JoeTrippi.com

Like many Americans who have watched the economic crisis in the Eurozone I found myself wondering several times over 2011 – “why can’t they get their act together and fix this? Don’t they realize what’s at stake?”

I also scratched my head in wonder several times at how the world’s markets kept falling for every new “fix”, no matter how unrealistic, because of an underlying belief that “in the end the politicians will do what they need to do and solve the problem.”

So in two trips to Europe as the end of 2011 neared, I decided to look at the Eurocrisis from a political perspective and I’ve come to the conclusion that the political system is incapable of solving the problem and probably will completely fail to do so.

The markets will, sooner or later, figure this out.

So how is it possible that political leaders across the Eurozone will fail to come to rational terms around a common solution given the horror many believe awaits each of their countries in the wake of an economic collapse? As a political strategist looking at the problem the answer became clear to me — the problems Europe’s economic system has created are so great they have overrun the ability of the political system to solve them.

For the average American to understand how impossible the political situation is I want you to try a simple exercise:

Imagine the United States. There is no President. There is no federal government. Instead Rick Perry is the President of Texas. Jerry Brown is the President of California. Andrew Cuomo is the President of New York. 49 Presidents of 49 states want Andrew Cuomo to tax Wall Street transactions to pay for unemployed citizens in the nation of Ohio, and those who overbuilt homes in the nation of Nevada. And Andrew Cuomo will no longer be President of New York if he does it. So Cuomo’s plan is to ask President Rick Perry of Texas to raise taxes on oil to pay for the mess. That isn’t going to happen either.

Let me be clear. Ohio and Nevada in the example above are all part of the United States. We sing the same Star Spangled Banner. Watch the same television shows, speak the same language. We actually have a President and a federal government and our political system has become so dysfunctional that we can’t agree on a 12 month extension of a pay-roll tax cut.

Now back to Europe. France speaks French, Greece speaks Greek, the Germans speak German. They fought world wars on each other’s soil. There is not a single political party that exists across the European continent. Yet the markets continue to believe that the leaders of Europe will somehow come to agreement and solution when the greatest democracy the world has ever known can not come to agreement on solving a similar albeit more shallow crisis here in the United States.

When the markets figure out the futility of the political situation it will be the markets and not the political leadership that will control events. And the impact on the lives of millions will not be pretty.

Our founders believed in capitalism. They believed that capitalism would be the engine of innovation and economic progress that would build a new future. But they knew that capitalism left to run amok would roll rough shod over everything in its path. That is why they believed that capitalism had to be subservient to democracy and not the other way around. Their worst nightmare was the notion that capitalism would take control and overwhelm the political leadership and democracy itself. The world may have come dangerously close to realizing the nightmare and not the promise of our founder’s vision in the great collapse of 2007 and its wake.

In 2012 Europe may prove we have not yet escaped. Politics and economics are the same and broken.

I went to school at San Jose State University in Silicon Valley in 1975. I was an engineering major who would try to grab time on red beam lasers to make holograms, or sneak more time on the IBM mainframe in the computer lab – all while maintaining my insane interest in politics.

I guess that’s why Steve Jobs meant so much to me. I watched him and was inspired by him from the earliest days as the Silicon Valley we know today was born.

Steve Jobs was the person who made me ask the question “what would change people’s lives more? Technology? Or politics?”

I was a hopeless early adopter – I had to have the Apple Newton – but I chose politics as the way to make a difference.

So today I want to say thank you Steve. You changed more lives than any politician in either party in my lifetime.

Steve Jobs ideology was simple – innovate and make it better than its ever been done before. Woe is our nation that neither of our two major political parties had such a simple purpose and direction.

In his Stanford Commencement speech Steve Jobs had some advice for the graduates that day that could serve our political discourse today:

“Don’t be trapped by dogma — which is living with the results of other people’s thinking. Don’t let the noise of others’ opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary.”

America’s ideology was once to innovate and make it better than it has ever been done before. Today both parties and our nation’s leaders are trapped by dogma.

I have to wonder what life would be like had Steve Jobs chose to change the world through politics? What would the Apple Party be like?

Thank you Steve Jobs for the choices you made and the difference you made in my life and in the lives of hundreds of millions.

#thankyousteve #appleparty

This is a post from my friend Raymond Glendening. Raymond is a co-founder of Ruckus, a cutting edge online organizing platform that I encourage everyone to check out. Before that, he worked at the Democratic Governors Association and on Bill Richardson’s presidential campaign.

