Speaking in sports metaphors, Barak Obama hit a home run, a grand slam, last night in Denver. Perphaps touchdown would be a better metaphor since he was at a football stadium. And he spiked the ball.
There’s no doubt he’s one of the best American orators in generations. One of the reasons he’s so good is that he’s mastered what the Positive Coaching Alliance (PCA) calls filling the “Emotional Tank.” In their best selling book, Made to Stick: Why Some Ideas Survive and Others Die, brothers Chip and Dan Heath explore the Emotional Tank with Jim Thompson of the PCA.
The PCA holds positive coaching seminars for youth sports coaches. At the seminars, trainers use the analogy of an Emotional Tank tget coaches to think about the right ratio of praise, support, and critical feedback. The Emotional Tank is like the gas tank of an automobile. If your car’s tank is empty, you can’t drive very far. If your emotional tank is empty, you are not going to perform at your very best (158).
Obama consistently hits the right mix of praise, support and critical feedback in his campaign, especially his big speeches, from the Yes We Can after the New Hampshire primary to last night’s galvenizing address. Along the way he pointed out how others drain the emotional tank of a people.
If the current administration were your sports coach, they would tell you what to do and yell at you when you didn’t do it. They would call a running play on third and long and belittle you, the player when it didn’t work for not supporting the coaching staff enough, for not giving it your all. If the current administration were parents, each time a child asked a question, their response would be “Because I said so.” Obama has understood from the beginning that this type of leadership is emotionally draining and that a good leader fills the emotional tank.
Contrary to his opponent’s criticism, and counter intuitive to the term, filling the emotional tank is not just about making people feel good, however. A coach who just slaps players on the back and makes them feel good about themselves will not succeed either. There needs to be the correct mix of emotional praise, support and teaching or in an non-coaching context such as a speech – uplifting, teaching and holding people responsible – all of that was in the speech in Denver last night and all that has been in Obama’s campaign in correction proportion all the way through. It is the right style and the right the delivery for the right time. It’s the reason he beat Hillary and the Democratic primary field and the reason I think he’ll beat McCain. He is playing 21st century politics to a post modern audience, he’s coaching a 21st century post modern America and like he said last night, his opponent just doesn’t get it.
It’s not that McCain’s a bad person, and interestingly enough, it’s almost beyond right or wrong in terms of policy. It’s that some people are still trying to play a game (and hence devise policy and strategies for a game) that’s over. What Obama made the case for is “We’re playing a new game now. We want you to play this game with us, we really do.” Politics has been discussed as game theory before, but I never saw so cleary a politician as a coach until hearing Obama’s speech in the wake of reading the Heath’s book.
UPDATE: Andrew Sullivan at The Atlantic.com on his Daily Dish blog in a post titled The Hope We Confess made a reference that pointed to another sports metaphor - “I own you.” Sullivan noted that Obama didn’t shy away from National Defense issues (nor did he shy away from any issues, do I hear echoes of Bring it On?) and said Obama “owned this issue in a way that no Democrat has owned it since Kennedy. That’s a transformative event.” Indeed it was. For the opponent’s party build’s its reputation on being the party of national defense and Obama took that play out of the playbook, so to speak.
Sullivan:
Above all, he took on national security – face on, full-throttle, enraged, as we should all be, at how disastrously American power has been handled these past eight years. He owned this issue in a way that no Democrat has owned it since Kennedy. That’s a transformative event. To my mind, it is vital that both parties get to own the war on Jihadist terror and that we escape this awful Rove-Morris trap that poisons the discourse into narrow and petty partisan abuse of patriotism. Obama did this tonight. We are in his debt.
Look: I’m biased at this point. I’m one of those people, deeply distressed at what has happened to America, deeply ashamed of my own misjudgments, who has shifted out of my ideological comfort zone because this man seems different to me, and this moment in history seems different to me. I’m not sure we have many more chances to get off the addiction to foreign oil, to prevent a calamitous terrorist attack, to restore constitutional balance in the hurricane of a terror war.
