Krishantering: Obamas förvirrade politik!

SYRIEN | Barack Obamas har alltid haft en god förmåga att kommunicera sin politik. Åtminstone under valkampanjerna.

Efter sina valsegrar har han inte imponerat lika mycket. Och när det gäller krisen i Syrien har turerna varit mer komiska än statsmannamässiga.

I en krönika i Standpoint kallar t.ex. Emanuele Ottolenghi honom för Hamlet i Vita huset.

Det blir smått underhållande när han försöker reda ut vad presidenten egentligen tänker göra åt Bashar al-Assad och situationen i Syrien.

First, he told the world that ”Assad must go.” Then he told the world the use of chemical weapons constituted a red line for his Administration. Then he told the world that the extensive use of chemical weapons, with mass casualties involved, would trigger an American response. When chemical weapons were extensively used, he finally announced that he was going to launch a strike. But then he told the world he had the authority to strike but was going to seek authority from Congress to do so. Though the warships were steaming off and the missiles were loaded, he called the whole thing off and let Congress decide instead.

First, then, inaction; followed by a decision to act quickly rescinded in favour of a Congressional vote he was likelier to lose than win; and with it, a delay that could only be read as hesitancy by all the regional players, both friend and foe; and finally, in the midst of the debate before the vote, a deferral to a flight of fancy, courtesy of a Russian diplomatic offer that looks more like a pretext than a solution.

[…]

It is as if his utterances are not statements of intent and enunciations of policy but rather the educated expression of a wish or an opinion, the implementation of which will somehow fall on other people.

So when Obama said that ”Assad must go” he never apparently meant to announce a US policy; he just said, out loud, that he wished that Assad would go, much as a disgruntled football fan might wish his team’s manager to quit. When he defined the use of chemical weapons as a red line, Obama must have intended, once again, not to warn of a US-initiated response but merely to express the hope that Assad would stop short of murdering his own people with chemical weapons. Now Obama has done it again. Although Assad should be punished, Obama is not going to punish him. Although he has the authority, he will not use it. Even though diplomacy has failed, it would be nice if it were to succeed. And although Assad is like Hitler, and Obama invokes Roosevelt, the American people prefer to rebuild the economy at home rather than engage in foreign wars.

Tidskriftsomslag: Standpoint, oktober 2013.

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Image: Ilska vinner inga val!

USA | Republikanska partiet är en sorglig samling gnällspikar. Numera är man inte längre för något, bara emot.

Den positiva framtoning som partiet fick under åren med Ronald Reagan känns idag avlägsen.

Men man behöver inte gå längre tillbaka än till president George W. Bush för att hitta en republikan som omfamnade en mer positiv ideologisk syn på USA:s möjligheter både hemma och utomlands.

Peter Beinart, Newsweek, skriver:

Bush was, at his core, an optimist. For starters, he was an optimist about the budget. He had taken over in the wake of a late-1990s economic boom that erased the deficits built up during the Reagan years. For Bush, the message was that you can cut taxes, maintain popular domestic programs, and dramatically boost military spending without worry, because economic growth will eventually balance the budget, as it did in the 1990s.

[…]

Bush was a cultural optimist, too. He had taken power on the heels of what Samuel Huntington called the “third wave” of democratization, a mighty tide that began when Spain and Portugal shrugged off their autocratic governments in the mid-1970s, and extended in the 1980s and 1990s from South Korea and the Philippines to Argentina and Chile to Hungary and Poland to South Africa.

[…]

As his former speechwriter Michael Gerson has noted, Bush’s brand of Christianity was strikingly untroubled by original sin. His own life was a tale of purposeless, self-destructive wandering followed by radical transformation via the power of faith. And while other conservatives focused on an entrenched “culture of poverty” that made it difficult to change the lives of America’s urban poor, Bush championed the idea that with religious counseling, inmates in Texas jails could experience the same radical, redemptive change he’d seen in his own life.

