The Elements of Persuasion

You Can't Handle the Truth

I was a little uncomfortable the other evening as I drove the narrow winding roads to a dinner party atop the Hollywood Hills. I quickly attributed my discomfort to navigating the narrow two lane blacktop as Italian sports cars and German SUV’s hurdled down the mountain toward me. Maybe I should have dug deeper and paid more attention to why I was really feeling that way.

 I had been invited to the home of Keith Ferrazzi

If you don’t know already, Keith is the author of the best seller “Never Eat Alone.” http://nevereatalone.typepad.com/ He was throwing a dinner party for about a dozen guests who were extremely accomplished in a variety of fields as diverse as hi-tech, economics, art direction and fashion. The big question bubbling up in my mind was, “Why was I invited?” This feeling was quickly swallowed down with the first sips of chilled, expensive wine.

 As we sat down for dinner, I noticed little square cards at each of our place settings. I turned mine over and read, “If you could go anywhere in history where would you like to go?” I realized that everyone would be asked questions during the evening and that’s when my discomfort came back. I felt like a longshoreman was wrapping his huge hands around my stomach and squeezing with glee. Soon enough Keith was asking people around the table to answer the question on their cards.  I focused on what I would say, thought about ancient Greece, how cool it would be to hang with Socrates and hear him say, “I know I don’t know anything and even that I don’t know.” Socrates was my pal because that is exactly how I felt and I couldn’t wait to give my answer.

 Keith looked at me as if he knew what I was thinking and said, “I want Bob to go last and I am going to give him another question.” My mind raced, “Why the hell am I going last?” and “Is Keith playing with me?” I felt like a tiny grey mouse sitting at a cat convention. Now those dreaded words: “Bob, what is it that hurts you?” Everyone turned and looked as I mumbled something about what an old acting teacher had told me about fear…

Soon after dinner we adjourned to the patio. I walked to the deck, which jutted out over a cliff, and gave the guests a god’s eye view of a dazzling city. I wanted to go home. As I thanked my host, Keith turned to me and said I had copped out and not told the truth.  He was right.

What was the truth? So obvious now and so obscured earlier: I felt inferior to everyone there and especially to Keith. I could not admit it and that had locked me away as sure as jail time in Sing Sing. However, in my case I was my own jail cell and jailer.  I had forgotten that I held the keys to my freedom and on those keys were inscribed “The truth shall set you free.”

 

DREAM TEAM II

First a major caveat: The five-element story model is descriptive, not predictive. It can tell you the strengths of a candidate’s story, but it can’t tell you what a candidate will do next. Still, knowing “the elements of persuasion” can help predict which story is likely to prevail in the long term “story war” that is a political campaign, and so suggest smart strategy.

So why would Obama-Gore be “the dream team”?

Because Gore brings the missing element to the Dem story. The one I’ve been waiting for. Awareness. And that can make all the difference. Awareness corresponds to the element air. It is the moment in a story when the Hero understands what they need to do to prevail. It leads to specific actions.

It is one thing to believe in change, something else again to actually know the levers of power well enough to make it happen. Thanks to eight years of carefully politicized appointments the government's bureaucracy is now actively malignant (if it wasn’t before that). Someone is going to have to roll up their sleeves and dive in to fix things. Gore, who headed up the “streamlining of the government” during the Clinton years knows the basic architecture. And he has shown himself comfortable with being in the number two slot. Plus he has spent years working on how to address our biggest problem – the environment – while at the same time stimulating the economy and rebuilding our energy infrastructure so his approach will have focus.

Better yet, from a tactical perspective - which is where the Obama campaign excels - putting Gore on the ticket allows Obama to open up a line of attack on the Repubs that his campaign against Hillary almost closed off.

I’m talking about the classic: “Are you better now than you were eight years ago?” That is the question Dems want voters carrying into the voting booth in November. And Gore personifies it.

So what do you do for Hillary? After her GREAT concession speech she deserves something. My suggestion – the Supreme Court. If there is one position that will allow her to continue her fight for universal equal rights, that is it. Plus, it will be fun to watch Justice Alito’s head explode when he has to argue with her on the bench.

