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You did it!!  You've got it!  Lotta hard work in back of you. Lotta hard work ahead. But really, it's all good. You are going to be stepping up and out and showing your stuff. Digging into a job - hopefully sooner rather than later. Digging further into learning and networking.  And truly, I hope you'll be showing your stuff to us all.

I'm always inspired by the energy, new passions and thoughtfulness of new librarians. And I want to echo what R. David Lankes wrote to the Syracuse graduates in his recent post: don't wait to break barriers, invent new ways of doing library work good, or pushing the envelope of fantastic.  Leap for it, push for it, do it. Do it now.

We sometimes get lost in the minutiae of our masters work and easily believe that we aren't really learning anything..."I could teach myself this!" kind of attitude. You get out, get that first professional job and think, "Whoa, I really didn't learn what I needed to know to face this crazy person or this screaming dad!".

But you did learn exactly what you needed to be successful - research skills, problem solving, the big picture of librarianship and it's history, how to learn more on any subject and skill and a critical eye to determine which way is best to go to make libraries more..better...indispensible.  And you did it in that atmosphere of higher learning that surrounded you with mentors, peers and discussions that formed your library worldview.

Now take that knowledge and keep building on it and push ahead and lead now. Don't wait until some old guy like me says, "Well, I think you're ready to be listened to." Go out and grab the brass ring now and shine, shine, shine.

Don't wait for permission - start that blog or tumblr. Leap into Facebook's ALA Think Tank group or Friend Feed's Library Society of the World or Flannel Friday. Start collaborating within Google groups or Twitter. Propose programs. Share thoughts. Pursue big ideas.

Fail. Learn. Try again. Succeed. Fail. Retrack. Tinker. Try again. Succeed. Listen, listen, listen. Learn, learn, learn. And lead and imagine and invent. And then share, share, share.

I am learning so much right now from current MLIS students and shiny new librarians of one, two, three, four and five years experience. After thirty seven years in the biz, you all are rocking my world and keeping me fresh and energized.

So give yourself permission to be that innovator, that mover and shaker and emerging leader. Don't be shy. Step right out, step right up and show your stuff. The library world is waiting for you.And so am I!

Image from Pixabay http://pixabay.com/

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By Gerald O’Collins, SJ

“Pope Benedict is 78 years of age. Father O’Collins, do you think he’ll resign at 80?” “Brian,” I said, “give him a chance. He hasn’t even started yet.” It was the afternoon of 19 April 2005, and I was high above St Peter’s Square standing on the BBC World TV platform with Brian Hanrahan. The senior cardinal deacon had just announced from the balcony of St Peter’s to a hundred thousand people gathered in the square: “Habemus Papam.” Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger had been elected pope.

Less than an hour earlier, white smoke pouring from a chimney poking up from the Sistine Chapel let the world know that the cardinal electors had chosen a successor to Pope John Paul II. The bells of Rome were supposed to ring out the news at once. But it took a quarter of an hour for them to chime in. When Hanrahan asked me why the bells hadn’t come in on cue, I pointed the finger at local inefficiency: “We’re in Italy, Brian.”

I was wrong. The keys to the telephone that should have let someone contact the bellringers were in the pocket of the dean of the college of cardinals, Joseph Ratzinger. He had gone into a change room to put on his white papal attire, and didn’t hand over the keys until he came out dressed as pope.

One of the oldest cardinals ever to be elected pope, after less than eight years in office Benedict XVI has now bravely decided to retire or, to use the “correct” word, abdicate. His declining health has made him surrender his role as Bishop of Rome, successor of St Peter, and visible head of the Catholic Christendom. He no longer has the stamina to give the Church the leadership it deserves and needs.

Years ago an Irish lady, after watching Benedict’s predecessor in action, said to me: “He popes well.” You didn’t need to be a specialized Vatican watcher to notice how John Paul II and Benedict “poped” very differently.

A charismatic, photogenic, and media-savvy leader, John Paul II proved a global, political figure who did as much as anyone to end European Communism. He more or less died on camera, with thousands of young people holding candles as they prayed and wept for their papal friend dying in his dimly lit apartment above St Peter’s Square.

Now Benedict’s papacy ends very differently. He will not be laid out for several million people to file past his open coffin. His fisherman’s ring will not be ceremoniously broken. There will be no official nine days of mourning or funeral service attended by world leaders and followed on television or radio by several billion people. He will not be lifted high above the crowd like a Viking king, as his coffin is carried for burial into the Basilica of St Peter’s. The first pope to use a pacemaker will quietly walk off the world stage.

In my latest book, an introduction to Catholicism, I naturally included a (smiling) picture of Pope Benedict. But he pales in comparison with the photos of John Paul II anointing and blessing the sick on a 1982 visit to the UK; meeting the Dalai Lama before going to pray for world peace in Assisi; in a prison cell visiting Mehmet Ali Agca, who had tried to assassinate him in May 1981; and hugging Mother Teresa of Calcutta after visiting one of her homes for the destitute and dying.

Yet the bibliography of that introduction contains no book written by John Paul II either before or after he became pope. But it does contain the enduring classic by Joseph Ratzinger, Introduction to Christianity (originally published 1967). Both as pope and earlier, it was through the force of his ideas rather than the force of his personality that Benedict XVI exercised his leadership.

The public relations record of Pope Benedict was far from perfect. He will be remembered for quoting some dismissive remarks about Islam made by a Byzantine emperor. That 2006  speech in Regensburg led to riots and worse in the Muslim world. Many have forgotten his visit later that year to the Blue Mosque in Istanbul when he turned towards Mecca and joined his hosts in silent prayer.

Catholics and other Christians around the world hope now for a forward-looking pope who can offer fresh leadership and deal quickly with some crying needs like the ordination of married men and the return to the local churches of the decision-making that some Vatican offices have arrogated to themselves.

When he speaks at midday from his apartment to the people gathered in St Peter’s Square on 24 February, the last Sunday before his resignation kicks in, Pope Benedict will be making his final public appearance before the people of Rome. A vast crowd will have streamed in from the city and suburbs to thank him with their thunderous applause. They cherished the clear, straightforward language of his sermons and homilies, and admire him for what will prove the defining moment of his papacy—his courageous decision to resign and pass the baton to a much younger person.

Gerald O’Collins received his Ph.D. in 1968 at the University of Cambridge, where he was a research fellow at Pembroke College. From 1973-2006, he taught at the Gregorian University (Rome) where he was also dean of the theology faculty (1985-91). Alone or with others, he has published fifty books, including Catholicism: A Very Short Introduction and The Second Vatican Council on Other Religions. As well as receiving over the years numerous honorary doctorates and other awards, in 2006 he was created a Companion of the General Division of the Order of Australia (AC), the highest civil honour granted through the Australian government. Currently he is a research professor of theology at St Mary’s University College,Twickenham (UK).

The Very Short Introductions (VSI) series combines a small format with authoritative analysis and big ideas for hundreds of topic areas. Written by our expert authors, these books can change the way you think about the things that interest you and are the perfect introduction to subjects you previously knew nothing about. Grow your knowledge with OUPblog and the VSI series every Friday!

