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Thinking beyond the cycle

In politics it’s difficult  to think beyond the next electoral cycle.  What good is it to think about five years from now if you lose your seat – and therefore the ability to make play a part in decision making, period – in eighteen months?

I’m as guilty as the next guy and gal working in the political world of putting on my “cycle blinders.”  Of forgetting what got me into politics in the first place: my firm belief that political communication is about more than selling something for the right now (which is why I’m building an advocacy and cause communications business, not a marketing business), but about making a difference in the world for the future.

The victory on election (or committee or floor voting day) is vital and, let’s be honest, lots of fun. But the real victory is in changing the way we think or feel on the big picture: how do we as a people come closer to our ideals? At it’s best, politics is about making us a better people, more like the Americans envisioned in our founding documents.

So I’ve been riveted lately by reporting on just how much of our political conversation is built on conventional wisdom that results from others’ victories, hard fought and won decades ago.

In Salon.com on Monday, Mike Madden made a compelling case that our stimulus and budget conversations today are driven by the victories won by Reagan in the eighties.  Moreover, he argues that while what we debate today are the specifics of particular tax and appropriations policies, the real conversation is about how we as Americans – and therefore American politicians – view the appropriate role of government in our economy.

As we’ve celebrated this past week with our client, the Campaign for Tobacco Free Kids,  a major legislative victory in the U.S. House – passage by a wide, bipartisan margin of legislation allowing the FDA to regulate tobacco products and advertising (finally!) – I’ve been thinking more about the long-term victory the vote really represents.  This legislative session we’re debating specific bills, but for the past ten years TFK, the American Heart Association, the American Cancer Society, and dozens of their partners in the health community have been battling to win a much bigger argument: that the federal government has an important role to play in our relationship with the businesses that would hope to sell us (and our children) stuff.

It’s an argument that’s important to food safety, and as we saw with last year’s many toy recalls, product safety.  And it’s an argument that gets to the heart of an even bigger element of our national identity: to what extent are we every man, woman and child for him or herself, versus a community that bands together to provide protections we cannot provide as individuals?

It’s my favorite part of politics – that sense that even in the knock-down, drag out fights we have about legitimate and deep-seated differences of opinions and values, we’re all of us working toward a better, safer, world.  I’m looking forward to more opportunities to work on terrific projects, with excellent clients moving that agenda forward, regardless of the cycle and the bill specifics.

-Shayna