Archive for: Practices

No matter how you slice it, Americans today are down on government. New research from the Pew Research Center shows that “by almost every conceivable measure Americans are less positive and more critical of government these days.”

Compared to the Kennedy-Johnson years, when public trust in government reached nearly 80 percent, today that number has dropped below the 25 percent mark.  Increasingly, Americans claim to want to curtail government growth and limit its power.

While big-picture economic and political explanations abound, one researcher at Claremont Graduate University believes there may be a biological component, as well. Professor Paul Zak recently told NPR that the chemical oxytocin administered by the brain allows us to determine whom to trust.  His research has demonstrated that by increasing the amount of oxytocin an individual receives, the more trusting he or she becomes.

So, as Zak told NPR, he began to wonder, “How much does this scale up?” To what extent could biology – or, oxytocin – affect the public’s trust in government?  As it turns out, people who received more oxytocin did report trusting other people more and those same individuals also claimed to trust their government more.

But, perhaps more telling, is that trust in government usually decreases during periods of economic hardship – that’s when the public is generally exposed to prolonged periods of stress.   And stress, Zak says, is toxic to oxytocin. Stress inhibits the release of oxytocin, which therefore decreases public trust.

So while Republicans and Democrats will both try to explain this recent rebuff of Uncle Sam, perhaps one of the best explanations doesn’t bear any partisan weight at all.

Thursday is Earth Day – it also marks the 40th anniversary of the environmental movement.  And while being green is very much in vogue today, it appears to be a trend on its way out.

It’s hard to avoid the green message  – it permeates television, movies, online social networking sites, corporate messaging and the fashion industry. And businesses regularly seek out ways to balance the environment with their bottom line.  But the question is: With all this eco-focused media and entertainment, are Americans still giddy for green?

As it turns out, the public is not as concerned about the environment as the green industry might like.  According to recent poll numbers, Americans rank the economy (way) ahead of the environment. A March Gallup poll found 53 percent of respondents believe “economic growth should be given priority even if the environment suffers to some extent.” While a much smaller 38 percent thought protecting the environment should take priority – even if that means curbing economic growth.

Gallup is not alone in its findings – several other polls confirm these results. For instance, the Pew Research Center found that 44 percent of Americans view protecting the environment as a top priority for the president and Congress. Yet, 83 percent cited strengthening the economy.

For now, appealing to the public through being green might help boost revenue, but this is one style that just might not be made to last.

In 1909, as the federal government was first moving towards regulation of the financial industry, J.P. Morgan is said to have told friends, “The time is coming when all business will have to be done in glass pockets.”  Goldman Sachs is about to find that, for the financial world today, glass pockets are no longer good enough.

The SEC’s civil suit against Goldman charges that, through a partner company, the investment bankers packaged particularly troubled mortgages into collateralized debt obligations, the now notorious CDOs.  After Goldman sold the allegedly designed-to-fail instruments, the partner shorted them.  Goldman collected fees for assembling and marketing the package (later offset, the firm contends, by larger losses).  The partner reportedly netted a billion dollars on its short positions.

The Wall Street Journal front page story characterized the SEC’s charges as the biggest Wall Street-Washington confrontation since the Michael Milken-Drexel case at the end of the 1980s.  The Journal might have added that Milken’s was the most prominent of a larger package of investigations targeting the investment community.  Despite a parade of so-called perp-walks, when financiers were led into custody as cameras clicked, almost none of those actions produced convictions.  The Milken case led to a fine and prison time but remains controversial to this day.  Many, myself included, believe justice was miscarried.

The public perception point here is that major financial players face a formidable communications obstacle when they become the targets of such sweeping legal actions. Most attorneys — both prosecutors and their own defense attorneys — and journalists don’t actually understand what investment bankers and securities traders do.  The complexity of modern finance bewilders them.  And they are predisposed to assume that complexity equals opacity and opacity equals fraud of one stripe or another.

As I write, the weekend after the SEC’s charges hit the papers, I am not offering a judgment on the  case against Goldman, though the purchasers of the CDO were among the most experienced and sophisticated players in the financial world.  If any buyers were capable of being intelligently beware, it was they.  But I am saying that Goldman must learn to explain its business with unprecedented clarity, otherwise, the legal, political, and journalistic worlds will judge the company guilty and exact huge penalties long before any trial.

