2001: A Space Odyssey.

Here are some pix from this morning. The first one’s looking west from the terrace next to the New York Public Library.

I chatted with a fellow there this morning about free WiFi in the Park, a very well-dressed midtown type. I shared your advice that, should one wish to gain access to the whole of the world’s knowledge from the Library’s west reading room, you need to sit by the windows and log on to the Bryant Park WiFi. It’s uncertain if you’re better off in the Library’s impressive reading room without WiFi, or online at the Park’s charming little reading room, with its staff of maroon-shirted volunteers:

My new friend’s a big-time Madison Avenue attorney, who spontaneously said, “I love anything that weakens Microsoft’s stranglehold on us all!” Whew! You don’t expect that kind of spontaneous emission in middle-aged guys like us. With just a bit of encouragement, he also expressed his dismay with the current administration. He can’t make the Dean rally tomorrow night, but seemed heartened to detect a way out of the wilderness.

This next picture is of an actor in some kind of commercial, gesticulating meaningfully behind a laptop with a green screen into which some video jock will paste some important-appearing computer information, without which no enterprise could hope to compete against the awesome forces arrayed against it.

You will appreciate the irony reeking from the image. Nothing meaningful said. No information on the screen. No comprehension of the message by the actor. In fact, at the moment I snapped this, the crew had just quit shooting but hadn’t yet told the actor, who continued buzzwording on, full of sound and flurry, signifying nothing.

Xpertweb is moving along, albeit more slowly than I’d like. Roland’s waiting for me to rough out the datatypes for the three preference sets present in each task, the Seller, Buyer and the Product/Task. I hate it when I’m the one in the middle of the critical path. It forces me to stop pontificating and to get on with real work.

Well, I’d better get on with Roland’s datatyping. Travel well. Tell your relatives that there are now people all over the world who care about them–people whom they will never meet. Now that’s news.

Hugs,

Britt

11:01:18 PM    

Zack Rosen is a brilliant young man who represents everything that’s right about the Dean campaign. He’s a student in the Computer Science Department at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, one of the world’s finest CS programs. The last UIUC CS student who made a major difference was Mark Andreessen when he wrote Mosaic, the little web browser that grew into Netscape. The UIUC’s Computer Science program is trolling for some reflected glory from Zack. The CS Department’s home page has a link to the Wired article describing Zack’s vision. On July 19 & 20, Zack and his friend Evan DiBiase met with Zephyr Teachout at our apartment in New York. Zephyr is Howard Dean’s Director for Internet outreach. Wouldn’t you love to be able to tell your grandkids you held that job the year politics got re-invented? The thumbnail images on the right link to Evan’s photos from that weekend. Mouse over them for a description. In early July, I had asked Zephyr if she’d like to use our apartment to meet with Zack to plan Dean Internet v. 2.0. The mini-summit was set up and Zack and Evan drove over from Pittsburgh and Zephyr flew down from Burlington. Zack told us that weekend that if he went back to school in the fall, he’d just flunk out since he’d be working full time on the project. So, wouldn’t it make sense for the campaign to hire him and save a brilliant career from premature ruin? When he put it that way, it was impossible for the campaign to resist. The results of our work excited us all and now Zack’s in Burlington working on several important projects, supported by a small army of volunteers around the country. As I’ve said before, his major project involves the best imaginable toolkit for grassroots campaign management. Joe Trippi, Dean’s campaign manager, told Larry Lessig last week that this is an open source campaign, that the important and truly effective stuff originates and is championed by the people and then spreads to campaign management. Everything that we’ve seen so far is the result of lashing together existing tools and web services, ad hoc, into the most effective Internet-based campaign ever. We ain’t seen nothin’ yet Rev 2.0 of the Dean Internet involves the RSS-based DeanSpace toolkit that I’ve described before. The system uses interacting RSS feeds to facilitate viral interaction among purpose-built local campaign sites, with blogs, mutual help, email lists and every other goodie you can imagine. Probably some we can’t imagine. Our next Dean event at the apartment will be a get-together here prior to the big Dean rally in Bryant Park on Tuesday and I’ve asked Zack to spread the word among the Dean interns who are thinking of a road trip. Every month or so, it’s exciting to host a dormitory for committed, clear-eyed young people with a high purpose. It’s amazing how much fun you can have by offering the right people a place to sleep in Midtown Manhattan with no check-out time. Oh yeah, with free pizza. Part of the deal. I’ve depicted the DeanSpace concept before, when it was called Americans for Dean, but here it is again:

Open Sourcery These truly are the best of times, because our tools have become permission-free. Just as there is no way to stop us from Purchasing the Dean Campaign by buying our own votes, there is also no way any force on earth can keep citizens from equipping themselves with the tools to contribute money, ideas, talent and shoe leather to the political activity of their choice. DeanSpace is building an open source toolkit. I call it Campaign-in-a-Box (notice that little RSS Feeds widget in the center): The campaign has built a rapid feedback loop that’s not going to disappear after the election. These donors will be just as demanding of the President they bought as any other donors. And that’s where the DeanSpace network comes in. Remember that widget called RSS Feeds in the network graphic? It’s a technical breakthrough in campaign organization, a chaordic disruption of party politics, and another genie freed from its bottle. This is a big deal: The campaign (or resulting presidency) can’t ignore the comments posted to its own blog Interesting comments rise through the Dean sites to reach a broader audience More information moves to the campaign than from it More initiatives and work get proposed and acted upon from outside the campaign than within It’s a Kick in the RSS What Zack saw before almost anyone else is that the aggregator is the network. By distributing a consistent toolkit, Deaniacs (as they call themselves) will build a zillion Dean sites. Each of those sites will vote good ideas to the top and expose them in their RSS feeds. Other sites will absorb those good ideas and vote the best ones further up the hierarchy of common sense. War is a series of campaigns that try to perfect the means for blowing things up. A Presidential election is a series of campaigns that try to perfect the means to aggregate lots of voices around a candidate’s shared vision. Both kinds of campaigns have, until now, forced the troops to conform to the whims of HQ. For the first time, a Presidential campaign is submitting to the elegant chaos of the grass roots. If that campaign elects the President, we’ll be started down a path that looks nothing like the road that got us here.

11:12:19 PM    

This is a repeat of an earlier blog, inspired by Jim Moore’s opinion, repeated most recently on 7/24 that we can raise a billion dollars for the Dean campaign:

A billion dollars for Dean, slight reprise

The fiscal year 2004 Federal budget is $1,731 billion dollars. Yup, one point seven trillion dollars–for a YEAR.

I’m amazed, based on these figures, that there isn’t more money in campaign finance!  Bush is blowing everyone’s mind by raising $200 million for his 2004 “primary” and general election campaign. He expects to spend over $170 million for his unopposed primary victory, prior to the Republican convention!  Everyone thinks this is a lot of money. Hell, I think it is a bargain. Chump change, given what is at stake. Bush and the Republicans will then turn around and control one point three trillion dollars a year–for four years. That is a lot of Haliburton contracts.

Awhile back I suggested that if just 1 million people (1/2 of Moveon.org’s registered users) gave $1000 to the Dean campaign, a billion dollars could be raised. What is the cost of taking back the presidency? If you have never written a campaign check before–you are in luck! This year you can put it on your credit card–it’s like buying a book from Amazon. Wouldn’t you buy a few more books to change the face of America?

We can’t exactly steal it, but we can buy it. Cheap.

We can buy the Dean campaign by showering it with so many $50 contributions that they won’t have to worry about corporate contributions. Apparently the Republicans are raising $200 million from their closest friends based on a single cynical premise:

You can buy people’s votes

The back story on that cynical assumption is that they need to be bought because they never manifest themselves other than through big time TV marketing.

But if we do what Jim Moore suggests, a million people giving $1,000, the Republican’s cynical assumptions go out the window.

Scale

Everyone seems to agree that 6/30/03 will be written about for years since it was the first spontaneous expression of political will by self-organizing voters talking each other into caring more and donating more through the Moveable Type Comments function. That inspiring day caused the campaign to believe more strongly in its core aspiration: to somehow get nominated and then to give the Republicans a decent challenge. If 6/30 is as important as it seems, the campaign should re-calibrate its goals:

$1 Billion
60 Million votes (including 15% of the Republican vote)
A Patriotic Congress (Patriotic = constructively bi-partisan), riding Dean’s coattails
A re-definition of American as cooperative, kind and open-minded

Do the Math

Internet-equipped people caused $802,000 to be donated to Dean on 6/30/03. They did it by chatting each other up as the new totals were posted every half hour, and as the goal, depicted as a baseball bat, was increased as goal after goal was surmounted through the afternoon.

A freely associating mob is forming around the Dean campaign. Its communication tools will soon transcend the Campaign comment archives, by organizing its own tools. The campaign can’t stop them nor should it want to, though there are surely consultants who would just as soon all this went away. Too late.