I’ve said it before – months and months ago. I should say it again tonight. This is a remarkable man at a vital moment. America would be crazy to throw this opportunity away. America must not throw this opportunity away.
Know hope.
The only thing I don’t like about this new book is that I didin’t write it. I’ve been thinking of this for years and I’ve been calling the Boss the most highly paid theologian in America since Divinity School. Alas someone beat me to writing this. But my idea for a book of sermons based on the Springsteen catalog still lives, at least for the moment.
The good news, pun intended, is that the author of The Gospel According to Bruce Springsteen is a Unitarian Universalist minister from Massachusetts named Jeffrey Symynkywicz. And yes, in case you’re wondering, I emailed him and asked for an autographed copy. I mean this is the Boss we’re talking about, the book is by a UU. I had to.
You can listen to Rev. Symynkywicz talk about the book on NPR’s Weekend Edition here.
Sisyphus wrote an interesting post, as usual quoting from interesting sources, about abolishing the Vice-Presidency. This caught my attention because while running for Lt. Governor in MA in 2002 I thought that if the incredible happened and our Green Party ticket were elected, I would push for an amendment to the Massachusetts Constitution abolishing my own office. Why? It doesn’t really need to exist. It has hardly any constitutional duties except for chairing the Governor’s Council, which is a purely advisory, although elected board (I’m sure they could elect a chair from amongst their own) and covering for the Governor should extreme circumstances make it necessary (couldn’t the Speaker of the House do that? Heck in Massachusetts, the person in that role always thinks they’re the Governor anyway.)
Sisyphus’ post makes some similar claims for the role of the Vice-President of the United States. Althought that tie-breaking vote in the Senate is nice, but how about if that went to the President or say, a registered voter chosen at random? I know, I’m getting silly. But really…
One of our new realities in Texas is paying attention to air quality reports and Air Quality Index reports since asthma is a reality for our family and the air seems to be unhealthy here not infrequently – no need for that Kyoto protocol though, right W?
Today we have a Red Ozone alert according to the Texas Air Quality Forecast.
Looks like we’ll be spending some more time inside today.
Ever since I ran for Lt. Governor in MA as the Green Party’s candidate in 2002, I have had an increased interest in the running mate selection process of presidential elections. I remember being called by the Jill Stein campaign and being asked if I would consider being considered as a Lt. Governor candidate (in Massachusetts the two offices appear on the ballot as a ticket, although the two candidates have to file separate nominating papers and separate nominating signatures, – 10,000 of them – with the Secretary of the Commonwealth). I was vetted as much as it happened at that level and I know that I was asked to run as much because of my profession (scripture and ethics teacher at a Catholic high school – at that time) and my geographic location ( I lived in the central part of the state and other potential running mates were Boston area easterners like the gubernatorial candidate as for any other reason. Still, I thought I could offer as much as anyone and with enough naivete for the entire campaign staff, I jumped in.
Throughout the 2004 elections I found the choosing of the Vice Presidential slot fascinating (and disappointing) in John Edwards, but have become very good friends with the Green Party’s VP choice of that year, Pat LaMarche. I’d rather not comment on Dick Cheney.
This year is even more interesting with both Democrats and Republicans having to choose Veeps. I was hoping for Obama to go with a woman. Kathleen Sebelius of Kansas was my choice, but I completely understand was even expecting Joe Biden. I expect McCain to pick Mitt Romney which I think will be a huge mistake. Romeny comes with too many negatives and now with the selection of Biden, well, let’s just say, I can’t see Mitt holding his own with Joe Biden on the campaign trail. For Goddess sake Jill Stein tore up Mitt in our campaign in 2002, and she was doing it on the fly on her first campaign. I’m feeling sorry for Mitt if he has to deal with Joe Biden for two months. I was bummed out that the press ran with a leak of the Biden pick before I got my text message from the Obama campaign and then I never got my text message. Hmmph!