THE DREAM TEAM

I don't have enough time to actually complete this post - but I have heard a rumor that is so hot I have to post it right now. The dream team? Obama Gore. Obama for president, Al Gore for veep. And I have heard from someone in a position to know that it is actually being considered on both sides. Is this a great idea or what? Keep posted.

And yes, I know I am a Gore Head and feel free to think of this as obsessive. It defintely is not a done deal. Still, it is very tasty.And I'll say why later teoday.

ALL OVER BUT THE SHOUTING

With his loss in South Dakota Barak Obama accumulated the magic number of delegates to win the Democratic Nomination of the first ballot – theoretically. And the media says it is in the bag. Of course, they have been saying that for months. And may be it is. But for a campaign whose slogan is “Change We Can Believe In” the Obamistas seem deeply certain that none of their over 2000 delegates will change their minds in the long months until Denver, months in which McCain will begin his attacks and Obama’s responses will be judged.

Remember that none of the Super Delegates are legally bound to vote the way they say they will when talking to the press. And most of the elected delegates are not legally bound to vote the way they said they would on the ballot. As Yogi Berra said “It ain’t over ‘til it’s over.” And it ain’t over until the Convention calls the role, counts the votes, and all those balloons drop. It IS all over but the shouting, but shouting is what a good convention is all about. That and silly hats.

As the Dem activist ladies chanting “McCain ‘08” in front of the DNC rules committee Saturday made quite clear, it could be a very fractious convention. Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned – unless of course it is 18 million of them. And I'm not sure even Hillary in full compromise mode can control that. This is actually a very good thing for the Dems.

Why? Because so far there really hasn’t been a clear moment of Dem awareness. The penny hasn’t dropped. Until that moment no real transformation can occur. I’ve been looking for it; I’ve been waiting for it, but haven’t seen it yet. But we will see it as the smoke clears. And that will be what we are dealing with as the blog gets back into gear.

In the mean time there were THREE important speeches last night, and TPM Election Centraol has all three. Hillary ,Obama and McCain. Check them out. They are the tea leaves from which the future can be read. You can see them by clicking over.

SUPER DELEGATE AWARENESS

It is taking much longer than I thought it would (and much, much longer than the pundits wish it would) but Awareness is arriving in the Dem Primary storyline. If it were simply a matter of counting votes, it would already be over. But politics is rarely only about numbers. Not every vote in the United States is equal – as Al Gore will be happy to remind you. And that goes double during Dem primaries.

Almost all states award their Electoral College votes in a winner take all fashion. So, for example, do the primary votes of Democrats in Alabama (which probably will go Republican in the general regardless of which “heathen” the Dems put up) count as much as those in California which will probably, (but not necessarily) go Dem?

And what about the votes in Ohio, which is a must win swing state? Hillary trounced Obama there and leads against McCain. Obama trails McCain in Ohio in all the latest polls (but poll numbers don’t mean much this far out anyway). Or do they? They certainly mean more if you know how to read them, which is one of the skills which supposedly makes those Super Delegates so Super. 

Add to that John Dean’s fifty-state strategy which seeks to totally energize the grass roots of the party. Theoretically Dems could lose this election, and still end up winning the war. That is what happened when Johnson trounced Goldwater in ‘64. The passionate idealism that the conservative Senator from Arizona kindled in hearts of his college-age supporters burned so brightly that it made the conservative revolution inevitable. The same might be the case for the Obamamaniacs. Is this the beginning of a new, New Deal coalition? Or would a loss now just be one more Dem crash and burn?

What the Dem storyline needs now is careful study and a bit of inspiration. The emphasis is on inspiration. It is a “Trust the Force” moment. . 

 

THE ANTI HERO

For years I’ve said that the five-element story model doesn’t have an Anti-Hero. I was wrong.

I said this because we define the Hero not as the story’s good-guy, but as the story’s Point of View.  If you tell “Silence of the Lambs” from Hannibal Lechter’s point of view Hannibal isn’t an “anti-hero”,  he is that story‘s Hero plain and simple, no matter how despicable his actions. This is exactly what the series Dexter is doing.

I should have gone a step further in my thinking. Stories are holistic. As well as being the story’s point of view a Hero confronts an obstacle, experiences awareness and undergoes a transformation. What happens if a story’s point of view is so completely oppositional that it actually is more antagonist than hero? In terms of political stories the anti-hero’s point of view would have no defined ideology (ground to stand on). It would simply be against anyone who does. 

