The New Yorker's James Surowiecki explains in more detail something I've touched on before: Obama is in a battle with human nature as much as he is with political opposition. To continue the card-playing analogies, he's running up against our deep-rooted instincts to stick rather than twist. Surowiecki suggests an alternative communication strategy:
Changing the system so that individuals can get affordable health care, while banning bad behavior on the part of insurance companies, will actually make it more likely, not less, that people will get to preserve their current level of coverage. The message, in other words, should be: if we want to protect the status quo, we need to reform it.
And maybe Obama's 2012 slogan can be Stop Change!
Czech writer Jaroslav Hasek (author of "The Good Soldier Schweik") once wrote a short story about a political party called "The Party in Favour of Revolutionary Progress (Within the Limits of the Law)".
Posted by: peter | August 24, 2009 at 12:20 PM