You and Me (But Mostly Me)
Rusty Guinn
January 28, 2019·Politics
A billionaire entrepreneur launches a presidential campaign framed around listening to Americans and bridging partisan divides. Yet every element of the rollout, from the coordinated memoir release to the image-saturated website, centers on a single person's story. The gap between the stated mission and the actual mechanics of the campaign raises a question about what "dialogue" means when orchestrated by someone convinced they hold The Answer.
- The campaign narrative inverts itself. Schultz claims to want to hear voices and discuss how people are living and thinking, but the infrastructure of his announcement prioritizes his voice, his journey, his timeline, his name above his image.
- This creates a familiar pattern. Every moment of political crisis seems to produce another figure convinced that personal leadership, outsider status, or wealth-generated wisdom can transcend institutional gridlock. The specific person changes; the underlying promise remains identical.
- The performance reveals something about what passes for dialogue in 2019. Staging, coordination, personal branding, and media management have become so normalized that an explicitly self-promotional campaign can be framed as an appeal for connection and understanding.
- There's a tension between who gets to ask questions and who provides answers. A billionaire positioning himself as someone interested in listening already controls the terms of what can be heard and what gets ignored in that listening.
- The core question becomes: What does it mean for the political center if every attempt to rescue it comes packaged as an individual redemption narrative? If the solution always requires believing in a person rather than a process, what happens to the idea of shared accountability?
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Comments
I think there are important ways in which Schultz’s actions are working to promote opportunities for Reciprocity and Identity. Those ways probably matter most here, if one’s objective is to act with clear eyes and full heart and to work to create more and more opportunity for others to do the same.
I also think whenever you feel the need to insert an ‘I know I’m being cynical, but…’ that’s probably a sign that there’s another path that would be more in keeping with the Clear Eyes Full Hearts mantra. So, I’ll say i was disappointed by what i read in this piece.
Most of the time, I try to fight my dominant paradigm of paternalistic curmudgeonly nihilism. Clear eyes and full hearts helps at times, but mostly I end up feeling swum over, exactly like a triathalon gone bad, almost fatally.
I see The Emperor with New Notes, where even anti-missionaries unwittingly (?) still do Fed talk ‘because’ those Notes must be more than just mutual agreement for the benefit of all. And the endless procession of proselytizers with an Answer is so nauseating I end up walking on the beach listening to the endless wind and surf pounding all the beautiful shells into sand, relentlessly. 'The Answer my friend is …"
Hope is a good thing, maybe the best of things - Andy Dufresne
I get your point Rusty but one of the steps in clear eyes full hearts was “taking back your vote” and while I’m not optimistic that Schultz is the “answer” I’m hopeful that enough centrists (however small) on both sides refuse to vote for their respective buffoon/extremist party leaders therby planting the seed in the national psychology that maybe there is a market for moderates. Our job is to talk to our friends/colleagues about the widening gyre and and that a vote for an independent isn’t a vote for trump, nor is it smart to vote for trump because solely because you Love how much he annoys the left. Naive? probably… but hope is a good thing.
That’s OK, EnochRoot. I appreciate your thoughts! Remember, though, that I’m not some zen master sitting in a forest somewhere - I have views, too, and I expect that you do, too.
The point isn’t and shouldn’t be to stop being ourselves. The whole point of this idea is to be able to express that without fear within the pack. And for me, whether Schultz has good ideas or not, a guy whose logo is his signed first name over an image of his full name probably isn’t what promotes reciprocity and identity. But I AM really interested in hearing from you why you DO. And if you have more detailed thoughts, I’d be happy to put that up on the site so that the pack can hear a different perspective.
Hope IS a good thing. I think that history tells us, however, that widening gyres bring forward a lot of people who define themselves as the answer. I don’t think we have to ignore that to believe that there is a market for moderates.
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