Metcalfe’s Law says that this mob’s value and power will grow with the square of its population, attracting more people and volksmoney as an accretion disc in space sucks matter away from the systems around it. I believe this phenomenon is a social force too powerful to be stopped, and that historians may be as interested in 6/30/03 as 9/11/01.

The smart mob is not limited by the campaign’s preconceptions. At a gut level, this mob seems to be saying, “We’ve got plenty of money for this little problem. Shit, we send $6 billion a year to Apple Computer. Apple! We can easily spend a billion or two every four years to own our own government!”.

Easy Monthly Payments

I’m encouraging the Dean campaign to set up three giving clubs:

• Club   42, whose members put $  42.66 on their credit card each month = $  500 per year
• Club   83, whose members put $  83.33 on their credit card each month = $1,000 per year
• Club 166, whose members put $166.66 on their credit card each month = $2,000 per year

Is That a President in your Pocket or are You Just Happy to See Me?

Imagine being a significant financing source for a populist President. Imagine being part of an army of people who, for less than $3 a day, transforms the face of American Democracy.

It could even be a return to the spirit of Andrew Jackson, the hero of the Battle of New Orleans, and even more like Teddy Roosevelt, beloved by the people despite his patrician roots. Like Roosevelt, Dean is presented with the opportunity to break the stranglehold that business has on politics.

The more things, change the more they stay the same.

7:37:42 PM    

A little break can be a good thing. After posting my Minimalism entry, I entertained friends on Wednesday night and then Thursday we had a little trouble with the utilities in Manhattan, so we entertained stranded co-workers willing to climb 28 floors: an evening of candlelight, wine and conversation reminded us of simpler pleasures (“Let’s drink the white first while it’s cold”).

It was a surprise three day weekend and the Internet seemed less compelling than I would have thought–I found it relaxing to be offline. I had unused power in the PowerBook battery and a POTS phone line and internal modem, but it didn’t seem necessary to add to the descriptions of what was, essentially, obvious.

When asked to comment on Niagara Falls by its enthusiastic boosters, Calvin Coolidge took a look and asked, “What’s to hinder?”

Amy Harmon of the New York Times called on Saturday for background on an article she was writing. I told her I really didn’t have anything more interesting than relaxation to report. And so she didn’t.

I do have a small bit of advice for handling blackouts. Yesterday was a glorious day, so I took a long walk, enjoying a street fair on Lexington and a stroll through the Park. Last night brought stomach upset and a real-life Immodium commercial. Why would a seemingly rational man buy a Gyro sandwich from a street vendor the day after every piece of meat in town has been warmed to room temperature?

Now back to our regular programming…

Resistance is Mutual

The theme I discern from my idle rants and the more thoughtful deliberations of others is consistent: at a deep level, each of us is convinced of our authority as the pinnacle of reason; that intelligence and insight degrade rapidly with the distance from our influence (ignoring the fact that, if a husband’s alone in the forest, he’s still wrong). So, rather than a participatory search for collective enlightenment and right action, we spend all our effort trying to convince others to think and act as we do.

How well does this work? Take a look around.

So is there a way out of this foolishness? It looks to me like the Internet’s hive mind is working on the answer without us realizing it. In other words, paraphrasing Scott McNeely, the network is the human.

If so, then the self-directed Clint Eastwood is a mirage, though most of us believe that’s how we’re supposed to lead our lives if we weren’t so weak and other-directed. What’s worse, we believe that people who appear to be like Clint are people worth following, deferring to and voting for.

So we may be in a society where the leaders cling to their illusion of competence to stay in power and the rest of us cling to their illusion to stay in denial.

The Bloomin’ Truth

Howard Bloom is the one who first clued me that we’re not wired for solitary action, back in 1995 when his important book, The Lucifer Principle, was published. In fact, his second chapter (after Who is Lucifer?) is The Clint Eastwood Conundrum. Bloom demonstrates that we are totally social creatures and that isolation is the ultimate poison.

My guess is that we are drawn to those who appear to be independent and strong for the same reason that chimps and wildebeests are, but those types need our attention as an actor needs an audience. Bloom suggests, and Susan Blackmore reinforces the point, in The Meme Machine, that these strong, self-assured types are indeed actors, posturing in ways that have become second nature, attracting us with their compelling demonstrations of independence and stubbornness to ensure that they can avoid the fear we all share: never be alone.