A case in point is NYT columnist Maureen Dowd. Though I admit I haven’t been a regular reader for a while, and feel free to refresh my memory, I can’t recall a time she was actually for something. If you have power, or want it, whether you are Bill Clinton, George W. Bush or Hillary she always has something nasty to say about you. And that is pretty much as far as her thinking seems to go.  Like many guilty pleasures, it is all empty calories.

Ms.Dowd is an example of an Anti-Hero. And while a Hero provides a point of view that brings people together and eventually leads them to awareness, an Anti-Hero does just the opposite. There is no awareness, no transformation. The target of Ms. Dowd’s vitriol may chance, but her tone remains remarkable consistent.

With Dem unity now in a delicate state (and McCain leading Obama in Ohio polls) Obamaistas should be very careful about drinking too deeply from Ms. Dowd’s poison pen.   

WORKING CLASS HERO

I am painfully aware of how far behind the news curve this post is, but I really can’t let the most important story moment of last week go uncommented on. I’m not referring to Hillary’s predictable 40 point trouncing of Obama in West Virginia (nor the equally predictable media downplaying of its significance), I’m talking about John Edwards’ long delayed endorsement.

John E had originally been expected to endorse Obama immediately after withdrawing from the race. He didn’t. That was smart. By holding back he remained a player, perhaps the key player, in an increasingly “too close to call” struggle. If it came down to a floor fight at the convention – which is still highly likely – he would be holding trump.

So why endorse now, just when conventional wisdom (which has been notoriously wrong this cycle) says the fight is all but over? Isn’t that the worse time to do it?

It wouldbe, if he was seeking personal power – say a spot on the ticket. By moving when he did Edwards proved he isn’t in it just for himself. Media blowhards were beginning to trumpet the line that Hillary’s voters are “poorer and less educated” in the sort of media mantra that has lasting damaging effect. What they should say is “working class”, but at least they didn’t say “white trash” which you could feel many of them thinking very loudly. To keep that wedge from being driven into party unity, to keep working class blacks from being separated from working class whites Edwards stepped forward. He gave away personal power for the common good.

That is what heroes do. They take a stand that brings people together. If you listen to his endorsement speech (which you can at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BzkAjd3xQ7w ) you’ll notice how much time he spends praising Hillary up front. 

John Edwards is a working class hero, and it his endorsement now is a real class act. He would make a great Attorney General. Bobby Kennedy to Obama’s JFK, and like Bobby he should be a intimate advisor during Obama’s upcoming campaign.

RE DEDICATION

As we kick start this blog back to life after a six-week hiatus it seems a good time to answer a question Bob and I are often asked - where does the five-element story model come from?

Well, the story part comes from Bob and I and our experience as corporate communications consultants. But the five-element part - the understanding of how the original Greek elements of fire, earth, water, air and space relate to specific psychological processes – comes from our study of the work of contemporary philosopher Oscar Ichazo. That is why our book “The Elements of Persuasion” is dedicated to him.

Icahzo is probably best known for his development of what are now called the “Enneagrams of Personality.” This work has created a cottage industry in the self-help field known as the “Enneagram Movement”. Ichazo himself rejects this “movement” as pop-psychology and coffee-table mysticism, which includes only the barest tip of the iceberg of his theory of the nature of the human psyche and the Mind as such.

The clearest explanation of Icahzo’s work on the five elements (only a very small part of his overall presentation) is in the Autumn 1992 issue of “The Arican” the journal of the Arica Institute and is available on their website at www.arica.org. Be warned, that article is pretty thick going (Icahzo is a serious philosopher after all). If you aren’t going for your Ph.D, but are interested in studying Ichazo’s theories (and believe us, you really should be) we suggest that you start by reading his book Between Metaphysics and Protoanalysis available on the same site.

Ichazo is a bit of a recluse and is currently closeted working on his magnum opus. As his loyal students Bob and I wish him well. THKR

MEDIA AWARENESS

One sure sign that the primaries are into their Awareness moments is that the quality of the media coverage itself becomes a major issue. The media is, after all, how we become aware of the facts we need to know to vote intelligently. When we begin to become aware of how we become aware, we are becoming really aware.

