Well that didn’t take long.  If you caught the post yesterday I mentioned there was a very good chance Iran and other similiar Middle Eastern regimes would respond to Obama’s recent gestures as a sign of weakness and increase their demands.

To that end, check out this post from the AFP. 

 

If you haven’t already you should really check out Malcolm Gladwell’s new book “Outliers.�  It’s an outstanding work on exceptional-ism and how where we come from, our cultural heritage, dictates a good deal of the opportunities and success we may or may not have. 

In one chapter Gladwell discusses the culture of honor immigrants from Scotland brought with them to America; specifically to Kentucky and other similar rural states of the American Midwest.  Basically the culture of honor filters a good deal of social interactions with an eye toward compliments, insults, displays of strengths and weakness.  

The culture of honor is pervasive throughout the Middle East and many seem to have particular interests in displays of weakness; which brings to mind President Obama’s recent declaration this week in his first full interview. 

During the interview he said that, “…all too often the United States starts by dictating…â€� in our interactions with the Middle East.  Moreover, it was leaked that his administration is writing a letter aimed at warming relations between the U.S. and Iran.  The letter is, “intended to allay the ­suspicions of Iran’s leaders and pave the way for Obama to engage them directly.â€�

While it is too early to tell for sure what the outcome will be from these efforts, if the culture of honor tells us anything both of these gestures might just prove to leaders in the Middle East to be signs of weakness.  IF that is the case then we can expect more demands and shows of aggression from these regimes. 

With President Obama’s inauguration speech behind us we can now start to figure out what it all means.  How will it exactly frame his administration and ultimately his legacy?  To some it was seen as a call to a long overdue renewal of an FDR style government, to others it was seen as an unwelcome renewal to New Deal politics and yet to others it was seen as a call toward a different direction all together.  A call for a Pragmatism. 

And while it is obviously far too early in the Obama presidency to say which of these roads he will take, I think Obama himself wants to usher in a new era of this third option, the era of Pragmatism

“The question we ask today is not whether our government is too big or too small, but whether it works, whether it helps families find jobs at a decent wage, care they can afford, a retirement that is dignified.  Where the answer is yes, we intend to move forward. Where the answer is no, programs will end.�

So if a policy works then the discussion is over.  We as good pragmatists would all agree that X policy is always the right thing to do and to deviate from it would be to act as an ideologue at worst and misguided at best.   

Now, several great phsyicists over the years, bare with me for a second here, have sought something they call the “Grand Unifying Theory of Physics.�  This theory should it be discovered or in fact exist will somehow make sense of EVERYTHING…physically speaking.  The political pragmatists, and seemingly our new president, would say that certain policies are simply not open for discussion because they work and hence they should be included in something like a “Grand Unifying Theory of Politics.�

I’m all for pragmatism so if we’re going to be pragmatic and move toward a grand experiment of keeping the programs that work and ending those that don’t let me offer the first law of the Grand Unifying Theory of Politics:  tax cuts stimulate the economy. 

Moreover, they don’t and didn’t’ get us into the current financial crisis, period.  Giant federal budget deficits didn’t either. 

These things contribute to the U.S. financial system but they are not it’s central feature.  We’re dealing with a credit crisis, brought on in large part by a major correction in the housing market coupled with a huge number of foreclosures and banks owning a massive amount of bad loans and otherwise rotten assets.   The Bush tax cuts had nothing to do with it.  How could they?  If the tax cuts were putting more money into individuals’ pockets it would stand to reason they would have an easier time with their mortgages.  If loans were being made to people who would not have qualified for them just a few years ago, now that would contribute to the crisis.

Moreover, the historical record, the great tape measure of all pragmatists, has clearly shown that each one of the income tax cuts we have had, and there’s been at least four, since the inception of the income tax amendment has lead to an increase of federal revenue.  Just last year the federal government had record revenue from tax receipts.  A record that was somehow set under the burden of the Bush tax cuts and yet the federal government had never had so much money.  Why then did President Obama refuse more tax cuts in the stimulus package?  Why isn’t he promising to make Bush’s tax cuts permanent?  They’ve objectively increased funds to the U.S. government.  They work.

And why is Bob Herbert in the New York Times saying the Bush tax cuts got us into our financial mess?    If there is record revenue and enourmous deficits where’s the problem?  Spending!  This is so simple we should all pragmatically agree: it’s the spending, stupid.

Perhaps that should be the second law of the Grand Unifying Theory of Politics.

As I mentioned last week, Democrats have the edge in voter identification.  In fact, when we include leaners (those who say they are Independent, but lean more toward Democrats than Republicans) a majority of Americans say they are Democratic (52%), while only 40% say they are Republican (source).