So I wonder if we aren’t all resisting the truth that the strong, independent father figure is a threat to us all. George Lakoff points out that we’re inclined to embrace the metaphor of the strong father and question the value of a nurturant parent.

What if all our emperors are naked and we’re just their credulous patsies? What if the reality of sucking up to a strong-appearing leader is that we simply give a questionable ego more fuel and their self-indulgent personality more reason to spurn us?

10:14:00 PM    

Capitalism may not last forever. For decades I’ve been wondering what the next “ism” might be. I think I’ve got it. It’s Minimalism: a cultural sense of restraint.

Minimalism suggests that:

• The Government that governs least governs best.
• No one gets any say about another’s private behavior.
• Humans have a God-given right to Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness,
  even if they don’t worship their neighbor’s god.
• Humans deserve non-interference from persons that are not human, such as corporations.

What we have today is the opposite of Minimalism: Grandiosity. Everything’s supposed to get bigger forever: every company, advertising campaign, bulk mail, spam mailing, copyright law, car and, above all, government. You know, the Texas-sized notion that everything should be bigger, flashier, more expensive and impressive. All-pervasive boosterism and Big Bidness, boy howdy! Guys with big hats and over-dressed women and huge Rolex watches.

We used to say of pilots with fancy chronometers on their wrist, “Big clock, small cock.”

Capitalism has developed to the point that it vests its chieftains with a grandiosity beyond belief. Our leader of the free world has not one but two 747’s at his beck and call, 5,900 employees and a budget estimated at $730 million as of three years ago.

FDR managed a war on two sides of the world with a staff of 18 and a rail car.

Federal Staff Reductionism

There’s only one way to reduce the Washington bureaucracy, which is the ostensible goal of conservatives, but obviously not their effect. Minimalism can only come about when the bureaucrats embrace smallness. But how to do that?

Web applications.

We all know that most bureaucrats could be replaced by a reasonably well programmed web app. Whether public or on an intranet, a properly designed web site can elicit the information needed to replace many a bureaucrat’s job of repackaging information for the consumption of those who think they need a bureaucrat to define the obvious.

I propose a crack team of experts on call to help bureaucrats eliminate their positions–a web site, an 800 number, bulletins on boards, etc. The message: if you can help us devise a web application that moves information as your job description specifies, then you get to go home and continue receiving the pay and benefits you’re getting and reasonable increases, plus a great retirement package when the time comes.

Yep. We’re ready to do that for you, Mr. Bureaucrat, to keep you from dreaming up programs to make your position seem necessary; to avoid the endless rounds of committee meetings and studies and travel and consulting contracts to make it appear that how you move information needs more study. No, we realize that the expensive part of government is the programs you dream up, not the cost of paying and retiring you.

Save the Children

But what about the programs that matter, you ask? Is this merely a variation on the NeoCons’ idea that if we just stop spending gummint money then we can return to a pristine world of bucolic villages and faith-based socials and solutions (don’t pay attention to those smokestacks and fetid water)?

No, there are real needs and real money to spend. Undernourished, under-educated children need a better future. Minimalism doesn’t have a problem with spending money on kids and job training and a health care safety net. It also doesn’t mind spending money defending us against real threats, like people who actually possess WMDs. No, Minimalism has a problem with ideological politicians funneling so much money through a bureaucracy stealing money from real problems.

Minimalism has an abhorrence of corporate welfare supporting obsolete business models and legislation to jail customers who invent their own media packaging and an arms race against ourselves. Rather, Minimalism seeks a spareness in all things, whether government, legislation, business, marketing or car stereo volume. It’s not a matter of making laws defining efficiency and slim government, it’s a matter of allowing a culture-wide sense of restraint to permeate our shared aesthetic about how to conduct our affairs. The time seems to have arrived.

When we get it right, we’ll know it, and the simple act of defining ourselves as minimalists may be a start. Howard Dean has ignited voters by saying that deficits need to be minimized, that federal gun control needs to be minimized and that the feds have no business telling states what form of ritual qualifies their citizens as life partners.

I’ve been traveling to Vermont for 42 years and got married once in Dallas, so I have a sense of the contrasts. Vermont’s always been a place of few words and laws. A quiet place where people keep to themselves but help their neighbors. Sure, there are more ex-urbanites there now, but the place hasn’t changed that much. The last president from Vermont was a man of few words. When asked to comment on Niagara Falls by its enthusiastic boosters, Calvin Coolidge took a look and asked, “What’s to hinder?”

Ayep, Vermont’s a good place to spawn an overdue sense of minimalism.

10:55:46 PM