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Image Credits: Pope Benedict XVI during general audition By Tadeusz Górny, public domain via Wikimedia Commons; Church of the Carmine, Martina Franca, Apulia, Italy. Statues of Mother Teresa and Pope John Paul II By Tango7174, creative commons licence via Wikimedia Commons

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The “need for public servants who can negotiate . . . moral minefields with wisdom and integrity is more urgent than ever,” says Mary Ann Glendon, author of the new book The Forum and the Tower: How Scholars and Politicians Have Imagined the World, from Plato to Eleanor Roosevelt. “It is hard to resist,” she continues, “the conclusion of the classical philosophers that no polity can afford to neglect the nurture and education of future citizens and statespersons.”

Her book serves as a walk through history, profiling those who both spoke and acted on firm convictions in civic life. Glendon, a professor of law at Harvard and former U.S. ambassador to the Vatican, discusses statesmen and scholars with National Review Online’s Kathryn Jean Lopez.

KATHRYN JEAN LOPEZ: Citing Max Weber, you note that “the qualities that make a first-rate thinker are not the same as those required for success in statesmanship.” Isn’t that a devastating problem for politics?

MARY ANN GLENDON: Not necessarily. Some of the greatest political achievements in history — the framing of the U.S. Constitution, the Corpus Juris of Justinian, the Napoleonic Codes, and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights — were the products of the synergy that came from collaboration between statespersons and scholars. Nearly all the scholars and political actors profiled in my book shared the belief that society benefits if political actors keep in touch with the world of ideas and political theorists attend to what is going on in the world around them.

Plato, who tried hard to keep a foot in both worlds, had little use for politicians who never looked beyond the business at hand, or philosophers who kept their heads in the clouds. The former, he said, develop minds that are “narrow and crooked.” As for philosophers, he warned that they need to stay grounded in reality, not only for the sake of philosophy, but in the interest of self-preservation: to assure the maintenance of conditions under which intellectual life can flourish.

LOPEZ: What does Aristotle mean when he indicates that the most choiceworthy callings are politics and philosophy? Are they?

GLENDON: Aristotle held that politics and philosophy were the most choiceworthy vocations for certain kinds of persons — those who are capable of pursuing them, and “most ambitious with respect to virtue.” I take the more capacious view that a person can have more than one vocation, and that all honest vocations can be paths to a virtuous life. Think of parenthood, for example! The challenge is to discern one’s own path toward the perfection of one’s nature, and to follow through on that discernment. Some of the persons profiled in my book (Plato, Locke, Tocqueville, Weber) were surprisingly slow to figure out where their own talents lay.

LOPEZ: You write of scholarship and statesmanship as vocations. Do we view them this way today? Do we raise scholars and statesmen? How do we present such choices positively in our homes and in our public discourse?

GLENDON: When Weber gave his famous lectures on scholarship and statesmanship as vocations nearly a hundred years ago, his use of that term was already heavy with irony. Then, as now, both the academy and government were highly bureaucratized and permeated with careerism. But most people still admire and hope for dedicated public servants, and we still look up to men and women who are passionately devoted to the disinterested quest for knowledge. Are we doing enough as a society to promote the qualities we value in scholars and statespersons? No, but the ideals survive nonetheless.

LOPEZ: You point out that “nearly every

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Scott, Elaine. 2012. Buried Alive! How 33 Miners Survived 69 Days Deep Under the Chilean Desert. New York: Clarion.

Though it may seem as if it were only yesterday, it's been nearly two years since the San José mine collapse in Chile's Atacama Desert. The first collapse occurred on August 5, 2010. For two days, an escape route remained open, however, the escape ladder was only 690 feet long. The distance to the surface was 2,300 feet. A subsequent and more devastating collapse occurred two days later on August 7, effectively sealing thirty-three miners underground. It was 9:55pm, October 13, 2010, when the last miner, foreman Luis Urzúa, finally emerged.

Buried Alive! offers a chronological story that is contextual and multi-faceted. Using a theme of cooperation (chapters are titled "Surviving Together," "Working Together," "Planning Together," "Living Together," and "Rejoicing Together"), Elaine Scott begins with an introduction of the various factors that draw men into the mine, including poverty, tradition, and national pride. Other chapters recount the extraordinary way that the miners, under the direction of Urzúa, known affectionately as Don Lucho, organized themselves fairly and purposefully to survive the ordeal, never knowing until they surfaced if they would survive.

Not covered much in televised accounts, was the real meaningful work that the men did to help themselves. They dug sanitary trenches, aided the drillers with useful information, and dug drainage and holding pools for the 18,421 gallons of water that were necessary to cool and lubricate the drill bits as they ground down to the mens' refuge, a 14-day project.

Scott also follows the cooperative scene at Camp Hope, the makeshift town including a school and medical facility, that sprung up to house the thousands of people living in tents above the mine - family members, would-be rescuers, Chilean military members, and more - all awaiting news of "los 33." And journalists were there to provide it,

an estimated 1,700 of them, representing thirty-three countries on five continents. The world had its eye, its ear, and most important, its heart on Camp Hope and the thirty-three men who were buried alive.

The cooperative (and, in the case of the drillers, competitive) spirit of the rescuers is chronicled as well. Rescue plans and offers of assistance arrived from around the globe.  The logistics of drilling so far down into the ground without mishap is explained in fascinating detail.

Most people will be familiar with the jubilant scenes of rescue, but it does not feel as "old news," rather, Scott's writing rekindles the emotions of the day.

An afterword tells the somewhat saddening stories of what has happened in the miners' lives since the rescue, but the overarching message of Buried Alive! is one of togetherness - for 69 days, the trapped miners, their families and the rest of the world were together in hopefulness.

 Buried Alive! How 33 Miners Survived 69 Days Deep Under the Chilean Desert is dedicated "To the thirty-three miners and those who worked, waited, and worried until they were finally free." I count myself among the millions of people who worried about the fate of these amazing men. This is a story that will live on for many, many years to come. Elaine Scott has done a superb job in telling it.

Extensively researched, sourced and indexed with detailed author's notes. Contains numerous photographs.
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This past month, I finished my first full term as Wisconsin’s Chapter Councilor on the ALA Council.  It has been a great adventure and I can hardly wait for the next two years of services as I continue my term. I have spent decades as an ALSC leader – serving on committees and as committee chair on process committees and even a time or two on an award committee. I have also spent decades as a leader in my own state association.  Combining these two streams of process junkie-hood and leadership makes for a perfect preparation for Council.

 

When I first talked to my library colleagues both in state and nationally about my new Council service, the biggest surprise I had was how many sympathized for me and thanked me for serving in such a difficult assignment.  What?!?! Were they nuts? I was looking forward to a new level of service and leadership. Was I missing something?

 

Happily, no. The Council of the past and the monster nightmare of people’s imaginations is not the ALA Council I serve on.  There is certainly debate but the rancor is missing. People have been welcoming, have provided support and insight for me and I can say that after one year I am feeling like I am home. I am getting to know some smart, savvy caring people from all types of libraries and all library positions. I am making contacts across divisions as well and talking about the issues I care about and becoming more knowledgable about issues that matter to others.  I am becoming stronger and smarter (I think!).