I first met Joe Trippi in 2003, while he was orchestrating the Howard Dean presidential run. Dean’s meteoric rise as an outsider was happening, and, for the first time in my political life, an outsider and a rogue had a legitimate chance for a major party nomination. It was clear Governor Dean was being advised by an outsider himself. In the years since then, I have come to know Joe Trippi pretty well. The only thing I am certain of about him, beside his loyalty to his convictions, is that you cannot box up his politics and thinking and neatly fit him into any one style of thinking. Increasingly, this is becoming all of us. How many of us are happy with what we currently have as political engagement outlets? In addition to being an outside thinker politically, Joe was also one of the first pioneers to see the future utility of the internet with regard to political activism potential. The future is now here.

Thanks to technology, most things in our lives are now custom fit. If we want coffee, we can order it 50 ways from 50 different places. If we want to watch a movie, we can choose between Netflix, iTunes, Blockbuster or good ol’ fashioned cable television. If we need a restaurant review, we have OpenTable, Yelp, and of course our numerous social networks. Yet in what is arguably the most important aspect of our life – politics – our system still sadly offers just two “surf or turf ” options.

Our collective reliance on two antiquated and prefabricated political entities has led to a groupthink mentality that strikes many of us as odd. Why is it that a person who believes abortion should be illegal must also believe in mass deportations of illegal immigrants? Why must someone who supports marriage equality necessarily also support the immediate withdrawal from Afghanistan?

The two political parties have become anachronisms, and the growing disconnect between them and the way technology allows us to live our lives led to historic political disaffection. A Pew post-election poll in 2010 found for the first time in modern American history, Independents outnumbered Democrats and Republicans in terms of party affiliation. In other words, in the world’s only major two-party democracy, the majority of people are saying “no thanks” to both parties. Of course, “Independent” does not necessarily mean “moderate.” Independents (as well as those that still identify as partisans) come from all over the ideological spectrum. Many liberals think the Democratic Party needs to come left, and many conservatives think the Republican Party needs to move right. For most of us, however, politics is dynamic. While we might be considered “left” on some issues, on others we are ”center” or “right.” Indeed, the whole idea of a linear political spectrum is fiction; politics exists in 3D.

We have already seen social media erode the foundations of the two parties. The biggest political movements in the last year – the union fight in Wisconsin, the Arab spring, the Tea Party – were all external events powered by technology. While the world was changing, the parties lamely stood by and watched. Of course, some in politics have been wise to this trend. President Obama, for example, built an entire organization, Obama for America, OUTSIDE the Democratic Party (it still exists as Organizing for America).

So, if the two political parties are destined to join the telegraph and the steam engine in the dustbins of the Smithsonian, what will take their place? The future will be about organic clusters around issues rather than formal opt-in membership groups like parties.

There is a revolution already underway. It’s a revolution of people against institutions. Call it the “i-Tunes-ization” of modern life. Joe Trippi should be proud.

While we all brace for the hurricane, some very saddening news from Nigeria:

A car loaded with explosives crashed into the main United Nations’ building in Nigeria’s capital and exploded Friday, killing at least 18 people in one of the deadliest assaults on the international body in a decade. A radical Muslim sect blamed for a series of attacks in the country claimed responsibility for the bombing, a major escalation of their sectarian fight against Nigeria’s weak central government.

The brazen assault in a neighborhood surrounded by heavily fortified diplomatic posts represented the first suicide attack to target foreigners in oil-rich Nigeria, where locals already live in fear of the radical Boko Haram sect. The group, which has reported links to al-Qaida, wants to implement a strict version of Shariah law in the nation and is vehemently opposed to Western education and culture.

While police officers and local officials have primarily bore the brunt of Boko Haram’s rage, now everyone seems to be a target in a nation often divided by religion and ethnicity.

My sympathies go out to the families of the victims of this tragedy and to all of the Nigerian people. I helped President Goodluck Jonathan in his successful election earlier this year, and I know he’s a man committed to unity and progress for all Nigerians. It’s very sad to see some groups taking Nigeria backwards.

From President Goodluck Jonathan’s administration:

He extends his sincere condolences to the Secretary-General of the United Nations, Mr. Ban Ki-Moon and all members of the United Nations family who have lost loved ones in the heinous attack.

President Jonathan reaffirms the Federal Government’s total commitment to vigorously combat the incursion of all forms of terrorism into Nigeria, and wishes to reassure all Nigerians and the international community that his Administration will spare no effort to bring the perpetrators to justice.

The President has also directed all relevant government agencies to assist in the search and rescue effort at the UN Building, and ordered heightened security across the Federal Capital Territory.

He urges all Nigerians to cooperate fully with the government in its efforts to expose the desperate elements who promote violence, terrorism and division in the country.

While noting that by today’s attack, we are once again reminded of the international character of terrorism and its indiscriminate targeting of innocent civilians, President Jonathan affirms Nigeria’s determination to continue to play its part in the global effort to eradicate the scourge of terrorism in all its ramifications.

