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We are quickly approaching the Year of the Dragon, an auspicious year in Asian culture. But what about here and in other places around the world?

The World Economic Forum recently released Global Risks 2012 report, which identifies the issues 469 experts and industry leaders believe will have the greatest impact on society.

At the time the data for the report was compiled, survey respondents believed that world-economic conditions are having a greater impact on society than any other factor. Over the next 10 years, they ranked water supply as the second significant risk.

If we take a step back, these issues and others mentioned in WEF’s report are grounded in political risk. That should be top-of-mind for everyone. Indeed, whether the issue is income disparity, chronic fiscal imbalances, or cyber threats the issue is rooted in political factors. The report does list global governance failure as a Center of Gravity. But far less attention is paid to that macro issue than risks that would be the result of political decisions.

There was a lot of political turmoil in 2011 but the outcome will start to emerge this year. Indeed, the changes in governments in the Middle East will have a profound impact on the cost of energy over the course of the next 11 months. In addition, there are a myriad of policies in the U.S., Europe, Latin America and China that will go into effect this year and will significantly affect the financial sector. And, perhaps just as important, is the lack of progress that won’t be realized in 2012 because of a lack of political decisions on a whole slew of issues, such as land use, that are in dire need of addressing.

It is important to focus on vital issues that ladder up to the macro risks but it will be critically important to keep an eye on the big picture in 2012.

Cecilia Muñoz is a name that, until a few days ago, didn’t mean much to many who hadn’t followed her involvement in immigration issues or her work as senior vice president at the National Council of La Raza. To those, that name might have sounded as common as any María Rodríguez or Isabel Meléndez. However, on January 10th, 2012, Cecilia Muñoz became a name that can be considered a tangible representation of hope and success for many Latinos and Latinas like me who have worked hard each and every day to be someone and to be acknowledged in the United States. It is with great honor and pride that we welcome her as President Obama’s new Director of the Domestic Policy Council, as announced by the White House.

As President Obama said in a statement, Ms. Muñoz “has done an extraordinary job working on behalf of middle-class families, and I’m confident she’ll bring the same unwavering dedication to her new position.” I am with you on this, Mr. President.

Ms. Muñoz’s appointment signifies a level of respect that many strive for. She represents, not just a growing segment of the population of the United States, but also one of the fibers that makes this country strong. Latino participation, presence and contribution to the US is undeniable, and Ms. Muñoz is only a reflection of what we are here for: to be part of the American community as a whole, to work for the better of this country, to be acknowledged for our worth and our dedication, and to be seen as active contributors to the well-being of this grand nation.

This appointment is a three-way success because it is, again, a woman who will be occupying this position, as Ms. Melody Barnes steps down. It is not only a woman but it is also a Latina who will be taking this role and not just any Latina woman, but one who has demonstrated dedication and generosity in her efforts for fair immigration reform. Thirdly, but not less important, Ms. Muñoz has been selected to not only serve her Hispanic community, but to work for the American people, for each and every American without distinction. That is how honorable her appointment is.

This Latina has shown that sí, se puede, and she is living proof that we, Hispanics, can excel beyond the ethnic lines, can feel confident that we are part of this society and have a lot to bring to the table for every single citizen of this country.

When President Obama gives his annual State of the Union Address tonight, an estimated 50 million viewers will watch.  Some newscasters are hyping the speech as critical to his presidency. But despite the buildup, the question remains: will it matter?  For many Americans, it’s the least memorable of presidential speeches. That’s because it’s often far too long, interrupted by grandstanding applause, and is too often a laundry list of goals that every federal agency and outside interest group wants the President to include. The Washington Post had a good story on this on Sunday, “Interest groups vie for a moment of Obama’s time in State of the Union address.”

When I worked at the Peace Corps in the late 1990s, we worked for months to get President Clinton to mention our goal of  having 10,000 volunteers by 2000. We were thrilled to hear him mention that goal in his 1997 State of the Union Address — never mind that it was one-half of one sentence.  But in the end, funding fell far short, and the Peace Corps is still not close to having 10,000 volunteers.

Still, I think the State of the Union does matter. It is an opportunity for a President to break through media clutter.  Because of the intense press coverage this week, it will be difficult for the average citizen to avoid seeing or hearing about at least a part of it. It’s a real chance for President Obama to tell the American people - “this is what I believe in and this is where I think the nation needs to go.”

At a briefing I attended at the White House yesterday morning for Democratic strategists, David Axelrod and other advisers made it clear to that the theme of the President’s speech will be about “winning the future.”  The President will lay out a plan to win the future by “out-innovating, out-educating and out-building the rest of the world.”  Axelrod said Obama will talk about the need to take responsibility for our deficits, by investing only in what makes America stronger and cutting what doesn’t, and reforming our government so that it’s leaner and smarter for the 21st century.  

According to his aides, the speech will not contain a laundry list of policies or specific proposals, but will rather be a discussion of goals for the United States to win the future. It will be optimistic, and the President will touch on the mood post-Tucson tragedy but will not dwell on it.