The Dems have started their convention and the timing coincided with Zack starting school. While Zack hung around the house yesterday after his first day in Texas public schools (more blogging on that once we have more days to evaluate by), we had the convention on CNN and into prime time. The Dems seem to be doing it right for the first time since 1992 (although I was never a big fan of the Clintons). The music has been great. John Legend and the Agape Choir were kinda wow! By contrast the Charlie Daniels Band is playing the Republican National Convention Next Week. The Charlie Daniels Band hits include What this Country Needs is a Few More Rednecks – Is that a voter registration ploy or is someone at the RNC really out to lunch?
The crowd at the DNC ooks like America, black, brown, yellow and white, (I can’t wait to see how white the Republican convention looks by comparison, If RNC folks are paying attention, they’d better do something about that), and all the right themes are being hit in traditional Dem fashion – we’re in touch, Republicans are not; we get your economic pain, they don’t; we can end ridiculous wars and keep us safe, while re-establishing America’s good name and moral authority, they can’t.
Many of the first day speakers, including Nancy Pelosi didn’t thrill me, however two serious ready for prime time players hit major home runs: Jesse Jackson, Jr and Michelle Obama. The potential next First Lady’s speech is available in audio at NPR here and on video at the DNC site here.
Unless your brother is Paul Westerberg or someone. My brother and his mates rockin’ back in the Bay State (review from clicky clicky music blog) :
In the top supporting slot for the night was recently resuscitated Massachusetts power-pop quartet Lump, who turned in a surprisingly sludgy and rocking set. We’re not sure if all the sludge was intentional, as the sound guy was inattentive enough at first to leave guitarist Rock’s (no surname for Mr. Rock) mic out of the mix for the first few numbers. In reviewing our pictures from the night (flickr set here) we were amused to see that between the rocking out, the shorts and the lighting that Lump reminded us a little of Helmet, visually. In reality Lump is sonically more akin to bands like Small 23. We aren’t overly familiar with Lump’s repertoire, but we showed up hoping to hear the classics “13″ and “Tatters” and we weren’t disappointed. And closer “Primrose” was an immaculate noisefest that hope to witness again sometime soon. Lump is writing new material and aims to cut a new record as soon as it has enough new material to fill it. For now, head over to the foursome’s MySpace dojo to stream the musical goodness.
And you missed ‘em Texas because they played SxSW last year. Somewhere, sometime during the week in Austin.
While running errands Wednesday getting my car registered in Texas and getting a Texas driver’s license (getting fingerprinted no less, how Big Brother do you get?) I caught an interesting program on NPR’s All Things’ Considered. In the aftermath of a kosher slaugherhouse being raided by immigration authorities, some rabbis are coming forward with thoughts on rethinking what it means to be kosher.
Is it enought to follow Torah prescriptions? Is Halakha enough? Is following ritual slaughter practice and eating the right foods and not mixing meat and milk and so forth the end of it? OR in the modern world does ethical religious eating require more of us? Do we need to eat food processed at a plant that obeys immigration law and provides health care to its employees and uses local organic ingredients? Just how holy does our food and our eating have to be?
The program had my full attention because a ministers’ study group to which I belong discussed just these issues this past April. In fact, we asked ourselves, “What would a UU kashrut look like?” Is it enough to serve fair trade coffee at coffee hour or does our UU faith require more of us?
Listen to the NPR program here:
Support is growing in the Jewish community to change the standards for kosher certification — to include an ethical component. A group of conservative rabbis has drafted guidelines. The orthodox movement has resisted the idea, but may be open to independent certification on ethical issues.
In a 20-page decision you can read here, Federal Judge Orlando Garcia granted Jeff Wood a Stay of Execution, putting of a death sentence that was to have been carried out yesterday. Judge Garcia called the death penalty system in the State of Texas “insane” in his decision:
With all due respect, a system which requires an insane person to make “substantial showing” of his own lack of mental capacity without the assistance of counsel or a mental health expert, in order to obtain assistance is, by definition, an insane system.