A new survey released by Gallup indicates that the nation that twice elected George W Bush as President has become decidedly blue.

How can this happen?

As we’ve discussed before, The Republican party’s brand is badly damaged.  It has less to do with President Bush and more to do with the fact that we have alienated voters by focusing more on our socially conservative issues rather than issues and messages that attract voters to the party of Lincoln.  This does NOT mean that the Republican party has to moderate its stance on abortion, guns, and gay marriage; however, it does mean that we have to do a better job at targeting voters with our messages. 

It’s no big surprise that voters have different interests, but Republicans have insisted on running messages that draw in only the hard-core conservatives, driving our center-right supporters away from us.  For the GOP to ever be competitive again, we have to embrace a full spectrum of issues.  This does NOT mean we have to become any less conservative.  But, it does mean that we have to conduct more research and adapt our campaigns to an electorate that is not single minded.  Reagan put it best when he said, “my eighty percent friend is NOT my 20 percent enemy.”  We have to attract those who love our conservative stance on some issues, but may disagree with us on other messages.  They, too, can be Republican.

For those Republicans who believe that all will be better now that Bush is out of the White House, I can safely say that you are WRONG.  Bush is gone, but the fact that the majority of Americans view Republicans as being extremists had little to do with him.  We have to change our message and our approach or we will go the way of the Whig party.  In fact, the very way we wage campaigns and recruit candidates has to be overhauled.  We need to assemble the great strategic minds of the party and bring in a new generation of ideologists and campaign operatives to start the discussion of how we rebuild.  We have to have new ideas.

On Friday, a new RNC chairman will be elected.  The absolutely best thing the man can do is to wipe clean the current structure of the RNC, and start over (don’t read this wrong - I advocate a new structure, not necessarily new employees.  There are a lot of talented people at the RNC).  Whatever we’re doing is clearly not working, but we’ll never achieve solvency if we don’t listen to new ideas and embrace new techniques.

This year marks a first for American history – the Arizona Cardinals are heading to Tampa Bay for the Super Bowl.  

As the historic inauguration of President Barack Obama and his first few days in office have dominated the news during the two past weeks, the Super Bowl is still another moment of significance.  The Arizona Cardinals franchise has technically won the NFL championship in 1925 and 1947 while they resided in Chicago.  Since the NFL –AFL merger, however, and creation of what is now known as the Super Bowl the Cardinals have never been to this modern championship game.

 While Americans are not reticent about sharing their opinions in national surveys, the ability to make predictions for those surveys is more uncertain.  On January 10, a survey conducted by Rasmussen found that most Americans expected the New York Giants to beat the Pittsburg Steelers in the Super Bowl.  That study was conducted before the playoff games and before New York lost to Philadelphia.  The participants did get it half right as the Steelers will represent that AFC at the title game.

 So, as Americans look toward a year of change and firsts for our country they can take note of one more significant moment…especially the residents of Arizona.

 

Are you marketing your company, product or service in the best way possible?  Companies are facing difficult times right now and this may be just the time to find out if your marketing is truly effective.

Marketing effectiveness drives the impact, competitive advantage and return an organization achieves with its marketing resources.  The ways in which effectiveness increases the odds for success are numerous.

A marketing effectiveness study provides a comprehensive, systematic and independent examination of an organizations marketing environment - across all major marketing activities of the organization. It is often the first-step in improving performance.

Key issues addressed:

• Have marketing objectives, strategies and plans been set, and do they reflect marketplace requirements?
• What elements of the marketing mix provide the greatest leverage opportunities?
• Can marketing resources be realigned to improve efficiency and effectiveness? 
• Are there opportunities to improve marketing and sales planning, through redesigned systems, processes or organizational structure?

A WRS Marketing Effectiveness Study will:

• Build internal knowledge and understanding of the key drivers of effectiveness and their interdependencies
• Evaluate current strengths and measure and prioritize opportunities for significant performance gains
• Develop and implement strategies and tactics to improve effectiveness within and across key marketing areas
• Calculate the expected ROI for each strategy
• Establish measures for on-going assessment and evaluation to measure success
• Determine how each channel impacts the overall effectiveness

Approach and anticipated results:

• Through internal interviews and primary and secondary research, an organizations brand’s strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats are uncovered.
• A corrective action plan is then developed, to identify a limited set of marketing levers, with a focus on improving marketing efficiency and effectiveness.

Because no race is run in a vacuum and no issue debate occurs on its own, Wilson Research Strategies constantly monitors the national political scene and the political environments in key states. One way we do this is by tracking the large volume of polling data publicly available.