Bush, in other words, was an optimist even when it came to cultures—like the ones prevailing in America’s inner cities or in the Arab world—for which other conservatives held out little hope. Despite the incredulity of many on the right, he responded to 9/11 by insisting that Muslims were just as desirous of democracy, liberty, and peace as Christians and Jews. And he set about proving that in Iraq. “The human heart,” he told the American Enterprise Institute two months before the invasion, “desires the same good things, everywhere on earth.” That universalism also shaped his views on immigration. If Iraqis shared the same basic values as Americans, so did undocumented Mexican immigrants.

[…]

But since Bush left office, the GOP pessimists have taken full control of the party. When Bush was jacking up the deficit via tax cuts and defense spending, the conservatives who worried about America’s fiscal health mostly held their tongues. When Barack Obama replaced him, however, and began spending money on a domestic stimulus package and a universal-health-care law, the deficit became a GOP obsession. Gone was Bush’s happy talk about how economic growth, which had overcome the Reagan deficits, would do so again. In its place came a dystopian vision of America as Greece: its currency worthless and its coffers empty. The GOP, the party that under Bush said America could have it all, under Obama has become the party that says America can’t even afford food stamps.

Foto: Governör George W. Bush den 4 november 2000. Steve Mellon, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette.

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Krishantering: Obamas alla utrikesproblem!

UTRIKESPOLITIK | President Barack Obamas verkar inte ha ett lika stort intresse för utrikespolitik som för inrikespolitik. Och detta skadar honom inrikespolitiskt.

Detta är i och för sig inget nytt för en amerikansk president. Vare sig Bill Clinton eller George W. Bush blev primärt valda för sina utrikespolitiska ståndpunkter.

Annat var det under kalla kriget när det förväntades att presidentkandidaterna kunde visa upp en gedigen förståelse för hur världen fungerar.

Till skillnad från väljare i många andra demokratier har amerikanarna varit mycket väl medvetna om att amerikanska presidenten har en unik position i världspolitiken.

Detta inte minst för att presidenten aldrig är långt ifrån avfyrningskoderna till landets kärnvapen.

Men vad som verkar vara unikt för Obama är att kritiken inte bara kommer från republikanerna i USA.

Som Michael Crowley påminner om i Time så hoppades t.o.m. president Assad i en tidningsartikel 2009 att Obama skulle ta aktiv del i utvecklingen i Mellanöstern.

Assad påpekade att det i realiteten inte fanns något substitut för USA i världspolitiken.

Some of Obama’s problems have a familiar ring. Early in his first term, Bill Clinton–who, like Obama, focused on domestic matters–also faced charges of timidity and weakness. ”We simply don’t have the leverage, we don’t have the influence [or] the inclination to use military force,” a senior State Department official complained in 1993. And much as Obama is facing pressure at home and abroad over Syria, Clinton was castigated for not intervening in the Balkan wars. ”The position of leader of the free world is vacant,” French President Jacques Chirac lamented in 1995.

Obama has likewise developed a strangely broad coalition of critics: humanitarians who want to stop the war in Syria; hawks who want a bolder U.S. foreign policy; democracy and human-rights advocates appalled that Obama isn’t tougher on Egypt’s generals. Meanwhile, U.S. allies in Europe complain that America isn’t showing leadership, and a senior Arab government official tells TIME that friendly states in the region don’t feel they can count on the U.S. ”There’s no perception that we’re engaged in issues in the Middle East right now,” says Christopher Hill, a veteran diplomat who served as Obama’s ambassador to Iraq.

Obama’s defenders say he has done the best with a poisoned inheritance–from anti-Americanism abroad to tight budgets and rising isolationism at home. And his White House predecessors have often heard cries from overseas that the U.S.’s will to power was faltering. But it’s also true that the public is tired of paying in blood and treasure to solve faraway problems that often look unsolvable. ”At the end of the day, the U.S. cannot impose its will on every problem in the world,” says Adam Smith, the top Democrat on the House Armed Services Committee.

The blunt instrument of military power may be especially useless when it comes to untangling the Arab Spring’s social upheavals. ”Frankly, the U.S. is not good at resolving another country’s political implosion,” says Mieke Eoyang, a national-security analyst at Third Way, a Washington think tank. ”It may be that the U.S. just doesn’t have the tools.”

