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Politics : Politics for Pros- moderated -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: LindyBill who wrote (26918)	1/29/2004 3:25:54 PM
From: Lane3	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 793846

You don't give the left an opportunity to dump on you. You keep up a front, and fix it within. I understand your reluctance to provide any more ammunition, but I disagree with your approach. There is very little downside by acknowledging just enough to mollify all but the bush-hater-class critics. He's already getting dumped on. There's very little downside. But there is a bunch of upside, enough upside to potentially move him into hero class if it's executed well. The approach I'm suggesting works well in business applications. I've done it so many times I could write his script for him. I've effectively recommended it scors of times and done it myself a few times. Sure, if you have a smoking gun, you can hang whoever is holding it, but that easy fix is rarely available. It's not an option here. When you have a community at each other's throats, hanging up the organization and compromising the mission, you don't just let it fester until the situation has degraded into Northern Ireland or the Palestinians and the Israelis. You acknowledge enough 'fault' to mollify the oppostion--sometimes you can get away with as little as "mistakes were made." You say something that indicates you understand their concerns and frustrations. Then you say the obvious--that there's no possibility of a do-over. Next you say that we are where we are and we need to work together to move forward to save the country (insert flag waving here.) Then you ask for everyone to pull together. And the result is that you get a critical mass of folks supporting you and a bunch more offering grudging respect for what you did. The die-hard haters, you never get but they lose clout when they lose their audience. It's hard to sell executives on this approach. It's not natural to them. But it's effective if you can pull off sincerity.