Jay Rosen‘s latest is Nine Story Lines in a New Campaign Narrative. Excellent, as usual. It should be required reading for candidates preparing to mix it up as the political season gets into full swing.
I wouldn’t be a techblogger if I didn’t add one more story line, without which the other nine wouldn’t mean squat.
We’ve only begun to see what can be done with tech tools as instruments of applied democracy.
More later, after I get some sleep.
While Jay and Doc are focused on the political process, their analyses also apply to organizations more generally. Both political campaigns and organizations are instruments for acquiring and deploying power (in the sense of the ability to accomplish work) effectively. The Dean campaign is a case study in progress of what can happen if you start with different premises. That case study is worth tracking on both levels – for what it portends for our political leadership and for what it suggests for leadership and management in general.
I’d also recommend looking at Ed Cone’s excellent case study of the Dean Campaign in Base Line magazine, “The Marketing of the President 2004.”
Finally, let me suggest that all of this can be fruitfully thought of in terms of the late Donella Meadow’s advice on places to intervene in a system.