presidential race

Photo credit: Nick Hall via Flickr cc

Guest post by James E. Lukaszewski, ABC, Fellow IABC, APR, Fellow PRSA, BEPS Emeritus

The 2016 presidential pre-primary campaign, often called the Silly Season of American politics, has been in the ditch, the dirt, and swimming around the edge of the bowl, circling the drain so to speak, much of the time. It might be a useful time before we get into the real campaign to clarify, comment on, and suggest the kind of behaviors that could make for a more substantive, useful, and constructive campaign, if anybody really wants one.

 

Winning Principles

 

To win something worth winning, clearly advocate what you are for, define what needs to be changed, state what is reasonable and necessary to achieve your objective, and give up or provide something truly meaningful as an incentive, in return for base and public support. Here are some constructive guiding principles for a victory worth winning and the public can respect.

 

  1. Be candid, open, aboveboard, and talk about what you know to be true.
  2. Be positive, use positive language; avoid negative language and demeaning or discrediting accusations.
  3. Make sensible, believable arguments.
  4. Answer all the questions, be responsive, and acknowledge the obvious.
  5. Suggest and answer questions the public and the media should be asking.
  6. Inform, entertain, inspire and surprise.
  7. Provide options. Give people choices.
  8. Show solutions with empathy.
  9. Make the actions required, or decisions needed, obvious and more in the interests of those affected by the decisions and actions, than the proposer.
  10. Acknowledge and apologize for mistakes promptly and sincerely; an apology is the atomic energy of empathy, among the most powerful individual acts of integrity and courage.
  11. Promptly correct or clarify anything that is confusing, inaccurate, wrong, abusive or damaging.
  12. Show us your clear path to peace, trust and reconciliation.

 

Winning Behaviors

 

  1. Listen; demonstrate that you’ve heard.
  2. De-escalate, detoxify.
  3. Constantly seek incremental agreement, even though the smallest of details.
  4. Make constructive suggestions rather than criticize or be negative.
  5. Behave with dignity and integrity; disavow those who don’t.
  6. Let those who oppose make their own case; speak only for yourself.
  7. Start with integrity, aim for trust, and achieve reconciliation.
  8. Target every decision and action to reduce the amount of critics, opponents, contention, confrontation, and abusive questions.

 

Confusing Strategies

 

These traditional approaches mystify supporters and opponents alike; distract the sincere and the insincere, cloud the process and muddle up purposes and objectives:

 

  1. Establish front group coalitions of organizations, companies and individuals who seem to have common interests, but their name and purpose fail to match their actions and stated goals.
  2. Concoct events, behaviors, and platforms that seem out of tune or out of place with the goals to be accomplished.
  3. Whine about the unfairness of it all.
  4. Use weak, transparent, and wobbly arguments.
  5. Be negative, argumentative, and accusatory.
  6. Trivialize the things others rely on or believe in.
  7. Behavior, language, and actions that irritate, agitate, or alienate.
  8. Force people to make unnecessarily negative decisions, against their own interests.
  9. Deceive, mislead, and demean.
  10. Be harsh, confrontive, and negative.

 

Losing Strategies

 

There are certain mistakes all over-zealous advocates tend to make. They are generally negative, pretty obvious, attract the attention of journalists and otherwise neutral observers, and give energy to the opposition.

 

  1. Discredit public servants and public officials.
  2. Make silly, irrelevant claims.
  3. Fudge the truth.
  4. Underrate people’s intelligence.
  5. Insult people’s intelligence.
  6. Disparage things people trust or rely on.
  7. Fail to acknowledge your own negatives.
  8. Intentionally misstate, mischaracterize, or misframe.
  9. Lie.
  10. Tear us apart.

 

Winston Churchill’s famous characterization of Americans remains as true today as when he spoke it before a joint session of Congress in the early 1950s. He said, “The world loves America because Americans will always do the right thing, after trying everything else first.”

Let’s not wait so long this time for victory through civility, integrity and reconciliation. Be nice, wage peace every day.

 

This post was adapted from a Duets Guest Blog from March 20, 2012.