 

Just one little teeny tiny thing is missing for me.  Youth colleagues and leaders from ALSC are very few and far between. I have plenty of youth peeps from YALSA and AASL but ALSC is sadly underrepresented.  Where are you, my friends?

 

I know in the past we have had many more folks representing ALSC as at-large members.  Would you like to consider joining our small but merry (and meaningful) band?  It’s easy. You can submit your name to the nominations committee. You can petition for a spot on the ballot with a mere 25 signatures of ALA members which you can garner online.

 

It is amazing feeling to effect change on a divisional level and to work on behalf of youth librarianship and kids on that stage.  It is an extraordinary feeling to do the same thing on the ALA Council level. Won’t you consider joining me there?  I promise you, the water is fine….and fun!

Our guest blogger today is Marge Loch-Wouters, the Youth Services Coordinator at La Crosse (WI) Public Library. Marge is active in ALSC and blogs regularly about youth library services issues at Tiny Tips for Library Fun

If you’d like to write a guest post for the ALSC Blog, please contact Mary Voors, ALSC Blog manager, at alscblog@gmail.com.

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Oxford University Press USA is putting together a series of articles on a political topic each week for four weeks as the United States discusses the upcoming American presidential election, and Republican and Democratic National Conventions. Our scholars previously tackled the issues of money and politics, and the role of political conventions. This week we turn to the role of media in politics.

By Daniel Kreiss

A recent Pew study on the presidential candidates’ use of social media described Barack Obama as having a “substantial lead” over Mitt Romney. The metrics for the study were the amounts of content these candidates post, the number of platforms the campaigns are active on, and the differential responses of the public.

Metrics such as these often tell us very little about how campaigns are actually using social media and the Internet more generally, and their relative strategies for and success in doing so. If there is anything that I found in my last six years of researching new media and electoral campaigns, it is that much of what makes for the successful uptake of new media is often the organizational decisions that receive scant scholarly and journalistic attention. A focus on platforms and content tells us little about the issues of campaign organization, staffing, and coordination of digital and field efforts around electoral strategy that have much more impact on electoral success.

For one, both the Obama and Romney campaigns have created organizational structures that make the heads of their respective new media teams senior leadership. The Romney campaign learned this by studying Obama’s 2008 campaign, which was among the first efforts to organize a campaign in this way.

This organizational role, in turn, helps integrate new media operations within the larger electoral strategy of the campaign. This is important because effective campaigns take up new media in accordance with their electoral goals, and investments in new media have to be evaluated in light of overall campaign strategy. There are very real differences between the presidential candidates, their parties, their supporter and donor bases, and electoral strategies — so much so that we should not expect them to have the same goals for, strategies of using, and investments in their use of new and social media.

During the 2008 cycle, for example, the Obama team took to new media early on, with the specific goal of using an array of tools to overcome the institutional advantages of Senator Hillary Clinton. For the campaign, this meant using new media as a fundraising and especially organizing tool in accordance with the larger electoral goal of expanding the electorate among groups favorable to Obama with historically low rates of turnout: youth and African Americans. Above all, it meant using new media to translate the incredible energy of supporters gathering around the candidate into resources that campaigns need: money, message, volunteers, and ultimately, votes. And yet, while this worked for Obama, other candidates with essentially the same tools could not inspire the same supporter mobilization. The story of the 2008 Obama campaign is neatly summed up in what Michael Slaby, the 2008 campaign’s chief technology officer and the 2012 campaign’s chief integration and innovation officer, said to me: “We didn’t have to generate desire very often. We had to capture and empower interest and desire…. We made intelligent decisions that kept it growing but I don’t think anybody can really claim we started something.”

In this light, the continual hope, exemplified in the Pew Study, for “transforming campaigning into something more dynamic, more of a dialogue,” and the inevitable let down when this does not occur, is a case of our democratic aspirations placing undo expectations on campaigns. Campaigns have very concrete metrics for success given electoral institutions. Campaigns are temporal entities with defined goals: garnering the resources and ultimately the votes necessary to win elections. They are not about democratic renewal, although certainly that can happen. Furthermore, much of the discourse calling for dialogue ignores a fundamental fact: the goals of campaigns and their supporters on social media are often closely aligned around defeating opponents. Supporters embrace tasks and respond to one-way messaging because their goal is to win on election day, not remake democratic processes.

Indeed, a close look at the networked tools campaigns across the aisle are now routinely using in 2012 reveals an emphasis on electoral gain, and integrating tools within larger electoral strategy. The story of the last decade in electoral campaigning has been both about a reinvestment in old fashioned, shoe leather campaigning coupled with new data infrastructures designed to more efficiently and effectively coordinate volunteers and leverage their time, efforts, and social networks. As Rasmus Nielsen has analyzed in his recent book, in the face of widespread practitioner recognition of the diminishing returns of broadcast television ads, fragmented audiences, narrowly decided contests, and social science findings, campaigns have increasingly enlisted humans as media through what he calls “personalized political communication.” Campaigns deploy field volunteers on the basis of voter modeling and targeting supported by a vast, national data infrastructure stitched together from a host of public (voter registration, turnout, and real estate records), commercial (credit card information, magazine subscription lists), party (historical canvass data), and increasingly social network data.

Leveraging people as media in the field complements the ways in which campaigns enlist supporters as the conduits of strategic communications to their strong and weak ties online. Campaigns seek to utilize the social affordances of platforms such as Facebook and Twitter to create what I call new “digital two step flows” of political communication, where official campaign content circulates virally through networks of supporters. On one level, geographic-based volunteering in supporters’ communities is now supported by networked devices, such as the Obama Dashboard volunteer platform that creates teams based on location, and mobile apps that display local voter contact targets and scripts for contacting them. On another, through networked media far-flung affinity, professional, and social ties can now serve as channels of political communication designed to mobilize donors and online volunteers. Campaigns believe that political communication coming from supporters contacting voters through their geographic and social networks is more persuasive.

Alongside the fashioning of supporters into media and their social networks into channels, campaigns have developed sophisticated “computational management” practices that leverage media as internal and external coordination devices. New media is a closed loop; every expenditure can be tracked in terms of its return on investment given the ability to generate real time results of supporters’ interactions with networked media. If creating digital two step flows remains more art than science as campaigns struggle to make content go viral, optimizing web content and online advertising is data-driven to probabilistically increase the likelihood that supporters will take the actions campaigns want them to. Optimization is based around continually running experimental trials of web content and design in order to probabilistically increase the likelihood of desired outcomes. This means campaigns vary the format, colors, content, shapes, images, and videos of a whole range of email and website content based on the characteristics of particular users to find what is most optimal for increasing returns. In 2008, for example, the Obama campaign created over 2,000 different versions of its contribution page, and across the campaign optimization accounted for $57 million dollars, which essentially paid for the campaign’s general election budgets in Florida and Ohio.

At the same time, while television advertising has dominated campaign expenditures for much of the last half century, campaigns are increasingly investing in online advertising, which is premised on being able to access new sources of behavioral, demographic, and affinity data that allows for the more sophisticated targeting and tailoring of political messages. Campaigns can match online IP addresses with party voter files, allowing them to target priority voters. Campaigns use this matching, along with behavioral, demographic, interest, and look-alike targeting (matching voters based on the characteristics they share with others with known political preferences), to deliver online ads for the purposes of list-building, mobilizing supporters to get involved, and persuading undecideds.