Morgan’s term “glass pockets” suggested passive transparency.  Pull back the fabric; let in the light.  Goldman will need actively to project the light outward, making the complex both simple and comprehensible.  For an institution unaccustomed to talking to non-experts, the task is sure to prove formidable.

The exposure last fall of Tiger Woods’s philandering largely ended America’s crush on the golf star.  Now Nike – one of Woods’s leading sponsors – is trying to reform his image. Or, in the language of Washington, they’re trying to shape public opinion.

At the same time as the golfer re-emerged onto the green for the annual Masters in Augusta, GA, Nike released a new ad.  Sober, humble, and regretful are words that come to mind when you see Tiger Woods staring directly into the camera, while a voice-over of his late father talks about responsibility.

But if Tiger Woods is serious about changing his image, he might want to take a lesson from the world of public opinion.

In the vast land of pubic opinion research, John Zaller is king.  And according to Zaller, elite communication is the lifeblood of mass public opinion.  Public opinion, he explains, moves in response to the consistency and intensity of elite messages.  So when elites are divided the public tends to follow suit based on varying levels of political awareness and values.

Unfortunately for Woods, this newest product from Madison Avenue isn’t going to be sufficient to win back the American public.  Some ad execs are touting how great Woods is for confronting his past. But most continue to condemn the golfer and see this ad as nothing more than much-needed self-promotion.  Already the Augusta National Chairman Billy Payne targeted Woods as part of his opening remarks and the morning news shows are having a field day.

If Woods wants to improve his image, it’s going to take a lot more than one trendy ad.  The public is going to have to see Woods consistently and tirelessly giving back to his community, engaging with his fans, and contributing to good causes.

There’s no hole in one for Woods on the course of public opinion.

Ever show up for a party on the wrong day?

Hard to imagine, considering invitations are sent by email, responded to by text message, and directions can be accessed by phone. Miscommunication about a date seems, well, a little out-of-date.

But, that’s exactly what happened to French peasants in the 16th century, and today we have April Fool’s Day to commemorate their foolishness.  While it’s hard to pinpoint the very first April Fool’s Day, experts look to 1582 as the origin.  That’s the year Pope Gregory XIII replaced the Julian calendar with the Gregorian calendar.  Since the Pope’s authority did not extend beyond the Papal States and the Catholic Church, it was up to individual countries to adopt this reformed calendar on their own time. Read

It has become commonplace for American presidents to develop slogans to help sell their policies. From FDR’s “New Deal” to JFK’s “New Frontier” to LBJ’s “Great Society,” leaders have long sought brands to identify their agendas.

While most of these historical phrases denote grand domestic programs, President Bush’s “War on Terror” identified a new foreign policy in which the country was at war with a radical ideology rather than a state.

President Obama has settled on “New Foundation” – a phrase he first used in his inaugural address – to brand his approach to everything from education to health care to financial security. Read

Amidst all the commotion around health care reform this week, it was easy to miss another important headline: the Indian military is using the world’s hottest chili pepper as a new weapon in the war on terror.

While some view the bhut jolokia, or “ghost chili,” as simply something for the kitchen, others see potential for a new tear gas-like hand grenade.  It’s all in the way we frame the chili pepper.

We talk about framing all the time – it’s become part of the national lexicon: Republicans framed the health care debate as a government-takeover; Democrats framed it as a means of providing all Americans with health coverage.  But when a term gets used so frequently, it’s often easy to lose site of what it really means.

Some political scientists explain framing as a means of cataloguing, or organizing, complicated policy issues – “not as individual items but as interpretive packages.”  A frame simply presents the public with the heart of an issue: what’s at stake, what it means to a person.  Frames allow lawmakers, researchers, political players, and communication experts to converse more easily with the public.

Framing is how we wrap our minds around something as large and open to dispute as the health care bill — or, something as small as a chili pepper. There are endless debates over different kinds of political frames, the effectiveness of framing, and the limitations of framing.  But, in the end, frames are perspectives based in reality.

The health reform bill is an expansion of government and of health coverage. That’s reality. Chilis are food and chemical warfare. That’s reality too.