Jim Moore’s blog: Innovation, Strategy, Public Policy

Many people have been discussing the influence of Bill and Hillary Clinton on the Wesley Clark campaign.  Here is the view from insiders in the Democratic Party:

1.  The Clintons are heavily supporting Wesley Clark in exchange for Clark choosing Hillary Clinton as the vice presidential candidate on Clark’s ticket.  Why is this good for Hillary?  Assuming Clark/Clinton win the nomination, and assuming Clark/Clinton also win the election, Hillary as vice president is in good position to run for president in 2008 or 2012.  In the meantime, both Clintons enjoy influencing policy, from her perch as VP, in the administration of a political neophite who is expected to be receptive to their advice.  Assuming Clark/Clinton win the nomination and lose the election, Hillary Clinton becomes the presumptive presidential candidate for 2008.

2.  The Clintons support Clark because they hope he can stop Howard Dean. Dean is the only real outsider in the campaign, and the only one who will attempt to reform the party if he wins the nomination.  Read “reform the party” as reducing the influence of big traditional party donors and money people, including Clinton-sponsored DNC Chair Terry McAuliff, as well as the Clintons themselves.  Contrary to perceptions, the Democratic party prior to campaign finance reform was not a party of grass-roots activism, but was actually more dependent on big donors than the Republicans. Dean’s grassroots fundraising, with support of MoveOn and others, is broadening political participation but is also eroding the power of the money men of the party, such as McAuliff.

Why is the Clintons’ role in the Clark campaign a problem for those of us who support reform of the Democratic Party?  Insiders I have talked to believe the Clintons are putting their own ambitions above the well-being of the party.  As a former president, Bill Clinton should be encouraging every viable candidate, and promoting the interests of the party.  Bill Clinton knows that the 2002 election was a strategic nightmare, with the party lacking a compelling message.  No progress has been made by the party on matching the electronic and strategic infrastructure enjoyed by Republicans.  Other than Dean, the candidates are lackluster. 

By seeking to trip up Howard Dean, Bill Clinton is discouraging the new, hopeful and exciting developments in the party.  Dean has a powerful message, a sophisticated Internet infrastructure, and charisma.  Dean is the only candidate who has been generating any real enthusiasm for the primary process, and the only one who has been bringing in large numbers of new people. Dean has almost single handedly helped voters and the party see that George Bush is beatable, but only by a candidate who has a distinctive, compelling vision for the future of the country. 

Dean is a centrist governor in the tradition of the orginal Clinton campaign, yet he is being tarred as too liberal to be elected.  This is patently untrue.  What makes Dean threatening to the party elite is that he IS electable–and that he owes the elite little or nothing.  If Bill Clinton cared about the party, Bill would be enthusiastic about Howard Dean.  But Bill Clinton can’t control Howard Dean, and so it seems that Bill is putting up Clark as a spoiler.

Chris Lydon has written a favorable blog about Clark today, but I treasure something Chris said to me last week, “Presidential nomination politics is gang warfare.  A bunch of guys get together and say, ‘hey, do you want to take the hill?  Let’s do it! How about you be the candidate and I be the money man?”

Clark may be a great guy, but in politics it helps to know who owns the candidate.

Our fiends at the quite wonderful Canadian International Development Research Center hosted a small (34 participants) meeting this past weekend here in Cambridge. The title was Information and Communications Technologies for Poverty Reduction. I’ve had a very busy week, but want to highlight a few faces now, and more later. Among the activists present was Onno Purbo, an extraordinary leader within the Indonesian web community—he and his followers have written literally hundreds of books in Indonesian about technology—mostly about how to put together home-brew networks and computers, including ham-radio-based long distance nets, high powered wifi, and other strange and wonderful combinations of gear that is relevant to communicating in a far-flung land where the proliferation of ICTs among the poor is at best discouraged by the government and the monopoly telco. Very inspiring—the spirit of the early days of the personal computer and the Internet—and now scaling up with perhaps 4 million Indonesians currently involved. The second superpower spreads in the archipelago.