It is inconsistent with the mandates of both Panetti and Ford for the state of Texas to deny an indigent death row inmate asserting a claim that he is incompetent to be executed the assistance of counsel until said inmate first satisfies arcane pleadings requirements so intellectually challenging they test the skill of even the most seasoned attorney
The Texas Moratorium Network is posting a piece from the Houston Chronicle reporting that Wood’s lawyers will have to submit an evaluation on his mental state from mental health experts by January 2009. Truly distrubing are the comments to the article on the Chronicle website. They spout the usual misinformation about the death penalty being a deterent (it can’t be or no one would commit capital crimes, but capital crimes are not commited by rational thinking people therefore the deterent effect is useless). Most striking however is the example of what type of society we create when we approve of state sponsored killing. When we approve of killing, which we exemplify by executions, it manifests itself in the attitudes demonstrated by the commentators to the Chronicle’s article. There is little or no understanding or sympathy for the nuance of the Wood case, there is pride in the fact that Texas has (as a minority commenter put it) death penalty by association under the Law of Parties and executes a lot of people.
A few people have asked me why I am so interested in this case and in capital punishment. That’s a fair question. My interest began while doing my college internship for Amnesty International. One of the events I worked on was the first national student (high school and college) conference on the aboltion of the death of penalty. This was held at Northeastern University in November of 1989. Participants included Sister Helen Prejean most widely known for her story and work with death row inmates Dead Man Walking, Clive Stafford Smith, and Hugo Adam Bedau.
The death penalty is lowest common denominator. It uses to killing to say killing or other violent crime is wrong. The old childhood proverb is correct, however, two wrongs don’t make a right.
The death penalty is throwing our hands up in the air as a society and saying we give up, there is nothing we can do, but execute people we don’t like (because they are bad). In essence this is what Hitler did. We dehumanize criminals, Nazis dehumanized innocents, but once a society allows dehumanization, the process expands, it doesn’t contract. Notice how our society now dehumanizes terrorists and by extention, anyone who “looks like” a terrorist?
There is no way to have a fool-proof death penalty system and too many innocent people are executed. It got so bad in Illinois, that in 2000 a Republican governor put a moratorium on executions. 129 known and proven innocent people have been released from death row since 1973.
David Chandler at Progressive Writers Bloc brings up some of my favorite points in interesting ways:
The geography of executions is telling. The densely populated Northeast (more people, more crime?) has the lowest murder rate nationally and has executed only 3 people since 1976. The Western states have executed 59, the Midwest 96, and the South 735. Texas and Virginia alone account for 406 of the South’s total. The states in which a black man was most likely to be lynched in past decades are the states that execute the most black men today.
Hand in hand with racial discrimination is economic discrimination. In California in the 1980′s, 42% of blue-collar workers convicted of first-degree murder received the death penalty, compared to only 5% of white-collar workers convicted of similar crimes. Most defendants in capital cases cannot afford to hire their own attorney. This is clearly tied to the high rate of error in convictions.
The reason that is closest to my heart for opposing the death penalty is that it is about retribution, not restoration. Currently our criminal justice system is one based solely on handing out punishment, but punishing wrong doing does not always make whole. Making whole requires restoration. I’m not sure that there is a way to make completely whole victims of violent crime, but I am certain it needs to go beyond just punishing the criminal. It must involve forgiveness, making amends, creating a system and a society that is better at recognizing and caring for pain and suffering and I don’t see our current system, however full of bravado or however strong it may appear to execute someone, doing that.
Again, David Chandler,
The death penalty is based on the concept of retribution: “eye for eye, tooth for tooth, life for life.” Retribution is not about protecting society. That is accomplished once the criminal is imprisoned. Rather, it is a way of collectively venting our anger. When we have been wronged we have an urge to strike back and make the offender suffer. When someone is murdered we feel we owe it to the family of the victim to avenge the death of their loved one. But vengeance cannot reverse the original act or heal the pain. Instead it arouses and legitimizes our own murderous impulses. Vengeance does violence to the soul and perpetuates violence in society.