Access the latest Assessment here, covering the state of the economy from the American public’s perspective, as well as the public’s expectations for Obama in his first 100 days.

Contrary to popular belief, Americans DO care about national debt, as 61% say that they believe that the national budget deficit is “a real and important number that has a direct effect on the average citizen.”  This proves that the public takes the money the government is spending on economic stimulus packages very seriously.

Unlike what we noted last year, Americans are beginning to embrace government spending as an attempt to help the economy.  According to a recent NBC/Wall Street Journal survey, 57% say that “the economic stimulus plan is a good idea because it will help make the recession shorter, get people back to work, and provide money for transportation, eduction and Medicaid programs.”

However, this doesn’t mean that the Democratically controlled government has carte blanche in regards to spending.  But unfortunately, the same survey indicates that 60% believe that “the federal government will spend too MUCH money to try to boost the economy and as a result will drive up the budget deficit.”

Losing the White House and the ousting of President George W. Bush is not enough to bring voters back to the Republican party.  It may be too early to tell whether the GOP naturally recovers, but a recent poll indicates that 36% of Americans identify themselves as Democrats while only 28% say they are Republican.

The Democrats’ eight-point party identification advantage could spell huge trouble for Republicans in 2010 and beyond, meaning that the GOP has to carry the majority of its base vote in addition to significant numbers of Independents to win races. 

This makes reaching out to moderates and Independents key to victory.  This does NOT mean that the Republican party has to become moderate, but it must focus on more main-stream issues like economy, conservation, and the environment and leave talk about abortion and guns to targeted mail pieces of those voters who care about those issues.  The fact is that many Americans currently view the Republican party as a group of extremists because we have used the anti-abortion and pro-gun messages as our lead approach.  This turned away droves of voters who now say they are Independent or even Democratic.  What’s worse is that these voters will be hard to bring back to the party.

Next week, Republicans gather in Washington, D.C. to choose a new Chairman of the RNC.  Here’s hoping that all those vying for the position realize that we can still be the conservative party, remaining unmoved on our current issues, without turning people away by pushing messages and issues that are meant for smaller sub-groups. 

I recently wrote about how Republicans need to take responsibility for the situation they find themselves in politically.  Both pieces essentially dealt with liberal media bias, an old refrain for many a conservative.  Since thinking about the articles something occurred to me…what did we expect to happen this election?  Or in 2006? 

Certainly conservatives created plenty of problems for themselves during this period, corruption, bad leadership, bad policies, etc.  So there is a good deal we can directly manage in the immediate future, basically clean house.  But the flip side to this period is the pervasiveness of the arguments against conservative ideas and policies.  Here again is the old saw about a biased press, academia, and Hollywood that basically says conservative ideas get little or no attention in the popular culture due to these professions’ biased personal.  But what do we as conservatives expect?  As a general rule for each of these professions:  education, journalism, and acting conservatives are found in insufficient numbers.

The problem for conservatives going forward is much bigger than cleaning up corruption and “getting back to our political roots.� Think for a moment about the professions I just mentioned.  They all have one thing in common, they each directly impact popular culture.  And in America our culture is almost entirely popular culture.  It drives nearly everthing from the foods we buy, clothes we wear, movies we watch, knowledge we possess and horrible, horrible television we talk about at work…admit it you watch Dancing with the Stars and Rock of Love.

And across wide swaths of American culture conservatives play practically no role in influencing the future.  So why should we be surprised when polls show significant numbers of voters had no idea who was in charge of Congress?  Conservatives can’t help properly inform voters because they are not plugged into the mediums of popular culture:  television, movies and schools. 

We have only ourselves to blame for this predicament.  As a group conservatives, have a certain amount of contempt for each of these professions:  Hollywood, is full of a bunch of nuts, journalism is a formerly great profession that is overrun with liberals, and “those who can do, those who can’t, teach.�

We actively discourage each other from these fields and we’ve been doing so for years.  It was only a matter of time before we started to see the results at the ballot box. 

Finally, Ronald Reagan warned us about this in his farewell address, saying:

“Those of us who are over 35 or so years of age grew up in a different America. We were taught, very directly, what it means to be an American. And we absorbed, almost in the air, a love of country and an appreciation of its institutions. If you didn’t get these things from your family, you got them from the neighborhood, from the father down the street who fought in Korea or the family who lost someone at Anzio. Or you could get a sense of patriotism from school. And if all else failed, you could get a sense of patriotism from popular culture. The movies celebrated democratic values and implicitly reinforced the idea that America was special. TV was like that, too, through the mid-’60s.

…for those who create the popular culture, well-grounded patriotism is no longer the style. Our spirit is back, but we haven’t reinstitutionalized it.â€