This weekend I attended the Investigating the Mind conference at MIT, which centered around realtime dialogue between the Dalai Lama and other senior Buddhist monks and distinguished cognitive scientists and psychologists. http://www.mindandlife.org/current.conf.html

http://www.boston.com/dailyglobe2/257/metro/For_Dalai_Lama_at_MIT_mind_is_what_matters-.shtml

Listening to the Dalai Lama and other monks, it seemed clear that the single superpower idea is deeply rooted in individual psychology. Buddhist psychology sees each of us as susceptible to a number of mental afflictions including, among other things, excessive will to control, expressed as “grasping.” We lust for power. We want to make ourselves feel safe by exerting control over the world. The problem is that our desire for power often leaves us more powerless, because in grasping we tend to interfer with natural processes of individual and community growth and development.

Western psychology is far behind the Buddhists, in my view. Yet there were some interesting research findings discussed at the conference. My favorite psychologist was Richard Davidson from the University of Wisconsin. Working with senior monks, he finds their minds function very differently from those of non-meditators. For example he has used PET scans and MRIs to demonstrate that in experienced meditators the brain areas associated with joy and pleasure are dramatically more active than in non-meditators. He is also carrying out studies that show that short periods of non-religious mediation carried out by beginners over a few months have significantly positive effects on both brain and immune system function. http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2003/02/030204074125.htm

Now if we could just get going on that meditation program at the National Security Council! By the way, what a great name for it. Hmmm. Security.

The conviction that the United States is “the only superpower” and the “indispensable nation” is one of the most dangerous ideas infecting our country’s leaders. This addictive idea breeds insecurity and has the paradoxical effect of reducing rather than enhancing the positive influence of the US in the world. The reigning vision of the US as the only superpower is widely credited to the Bush administration, but in fact it is deeply entrenched in established political thinking. For example, former Secretary of State Madeline Albright, an intellectual leader of the Clinton administration, speaking at the recent Fortune/Aspen Institute Brainstorm conference, emphasized approvingly that the United States is the indispensable nation for its “unique combination” of moral, economic and military dominance—and happily predicted that US dominance will last for decades.

The superpower concept is not the invention of members of the Bush administration, although Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice and others have made it the visible center of US policy. The conviction that the United States has a superior government that can and should take stewardship for the entire world has infected American foreign affairs for decades. The superpower idea virus has hosts in the State Department, the Pentagon, and in liberal as well as conservative circles. Its proponents maintain their view despite strong evidence that the most important world problems—hatred, fear, trauma, moral and social erosion—not to mention environmental and economic fragility and degradation—are barely addressed by US power.

The war in Iraq showed that the US can dominate another conventional military—albeit a weak, third-world foe sapped by years of international isolation. But can the US “dominate” its way to a sustainable peace or to the successful propagation of a new, creative, open society? Not so easily, it seems, even in small countries like Iraq or Afghanistan. Much less, we might observe, across broader regions of the world.

HLS students who are interested in the blog network posse project are invited to attend Dave Winer’s blog evangalist session Thursday night at 7 PM in Baker House, the Berkman Center’s home, at 1587 Massachusetts Avenue. Those of us who want to explore the blog network project will rally after Dave’s session, probably at around 8 PM.

Tonight we are having a meeting at Berkman to discuss student involvment in a variety of initiatives that the Center sponsors. I’m going to discuss something called “Blog Network” in order to try an experiment in distributed work and self-organization using blogs. Basically, I will sponsor about five new blogs, to deal with topics that I think need to be highlighted, debated, defragmented, surveyed, explored.

For each topic, at least three Harvard Law students will create a “posse” that will make the blog bloom over the next twelve weeks.

The goal of each posse is to get into the conversation in the blogosphere, to bring others into the blogosphere as well to as the particular conversation, and to reach out to new voices and new ideas, and to be thought leaders and provoceurs.