Retribution is Biblical, but so is its antithesis. When Jesus was asked whether a woman taken in adultery should be stoned to death in accordance with the Mosaic law, he responded simply, “He that is without sin among you, let him first cast a stone….” By his response he rejects the entire concept of retribution. All of us, both accusers and accused, are flawed human beings, so mercy, not retribution, is appropriate. Jesus changes the focus to restoration and healing.
Executing people is enacting revenge on a societal scale. There isn’t a person among us who wouldn’t feel some pull for revenge if she or he were the victim of violent crime, but that doesn’t mean it is the best response. Most of the rest of world has given up on this, frankly, barbaric practice of executing other human beings. The leading executing countries in the world are China, Iran, and Saudi Arabia … and the United States. Iraq used to be in there, too. What wonderful company to be keeping. Not an open, caring democracy among them.
[The death penalty] is hurtful to us and it diminishes us. We become more and more desensitized. Where do we stop? How do we decide who lives and who dies? We have put ourselves on a very slippery slope.
- Bishop Edmond Carmody of Texas
The majority of those on death row are poor, powerless, and educationally deprived. Almost 50 percent come from minority groups. This reflects the broad inequities within our society, and the inequity with which the ultimate is applied. This alone is sufficient reason for opposing [the death penalty] as immoral and unjust.
– General Board of the American Baptist Churches, Resolution on Capital Punishment, passed June 1977.
[Capital punishment is a] cruel hoax that is sold to the families of victims. They are so vulnerable, the easiest thing to sell them is anger. It’s the biggest disservice we can do to them.
– Rabbi Alan Lew, Spiritual leader of Congregation Beth Sholom, San Francisco.
The ultimate weakness of violence is that it is a descending spiral, begetting the very thing it seeks to destroy. … In fact, violence merely increases hate. … Returning violence for violence multiplies violence, adding deeper darkness to a night already devoid of stars.
Make your way to death row and speak with the tragic victims of criminality. As they prepare to make their pathetic walk to the electric chair, their hopeless cry is that society will not forgive. Capital punishment is society’s final assertion that it will not forgive.
I do not think God approves the death penalty for any crime – rape and murder included. Capital punishment is against the best judgment of modern criminology and, above all, against the highest expression of love in the nature of God.
I should be on the front line for those advocating the death penalty, [but] we have always been consistently against the death penalty.
– Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., pastor, pivotal figure in the Civil Rights Movement.
I oppose the death penalty as I oppose all murder, as I oppose the imposition of suffering on all beings through the action of the individual, group, or state. My opposition is based on simply my own choice. It does not rely on any scriptural command of my tradition, any dogma, any external coercion or any commandment from above. My opposition is my responsibility, it is my “ability-to-respond.” Who I am is who I choose to be, consciously and deliberately — I am not who I am told to be. I choose for myself to adhere the First Precept of Buddhism that goes something like this: “I am reverential and mindful of all life, I am not violent and I do not kill”.
– Venerable Kobutsu Malone, zenji – American Rinzai Zen Buddhist priest, volunteer death row chaplain and social justice activist.
I don’t want a moratorium on the death penalty. I want the abolition of it. I can’t understand why a country that’s so committed to human rights doesn’t find the death penalty an obscenity.»«I am passionately opposed to the death penalty for anyone … I think, myself, that it is an obscenity … that brutalizes society.
– Desmond Tutu, South African Archbishop, Nobel Peace Prize winner, about the death penalty in the U.S.A.
If you’re reading this, please call the Governor of Texas, Rick Perry, today, now:
at 512-463-2000Office of the Governor Fax: (512) 463-1849 or send him an email.
Ask for a 30 day stay of execution for Mr. Wood.
Know the facts about the Death Penalty in Texas – see this great resource from Texas Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty, including the clemency process, analysis of why Texas is the leading executing state, faith perspectives and the Texas codes for capital cases.
