Three Political Secrets
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Here is the secret to political success. It is only three things and this is what it takes. And here they are.
- Clarify your issue
- Build a coalition and
- Appeal to a higher authority
That’s it.
You can pick any issue at the local level, school board level, county, state or federal level. And if you do these three things and do them well, you will have success. But what do most people do when they want to see political change?
They write a manifesto. They take to the streets, they shoot innocent people, they call for impeaching the president, they bash the other political party, and they blame everybody else. And what happens? Nothing.
So look at the three elements I put up above. Did they clarify their issue? Not really. Did they build a coalition? No. And are they appealing to a higher authority? No.
So they’re not doing the three key essential things that the top government relations firms do for clients. Let me ask you a question.
[ Read: Get Money Out of Politics Now ]
In spite of your bias about lobbyists (and I am not a lobbyist), I have observed that there are people who organize in a very specific way who achieve higher levels of policy success than most others.
Lobbyists do not write manifestos. They do not shoot people in the street. They do not protest. They do not hold up signs. They do not sign petitions. They do not demonstrate and destroy property. Why not? Because these things just don’t work.
In a civil society there is no place for anarchy. We keep expecting the lawmakers to write a law, change the law, fix a law or do something to control the behavior of individuals in society who are doing bad things. But believe it or not, the politicians have a lot on their plate and they have a lot of competing interests among themselves and even among their own constituents, so it’s hard to get them to pay attention.
Maybe they need some help from the community instead of just a few think tanks and special interests and large companies. Maybe they need you to look at certain problems and come up with a framework to help them.