The students will decide whether to use their own bylines or create one synthetic identify (like the Federalist papers), and how to open their site to other contributors who will show up. They will experiment with telepresence and various forms of emerging blog-related communication.

By the way, anyone reading this, I’d love have your thoughts–and when we get the blogs up, your involvement in whatever way makes sense.

The overall topics will be loosely defined by me up front, are expected to evolve over time, and include but are not limited to:

1. The relationship of grassroots, free thinking “second superpower” individuals and organizations to “first superpower” institutions and people, especially in the realm of international law and institutions, but also including the governance of the US and other major nations. Examples range from the grassroots swarms that have been super powering the Dean campaign, to activists working to influence the IMF and World Bank, to anti-landmine campaigners, to the folks who swarmed around the recently collapsed WTO talks in Cancun. By the way, many (most?) of us are both “second” and “first” superpower in our own consciousness. How do we make sense of that?

2. Consciousness and technology on the web. Especially political consciousness, “semantic democracy” (Charlie Nesson’s passion), and “emergent democracy” (Joi Ito’s passion). Blogs, smart mobs, telepresence and meta-conscousness in the blogosphere, etc. What are the interesting new technologies–and how are they providing platforms for the development of new forms of individual and collective intelligence, wisdom, play, love, hate, etc.

3. Polling data, democraphics, values and consciousness. How many progressive souls are there out there? Are there really 30 million hard core global consciousness people in the US? Are there 100 million or more in the industrial world? And by the way, how many hard core conservatives are there?

More important, perhaps people have “multiple selves” and can sometimes respond from higher places in themselves than others? How does this affect how we think about who is “out there?”

4. The role of entrepreneurship in sustainable development and open economies around the world. “Business to the four billion” who live below a dollar or so per day. Involvement of all 6.3 billion people. A changing world economy that needs to become sustainable economically, socially, and environmentally. The value of law and legal ethos in supporting entrepreneurs who are change agents in their societies. Grameen Bank and Grameen phone as obvious examples with non-obvious lessons. E.g. the biggest barrier to Grameen phone was not serving poor people, but dealing with opposition from the established state and state-owned telco.

5. Big ideas that animate social movements. How do memes spread? What sort of collective self-consciousness helps movements to expand and sustain themselves and thrive? What sort of consciousness diminishes them?

Tune in for more! These are just starting point ideas. Your contributions, by email, are welcome!

You know, in many ways I like John Kerry. So here is some feedback for the Kerry campaign: Really, most Democrats don’t buy into the whole “war on terrorism” shtick. Not that we don’t think security is important–of course we do. And not that we won’t put a premium on competence in foreign policy and military leadership–we will. But by the same token, most Democrats think Bush is grandstanding when it comes to this “war.” Democrats and many independents think it is a joke for George to call himself a “wartime president” and compare himself with Abraham Lincoln or FDR. So I can’t believe John Kerry’s blog today calls 9/11 “our generation’s Pearl Harbor!” John, your blogger has got to be kidding, that makes George Bush “our generation’s FDR! ” The “wartime president” theme is a Bush campaign meme. Why is your blog promoting it?

We need a president who can wage peace. We need a president who can seriously understand the complexities of today’s world, and lead its transformation. John Kerry probably has the capacities to do this. In my view he needs to organize himself, his team, his allies, and his message around this goal.

The Bush war on terrorism and his “first superpower” foreign policy is falling apart all around us. It is imploding. People are fast waking up to this. We are entering a new political period. By next February, people won’t want a next leader who can take the Bush “war” over and make it work. They will want a next leader who realizes, with them, that the Bush team’s entire conception and implementation of the “war” was mistaken. People will want a new leader with a new way forward.

Right now the campaigns for president have official blogs, and there are scores of informal political blogs swarming and flocking around the candidates. What will happen as the race continues? For example, if Dean wins the nomination, what will happen to all the blogs flocking around him? What will happen to the blogs of the other democractic candidates? What will happen to their flocks?