Despite the best attempts of staffers, campaigns remain messy, complicated affairs. While it would be easy to see things such as computational management and online advertising in Orwellian terms, the reality is that campaigns are continually creating and appropriating new tools and platforms because their control over the electorate is limited. Candidates still contend with intermediaries in the press, opponents engaging in their own strategic communications, and voters who have limited attention spans, social attachments, and partisan affiliations that mitigate the effects of even the most finely tailored advertising. Millions, meanwhile, refuse to engage in the process, a massive silent minority that campaigns only spend significant resources on if they have them. There must always be political desire that exists prior to any of these targeted communications practices, or else supporters and voters will tune them out like much else that is peripheral to their core concerns.

In the end, as another presidential general election takes shape, we see continuities in electoral politics in the face of considerable technological change.

Daniel Kreiss is Assistant Professor in the School of Journalism and Mass Communication at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Kreiss’s research explores the impact of technological change on the public sphere and political practice. In Taking Our Country Back: The Crafting of Networked Politics from Howard Dean to Barack Obama (Oxford University Press, 2012), Kreiss presents the history of new media and Democratic Party political campaigning over the last decade. Kreiss is an affiliated fellow of the Information Society Project at Yale Law School and received a Ph.D. in Communication from Stanford University. Kreiss’s work has appeared in New Media and Society, Critical Studies in Media Communication, The Journal of Information Technology and Politics, and The International Journal of Communication, in addition to other academic journals. You can find out more about Kreiss’s research at http://danielkreiss.com or follow him on Twitter at @kreissdaniel

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We're getting ready for the OCLC Symposium here in Chicago at the Hilton Grand Ballroom. The presentation is ready, movies queued and backups made. I'll be blogging/tweeting as much as I can, although there's no internet in the ballroom. (Hilton FAIL)

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In 1965, Marshall Ganz joined Cesar Chavez and the United Farm Workers, where he worked for 16 years and ultimately became Director of Organizing.  Most recently, he advised Barack Obama’s campaign on organizing, training, and leadership development.  He is now Lecturer in Public Policy at the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University.  His most recent book, Why David Sometimes Wins: Leadership, Organization, and Strategy in the California Farm Worker Movement, tells the story of the UFW’s groundbreaking victory, drawing out larger lessons from this dramatic tale.  In the excerpt below we learn quickly about the UFW’s victory.  Pick up a copy of Why David Sometimes Wins to find how this miraculous feat was accomplished.

On Easter Sunday morning, April 10, 1966, Roberto Roman, walking barefoot, bore his heavy wooden cross triumphantly over the Sacramento River Bridge, down the Capitol Mall, and up the steps of the state capitol of California.  Roman, an immigrant Mexican farm worker, was accompanied by 51 other originales- striking grape workers who had walked 300 miles in their perigrinación, or pilgrimage, from Delano to Sacramento.  They were met by a crowd of 10,000 people who had come from throughout the state to share in their unexpected victory.

For seven months, striking grape workers organized by the fledgling National Farm Workers Association (NFWA) had endured picket lines, strike breakers, arrests, economic uncertainty, and, at times, despair.  But they had also been buoyed by the support of religious leaders, students, civil rights groups, and trade unionists.  Many supporters had traveled to Delano to bring food, clothing, money, and messages of solidarity, and they had begun to respond to the farm workers’ call for a nationwide consumer boycott of Schenley Industries, a national liquor distributor and major Delano grape grower.  In this winter of 1966, as the new grape season approached, NFWA leaders decided to conduct the 300-mile perigrinación from Delano to Sacramento in order to mobilize fresh support for the strike among farm workers, to call attention to the boycott among the public, and to observe Lent.

The farm workers began the perigrinación on March 17, carrying banners of Our Lady of Guadalupe, patron saint of Mexico, portraits of the Mexican campesino leader Emiliano Zapata, and placards proclaiming peregrinación, penitencia, revolución- pilgrimage, penance, revolution.  They also carried signs calling on supporters to boycott Schenley.  Roberto Roman carried his six-foot-tall wooden cross, constructed with two-by-fours and draped in black cloth.  Of the strikers selected to march the full distance, William King, the oldest, was 63, and Augustine Hernandex, the youngest, was 17.  Nearly one-quarter were women.

Launched the day after Senator Robert Kennedy had visited Delano to take part in hearings being conducted by the U.S. Senate Subcommittee on Migratory Labor, the march attracted wide public attention from the start.  Televised images of a line of helmeted police blocking the marchers’ departure-calling it a “parade without a permit”- evoked images of police lines in Selma, Alabama, just the year before.  As the marchers progressed up the valley from town to town, public interest grew.  A crowd of more than 1,000 welcomed the marchers to Fresno at the end of the first week.  Daily bulletins began to appear in the San Francisco Bay Area press, chronicling the progress of the march.  Reporters profiled the strikers, discussed why they would walk 300 miles, and analyzed what the strike was all about.  Roman Catholic and Episcopal bishops urged the faithful to join the pilgrimage, and the Northern California Board of Rabbis came to share Passover matzo.  The march powerfully expressed not only the farm workers’ call for justice, but also the Mexican-American community’s claims for a voice in public life.  As Cesar Chavez, the NFWA’s leader, later described it, the march was also a way, at an individual level, of “training ourselves to endure the long, long struggle, which by this time had become evident..would be required.  We wanted to be fit not only physically but also spiritually.”

On the afternoon of April 3, as the marchers arrived in Stockton, still a week’s march south of Sacramento, Schenley’s lawyer reached Chavez on the phone.  Schenley had little interest in remaining the object of a boycott, especially as the marchers’ arrival in Sacramento promised to become a national anti-Schenley rally.  Schenley wanted to settle.  Three days of hurried negotiations followed.  The result was the first real union contract in California farm labor history- a multi-year agreement providing immediate improvements in wages, hours, and working conditions and, perhaps most important, formal recognition of the NFWA.  Chavez announced the breakthrough on the Thursday.  By Saturday afternoon, some 2,000 marchers had gathered on the grounds of Our Lady of Grace School in West Sacramento, which was on a hill looking across the Sacramento River to the capital city that they would enter the next morning.  During the prayer service that evening, more than one speaker compared them to the ancient Israelites camped across the River Jordan from the Promised Land.  That night, Roberto Roman carefully redraped his cross in white and decorated it with spring flowers.  The next morning, barefoot, he carried it triumphantly into the city.

How did California farm workers achieve this remarkable breakthrough?  And why did a fledgling association of farm workers achieve it rather than the AFL-CIO or the Teamsters, its far more powerful rivals?

Since 1900, repeated attempts to organize a farm workers’ union in California had faled because the farm owners-or “growers”-had vigorously resisted farm labor organizing, often violently.  Their large-scale, specialized, and integrated agricultural enterprises required large numbers of seasonal workers to be available whenever and wherever they were needed.  At harvest time, these workers held the economic well-being of these enterprises literally in their hands.  So the growers protected themselves-and held labor costs down-by recruiting a particularly powerless workforce of impoverished new immigrants who lacked the political rights of other Americans and who, as peopel of color, faced racial barriers in all spheres of life.  For farm workers, the result was low wages, poor living and working conditions, and a lack of security for themselves and their families…

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Mobile Pants: January 14

Ahem. For my first trick, I’d like to demonstrate [drum roll]… flaking out!

