This week’s election drama marked the conclusion to an improvisational flurry over Same-Sex Marriage and the beginning of so many master plans, from the framing of a He-Doesn't-Get-It-Candidate, to a sinister Super Pac plot, to an Oval Office brownbag.  Like our post in February, here are the plays that were run…and their counters.

DOG OFF THE LEASH.  Just when you thought VP Joe Biden had been locked into the White House basement, there he was on the campaign trail, barking mad, but on-message, and all over Mitt Romney.  Beseeching gritty voters in Youngstown, OH, Biden played the populist card.  Talking about wealth and, by inference, Republicans and everyone’s favorite one-percenter, Romney, he simmered and slammed:  “They don’t get us.  They don’t get who we are.  They just don’t get it.”

• What’s the principle play?  A Label, i.e., Slap on a Soundbite.  Def., The application of a memorable word or phrase, self-given or attributed to another.

• What’s the counter-play?  If it's a Label you want removed, (1) run a self-flattering counter-Label to reduce the effects of the original Label, (2) take the high road by running a Deflect, but factor in the consequence of appearing disengaged or effete, (3) run a Bear Hug.  Agree with your opponent's Label.  It might fit your brand, i.e. you're brave, unflinching, undeterred.  Or (4), run a Disco.  Apologize and laugh at yourself.  Sometimes that's the best way to salve the sting.
  

LOW BLOWS COMING.  In what amounts to a tip-off to the left, The New York Times reported on a $10 million Super Pac plan that will hit hard and aim low at the Obama-Biden ticket and, in the words of its architects, “do exactly what John McCain would not let us do [in 2008].”  Backed by TD Ameritrade founder Joe Ricketts, the plan’s central strategy is to exhume the signature fury of President Obama’s former pastor, Jeremiah Wright, and reanimate Wright's God-Damn-America preaching as an Obama-endorsed “black liberation theology.”

• What’s the principle play:  A Screen, i.e., Play with a Prop.  Def., The borrowing of issues, ideas, events or symbols to project or protect a position or platform.

• What’s the counter-play:  Ricketts’ playmakers are reportedly ahead of the game, anticipating that Team Axelrod will counter with the race card.  According to Playmaker Standard Guidance, there are these possibilities to consider:  (1) Run Screens of your own to build reference points for you...and speed bumps for your opponent.  (2) Run a Challenge to exhort other players to disavow the rival's Screen. (3) Run a Mirror.  Expose your rival for exploiting sacred ideas or revered people.  (4) Run a Call Out.  Find a flaw in your opponent's understanding of the Screen they just referenced.  Take them to task for going too far.  (5) If the Screen is also good for you, co-opt it.  Run a Crowd.
  

SPEAKER OF THE SANDWICH.  Meanwhile, back in Washington, the Reds and Blues are locking in to the scrum of another debt-ceiling face-off.  To keep it nice but to get the ball first, Obama invited Congressional leadership over for sandwiches, a Preempt in his own signature style.

• What's the principle play?  Per White House Press Sec. Jay Carney, Obama played Challenges (to exhort his colleagues to compromise) and Fiats (to tell them his presidential preferences).

• What's the counter-play?  Speaker of the House John Boehner was said to retort, “As long as I’m around here, I’m not going to allow a debt ceiling increase without doing something serious about the debt.”  It was his own Fiat to keep his host in check and the Speaker’s options open. A starting series that, predictably, went nowhere.

Posted by Alan Kelly

Photo credit:  www.cantaur.blogspot

Click here to listen to "Plays for the Presidency" on SiriusXM, POTUS Channel 124, Fridays at 8:35 a.m.

What do computers and politics have in common?  At their core, they’re boring.

Assembly language, compiler code, applications generators – technologies that tortured my Silicon Valley career – are riveting only to nerds.  Likewise, the arcana or politics -- clotures, filibusters and gerrymandering – are largely of interest only to wonks.

The lesson for tech and politics alike, is that if you want your story to carry, you have to make it entertaining, literally.  Because details are boring to voters.  They’re also boring to pundits and reporters for the most part who must cater to attention-challenged consumers.

So politics, like software, is going the way of the Peacock, and who knows this better than Barack Obama and his shameless posse of playmakers.  To wit:  Obama’s 16-minute speech at last week’s White House Correspondent’s Dinner, where the President ran plays that in more serious settings he could never touch.  Consider these choice quotes:

• My mom is from Kansas.  My father’s from Kenya.  And I was born of course in Hawaii (he winks).
• Jimmy (Kimmel) got his start on 'The Man Show.'  In Washington, this is what we call a Congressional hearing on contraception.
• I have one (degree from Harvard).  [Mitt Romney] has two.  ...What a snob.
• [Romney's] campaign criticized me for slow-jamming the news with Jimmy Fallon.  Gov. Romney was so incensed he asked his staff if he could get some equal time on the Merv Griffin show.
• [Mitt] took a few hours off to watch the Hunger Games…a great change of pace for him.  I’ve not seen it.  There’s not enough class warfare in it for me.
• To my conspiracist friends who suspect a secret agenda…you’re absolutely right.  ...I will win the war on Christmas.  ....And we will replace [Don’t-Ask-Don’t-Tell] with It’s-Raining-Men. 