Partly because of the tragedy in Tucson, this year, for the first time in memory, many members of Congress are inviting each other to sit together as friends, not divided by party. The conservative RedState.com blog post on it yesterday had a good headline - “congressionalmatch.com.”  I’m not sure this bipartisan matchup really matters, but if this small symbolism shows resolve to work together for the common good, I’m all for it.

The President is on a bit of a roll lately, with several recent polls showing his overall approval rating increasing and more importantly, his standing with independents jumping by double digits. Analysts point to a number of explanations for this, including his reassuring response to the Tucson shooting, his willingness to cut deals with the congressional GOP in the lame duck session last month, and the presence of a new political foil, in the form of emboldened conservative Republicans.

But polls are fleeting and the President knows that his State of the Union Address will either add to his momentum or reverse it and start it going the other way. I know which side my money is on.  What do you think?

Branding and politics in America have been inextricably linked since the founding of the Republic – long before “branding” was even a well-defined concept or discipline.  “Tippecanoe and Tyler Too” evoked in a single poetic phrase and song the powerful image of military hero William Henry Harrison and the well-known John Tyler on a single ticket, carrying them to victory in the 1840 presidential election.

Albert Lasker a well-known and successful advertising man, played a pivotal role (albeit well-hidden) in packaging and selling the candidacy of Warren Harding in 1920, resulting in the election of arguably America’s least qualified and least successful president. 

In 1969 Joe McGinnis published the “Selling of the President” describing in detail how Richard Nixon was “marketed” and “sold” to the American people by a cynical group of advertising people much like a bar of soap.  The book caused a minor sensation reinforcing doubts many had about Nixon’s trustworthiness.

Perhaps the best use of branding principles and tools was the 2008 campaign of Barack Obama.  Using a thoroughly 21^st Century approach to branding, his campaign captured the themes of Hope and Change in a way that resonated with millions of new voters and traditionally independent-minded Americans and propelled him to a very unlikely victory.

When it came to governing, however, the Obama team has apparently jettisoned the branding approach – either by design or by terrible mistake.  Rather than wrapping the significant achievements of the first 18 months of his Administration in the themes of renewal and change, he has settled for a communications strategy that lurches from issue to issue, with no discernable thread tying it all together.

In the absence of the appearance of a coherent strategy, opponents on the right and the left have filled the vacuum with their own interpretations – he’s a socialist; he’s a corporate sellout, etc…

Had the Administration wrapped their major initiatives – stimulus, health care reform, financial reform, energy legislation – in the language of brands, it would have blunted the impact of the relentless attacks and delivered on the brand promise of his campaign.

Instead, many of the attacks have stuck; the significance of the achievements has been misunderstood and diminished and the Democrats’ majority in Congress looks increasingly in jeopardy.

Capitalizing on the Administration’s failure to brand its approach to governing has been a rag tag bunch of malcontents, cranks and fringe players who would have been largely dismissed by the media and pundits of all stripes had they not discovered their own powerful brand positioning as the “Tea Party.” 

Had they decided to reclaim the brand of a similar “movement” in the 1850s – the Know Nothings – or a more recent incarnation as the John Birch Society they likely would have been written off as fringe players so far outside the mainstream as to deserve contempt but not coverage.

However, by evoking the image of the Founding Fathers, Sam Adams and the American Revolution and wrapping themselves in the Constitution, they captured the attention of the media who have bestowed a level of credibility on what is likely a moment, not a movement.

But like all good brands, the Tea Party struck a chord and filled a need with a portion of the population – anger, frustration, anti-Washington and anti-establishment.  The question now is will it have staying power – to the election and beyond. 

As all marketing practitioners know, the worst thing you can do for a lousy product is great branding.  Great branding will lead consumers to try your product and if it disappoints they will be driven away and very hard to lure back.

Come January, those voters full of anger and captured by the allure of the Tea Party brand may find themselves terribly disappointed by the actual brand experience. That disappointment would likely land the Tea Party brand in the dustbin of history beside the Know Nothings and the John Birch Society.

I love NPR. I listen to it every day. I give money to my local NPR station every year. I say this to make clear that I want to see NPR succeed, rather than use the Juan Williams firing fiasco as a bludgeon to bash them with.

Now, with that behind us:

NPR President and CEO Vivian Schiller, who defended the firing of Williams with reasons that are clearly untrue, should be forced to resign immediately (probably along with other top executives, though I don’t have all the facts). This public relations disaster wasn’t caused by careless line employees or contractors. NPR’s leadership is wholly responsible for a fiasco that threatens the core of the NPR brand, and they need to go.

For an organization to survive a brand-threatening crisis, it must quickly own up to the problem, make it clear that the action is contrary to its values, and take immediate remedial action. That immediate action often includes terminating the employees whose bad judgment caused the crisis.

Schiller and the others responsible for this disaster can no longer credibly hold their positions. As long as they remain, they will continue to define NPR, and will leave NPR’s enemies a powerful weapon with which to attack it. The only way NPR can fix this fiasco is to clean house at the top. If they don’t do so quickly, NPR’s reputation may never recover.