[scattered applause]

When I posted about Mobile Pants, I neglected to mention that I would be in Seattle. Oops? I’m back home today but staying in the studio. Seattle was my Mobile Pants location this week.

I’ll post my planned whereabouts on Wednesday, I promise. Likely I’ll be in NoPo at Lucky Lab. Thursday, January 21st.

Lead, follow, or get out of the way

That’s one of my favorite quotes, by Thomas Paine. I admit, it sounds kind of like something you’d hear on an “Outward Bound” retreat or something your boss might say to “motivate.” Framed in those circumstances, it makes me want to vomit. However, in my own little world it’s sometimes helpful for sorting things out.

What made me think of it today was a hater comment on a forum I belong to. Haters just get in the way.

See, I meet a lot of people every week. Many of them are small business people (which includes freelance designers, illustrators, and animators). They’re all trying to get work, keep work, and figure out how to grow their businesses.

Some of them are confident but looking for new ways to get where they want to go. Some are not so confident and looking for direction. Some are downright terrified or lost and need a boost from someone else.

It’s extremely rare that any one of these people is only looking out for Numero Uno, even if Numero Uno is their first priority at the moment. Most people I meet, even when they’re struggling, are ready to jump in and help someone else.

For that reason, I’m confident that even the terrified people are going to figure out a way to succeed, even if it takes longer than they hope. It’s because of their passion for what they’re doing combined with a passion for seeing other people do well. It’s a powerful combination.

Those people are looking for ways to lead their people, sometimes by following other people to see how it can be done.

None of these people are in the way, because they’re too damn busy trying to make something happen.

Haters are trying to stop things from happening. They don’t follow and they certainly don’t lead.

The thing is, everyone has off days. Everyone says things sometimes that they could have phrased more tactfully (myself included). It happens. It’s easier to let fly when you’re behind the safe wall of servers and IP addresses.

But there’s a fundamental difference between someone having an off day and someone who expresses themselves in a way that is purposely hurtful (i.e.; in the way). Do you get that?

Even so, the so-called Haters are deeply scared themselves. They have their own fears and reasons for being afraid. So they’re still people, but they’ve put themselves in the way of you accomplishing your stuff.

So what do you do when a “hater” gets in your way? One of two things:

A. Ignore it. Pretty much everyone else recognizes the “hater comment,” so don’t feel like you even have to acknowledge anything. What’s there to acknowledge, anyway?

B. Respond in the most diplomatic way possible – and turn it over to them for answers. What are they willing to do to help improve things? Are they willing to go farther than mere complaining? You’ll find out soon enough.

Sounds easy-peasy, right? Riiiight.

Even when you understand all of this logically, the raw emotion of somebody hating on you and your thoughts is probably still there. Seek out someone you trust to help you analyze the comment. Vent. Get it off your chest, blow up. Be illog

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Mobile Pants: January 14

Ahem. For my first trick, I’d like to demonstrate [drum roll]… flaking out!

[scattered applause]

When I posted about Mobile Pants, I neglected to mention that I would be in Seattle. Oops? I’m back home today but staying in the studio. Seattle was my Mobile Pants location this week.

I’ll post my planned whereabouts on Wednesday, I promise. Likely I’ll be in NoPo at Lucky Lab. Thursday, January 21st.

Lead, follow, or get out of the way

That’s one of my favorite quotes, by Thomas Paine. I admit, it sounds kind of like something you’d hear on an “Outward Bound” retreat or something your boss might say to “motivate.” Framed in those circumstances, it makes me want to vomit. However, in my own little world it’s sometimes helpful for sorting things out.

What made me think of it today was a hater comment on a forum I belong to. Haters just get in the way.

See, I meet a lot of people every week. Many of them are small business people (which includes freelance designers, illustrators, and animators). They’re all trying to get work, keep work, and figure out how to grow their businesses.

Some of them are confident but looking for new ways to get where they want to go. Some are not so confident and looking for direction. Some are downright terrified or lost and need a boost from someone else.

It’s extremely rare that any one of these people is only looking out for Numero Uno, even if Numero Uno is their first priority at the moment. Most people I meet, even when they’re struggling, are ready to jump in and help someone else.

For that reason, I’m confident that even the terrified people are going to figure out a way to succeed, even if it takes longer than they hope. It’s because of their passion for what they’re doing combined with a passion for seeing other people do well. It’s a powerful combination.

Those people are looking for ways to lead their people, sometimes by following other people to see how it can be done.

None of these people are in the way, because they’re too damn busy trying to make something happen.

Haters are trying to stop things from happening. They don’t follow and they certainly don’t lead.

The thing is, everyone has off days. Everyone says things sometimes that they could have phrased more tactfully (myself included). It happens. It’s easier to let fly when you’re behind the safe wall of servers and IP addresses.

But there’s a fundamental difference between someone having an off day and someone who expresses themselves in a way that is purposely hurtful (i.e.; in the way). Do you get that?

Even so, the so-called Haters are deeply scared themselves. They have their own fears and reasons for being afraid. So they’re still people, but they’ve put themselves in the way of you accomplishing your stuff.

So what do you do when a “hater” gets in your way? One of two things:

A. Ignore it. Pretty much everyone else recognizes the “hater comment,” so don’t feel like you even have to acknowledge anything. What’s there to acknowledge, anyway?

B. Respond in the most diplomatic way possible – and turn it over to them for answers. What are they willing to do to help improve things? Are they willing to go farther than mere complaining? You’ll find out soon enough.

Sounds easy-peasy, right? Riiiight.

Even when you understand all of this logically, the raw emotion of somebody hating on you and your thoughts is probably still there. Seek out someone you trust to help you analyze the comment. Vent. Get it off your chest, blow up. Be illog

Add a Comment

Elvin Lim is Assistant Professor of Government at Wesleyan University and author of The Anti-intellectual Presidency, which draws on interviews with more than 40 presidential speechwriters to investigate this relentless qualitative decline, over the course of 200 years, in our presidents’ ability to communicate with the public. He also blogs at www.elvinlim.com. In the article below he looks at Obama’s leadership. See Lim’s previous OUPblogs here.

Presidents struggle to take charge when crises befall the nation. In the immediate aftermath of disaster, whether it be the terrorist attacks of September 11, Katrina, or a massive oil spill, Presidents Bush and Obama alike have been accused of being slow to take charge. Despite the conventional narrative that crises unite the country and cause us to rally round the flag, the truth is that the American presidency is not an institution to which we quickly rally around because we have unrealistic expectations of what presidents can and should do.

While it has become a presidential cliché to declare, Harry Truman believed, that the “buck stops here,” it never does. Nowhere is this more obvious than in the oil spill disaster in the Gulf. The reason why the cliché doesn’t work is that even if the president may have the will to take charge, he cannot be responsible for someone else’s mistake, and even he is, he and the federal government lacks the technological resources to clean up BP’s spill. Incidentally, the first branch, Congress, ought to have some responsibility too.

