Moral outrage in politics

One of Morton Blackwell’s Laws of the Public Policy Process is:

“Moral outrage is the most powerful motivating force in politics”.

It’s therefore with fascination that we learn that the Leader of Australia’s Labor Party, Kevin Rudd, was forced to admit that he paid a visit to a strip club during a boozy night out in New York in 2003.

Australians are still often perceived in Britain as beer-swilling, belching Bruces and Sheilas. So will Kevin Rudd’s admission, forced out of him against his will, harm his campaign? The conservative Prime Minister of Australia, John Howard, will clearly be hoping so as he struggles in the polls in part because of his clear support for President Bush.

The need to appeal to the heart

In an article in today’s Guardian, left-wing columnist Jonathan Freedland draws a lesson from successive US elections and observes that “voters want their leaders to appeal to the heart, not just the intellect”.

Has he too been reading Morton Blackwell’s Laws of the Public Policy Process? - for Law 42 reads:

“Politics is of the heart as well as of the mind. Many people don’t care how much you know until they know how much you care”

More McCain campaign troubles

The problems John McCain’s campaign is continuing to have, show the importance of two of The Laws of the Public Policy Process, specifically Law 36, Keep a Secure Home Base and Law 34, You cannot make friends of your enemies by making enemies of your friends.

John McCain has managed to alienate the core Republican vote with policies like campaign finance reform, immigration reform and attacks on the Christian Right without making any true friends on the left. Whilst some in the media may have seemed supportive, as soon as it no longer suited them, they dropped him. As ever the Laws show the underlying cause of his difficulties.  

Cindy Sheehan to run against Nancy Pelosi

It is reported that bereaved mother Cindy Sheehan - the soldier’s mother who spearheads the anti-war movement - is considering running against Nancy Pelosi, the Speaker of the US House of Representatives, next year if Pelosi fails to seek President Bush’s impeachment by 23 July. Not content with impeaching Bush over Iraq, Sheehan wants Bush impeached for torturing detainees, commuting the prison sentence of Lewis “Scooter” Libby, the domestic spying programme and the “inadequate and tragic” response to Hurricane Katrina. Not that she is an obsessive, you understand.

The Laws of the Public Policy Process are a central component of the teachings of Morton Blackwell, the President of the Leadership Institute. Morton trained, among others, Karl Rove so he clearly knows what he is talking about! I adapted Morton’s laws on Conservative Home last year in a weekly series.

Law 30 reads as follows: “Better a snake in the grass than a viper in your bosom.”

This essentially encourages you to avoid the temptation of bringing someone poisonous too close to you lest they subsequently turn on you to disastrous effect. It is better to keep such a person at arm’s length.

Nancy Pelosi must be wishing she had done that with Cindy Sheehan. But now the viper is in her bosom and causing her considerable pain.

Sheehan clearly has suffered some kind of post-traumatic breakdown after the death of her son in Iraq. Any sympathy one might have felt for her evaporates the moment she opens her mouth and a torent of un-Christian bile spews out. Her son, by all accounts, was a proud soldier who wanted to serve his country. Thankfully America has millions of such men and women who want to serve their country and who ignore the anti-American smears of radical campaigners such as Cindy Sheehan.