Schiller yesterday told NPR’s David Folkenflik that “our reporters, our hosts and our news analysts should not be injecting their own views about a controversial issue as part of their story.”

NPR news analysts aren’t allowed to express opinions? Why didn’t NPR fire Senior News Analyst Daniel Schorr, may he rest in peace? Are they going to terminate Nina Totenberg – who is a correspondent, not even a news analyst – now too?

Schiller compounded the mistake by telling a roomful of journalists that Williams should have kept his feeling about Muslims between himself and a “his psychiatrist or his publicist”

The decision wasn’t just wrong, it was clearly made with little awareness of what the reaction would be. Clearly this was a case of the straw that broke the camel’s back. But if NPR had an ongoing problem with Juan Williams, it should have let his contract quietly expire. What were they thinking?

Our colleagues at Parker & Partner, Ogilvy PR’s Australian Public Affairs affiliate, sent out this piece to clients after the weekend’s deadlocked election.    Enjoy.

The age of uncertainty

Uncertainty. It’s not something we’re accustomed to in the outcome of Federal elections but given where the numbers last night we will have quite a few days and maybe weeks of it. What the campaign lacked in policy differences was made up for in drama. And so the drama continues.

As the polls predicted Australia was amazingly divided. Queensland saw a significant anti-Labor sentiment translate into a 9.4 per cent swing away from the Government (split between the LNP and Greens) and the loss of up to nine seats. New South Wales wasn’t far behind with a 7 per cent swing, while Victoria and Tasmania said “no thanks” to Tony Abbott, with gains to the Government of 2 per cent and 1.2 per cent respectively. South Australia saw swings away from both Labor and the Coalition to the Greens who gained 3.2 per cent, while the West continued to be a stronghold for the Coalition with a state-wide 3.2 per cent gain.

Officially the ALP and Coalition sit on 71 seats each with four seats in doubt. We will definitely have three independents (Rob Oakeshott in Lyne, Tony Windsor in New England, and Bob Katter in Kennedy) and one green (Adam Bandt in Melbourne). The three independents have quickly come to a consensus to negotiate as a bloc –  so at this stage can be counted as three “country independent” seats to go to whichever party can give them the best outcome.

The best that either side can do is 75 seats –  just short of the magic number of 76. But it looks likely both sides will end up in a stalemate on 73 seats each, or a split of 73-72 if Denison falls to the Independent Andre Wilkie (see below).

Both sides are formulating what they are prepared to put on the table for negotiations and will soon put them forward for consideration. For the next week or so — and maybe longer – the centre of Australian political power shifts from Canberra to Mt Isa, Tamworth and Port Macquarie.

Four or five seats remain in doubt today, and it is the outcomes of these competitions that will decide who forms the next Government. The Australian Electoral Commission says both major parties have 71 seats each. While neither Labor nor the Coalition can get to the magic 76 seats to govern in their own right, if one party ends up with more seats than the other they will be given the opportunity, and will have a greater chance, of forming the next Government.

(The AEC is counting Dennison in Tasmania on the Labor side of the ledger. There is an outside chance, if preferences fall the right way and in the right order, that Dennison will go to independent Andrew Wilkie, former Office of National Assessments whistle-blower and the man who stood for the Greens against John Howard in Bennelong in 2004.)

The four remaining seats in doubt are Brisbane (Queensland), Lindsay (NSW), Corangamite (Victoria) and Hasluck (Western Australia). In all but Brisbane the ALP is ahead by narrow margins. In ordinary circumstances postal votes and pre-polls would be expected to favour the incumbent MP (Labor in all of these cases), but as OTR has previously noted, this election is anything other than ordinary.

It is inevitable there will be mutterings of a “constitutional crisis: as a result – or rather lack of result – from yesterday’s poll. While it is 70 years since Australia had a minority federal government, there have been at least ten examples of minority administrations in Australian states and territories over the last two decades.

There are no formal rules associated with forming minority government following a hung election other than an expectation that the party and leader best able to form a stable majority in the Lower House should be appointed. Experience in Australia through the last 21 years shows that in several instances minority governments have been formed on the basis of agreements with the major party holding the most seats in the Lower House, but this has not occurred not in every case.

Notwithstanding the lack of procedural law and explicit conventions, minority governments are generally based on a formal accord, charter or parliamentary agreement, setting out:

(Griffiths ,G. Parliament of NSW Discussion paper 2010).

So the key term is “conditional”, and the ability of the ALP or Coalition to obtain agreement from independents and Greens to secure support to ensure the fundamentals of stable government — parliamentary confidence in the Prime Minister and government and passage of monetary supply.

The principle of responsible government dictates that within caretaker arrangements, the Governor-General will continue to receive advice from the incumbent Prime Minister. This includes Julia Gillard’s advice on her Party’s ability to form and sustain a stable government.

It is the G-G’s reserve powers, however, that may well play the deciding card in the wash up from yesterday’s election.