I’ll give it to Scott Brown: he looks like a Senator. But while some in our Party scramble to find the “heavyweight” to take on Brown next year, I think we have our candidate — Bob Massie. He doesn’t have your typical political pedigree and his background might be outside-the-box, but in this race I think we need a little more Tester or Wellstone than Hillary or Kerry. We’re not going to out-politician Scott Brown. We’re going to make the case that we need a different kind of leader — a bold progressive with a survivor instinct that will take on Washington in a way that no one else can.

Blue Mass Group has a must-read piece on Bob today, laying out the background and perspective Bob would bring:

He was born to author parents in 1956 with hemophilia, which caused pain and hindered his movement; he says that from a young age, it gave him a sense of empathy with the vulnerable. Bob went to Princeton, where he was heavily involved in South Africa divestment movement. He went on to Yale Divinity School and became an Episcopal priest. He later did doctorate work at Harvard Business School, while a minister at Christ Episcopal Church in Somerville. His work @ HBS was concerned with the intersection of business and ethics; since then he co-founded the Global Reporting Initiative, an organization which produces a framework for measuring corporate social resposibility — “a bald attempt to alter the way the global economy worked”, he says. To that end, he ran Ceres for years, and last year he became an advisor to Domini Social Impact Fund. He was an election observer for Nelson Mandela’s election in South Africa, and wrote an award-winning 800-page history of US-South Africa relations vis-a-vis the anti-apartheid movement.

[...]

In the 90′s, he was tested as HIV positive …. but miraculously, possessed a natural resistance to the virus. In 2002 he contracted a debilitating case of Hepatitis C, which took him out of commission for years. He’s now completely recovered, thanks to a liver transplant.

Is this a normal career arc for a politician? No. Bob Massie neither looks, sounds, nor acts like someone who is mostly concerned with ambition and power. He doesn’t speak in sound bites. He has never been an elected official; his public service has been in activism, the church, writing, and working with the private sector on social responsibility.

Massie believes in setting a bold goal, and reverse-engineering a sequence of practical steps to achieve it; and we have to not lose hope that the big goals are “important, worthy and inspiring.” He is interested in not simply the hot-button issue of the moment, but in underlying causes. He has a sense of historical arc that is rare among politicians, because he’s lived it and studied it, and in the case of South Africa, he’s seen and experienced a smashing victory for human rights, after long struggle.

But what’s even more interesting is how this background would contrast with Brown in a head-to-head match-up. I’ve met Bob and I look forward to the day that he can question Brown on stage and challenge him, point by point, on Brown’s votes and flawed vision — if he has one at all — for our country.

Bob’s in this race to win. He’s building a large grassroots following and his fundraising has picked up — June was his best month yet. You can learn more about Bob and get involved at www.bobmassie.org

FULL DISCLOSURE: I’m currently an adviser to the Bob Massie for U.S. Senate campaign.

Last night, Los Angeles City Councilwoman Janice Hahn beat Craig Huey in the special election to fill the seat vacated by Rep. Jane Harman in California’s 36th District.

We are proud to have been a part of such an amazing campaign team, overcoming a 16-person field in the May 17 special election, then beating Craig Huey in the run-off, despite nearly a million dollars in self-funding from our opposition. Congratulations to Janice and the entire campaign team.

We produced aggressive television ads to generate earned media and shape the narrative of the race, while recommending a heavy mail campaign to target voters in a relatively low-turnout election. Working with a talented and experienced campaign team, including Campaign Manager Dave Jacobson, Pollster John Fairbank, and Consultant John Shallman, the strategy paid off.

We’re excited to be sending Janice’s strong voice to Congress.

A special thanks to Tom Rossmeissl from our firm who managed the television ad production for the campaign, and Sterling Clifford who runs our California office. This win is especially gratifying for our firm, as it was our first campaign in California since our work in helping elect Jerry Brown as Governor.

Some may blame poor publicity or the deficit for NASA’s lack of political support, but that didn’t stop Reid Gower from standing up for our space program.

Gower is a Canadian college student who recently became passionate about NASA’s work. Like many of NASA’s fans, Gower recognized that many people don’t understand the importance of space exploration. So Gower decided to make a series of moving YouTube videos with long-ago recorded narration from the eminent astronomer, Carl Sagan.

Millions of views later, I think it’s safe to say that Gower’s having an impact.  It’s hard not to feel an emotional pull towards supporting NASA and space exploration while watching these videos.

During an interview with Motherboard, Gower says he’s had no official contact or help from NASA, but they have no doubt benefited from it — and for free. While social media often becomes the thorn for many organizations and corporations (i.e. the Domino’s flap), it also has the capacity to work magic — just like Gower’s videos are doing right now.

As Carl Sagan says in the video, “we’re a species that needs a frontier”. And just as I’m excited to see where our space program takes us next, I’m eager to see how the Reid Gowers of this world will continue to shape our perceptions of politics and organizations.