When a sketch on Saturday Night Live about a fictional debate becomes an issue in the real debate in Ohio that follows it, and then Hillary follows that by going on SNL herself and taking a bow, the issue of media coverage is red hot.

Right on cue Newsweek has come out with a long article answering the question “Is the Media Biased?” You can read it here but I’ll save you the time: Yes, the media is biased. No, there is nothing anyone can do about it, and it doesn’t really matter that much anyway because most reporters aren’t politically biased they are just vacuous airheads concerned with causing trouble, getting ratings and looking good, and isn’t that sort of cute and special?

The problem for the Dems is that there are two flavors of awareness moments, and it is unclear which is fast approaching. One – vastly preferable – is the “Trust the force, Luke” moment when the hero realizes what to do to prevail. (Maybe Obama is right and Dems have to think outside their usual party-line political box). But the other type of awareness is the Wylie Coyote moment when you realize you have just run off the cliff and there is no solid ground under you at all. (Maybe Hillary is right and Obama’s new ideas are nothing but hot air). Paul Krugman deals with this dilemma in his piece in the Times which IS worth a read.

Facts wrapped in emotions are the essence of stories, and no one on the political beat works that alchemy better than the Sultan of Shrill.

THE PHONE IS RINGING

Nothing grabs your awareness more than a ringing telephone. Unless of course it is a ringing telephone late at night when the noise might wake up your sleeping kids.

That’s the hook for a new ad the Clinton Campaign hopes will be a wake up call for the 8% of Texas and Ohia Dems who are still undecided. You can see it here.

This style of political ad, known as “Red Phone ads” after a 1984 ad run by Walter Mondale, are all about the moment awareness that allows the hero to prevail. You never know when that “Use the Force, Luke” moment will come for a Hero – or a President – but you know it will.

Predictably Obama’s camp initially cried foul calling Clinton’s “fear mongering”, but then pivoted smoothly and came out with an ad of its own (see it here) that asks “Wouldn’t you rather have the person taking that call be the one that keeps you out of war rather than the one that got you into one?” Very nicely done.

But it doesn’t really answer the core question. Who is better prepared to be Commander in Chief? Luckily JACK NICHOLSON, on this own dime apparently, has weighed in with one of the really great ads of the year. It is more than worth a watch. It is worth two or three. It is great political filmmaking by a great filmmaker. Click here.

The line I really love? When Jake Gittes says, “What can I tell you Kid, when you’re right, you’re right, and you’re right,” which neatly puts to bed the whole issue of the vote to authorize force then moves on, to stirring martial music, towards a “makes you want to salute” close. If Hillary had done that months ago we could have cut to the chase a lot sooner. Nicholson’s ad is brilliant political story telling. Now watch it again.

AWARENESS

In terms of our five-element story model the Dem primary story is now entering its fourth element - Awareness. It got there step by step.

Both Hillary and Obama have Passionately motivated their base voters – how passionately is clear from the record turnouts. They have each presented a coherent point of view around which their constituency can rally. Hillary’s and Obama’s policies are essentially the same, so things are more about identity politics and style than usual, but given that they are both “historic firsts” their position as Heroes was pretty much of a lock.

As Antagonists they have slugged it out across 20 long – sometimes endless – debates. We have seen Hillary tear up and Obama shake his head fetchingly with that dazzling, “oh shucks” smile he has and most true Dems have opened their hearts to both of them. So much so that the biggest applause line at the Texas debate was for the suggestion that they join together in a “dream ticket.”

Yeah right, dream on. Emotions come from struggle and to see the real, raw emotional price politics extracts it is hard to beat this clip of Rep. John Lewis talking about how much harder it was to shift his support from Hillary to Obama than to face the racist beating he took leading the Selma march in the 60s. It should be required watching in any Civics class. Check it out here.

But you can only stay emotional for so long. The rush of adrenalin passes and if you are lucky it is followed by a strange and watchful calm. That is where things stand right now for Dems. Hovered on the edge of a dawning awareness. Awareness is a mental process but as viral marketing campaigns prove it is not necessarily a rational one. Watch closely, we are now entering the time of the tricksters