The reserve powers of the Governor-General include:

The power to appoint a Prime Minister if an election results in a hung Parliament

The power to dismiss a Prime Minister in circumstances where the House of Representatives has passed a “no confidence” motion against the PM

The power to refuse to dissolve the House of Representatives contrary to ministerial advice. The refusal by a Governor-General to dissolve House on ministerial advice has been the most frequently used of the reserved powers in Australia.

In addition, as the annals of Australian political history well document, these also include the power to dismiss a Prime Minister in circumstances where the Government cannot obtain supply and the Prime Minister refuses to resign or to call an election. The decision by the independent and Greens MPs in determining the level of stability has more riding on it than many may initially appreciate. Undoubtedly their interests are best served by ensuring the longest possible term until the next election. One can be certain that Quentin Bryce AC (a Queenslander appointed by Prime Minister Rudd) will be swotting up on Constitutional Law over the next few days.

There are currently four MPs who look set to hold the balance of power in the House of Representatives (with the possibility of a fifth from Tasmania joining them on the cross benches).

Although their previous associations with the Nationals may signal a natural sympathy with the conservative side of politics, it must be remembered that Katter, Windsor and Oakeshott are consciously not Nationals MPs, having left in circumstances which have given rise to difficult relationships between them and their former Party. There is no love lost between Katter and Windsor and Nationals leaders Warren Truss and Barnaby Joyce.

Bob Katter has held the seat of Kennedy in outback northern Queensland since 1993. Originally elected as a National Party MP, he resigned and become an Independent in 2001 due to an increasing disagreement with the Coalition on economic and social policies. He is a former member of the Queensland Parliament and calls himself a climate change sceptic.

Former farmer Tony Windsor has held the seat of New England in New South Wales since 2001, when he took the seat away from the Nationals. He is experienced in holding the balance of power after doing so at a State level in the NSW Lower House in the mid-90s.

Rob Oakeshott is the newest member of the trio, elected to the seat of Lyne in NSW in a 2008 by-election following the resignation of former National’s Leader Mark Vaile. Like the others, Oakeshott is also a former State MP, as the Nationals and then independent member for the NSW state seat of Port Macquarie.

Adam Bandt is a former industrial lawyer with Julia Gillard’s old law firm Slater and Gordon. He has taken two campaigns to win Melbourne from Labor, allowing him to create a strong profile locally and nationally.

Sitting in an unprecedented position of power, cross-bench members will want to negotiate a stable power-sharing deal that will allow their position to endure for a three-year parliamentary term, rather than merely shoring up the government before a quick return to the polls. In addition to Katter, Windsor, Oakeshott and Bandt, the Nationals’ Tony Crook, who took the West Australian wheat-belt seat of O’Connor from the Liberals’ Wilson Tuckey, is signalling he will sit on the cross-benches.

Several issues will be pivotal for the three “country independent” members in negotiating with the two major parties. Katter, Windsor and Oakeshott, all of whom are experienced parliamentarians, will agree on a common set of principles for negotiating with the major parties, a pact they made prior to the election. The three have broadly similar interests in negotiating a better deal for their regional and rural constituencies, including better health care, ensuring a sustainable population, and upgraded broadband services, bringing the broadband policy debate strongly into play.

Katter advocates for an eclectic mix of changes, including the reintroduction of trade protection to benefit the banana, beef and dairy industries, breaking the major supermarket duopoly and cutting down on a range of taxes he sees as imposing on individual liberties. Although he has already indicated he would support an ALP government, Adam Bandtâ€s support has the potential to be recognised through key policy undertakings. Together with his Greens colleagues he is expected to fight for outcomes on climate change policy, dental care to be included on Medicare, same-sex marriage and more generous treatment of asylum seekers.

Although Tony Crook is yet to outline his position in detail, the fact he is a Western Australian Nationals MP suggests he is likely to be well versed in the “Royalties for Regions”-style regional funding deal that his State leader Brendan Grylls negotiated with West Australian Premier Colin Barnett.

An intense and complex few days of negotiation await us.

Even at this early stage of counting there are two certainties from last night’s half Senate election results.

First, the current Senate composition and voting dynamics remain in play until July 2011 with Liberal Senator Gary Humphries retaining his ACT Senate seat. In the case of a returned Gillard Government and assuming Party unity, there are two options for legislative passage through the Senate; either with the support of the Coalition or with the block vote of the Greens plus Steve Fielding and Nick Xenophon. A minority Coalition Government would be presented with four options to secure its legislation through the Senate as the Greens, Fielding, Xenophon or the ALP, could all individually provide enough support to secure an absolute Seante majority.

Second, is that the Australian Greens will hold the balance of power in its own right post-July 2011. It is anticipated the Greens will extend its Senate representation from five to possibly nine seats. At this early stage of the count it appears the Greens’ gains have come at the expense of the Coalition, which has lost two to five Senate seats. Family First Senator Steve Fielding has also lost his Victorian seat, but could possibly be replaced by a Democratic Labor Party candidate.