In the old mass media days the media becomes more focused as the candidate group is winnowed down. Because fewer and fewer groups can afford to buy TV time.

But in the new web days more and more groups and individuals will start up blogs–because the dollar cost is minimal, because more and more people are blogging anyway, and because the narrowing campaign will also feel more and more relevant, and thus will become more interesting to non-political junkies.

So there will be massive flocks and swarms whizzing around the landscape. We will need Technorati and Blogdex and all sorts of new tools to make sense of what emerges and what declines and what morphs and what is distorted. It will be a wild world.

And my sense is that the political bloggers of the candidates will need to become more and more aware of the “zeitgeist” of blogdome–just as media-savy candidates are aware of the zeitggeist of television-land. This will be, as they say, a whole new ball game. Leadership of flocks and swarms will spawn new tools, new skills, new kinds of folks–new kinds of consciousness.

Come to think of it, this is already happening–witness http://www.blogforamerica.com/

It finally hit me this morning at about 5:30 AM: The “first superpower” idea and geopolitical approach is a form of idolatry. In this case the false gods are military and economic power. Idolatry is defined in the Christian and Jewish traditions rather precisely as seeking to control God’s universe through man-made means (the “idols”). The idolatrous stance is contrasted with that of a person humbly and respectfully and with gratitude embracing God’s universe and appreciating his or her place in it.

And trusting that if we follow paths of truth and care, forces in the universe come together and help us, often in ways that can’t be understood by us.

You do not have to be a Christian to feel the wisdom in this approach to life. The great cybernetician and anthropologist Gregory Bateson pointed out that the human tendency to rely on will power and (illusory) physical domination is a kind of “bug” (in the computer sense) in our mental programming. It leads to addictive traps, where the more we try to control, the more we are helpless. Bateson thought of the AA Prayer as a useful corrective: “God grant me the serenity to accept what I cannot control, the courage to change what I can, and the wisdom to know the difference.”

The problem with the Bush administration (and, in fairness, most governments) is that they lack the wisdom to know the difference between what they can and cannot control. This problem seems to stem from a toxic combination of the generic seductions of power, made more virulent because it’s illusions are encouraged by very a specific meme or ideology: The idea that the US is the “essential nation” and the “only superpower.” The result is an idolatrous worship of American military and economic power. The predictable result is that we break our sword on challenges like Iraq. The more we seek to control the world though military and economic dominance, the more out of control our situation becomes. And the farther we move from the means of action and the modes of understanding that further a world at peace.

I am surprised that more Christian commentators are not picking up on this problem of idolatry.

Lots of interest these days in using the web for winning campaigns, and lots of interest in political language. But in this interest folks are predictably focused on what we can use now, not what we need to do together as a community to advance our capabilties.

For example, lots of interest in blogging and campaigns–but not too much interest in defining and refining–indeed rediscovering and reinventing democracy for our time. Deeper democracy, deeper political participation, and a “wiser politics” is clearly something we need. But few are discussing what is wise and what is not wise in our political process. And fewer are considering how the web, blogging, telepresence, etc. can be developed to further wisdom–in addition to “winning.”

On language, there is much rehashing of left and right language. For example, George Lakoff’s excellent thoughts on political language, originally on the web http://www.wwcd.org/issues/Lakoff.html are given a new look in the current American Prospect http://www.prospect.org/print/V14/8/lakoff-g.html

What is not really being discussed is how we can forge a new political langauge that speaks to our time now. Lakoff speaks of the political right as favoring “stern parent” language and ideas regarding government, and the left “nurturant parent” language and ideas. But how about some other language and ideas besides “government as parent?” I for one don’t want George Bush and John Ashcroft or Howard Dean and whoever to be my surrogate parent. I want government to provide a platform and context for creativity. I want it to favor emergence. I want it to set some broad rules within which our social ecosystem can thrive. But of course these are my ecological metaphors. I’d like us to find others, as well.