On Thanksgiving Weekend, I received an enthusiastic email from an executive at the Republican National Committee in Washington. "Please let my secretary get me some time with you," is how he wrote to me. I was in Manila, on another job.
I spent a week in discussions with the RNC about who would pay airfare and when we would meet. The 13-hour time difference, the 27-hour 4-airplane trip and the International Date Line were novelties to them, making planning difficult while airplanes were filling up for the holidays. Skype conferences were promised and then postponed due to other meetings in-house at the RNC. Eventually, I flew back at my own expense, eager to pursue this expression of interest before Christmas and New Year intervened to cool the RNC's enthusiasm.
After the 27-hour, 4-airplane, 10,000 mile trip, I called the man at the RNC from Reagan Airport to be put off again. Eventually, a telephone conference time was assigned to me. I could have done this from Manila.
The telephone conference was cordial. I declined to disclose my fundamental ideas without recompense. RNC told me that they had no budget for some of my ideas and were staffed up for other of my ideas. I was offered nothing but the promise of some further leads that have not yet been sent to me.
The RNC abused and attempted to exploit my patriotism They cheerfully led me to expend thousands of dollars only to offer me a telephone conference and no work.
The RNC should be ashamed of their attitude and behavior.
Based on my discussions, my opinion is that the RNC is using The New Media to replicate the work that has been done for the past 30 years by "the old media." Not much new is in the works. The 51/49 world that we have been living in is both cause and effect of these "old media" methods of segmenting the voting public into narrow cells and motivating them by wedge issues.
The New Media permit different tactics. The New Media also permit/require that we work around the liberal bias of television and newsprint. However, vested interests and old habits will not permit us to achieve the dominance that our principles and our times deserve. If old habits and tactics abide, there isn't much chance of a radically different outcome - at least, not in our favor.
My Washington friends have laughed at my naivete, explaining that - inside The Beltway - both parties want everything for nothing and seldom offer work to anyone who isn't already firmly connected. And, everyone outside The Beltway wonders why nothing seems to change.
New levels of sophistication are required to understand what is happening. Clever columnists write of double-accounting and hidden costs and postponing consequences. This is complicated stuff.
