Jan 26 2009
Uncommon Sense Needed to Fix Problems
My Twenty-Second Rule of Media Relations is Common sense isn’t common. Common sense means most of your friends agree with you.
The way to fix the economic crisis is to let failing businesses collapse and to allow struggling people sink. If there are truly voids left, smart entreprenuers will fill them and do so much more efficiently than their greedy precessdors. Certainly better than the government could ever dream of fixing the problem. It’s just common sense.
The way to fix the economic crisis is to have the government provide a broader safety net. People are scared they’ll lose their jobs and their houses–if they haven’t lost them already. The free market brings greed and that’s what got us into this mess. Government temporarily investing in companies and helping average folks is the way to keep a bad situation from getting worse. It’s just common sense.
There are plenty of other examples to use, such as the Israelis and the Palestinians. The point is what you consider to be obvious or self-evident will be neither to many other people. Thomas Paine wrote a famous pamphlet called Common Sense but that doesn’t mean we think of common sense the same way.
Barack Obama is having some trouble getting broad support for his economic recovery plan because he’s dealing with elected officials who were recently burned. Like a jilted lover who’s slow to trust a new partner, members of Congress and many Americans are leery about handing billions of additional dollars to a president who is saying, “Trust me now or we could face the next Great Depression tomorrow.”
Use the media to define why your ideas are good. If you can’t do that, explain why your opponents’ concepts are worse.
History shows us that change happens when the status quo becomes unbearable. As Albert Einstein said, a body at rest tends to stay at rest. The path of least resistance is the one most traveled.
Use your skills to convince people that they must think beyond what they normally do. Bill Clinton’s line, “Insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results,” resonated because it was simple. It seemed like common sense.