- Annabel Crabb on Twitter

- Opposition Leader Tony Abbott

- Prime Minister Julia Gillard

Given the various Ogilvy Exchanges in recent months regarding the U.S. government’s use of social media in regard to promoting our nation’s foreign policy goals, the following Snapshot article from Foreign Affairs is a good read on what the U.S. government has done right, and where it has gone wrong, in the use of technology to promote development.

It took all of about 45 seconds for the finger pointing to start.  Since Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) announced last week that the Senate would not take up a comprehensive climate change bill this year, the accusations have been flying fast, furious and often over the top (see Paul Krugman’s diatribe in the New York Times this morning).

For a quick read on the post-game analysis, Politico has a good article that outlines five different reasons why the bill failed:

1. The environmental movement was ineffective (the administration’s point of view).

2. The Obama administration didn’t give the issue enough attention or show enough leadership (the environmentalists’ point of view)

3. Key Senate Republicans, including Sens. John McCain (R-Ariz.),  Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) and Richard Lugar (R-Ind.) changed their minds after the 2008 election and didn’t work with Democrats to get to a bill that would get 60 votes.

4. Key moderate Senate Democrats, such as Sens. Claire McCaskill (D-Mo) and Jay Rockefeller (D-WV), were never enthusiastic about the bill and didn’t engage.

5. Sen. John Kerry (D-Mass.) and Joe Lieberman (I-Conn.) misplayed their hand by insisting on a economy-wide solution that couldn’t get 60 votes until it was too late.

In the end, all are correct.  No one group was responsible for the end of the legislation.  But, it has been interesting to note some of the reactions from some leading bloggers on the topic.

On The New Republic’s environment blog, The Vine, Bradford Plummer asks four “what ifs?” that outline how the climate debate could have been different.  After examining these four scenarios, Plummer comes to the conclusion that, in the end, the Democrats in the Senate pursued the wrong strategy and should have more quickly changed course and embraced a more limited bill.

Plummer points to a story in Rolling Stone as a good example as any as to the arguments environmental groups are making (all of which coalesce around the  point Politico made above regarding the failure of the Obama administration to push sufficiently hard for the bill).  While Plummer thinks think that getting the Senate to 60 votes may have never been something President Obama could have made happen, he does believe that the criticisms being lobbed against the administration have merit.

In fact, the Rolling Stone article places the blame at the feet of both the Senate Democratic leadership, especially Majority Leader Reid, and the Obama administration.  It argues that both played into opponents’ hands by inviting business to sit at the backroom negotiating table and not pushing hard enough.  One key paragraph:

Indeed, the president has made no concrete demands of the Senate, preferring to let Majority Leader Harry Reid direct the bill – a hands-off approach that is unlikely to produce a measure of any substance. “You have two camps right now in the Senate,” says a top congressional source. “One is the camp of ‘Let’s put something together, put it out there, whip it really hard and get to 60.’ And then you have the Harry Reid model, which is ‘Let’s wait until we know we have 60 votes.’ ” Climate advocates are furious at the least-common-denominator approach, saying it takes victory off the table. “You can’t run up the white flag,” Sen. Jeff Merkeley of Oregon said in June, “until you have the fight.”

And another…

But the Obama administration let the opportunity [the BP oil spill] slip away. On June 15th, the president – a communicator whom even top Republican operatives rank above Reagan – sat at his desk to deliver his first address to the nation from the Oval Office. It was a terrible, teachable moment, one in which he could have connected the dots between the oil spewing into the Gulf and the planet-killing CO2 we spew every day into the atmosphere. But Obama never even mentioned the words “carbon” or “emissions” or “greenhouse” – not even the word “pollution.” The president’s sole mention of “climate” came in a glancing description of the “comprehensive energy and climate bill” that the House passed. In a moment that cried out for direction-setting from the nation’s chief executive, Obama brought no concrete ideas to the table. Restating the need to break our addiction to fossil fuels, he stared at the camera and confessed that “we don’t yet know precisely how we’re going to get there.” He didn’t challenge Americans to examine their own energy habits. He didn’t rally his fellow Democrats into a fight with the Republican Party of “Smokey” Joe Barton, the Texas Republican who later apologized to BP. Far from offering a clarion call for action, Obama said, meekly, that he would listen to give senators from both parties a “fair hearing in the months ahead.” Then he asked us to pray.

Finally, it is interesting to look at the comments of Tom Friedman’s favorite climate blogger, Joe Romm at Climate Progress (that’s not a slam, more professional jealousy).  Romm, in his July 23 post  title “The White House lamely blames environmentalists for climate bill failure,” lays the blame at the feat of moderate Democrats (separate from the leadership) and the Obama administration. His two key paragraphs:

On the  political front, the White House  deserves most of the blame for not getting Republicans.  Why?  Because  the White House never tried to keep moderate Democrats in line, never made  it clear that there was definitely gonna be a vote on this bill and the moderates should figure out what they needed to support the bill (as in the case of healthcare reform).