Like the press and the American people, the White House clearly has not worked out the ethical boundaries of culpability versus responsibility, which it why it has floundered in articulating, exercising, and then defending the proper role of government in handling the present crisis. All this is compounded by the fact that the American media demands and expects a semblance of control even as nature and a complex reality stacks up against one.

While everyone is asking for it, no one knows what leadership means in this situation. If asked, talking heads would each have a different answer. The fact remains that the White House does not have plenary control over corporations and regulatory agencies, nor should it. The President can entreat other oil companies to chip in, but he does not have the authority to command them to do so. The President can pressure BP to be transparent about its operations, but he cannot seize BP’s assets or command a corporation to deploy its assets whichever way the White House directs.

And so the President has made repeated trips to the Gulf to show that whether or not he is in charge, he is at least in the loop and emotionally invested. Empathy, apparently, is a virtue in presidents if not in judges. We desire “activist” presidents, but events do not always permit them.  If we insist on turning leadership into messiahship, we should hardly be surprised at the president’s showmanship.

Given the contested and myriad models of leadership being purveyed on the Left and Right, it behooves the President, at the very least, to decide exactly and then defend what his leadership amounts to. If Obama believes that the buck really stops at the White House, then, as the Left desires, the regulatory power of the federal government must be considerably increased. If he does not want bigger government, then he needs to educate the American people and the Right that the buck really doesn’t stop with government, but at civil society or somewhere else. Right now Obama hasn’t made up his mind, but in this vacillation he is trying to have his cake and eat i

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By Elvin Lim

In recent memory, there was Al Gore , then it was John Kerry. It was a only a matter of time before President Barack Obama would be compared to the failed Democratic presidential bid of Michael Dukakis in 1988. According to Noemi Emery, Dukakis and Obama are “both creatures of the liberal Northeast and of Harvard, with no sense at all of most of the rest of the country; both rationalists who impose legalistic criteria on emotion-rich subjects; both with fixed ideas of who society’s victims are, which do not accord with the views of the public.”

With the economy still struggling and the President insistently on the unpopular side of the debate about the Ground Zero mosque , Barack Obama has become the newest target of an ancient charge that Democrats are “clueless, condescending, and costly.”

Abraham Lincoln once invited the nation to be guided by “the better angels of our nature.” But when he said those words in 1861, the North was less than inspired and the South was surely unmoved. The nation did eventually come to the right conclusion about slavery by the end of the Civil War but it would take much longer (via the detour called Jim Crow) before we came close to the right conclusion about racial equality.

The civic education of a nation takes time, and Barack Obama should take heed. In a democracy, public opinion is king. And the king should either be obeyed (and this is typically the path of least resistance), or he should be educated (this is leadership). But Barack Obama has done neither. People say he has been too professorial. But maybe he hasn’t been professorial enough.

For after endorsing the idea of the mosque near Ground Zero and resisting the path of least resistance, a day later, the president back-tracked, saying, “I was not commenting and I will not comment on the wisdom of making the decision to put a mosque there. I was commenting very specifically on the right that people have that dates back to our founding.” (As Kerry was for the Iraq war before he was against it.) Well done, Polonius.

If Obama was referring to the Declaration of Independence, he should have known (as Lincoln came to know) that even truths which are self-evident must nevertheless be said, resaid, and said again before stubborn majorities come to see the light. Obama should either have deferred to the majority against the idea of the mosque, or tried to convince the majority that their particular sensitivity about the location of the mosque was illegitimate. What he should not have done was perform the unhappy medium: tell people they were wrong but not wrong enough that the President himself would take up the considerable challenge (called leadership) of disabusing stubborn majorities of their ill-conceived conclusions.

If presidents dare tell the American people that they are wrong, then they should also be brave enough to follow through with a thorough explanation. “I will not comment on the wisdom of making the decision to put a mosque there” is not an explanation. It is an abdication.

Where Gore, Kerry, and now Obama have fallen short is their failure to assume that that which is self-evident to them almost always demands explanation for others. And quite a lot of it, because our better angels have never popped up spontaneously like a burning bush. Ask the abolitionists, and the suffragists (and the best teachers): they of all people knew that intuitions feel utterly right and unassailable until they are brought under the prolonged and penetrating light of reason. We have always fumbled our way toward the right side of history because most of our leaders have bowed to public opinion where

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I hope you noticed our new look. Snazzy, heh? Well, like it or not, the tagline is here to stay. There’s good inside everyone and it’s about time we show it. That’s the central theme to my new book Driven and the new theme for this site, so hang on. We’re going to see if we can find the good inside you.

Take a look at the leaders in your life: your teachers, coaches, instructors, bosses, parents. . .Are they leaders by design or by fortune (misfortune in some cases)? Something that’s inside itching to get out? Or something life feeds us along the way?

In the movie Night at the Museum, Pres. Roosevelt tells us some folks are born leaders while others have leadership thrust upon them. Then agan, Vince Lombardi once said “Leaders are made, they are not born. They are made by hard effort, which is the price which all of us must pay to achieve any goal that is worthwhile.”

So which is it? What do you think?

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In my last blog I wrote that it is common for one person to be the decision maker, leader, boss, or, whatever you want to call it, in a relationship. Sometimes that person is aware of it and takes advantage of his dominance; sometimes it comes about in a very subtle way, as I described in many European marriages I witnessed as a child.

The whole subject got me thinking about the person or persons who are being dominated, be they wives, children, office workers, farm hands, secretaries, etc. I think sometimes people are content to be bossed around because it takes the responsibility of making decisions away from them. It is my feeling about people who follow certain religious leaders who dictate to others how they are to live their lives.

Most usual, in my opinion, people are not happy to be controlled in any way. How do they then deal with their discontent? They may seek to dethrone the dominant person by fighting for his/her position as in a family, business, law office, etc. Perhaps they will do as I did when I felt I could not live being dominated by my father. I left the household and moved to another city. I have known others who have left their religion, their job, and even their family.

For me it is clear that being bossed/dominated does not work in the long run. What I didn’t know was that my family members would eventaully follow me to me new home city, forcing me then to take over the leadership position. I hope I didn’t abuse that power.

Filed under: Dominance, Personalities Tagged: change, Dominance, frustration, leadership, marriage, Personalities, relationships

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In the upcoming days, I'll let you know about a new Saints and Spinners feature I'm developing.

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Some of you may remember my attempts to potty-train Lucia during Mother Reader's 48 Hour Book Challenge and my search for a patron saint of potty-training. My daughter now uses the potty consistently. The next challenge is getting her to go consistently to the bathroom before it becomes an emergency. Bede and I were inspired by the Advent calendar as an incentive for Lucia to use the potty even

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I thought you might like to see the latest completed picture from Lucia's potty challenge. For each day that Lucia goes without wetting her trousers, she gets a picture of her choice in one of the windows. The windows in the two turrets are reserved for night-time challenges. Here is a partial list of the people she's requested for her windows. Can you spot them? A robber (inspired by Audrey

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I recently reviewed Mythological Creatures: a Classical Beastiary, by Lynn Curlee. I read to Lucia the one-page overview of the gorgon Medusa, and now the pages of her sketchpad are thronging with snakey-haired gorgons. Next to one of the pictures is an M, a character that looks like an A but is supposed to be an E, and a D. Bede said that Lucia told him she had spelled “Medusa.” This is the

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Last night, we had some family and friends over for dinner. At one point, Lucia took her napkin and dipped it into my brother's girlfriend's wine. I was shocked. "That was mean and rude, "I said. "Why did you do it?" Lucia replied, "I was being Veronica wiping the face of Jesus." "Oh," I said. "I'm glad you weren't being mean-- you were just being... interesting." I asked her apologize to my

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It's the summer of 1963, and all is not well. Medgar Evans has just been shot, four little girls have been firebombed while at Sunday School, and who knows what else is going on that is not making the news.

