{"id":665,"date":"2009-02-10T07:57:43","date_gmt":"2009-02-10T07:57:43","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.tuppenceworth.ie\/blog\/?p=665"},"modified":"2009-02-10T07:57:43","modified_gmt":"2009-02-10T07:57:43","slug":"partial-notes-on-a-yes-to-lisbon","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.tuppenceworth.ie\/blog\/2009\/02\/10\/partial-notes-on-a-yes-to-lisbon\/","title":{"rendered":"Partial Notes on a Yes to Lisbon"},"content":{"rendered":"

No forgiveness without atonement.<\/strong><\/p>\n

The Catholic Church understood this psychological truth centuries ago. That’s why Confession works the way it does. You can have all the forgiveness you like. But before you can draw a line in the sand, you have to pay the price of acknowledging where you went wrong.<\/p>\n

The Yes Campaigns- collectively and individually- lost in 2007. If they want people to listen to them a second time they’re going to have to show they’ve realised and learned from their mistakes.<\/p>\n

NB: Scolding the voting public for voting the wrong way and presenting this second vote as favour to let them mend their ways is the surest route to a repeat NO result. Everyone on the Yes side needs to repeat “It’s my fault, not the voters’.”<\/p>\n

How do you atone? How do you show the voters that this campaign is different and that you’ve listened to them?
\nThe strongest symbolic way to draw a line under the past is to have a prominent figure from the first Yes campaign to publicly and openly acknowledge all the failings of that previous campaign. By falling on their sword, they will have done more to aid a Yes result than any amount of media appearances.<\/p>\n

Example: <\/strong>Hillary Clinton was the undisputed front runner for the Democratic nomination. But her refusal to acknowledge that her vote in favour of the Iraq war had been a mistake infuriated her potential supporters. It allowed Barack Obama to tell his wider story, while she was trapped in that one moment. The rest was history.<\/p>\n

Fresh New Faces, not tired old ones.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Ireland has 1,345,873 people between the ages of 25 and 44. So why do we still keep seeing the same few yes campaign faces aged over 50?<\/p>\n

Libertas understood the value of new faces. In a society that’s lost faith with its political class, and the political process, being a well known member of that class is a distinct disadvantage. Both the public and journalists will favour the amature Mr. Smith over the tainted political professional.<\/p>\n

Fortunately the country is full of intelligent, articulate people who’ve you’ve never heard of. Many of them will be passively supportive of your position. To turn them into active supporters, just ask. Ask for help, volunteers, spokespeople, ideas etc. Give them the support and encouragement to let them know that you really value their contributions. Give them training, literature or access to ideas- whatever they need. Then let them work at the coalface. Some will become your regional go-to people on Europe. Local radio stations, newspapers etc will welcome the chance to have someone without the baggage of elected representatives talk to their audience. Let other people use your kits and ideas to run smaller lunchtime or evening sessions in their work or community.<\/p>\n

If you’re lucky, you’ll find one or two people who will be able and willing to perform at the national level when the time comes.<\/p>\n

Example:<\/strong> The entire Obama campaign kit was downloadable and distributed to anyone, anywhere who wanted to participate. It was the grassroots workers, self organising in places that had been never been considered viable for expensive TV campaigns, who overturned the electoral map of the US.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"No forgiveness without atonement. The Catholic Church understood this psychological truth centuries ago. That’s why Confession works the way it does. You can have all the forgiveness you like. But before you can draw a line in the sand, you have to pay the price of acknowledging where you went wrong. The Yes Campaigns- collectively and individually- lost in 2007. If they want people to listen to them a second time they’re going to have to show they’ve realised and learned from their mistakes. NB: Scolding the voting public for voting the wrong way and presenting this second vote as favour to let them mend their ways is the surest route to a repeat NO result. Everyone on the Yes side needs to repeat “It’s my fault, not the voters’.” How do you atone? How do you show the voters that this campaign is different and that you’ve listened to them? The strongest symbolic way to draw a line under the past is to have a prominent figure from the first Yes campaign to publicly and openly acknowledge all the failings of that previous campaign. By falling on their sword, they will have done more to aid a Yes result than any amount of media appearances. Example: Hillary Clinton was the undisputed front runner for the Democratic nomination. But her refusal to acknowledge that her vote in favour of the Iraq war had been a mistake infuriated her potential supporters. It allowed Barack Obama to tell his wider story, while she was trapped in that one moment. The rest was history. Fresh New Faces, not tired old ones. Ireland has 1,345,873 people between the ages of 25 and 44. So why do we still keep seeing the same few yes campaign faces aged over 50? Libertas understood the value of new faces. In a society that’s lost faith with its political class, and the political process, being a well known member of that class is a distinct disadvantage. Both the public and journalists will favour the amature Mr. Smith over the tainted political professional. Fortunately the country is full of intelligent, articulate people who’ve you’ve never heard of. Many of them will be passively supportive of your position. To turn them into active supporters, just ask. Ask for help, volunteers, spokespeople, ideas etc. Give them the support and encouragement to let them know that you really value their contributions. Give […]","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-665","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tuppenceworth.ie\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/665","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tuppenceworth.ie\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tuppenceworth.ie\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tuppenceworth.ie\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tuppenceworth.ie\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=665"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.tuppenceworth.ie\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/665\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tuppenceworth.ie\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=665"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tuppenceworth.ie\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=665"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tuppenceworth.ie\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=665"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}