It’s funny enough, but it’s all on-strategy, including this closing pearl:  I have to get the Secret Service home in time for their new curfew.

Playing to the Hollywood liberati of Lindsay Lohan (sic) and Kim Kardashian (sic) and, oh yeah, A-list journalists and politicos, Mr. Obama cauterized political wounds and flipped them to his advantage.  Here are the chosen stratagems:

• On Jimmy Kimmel’s Man Show:  A Ping to keep alive the embarrassing spectacle of an all-male panel testifying on birth control.
• On Hawaii:  A dissing Call Out on birthers and a Ping to say, in effect, you’re jackasses, just like Kanye.
• On Harvard:  A Screen on Santorum’s over-the-top snob gaffe to enliven silly images of POTUS pretenders.
• On the Slow Jam:  A Preempt + Screen combo that morphed the possibly tawdry Barack & Jimmy act into an ossified Mitt & Merv number...and reinforced Obama's primacy in the student loan issue.
• On Hunger Games:  Another Preempt + Screen that used the box office hit to breathe life into the class warfare narrative.
• On Conspiracy:  A Crazy Ivan + Recast run directly at conspiracy theorists who, instead of worrying about Muslim Presidents and gay soldiers, were portrayed as worried about Christmas killers too.
• On Curfew:  A final Preempt + Ping to suggest that Obama knows what’s going on in Secret Service hotel rooms and that, well maybe, he’s on top of that too.

Is this tragic or tragic comedy?  You be the judge.  Suffice it so say, it is today Jon Stewart’s brand of news that trumps Ben Bradlee’s.  And it is self-exploited movie stars who make sexy the things that, like computers, are otherwise boring.

Photo credit:  Radar Online.com

Posted by Alan Kelly

Click here to listen to "Plays for the Presidency" on SiriusXM, POTUS Channel 124, Fridays at 8:35 a.m.

Thinking about political gridlock the other day with GOP advertising ace Mike Hudome, it occurred to my politico friend, “It’s like those cartoons with the sheepdog and the coyote.  You know?  That’s what it’s supposed to be like…just business.”

I was raised on Bugs Bunny, Wile E. Coyote and the rest, so I knew immediately the series he was recalling:  Morning coffee with Sam and Ralph.  Friends, colleagues and rivals.  They punch the clock.  The whistle blows.  The work day begins and, bam, the game to guard and steal sheep is on.  Attempts are made, and foiled.  The whistle blows.  Traps and bombs are switched off.  Another day at the office…and so it goes.  An oddly rational cycle of comity and blood sport, per Warner Bros.

This does not describe today's Washington, the capital of influence and strategy, where the game is to win by elimination, around the clock.  We share no coffee or morning paper.  Quitting time is never a time to quit our plots and plotting.  Perhaps, because we lack the friendships and work ethic of Sam and Ralph, we have a process that can't progress.

Are there strategies we came blame for the gridlock?  Or does the problem have more to do with the players and their penchant for running plays?

One answer comes from my GW pupil, David Haddock, who earlier this semester used The Standard Table to solve the gridlock riddle.  It’s a Jam, one of five freezing stratagems that, by its definition, gums up the works.  Jams are used to disable or disorganize another player’s activities or communications.  Think occupiers.  Think radio jamming.  Think legal injunctions.  Jams, the strategy student observed, are like simply saying ‘No.’  To wit:

• On a proposal by House Speaker John Boehner to extend the Bush tax cuts, what does House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi say?  No.

• On President Obama’s strategy to send food to North Korea, what does challenger Mitt Romney say?  No.

• On a budget to solve the federal deficit, what does Rep. Maxine Waters say to Rep. Paul Ryan?  No.

There is no alternative offered.  No compromise.  Only objection and refusal.  Words like ‘no’ don’t advance a process.  They lock it up.

There are other freezing plays that might do the job.  Mirrors force a player to consider inconvenient truths.  Bear Hugs allow a follower to co-opt another player’s platform.  Lanterns quell speculation and rumor.  So do Discos.  But the Jam takes the hard line -- a favorite among today's celebrated compromise-killers.

How do you slow or stop a Jam?  Standard Guidance holds some clues:

• Lure your rival with a Challenge.  Make it in their best interest to stop.  Let's stopping refusing.  Let's find something to agree on.

• Run a Peacock.  Call attention to the Jammer’s Jam with a made-for-media stunt.  I am going to cross my arms and hold my breath til I pass out...right here on the steps of the Capitol.

• Run a Red Herring.  Feign that the Jam has done more damage than it actually has.  By refusing to budge, Rep. Waters has disemblowed the political process and her constituents' needs.  Go ask them...

• If they're an inferior competitor, Pause. It may be better to let little jammers have their day.

• Set a trap.  Bait your rival into a false debate to catch them in an act of sabotage.  Can you say anything but 'no'? If I claim on the house floor that your mother is a saint, will your response be 'no'?

In a two-party system, we are ultimately all sheepdogs and coyotes.  But the play action of today's politics has expanded from 9-to-5 to 24 x 7 and narrowed to one influence strategy, among 23 other options.  And it's gumming up the works.

Graphic credit:  Warner Bros.

Posted by Alan Kelly