Larry D. Lauer

With or without impeachment, activating the growing number of Americans disgusted with today’s Washington will require a pragmatic strategic communication plan… one that leads with bold themes and slogans.

Many analysts think that in 2016 Mr. Trump simply stumbled into a new media environment created by a game-changing digital technology revolution. Surprisingly, he discovered that the more outrageous his remarks the more headlines news organizations would just hand him. And it also allowed him to make outrageous promises to people who felt angry and ignored.

Today “populism” and “nationalism” are gaining influence around the world in much the same way. Populism favors ordinary people over power elites, and nationalism favors citizens over foreigners. So extremists propose to redistribute wealth and limit immigration…. and they also use outrageous language to produce daily headlines, and eventually gain support from citizens who feel ignored.

So how can this apply to winning back a mostly invisible American majority?

First, replace the misunderstood “democratic socialism” term with “democratic capitalism,” and repeat it incessantly. Second, propose easy to describe pragmatic solutions to real world problems, including immigration. Third, invite input from everyone… and use digital media to collect it. Fourth, referencing this input, formulate, a bold vision for a whole new values-based America, drowning out social media noise with bold slogans and themes that command big headlines every day.

I believe a strong strategic communication plan with bold themes and slogans can win in 2020. Otherwise, both political parties will soon destroy each other and put an autocrat in charge for a very long time.

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Dissent in America:

1. Dissent in America is patriotic when it springs from a true love of country and expresses a sincere desire to make it better. In fact, this kind of dissent was basic to America’s founding.
2. But dissent becomes dangerous and often un-American when it is cruel, produces social division, disregards its potential to incite violence, and appeals to deep feelings of hate.

Intent is what separated the president’s approach to rallying his base from the four dissenting freshmen legislators. One approach was hateful and divisive, and the other was distinctly American. One reflected a country that was made for immigrants, and the other chose to ignore it.

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My previous blog post pointed out that news media are really businesses. I follow-up here by suggesting that the entire topic should be dealt with in newspapers and on television as important public interest news.

Stories about big changes in major media organizations, the inside workings of biased news organizations, profiles of extreme talk show hosts and writers, sources of domestic fake-news, social media as weapons, foreign government generated fake-news, and much more, are all sources of potential audience-grabbing news stories.

Some news organizations already have media reporters. Brian Stelter at CNN is one of the few with high visibility. His program on Sunday mornings reports inside news about organizations, people and places, and also deals with the hot issues of the week.

Beyond reporting news media news stories, it is also in their self-interest for news organizations to invest heavily in media education. For them, promoting media literacy should simply be seen as essential immediate and long-term audience development.

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As the democratic candidates for president get in line, it is refreshing to see diversity in race, gender, and religion. It is also refreshing to see intelligent young people getting interested in politics. They really do seem to represent the diversity of America.

Most have done their homework, have impressive backgrounds, are good speakers, and have a lot of stored up enthusiasm and energy to display in the many months ahead. And if you listen to their words, and are moved by their upbeat tone, you will likely conclude that any one of them will make a great leader of something.

But recent television and social media revolutions, combined with hard lessons from the 2016 election, have already changed the requirements for winning in 2020. Looking strong on television, in social media, and in person is now basic. And simply being photogenic does not help. In fact, “too pretty” today can actually be counterproductive. What works best in a “hard-hitter” world are leaders who can look both really strong and sincerely empathetic at the same time.

Here is what all this will mean in 2020:

(1)  A physical presence and “look” of strength will be necessary to match Mr. Trump’s towering, loud-mouth, arrogance. This strength need not come from height, weight, or gender. Rather it can come from posture, facial expression, attitude, tone, rock solid self-confidence, and overall body language.

(2)  An unwavering strength of character must also be obvious from past and current behaviors in order to counter Trump’s lies, exaggerations, cruelty, bully tactics, lack of ethics, autocratic behaviors, and name calling.

Therefore, a picture image of both personal strength and empathy is the bottom-line prerequisite for winning in 2020. This will matter more than gender, age, race, or even rally generated excitement. And a deep understanding of issues, a clear vision for the future, and fully explained commitments, must underlie everything.

Before you support any candidate you should ask these questions: Overall, is this person strong enough to win? Can he or she handle any crisis, in any place, at any time, with clear strategic thinking? And when in the oval office, will I once again be very proud of my United States of America?

Make no mistake, it will take a rare blend of unflappable personal strength and second-nature empathy to pull all this off. And just liking a candidate will not be enough. If this current crop of candidates remains an indicator, by 2020 you will probably still like most of them.

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Much of my work in the past was helping institutions become better understood. My first task was to clarify each institution’s founding purpose, to show how that differentiated it from others, and to explore how that difference might be its competitive advantage. Simply put, “who are you,” was my first focus group question?

The “who are you” question led me to founding purpose-inspired answers such as “we are all about service to the community,” or, “we develop the talent of each and every student,” or, “we will immerse you in American history,” and the answer almost always also included a set of values. In other words, how they went about their work was as important as what they did. I found that this was also true about the founding purpose of the United States of America.

I have been referencing the Constitution when writing about long-held American values. But the Declaration of Independence is clearly the best “founding purpose” document. And it declares our nation’s independence in the context of unifying values such as human rights, the rule of law, and the complete rejection of monarchical rule.

Additionally, the Constitution promises freedom of speech, religion, and the press. But when angry and polarizing speech results in tribalism and chaos, the Declaration of Independence is there to remind us about our unifying values. Never totally selfish. Never an autocracy.

Both the letter and the spirit of the Declaration of Independence assume the election of leaders with high ideals and strong character. And since we now live in a time of background checks for important positions, should we not be able to expect political parties and precinct chairs to require some level of character qualification before putting candidates on the ballot?

And should we not be able to expect political parties and political action committees (PAC’s) to have professional codes of conduct to guide the work of their communicators… i.e. political statements will be factual, promises will be doable, and personal attacks will not be tolerated?

Yes, I know. You think I am hallucinating! But if citizens and journalists scream long and loud enough about integrity in politics, maybe mobilized public pressure can eventually do some good.

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