Between various kinds of political operatives, advertising and focus group social manipulators, and the usually dumb assumptions of politicians, there has come to be a false consensus that under estimates the intelligence and wisdom of the American People.
Sure there are people who will buy lies and cheap talk, but most folks have lived enough life to know what's real and what's not. Most folks realize something is wrong in Washington, even if they can't put their finger on it. Most folks see hate speech for what it is, whether it is so-called conservatives ragging on liberals or the other way around. The heart of the American People is fairly simply once we ignore the true believers, who are always an excessively vocal minority, but who really, in the end, are not representative of the main heart values of our People.
We want honesty, and we can tell when a politician is shading the truth. We'd like to trust government, but have too many times been burnt. We don't trust Bush and Company any more, and a lot of us are going to vote in November just to throw the bums out of office. This will not be any kind of mandate for who we put in office - in the main we are only offered a choice between two evils, and have to take the lesser - a lesson life often forces upon us, so it is one with which we are familiar.
So don't let it go to your head Senator Kerry - you are not being elected God.
You want to win the election? Here's how. Don't run just against Bush, run against the whole gang - your ads should mention Rove, and Rice, and Rumsfeld, and Wolfowitz, and Perle, and Powell. Make Bush responsible for these people - he picked them, and he listened to their crap. Just show the double talk. Run ads showing them saying one thing before the war and another thing after David Kay's stating there are no WMD. They'll look like the idiots they are. Short ads, not even focused on issues, just on the tissue of lies and misjudgments, and then with a punchy, do you want the same man who picked these people to be in government to have another four years of making mistakes.
You should run a second set of ads as well. These ads are your message and it will have a simple theme as well. Healing the nation from the divisions fostered by the Republican Right, but that is the sub-text and isn't even mentioned. These ads are about us, and about "we the people" and simply say that times are going to be hard, governments are made up of people, mistakes have been made, but we are - when united - strong enough to face them.
Avoid the excesses of rah rah language, such as "this is the greatest nation in the world". That's just BS. Talk about ordinary people, about teachers and parents, and clerks in stores, and all the little folk who make the wealth and make our lives have whatever civility they have. Show us, not your face, but ours. Pictures of someone being nice to someone - like what the bumper sticker says - "random acts of kindness". Show us being who we are, and help us believe again in ourselves. Don't talk about yourself, or what you are going to do, because its not you that makes this Nation what it is, its us. Be humble, help us come together.
In your campaigning don't go for the sound bite. Meet people and talk to them. Really go out and ask us what we want and need, and let the news ghouls do their thing. The talking heads will not get it at the beginning, but in the end it will itself make real news - "candidate works to unite America and return us to our real strength as a people."
The President is not a King, but he is our chief public servant, and has to, in the conduct of that Office, show by example just what public service means. If you don't know, then just ask. The public knows - we're way smarter than most people inside the beltway give us credit for.