Addie Ann Pickett lives in Kuckachoo Mississippi with her mama, her Uncle Bump (on account of his muscles), and her brother Elias. Her biggest concerns of the summer are working with her Uncle at Old Man Adams' place, trying to convince her best friend Delilah that jumping double dutch isn't baby stuff, and worrying about
7th grade next year with Mrs. Jacks over at Country Colored (West Thunder Creek Junior High School, if you please!)

Things start changing when Old Man Adams up and dies. No one is more surprised than Addie Ann when she, her Uncle and Elmira the cook, are summoned up to the house for the reading of the will. Mr. Adams left a little something for each of them. Elmira gets his dutch oven, Addie Ann gets the television (that she used to secretly watch sometimes), and Uncle Bump gets a beautiful gold pocket watch. Everyone there is most interested in what will become of the house and grounds. After all, Old Man Adams has the best garden around.

Imagine the looks on the sheriff's and mayor's faces when the lawyer announces that the garden is to be a shared community garden for whites and colored folks alike! But when most people in power are racist from there toes on up, this seems like a piece of Old Man Adams will that won't be honoured.

Then something even worse happens. One day when Addie Ann's brother brings here to the general store, two bully white boys take her cat from her. All because she raised her eyes, and doesn't know her place. One boy is about to drop kick poor Flapjack when Elias comes to the rescue, lobs a honeypot at the boys head, knocks him out and breaks his leg. Elias takes off swimming for his life in the Bayou. Addie Ann knows the sheriff and his hounds, along with the Klan will be after Elias.

What follows is Addie Ann's struggle to get through. Her struggle to come to grips with what has happened to her family. And her realization that now is her time. The reverend always said that she would know when her time to the movement would come. When the hounds come for her Uncle, she knows it's her time, and Addie Ann rises to the occasion.

Brilliantly written, A Thousand Never Evers should have a place in every public and school library. Addie Ann and her family come alive off the page, as does the town of Kuckachoo itself. Equally heartbreaking and inspiring, Shana Burg has taken her own family's calling to the civil rights movement and made it into a work of art.

This is one of the rare times that I put a recommendation here and at Booktopia. I do think that this book really does span from tween to young adult. The issues that arise can be discussed in various manners, and the summer of 1963 is one that we all need to know and think about!

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It's the summer of 1963, and all is not well. Medgar Evans has just been shot, four little girls have been firebombed while at Sunday School, and who knows what else is going on that is not making the news.

Addie Ann Pickett lives in Kuckachoo Mississippi with her mama, her Uncle Bump (on account of his muscles), and her brother Elias. Her biggest concerns of the summer are working with her Uncle at Old Man Adams' place, trying to convince her best friend Delilah that jumping double dutch isn't baby stuff, and worrying about
7th grade next year with Mrs. Jacks over at Country Colored (West Thunder Creek Junior High School, if you please!)

Things start changing when Old Man Adams up and dies. No one is more surprised than Addie Ann when she, her Uncle and Elmira the cook, are summoned up to the house for the reading of the will. Mr. Adams left a little something for each of them. Elmira gets his dutch oven, Addie Ann gets the television (that she used to secretly watch sometimes), and Uncle Bump gets a beautiful gold pocket watch. Everyone there is most interested in what will become of the house and grounds. After all, Old Man Adams has the best garden around.

Imagine the looks on the sheriff's and mayor's faces when the lawyer announces that the garden is to be a shared community garden for whites and colored folks alike! But when most people in power are racist from there toes on up, this seems like a piece of Old Man Adams will that won't be honoured.

Then something even worse happens. One day when Addie Ann's brother brings here to the general store, two bully white boys take her cat from her. All because she raised her eyes, and doesn't know her place. One boy is about to drop kick poor Flapjack when Elias comes to the rescue, lobs a honeypot at the boys head, knocks him out and breaks his leg. Elias takes off swimming for his life in the Bayou. Addie Ann knows the sheriff and his hounds, along with the Klan will be after Elias.

What follows is Addie Ann's struggle to get through. Her struggle to come to grips with what has happened to her family. And her realization that now is her time. The reverend always said that she would know when her time to the movement would come. When the hounds come for her Uncle, she knows it's her time, and Addie Ann rises to the occasion.

Brilliantly written, A Thousand Never Evers should have a place in every public and school library. Addie Ann and her family come alive off the page, as does the town of Kuckachoo itself. Equally heartbreaking and inspiring, Shana Burg has taken her own family's calling to the civil rights movement and made it into a work of art.

This is one of the rare times that I put a recommendation here and at Welcome to My Tweendom. I do think that this book really does span from tween to young adult. The issues that arise can be discussed in various manners, and the summer of 1963 is one that we all need to know and think about!

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Charles O. Jones is Non-Resident Senior Fellow at The Brookings Institution and the author of many books including Passages to the Presidency and Preparing to be President: The Memos of Richard E. Neustadt. In his most recent book, The American Presidency: A Very Short Introduction, Jones has written a marvelously concise survey that is packed with information about the presidency, some of it quite surprising. We learn, for example, that the Founders adopted the word “president” over “governor” and other alternatives because it suggested a light hand, as in one who presides, rather than rules.  In the original article below Jones analyzes Obama’s term as President-Elect.

Following his victory, President-Elect Barack Obama conducted a model transition, one suited to the standards set by successful transitions in the post-World War II era, most notably those of John F. Kennedy in 1960 and Ronald W. Reagan in 1980. Obama played it by the book, revealing that “change you can believe in” is to be achieved by governing methods he can trust.

During the 1960 campaign Kennedy reportedly said: “If I am elected, I don’t want to wake up on November 9 [the morning after the election] and ask myself ‘What in the world do I do now?’” The answer to that question was then, and remains, fairly simple. You prepare to be president. Arrangements begin with clear notions of who you have become, what the job entails, and who can be of help.

Obama became a presidential candidate in the 2008 campaign. That assertion is less trite than it appears. John McCain remained a maverick senator running for president, Hillary Clinton was an heir apparent First Lady, John Kerry a backbench senator in 2004, Al Gore an heir apparent Vice President in 2000. No one of these aspirants fully adopted the role of presidential candidate. Obama did.

Not having become an in-house senator in his brief service or been in a position to imagine himself an heir apparent, Obama was free to acquaint himself with the style and demands of a national campaign. He learned the role well enough to hire a compatible supporting cast and to script a message absent allusions to the past. “Change: That’s what you want? That’s what I will give you.”