The WH thus enabled  nonstop public (and private) criticism and bitching about the bill from  a core group of moderate Democrats, which  not only became a self-fulfilling prophecy — that  getting the Democratic votes needed was impossible — it convinced Republicans that there was no possibility of getting anywhere near 60 and thus  no reason for them to stick their necks out.  That is,  it was always going to be harder for even a moderate Republican to support this bill than it was  for even relatively conservative Democrats.

To be sure, Romm does not believe that it was all the Democrats’ or environmentalists’ fault.  In an earlier post titled “The Failed Presidency of Barack Obama, Part 1,” he blames them for about 10 percent of the problem.  Of the remaining 90 percent of the blame, he gives 60 percent to Republicans and their industry allies and 30 percent to the media for giving them a platform.

So, who was to blame?  If I were a environmentalist, I’d put more of the blame at the feet of Harry Reid than the administration.  His strategy gave opponents of climate change legislation of plenty of room to operate.  However, they can’t blame him too much since they need him to win in November.

This is not the end of the debate.  Next up will likely be new regulations from the Environmental Protection Agency to move on the issue now that the Senate has failed to move.  However, this being Washington, those regulations are likely going to be challenged in court by industry or a legal group acting on behalf of industry.  Given the reputation of the court that will hear the case, there is a good change they will be thrown out.

This debate is far from over.  Stay tuned.

Sure, if you talk about any subject in a clumsy fashion you will turn people off — just look at how Obama and major progressive politicians managed to turn a winning political issue, health care reform, into an unpopular one!

Yes, much of the climate language that gets tested is truly lame.  But the fact that poor messaging fails is not an argument for not doing messaging on the subject at all!

What is especially lame I think is that many (but not all) progressives and environmentalists have stopped even talking about any of the basic environmental benefits of clean energy.  Here’s a simple message (to go with the energy independence and clean energy jobs pitch):   Strong action to reduce carbon pollution is crucial to preserving and improving clean air, clean water, and a livable climate for our children [emphasis his].  If you can’t even utter that basic sentence or something like it, you simply aren’t serious about explaining to the public why they need to put a price on carbon pollution.  “Global warming pollution” can also be interchanged with “carbon pollution.”  I tend to use both.  “Carbon” happens to be shorter and punchier, but then I devote a significant fraction of my talks to global warming.

As the pundits finish digesting and reviewing the President’s Oval Office address from last night, the Lexington columnist over at The Economist argues that the American voter will be largely judging congressional Democrats (as the proxy for the President) on issues other than the administration’s response to the situation in the Gulf of Mexico.

Instead, the magazine (yeah, yeah, yeah, I know newspaper is the prefered term) argues that the 2010 election will be determined by how the American voter views responds the Administration’s three signature policies: the stimulus, Afghanistan and healthcare reform.

Indeed, The Economist argues…”He will decide the fate of his presidency. You could in fact argue that he has decided it already, by placing three huge and deliberate bets during his first year and a half in office. What he is mainly doing now is waiting to see whether they come good or not.”

Of the three issues, The Economist believes healthcare may be the most troublesome.  And the administration knows this.

This [healthcare] has already been inscribed in White House lore as a magnificent victory, snatched in the spring of this year from the mouth of defeat by a combination of presidential fortitude and congressional ingenuity (or stubbornness and rule-bending, as Republicans see it). Posterity may indeed one day thank the president for taking America a giant step closer to entrenching the principle of universal health coverage that other rich countries take for granted. But posterity has no vote. And as November’s mid-terms approach, polls suggest that most Americans will not be thanking the president for health reform when they go into the voting booth.

Far from delivering a gain, health reform could well turn out to be a negative, at least for the mid-terms. When the Democrats won a victory last month by holding a white working-class district in a special election in western Pennsylvania, their own candidate felt obliged to assure angry voters that he for one would have opposed Obamacare if he had been in Congress at the time.

By the president’s own account, health reform is his proudest achievement, one that would justify his election on its own. And yet it has attracted criticism from every point of the spectrum. Conservatives denounce a budget-busting government takeover. Many on the left who made a fetish out of the so-called “public option” will not forgive Mr Obama for ditching it. And a lot of voters in the middle have reason to suspect that the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, as the legislation is known, is not as affordable as the president claims, especially after so many measures to “bend the cost curve” were left on the cutting-room floor as the measure made its tortuous way through Congress.

Is it far-fetched to argue that having cast his main bets Mr Obama can now do nothing except await their result? Of course. He can, for a start, work harder to explain them. The president did not expect health reform to go down like this. Once it was passed, he predicted in the spring, Americans would wise up to the lies of the Republicans and see that “nobody is pulling the plug on granny”. Now that spring has given way to summer, the White House has embarked on yet another campaign to hasten the voters’ understanding. Mr Obama visited an old folks’ centre in Maryland to spell out the excellence of the forthcoming changes. But voters, not being stupid, are not so sure. This is complex legislation whose full costs and benefits will take years to be seen.

The Economist is not alone in this thinking.  This week, Time ran a story that further outlined how the legislation will may be a political minus for the Democrats in the mid-terms.   As Kate Pickert points out, millions will be spent on this issue trying to affect public opinion.  In the middle, as usual, are conservative and moderate Democrats in swing districts that are key to helping the Democrats retain majorities in both houses.

It will be fasciniating over the next five months or so to see how the both sides play the public relations game.  As both articles note, the Administraton has tried to go on offense on this issue.  This effort will be supported between now and Election Day by several big-dollar interest groups and, despite the recent schism over Arkansas, organized labor and much of the NetRoots.  The Republican and business groups have already started their campaign to make the legislation a political liability with The Wall Street Journal editorial page, The Daily Caller, commentators on Fox News and Fox Business and other members of “the usual suspects” already leading the way.  As the polls show, the oppostition starts out with the advantage.

The Obama administration came into power with experts saying that the Obama campaign had rewritten the rule book on how to conduct a political campaign.  However, as administration staff and their supporters quickly found out, it is much harder to conduct similar campaigns from inside the halls of power.  The question remains, have they learned to adapt?  So far, the answer is largely no.  If they are unable to turn the current situation around, one of the Obama administration’s signature accomplishments may end up being the millstone around the Democratic Party’s political fortune.

[Editor's note:  Maggie Linden is a proud liberal Democrat, with many years of experience working with Democrats in Sacramento.  Mindy Fletcher is a staunch Republican, having worked both in the Bush administration and in the Schwarzenegger administration in California.  Together, they work in Ogilvy PR's Sacramento office.  They sent out this analysis to our clients and Maggie allowed us to share it on The Intersection.  Enjoy.]

A View of the Election from Maggie’s Perspective:

The results are now in and they put California right back in the political spotlight. We’re never very far from it – with movie stars and initiative wars competing for national attention – but both CNN and NPR are calling California’s races for U.S. Senate (Boxer vs. Fiorina) and Governor (Browns vs. Whitman) key battleground races to watch in November.

And as Dan Morain pointed out in today’s Sacramento Bee – registration numbers won’t tell the entire story this year in California. Although Republican now can only claim about 31% of registered voters – the increasing numbers of Decline-to-State voters – and the disenchantment of the general electorate to all things that look “political and incumbent” mean that the Democratic registration advantage can not be taken as a solid indication of victory this year.

Boxer vs. Fiorina:

Carly Fiorina became the darling of the new right during the course of the primary election. While she started out a moderate – she moved into the far-right fringe in the final weeks, was endorsed by Sarah Palin who made nearly one million robo calls on her behalf, and championed the Arizona anti-immigration law. She also took and was proud of taking nearly three-quarters of a million dollars from anti-choice national money – and California has not elected an anti-choice candidate in decades. However, Barbara Boxer has been an unwavering liberal and has never really faced a tough or well-funded challenger. So while Carly looks very “right” right now, Boxer will have to run to the middle also. In fact she has already started that by emphasizing jobs, jobs, jobs in all of her post-election comments.

To be elected Fiorina also must move away from her right wing primary stances. Her election night speech was well done, and she’s already begun to move to the center. She is a cancer survivor; she is a successful corporate CEO; and she isn’t one of the Washington DC incumbents Together with Whitman they will have a strong appeal to women and to disenchanted voters. There is more at stake here than just the Ca Senate seat. The US Senate is a critical battleground for Obama and the national Democratic agenda and the eyes of the nation will be on Boxer/Fiorina. This race will be close.

Brown vs. Whitman:

One Dem wag quipped this morning that since Meg Whitman spent about $77 dollars per voter – which is what an iPod currently costs on eBay – maybe her slogan can be “An I-pod in every pot!.”…but I digress…This is a very tough contest for the Democrats. Meg has the ability to go on TV and Radio right now and stay on through November 9^th. No amount of Dem money will match her, even as the unions are up on TV today. Meg has an anti-incumbent advantage – and she’s a woman running with another woman (Wow the Reps moved into this century(!)

But never underestimate the power of Jerry Brown to re-invent himself. He did have the best election night line of the night: “It takes more to govern California than the ‘rich and the restless.’” And he will be indefatigable in this race, even though he won’t have the funds to match Whitman.

On our side, labor unions, teachers and others will have to get organized, energized and become believers – with both shoe leather and money to bring this one home.

Yet to be answered for me is whether either of the top ticket pairs can infuse any real “excitement” with the general voting public into this race. While special interests will surely notice: e.g. business, labor unions, women’s groups – the turnout yesterday was miserable (less than 30%) and nowhere were there screaming crowds – in any headquarters or hotels election night. In order to get the kind of campaign Dems need someone will have to fire us up!

In addition, this electorate was remarkably different from the Obama 2008 electorate. It was white, it was old (er) and it was conservative. Both Republican candidates embraced tough new immigration reform, which, in another year might hurt them with California’s large Latino population – but it remains to be seen whether Latinos will be motivated by that and actually come out to the polls. Similarly, younger voters and African American voters, captivated by Obama have little to relate to in either Whitman or Brown – indeed Jerry’s service as Governor took place before the younger voters were born. Low turnout races sometimes spell trouble for Democrats.