The October surprise on Wall Street illustrated his differences with McCain. Obama remained the presidential candidate he had become. McCain suspended his campaign to resume his familiar role as the maverick senator. Yet the complex financial issues involved required neither a campaigner nor a nonconformist. Obama understood and stayed out of it; McCain rushed in where he was not needed or welcome.

On November 5, Obama became president-elect. That role too requires an understanding of how to behave. The most important guideline: There is a president, you’re not him. Corollaries: Remind the staff not to jump the gun—their time as big shots will come. Follow the book in making appointments and organizing White House staff. Don’t promise more in the first 100 days than can be delivered. Stay out of the way, preferably away from Washington, but be accessible and nice to the press. Find out how the White House works—inside the building itself and outside in the government. Accept the help offered by the incumbent administration in learning about departments, agencies, and budgets. Visit, but don’t invade, the workaday government. Be nice to Congressional leaders but wary of their advice. Find friends in the opposition party—you will need them. Can the arrogance of a victor—that goes even more for staff.

These rules are in accord with the Law of Commonsense. Yet President Elect Bill Clinton and his staff ignored most, if not all, these advisories. Obama and his aides paid heed to all, thereby winning praise and favorable comparisons to the Kennedy and Reagan transitions.

Knowing who you have become should aid immeasurably in learning what the job entails. The rules cited here provide orientation for the most important role—President of he United States. It all starts with understanding the separation of powers. The three branches, plus the bureaucracy, share and compete for powers permitting them to get into each other’s business. For example, Congress spent the last two years curbing executive powers the new president may wish he had.

Two facts are relevant to understanding the new job: 1. The president is not the government. 2. A new president joins a government already at work. The new Congress is mostly populated by members from the last Congress; judges serve life terms; and the bureaucracy is forever. What is new is a President Obama, his staff, and appointees, all charged to make what is already there work effectively under new leadership. One other fact: The choices presidents make today have an effect on persuasive power in the future. One need only review President Bush’s decision to invade Iraq, relying on bad intelligence, for a contemporary illustration. Support for his leadership never recovered.

It is too early to know the depth of Obama’s savvy in serving as chief executive. He has no record and it is impossible to “game” the presidential experience. But there are positive clues from the campaign and the transition that the president-elect recognizes what is coming. The campaign showed he knows how to hire and keep good help. He understands the need, recognizes talent, communicates purposes, and commands loyalty. Furthermore, lacking experience himself, he has demonstrated strength of character and resolve in hiring those who do have the knowledge and skills he requires as president.

The process of selecting staff and cabinet positions was impressive. He assigned the major White House staff positions early, thus reducing job anxiety among his campaign operatives and allowing them to settle in during the transition to aid him and connect with establishment figures. The cabinet and ancillary selections were announced in policy clusters, thus showcasing “teams” rather than drawing attention to a single appointment. Further, the sequence revealed policy priorities, as with the early selections of the economic and national security teams. The president-elect himself made the announcements, his physical presence leaving little doubt as to who was in charge. And whereas diversity was the result, emphasis in each case was on the capability and experience of those chosen. One notable effect of this orderly process was to project an aura of leadership.

There was a casualty. Bill Richardson withdrew prior to a confirmation hearing. One case is par for the course and can have the effect of increased scrutiny of the rest.

Does this positive start ensure a successful Obama presidency? Hardly. Unscheduled events occur and unwelcome change happens, as with Israel’s assault in Gaza. Expect more agenda-bending events to interfere with the new president’s plans, hopefully not as dramatic as 9/11 for his predecessor.
The record as I read it, however, indicates that as a candidate and president-elect Barack Obama has verified an aptitude for leadership and for knowing who can best help him lead. Less clear is whether he understands that neither he nor Congress can quickly fix much of what is wrong in the nation and the world. In a separated powers government, confidence in knowing what to do is only part of getting it done.

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Elvin Lim is Assistant Professor of Government at Wesleyan University and author of The Anti-intellectual Presidency, which draws on interviews with more than 40 presidential speechwriters to investigate this relentless qualitative decline, over the course of 200 years, in our presidents’ ability to communicate with the public. He also blogs at www.elvinlim.com. In the article below he reflects on Presidents Obama and Bush. See his previous OUPblogs here.

Presidents array themselves along a continuum with two extremes: either they are crusaders for their cause or merely defenders of the faith. Either they attempt to transform the landscape of America politics, or they attempt to modify it in incremental steps. To cite the titles of the autobiographies of the current and last presidents: either presidents declare the “audacity of hope” or they affirm a “charge to keep.” If President Obama is the liberal crusader, President George Bush was the conservative defender.

The strategies of presidential leadership differ for the crusader and the defender, but President Obama appears to be misreading the nature of his mandate. Conciliation works for the defender; it can be ruinous to the would-be crusader.

The crusader must have his base with him, all fired up and ready to go. For to go to places unseen, the crusader must have the visionaries, even the crazy ones, on his side. The defender, conversely, must pay homage to partisans on the other side of the aisle because incremental change requires assistance from people, including political rivals, invested in the status quo. Moderate politics require moderate friends.

The irony is that President George Bush, a self-proclaimed defender - spent too much time pandering to his right-wing base, and Barack Obama - a self-proclaimed crusader, is spending a lot of time appeasing his political rivals. Their political strategies were out of sync, and perhaps even inconsistent with their political goals.

Take the issue of gay rights for President Obama. The President is trying so hard to prove to his socially conservative political rivals that he is no liberal wacko that he has reversed his previous support for a full repeal of The Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA). What he may not have realized is that it may be politically efficacious for a defender to ignore his base, but the costs to the crusader for alienating his base are far graver. Bipartisanship is not symmetrically rewarding in all leadership contexts.

Consider the example of President Bill Clinton, a “third-way” Democrat. He ended welfare as we knew it, and on affirmative action he said “mend it, don’t end it.” Much to Labor’s chagrin, he even passed NAFTA. Bill Clinton was no crusader. And if the Democratic base wanted a deal-making, favor-swapping politico, they would have nominated a second Clinton last year.
The crusader rides on a cloud of ideological purity. Without the zealotry and idolatry of the base, the crusader is nothing; his magic extinguished. And this is happening right now to Barack Obama.

The people who gave the man his luster are also uniquely enpowered to take it away. (It is a mistake to think that Sean Hannity or Michael Steele have this power.) Obama campaigned on changing the world, and his base can and will crush him for failing to deliver on his audacity. The Justice Department’s clumsy defense of DOMA via the case law recourse of incest and pedophilia may be a small matter in the administration’s scheme of things, but it is a big and repugnant deal to the base - the people who matter for a crusading president.

This is a pattern in the Obama administration: for the promise to pull troops out of Iraq there was the concomitant promise of more in Afghanistan, for the release of the OLC “torture memos,” operatives of harsh interrogation techniques were also offered immunity, in return for the administration’s defense of DOMA, Obama promised to extend benefits to same-sex partners of federal employees. This is incremental, transactional, and defensive leadership. Defenders balance; but crusaders are mandated to press on. Incremental leadership works for presidents mandated to keep a charge, but not for one who flaunted his audacity. There are distinct and higher expectations for a crusader-to-be; and if President Obama is to live up to his hype, then bear the crusader’s cross he must.

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