Down ballot races could prove to be semi-interesting because:

1. “Coat-tails” don’t often emerge in California. Voters are used to voting for different statewide candidates of different parties. Eight years ago under the Davis re-election effort Dems nearly swept the floor; but that is not the main happening in California. We are very used to having both a Republican Governor and a Dem Lt.Governor or the other way around. But with two women in the race at the top of the Rep ticket and a woman at the top of the Dem ticket, it will be interesting to see how/if they campaign together and what that means.

2. Liberal San Francisco will be an issue. Our Lt Governor candidate: Mayor Gavin Newsome gained statewide attention during the Prop 8 effort and he is joined by our Attorney General Candidate San Francisco DA Kamala Harris. Will the Reps make a big deal of SF liberals – I’d guess yes.

3. Only a few legislative battles remain and both houses will remain firmly in the hands of the Democrats – so while some may be hard fought, I don’t see much interesting on that front.

A few final comments of note:

• Meg Whitman only mentioned a few people last night to thank for her victory: Nathan Fletcher was one of them – good on ya, Mindy and Nathan!
• California voters once again proved themselves VERY SMART last night. It really wasn’t a long night. Few races held much drama. But if you take a close look, the rejection of both Prop 16 and 17 once again proves California voters do and can pay attention. They can figure it out – even when millions of dollars are spent by special interests to try and sway them. They do listen to editorial boards and to personal connections, either on the phone or at the door, and oft times say NO to big money and big corporations. PG&E and Mercury Insurance spent millions in failed efforts because the public saw through them. In most cases the voters here do get it right (Prop 8 notwithstanding – but we’ll get that right soon.) This is some comfort to those of us (Dems) who will be fighting the enormous war chests of Whitman and Fiorina as the nation watches.

It will be a long summer and a longer fall…but I’m very excited to see it unfold.

A View of the Election from Mindy’s Perspective:

As always California offers colorful and interesting storylines that make the rest of the county scratch their head and watch in wonder. I agree with Maggie that this first test of the election season shows that Californians on the whole are pretty smart and despite the lengthy, confusing and wordy ballot, they manage to figure things out.

An important thing to remember about the primary yesterday was that the turnout was heavy on the Republican side because of more hotly contested races on our side. I think the effect of that was probably more visible in some of the lower profile local races and initiatives.

But let’s get to the juicy stuff.

My party last night nominated 2 women, a black (Damon Dunn for Secretary of State) and a Latino (Abel Maldonado for Lt. Gov) for the statewide ticket. The two women were history making unto themselves, but the four of them together could actually make history in November. Maggie pointed out that we usually don’t have coattails in California. However, this year could be different – here’s why:

• Meg Whitman, unlike her predecessor, actually understands the value of bringing in a team and not winning a solo victory in November. Watch for her to campaign vigorously for the ticket, especially Tony Strickland (who narrowly lost this same race 4 years ago) who is running again for the little-known, but very important Controller’s seat. The current Controller has been a thorn in the current Gov’s side the last 4 years. Meg knows she needs friends to get done what she wants to get done.
• The anti-establishment climate in the country will be felt in California. It won’t be in Assembly and Senate races because they are drawn so one-sided it doesn’t matter what climate is out there. It will be felt in congressional races. It could be felt in other state races where the right issues are in play. Two of Meg’s key messages – jobs and spending – are very much a part of the tea party anger and could serve her and the rest of the ticket well in November. Best part – the Dems will be hard pressed to morph her into a crazy tea party radical. She just isn’t.
• Carly Fiorina understands how to cripple Barbara Boxer and has a high enough profile for it to matter.

What I am most excited about from last night’s election has nothing to do with the 2010 elections, but could change the face of California politics. Open Primary.

Voters passed this initiative that will yield more candidates focused on getting things done and fewer candidates focused on setting themselves up for the next election down the road (a terrible byproduct of term limits). Open primary will be combined with the new redistricting process where involved citizens (that the Ogilvy team helped the State Auditor recruit earlier this year) will be drawing the legislative lines instead of the legislators who run for the seats.

My party opposed this and with its vantage point of staring a Democrat supermajority in the face I am not sure why they think the current system is such a good thing. Maggie’s party opposed it to. Another reason why my party should have embraced it. I will leave it to you to surmise the wisdom of an electorate that passed something so strongly opposed by both party establishment…..

These two changes could create a legislature where common sense has a chance and getting things done trumps getting a good headline. Like I said – this could change the face of politics in California for years to come.

Concluding thought:

So now we head into the usual antics of the general election in California. Lots of union dollars spent on ads. Lots of Republicans bemoaning the union dollars. Lots of my neighbors asking me if I could tell X candidate to please stop making those phone calls to their house. And many events and happenings sure to make news that we couldn’t even dream up as we sit here today. It will be a wild ride as usual. But I look forward to it and to joining Maggie along the way to keep you updated and entertained.