[…]

But to his critics, Obama does hesitate, and trouble follows as a result. With more than three years left in his presidency, he has the opportunity to reverse that impression. Success in Syria and then Iran could vindicate him, and failure could be crushing. ”The risk is that, if things in the Middle East continue to spiral, that will become his legacy,” says Brian Katulis, a former Obama campaign adviser now with the Center for American Progress.

Some Democratic Presidents have been crippled by foreign policy: Carter by Iran, Lyndon Johnson by Vietnam. But there is another model. Clinton doused the fires in the Balkans and demonstrated the nobility of American intervention. Obama has time to find a path through the current chaos to a successful legacy abroad.

As he charts his course, he might consider a thought from an unlikely source. In a 2009 British newspaper interview that struck a moderate tone, Assad said he hoped Obama would take an active role in the Middle East peace process because only Washington could broker a lasting solution. He said, ”There is no substitute for the United States.”

Tidskriftsomslag: Time den 9 september 2013.

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Politisk kommunikation: Göran Hägglunds Moment 22!

OPINION | Göran Hägglund har två förklaringar till varför det går dåligt för Kristdemokraterna i opinionsundersökningar.

Enligt Hägglund beror de dåliga siffrorna på att alla partier tycker som Kristdemokraterna. Paradoxalt nog anser han också att väljarna inte vet vad partiet står för.

Att det finns felaktiga uppfattningar om partiet i väljarkåren – t.ex. om aborter – är säkert sant.

Men Hägglunds problem är att han inte vill diskutera just de frågor som väljarna traditionellt förknippar med Kristdemokraterna.

Anledningen till detta är naturligtvis att partiet mycket medvetet under många år har försökt flytta fokus bort ifrån just frågor som t.ex. aborter, äktenskap och homosexuallitet.

Detta gör att man har hamnat i ett Moment 22.

Om man inte vill diskutera de frågor som partiet förknippas med kommer väljarna naturligtvis fortsätta förknippa partiet med just dessa frågor.

Dilemmat blev tydligt när Karl-Johan Karlsson och Elisabeth Marmorstein intervjuade Hägglund för Expressen i början av juni.

Du är ansvarig för sjukvården, ett område som brukar hamna i topp när väljarna får ranka sina viktigaste frågor. Samtidigt har bara 12 procent av väljarna störst förtroende för ditt parti i vård- och omsorgsfrågor. Du har varit ansvarig minister för sjukvården i snart sju år. Varför har det inte gett bättre utdelning i opinionen?

– Vi har för lite konflikter. Vi har genomfört fenomenalt stora reformer när det gäller tillgängligheten, patientsäkerheten, de mest sjuka äldre och tandvården. Oppositionen har mött reformerna med tystnad eller kritiserat dem med randanmärkningar, men vi har inte fått de där stora politiska debatterna. Det gör ju också att medierna blir mindre intresserade.

Letar du efter en strid i sjukvården, för att få upp siffrorna?

– Ja, gärna det. Frågorna om vinst i vården tror jag kommer bli en stor fråga i valrörelsen, där vi vill se många aktörer som bidrar till att utveckla vården och där oppositionen tycks dra alltmer åt vänster. Här finns det nog utrymme för en politisk sakdiskussion.

[…]

I den senaste Sifo-mätningen får KD 2,7 procent. Det är din sämsta siffra på dina nio år som partiledare och partiets sämsta siffra sedan 1995. Hur bekymrad är du över opinionsläget?

– Inte över siffrorna i sig. Jag är mer bekymrad över vilka reaktioner man får omkring det här. Kommer det att utbryta någon slags dysterhet i partiet? Vi ser inte det än, utan folk är laddade. Sedan ser vi att det finns en massa felaktiga uppfattningar om vilka vi är. En del jag möter säger så här: ”Men ni vill ju förbjuda aborter”. Men det är en inställning som vi övergav för mer än 15 år sedan. Vi behöver bli bättre på att både bryta ner felaktiga föreställningar och berätta vad vi faktiskt vill.

Ni har ett oförtjänst dåligt rykte alltså menar du?

– Ja, i den mån folk har någon uppfattning alls. En del sorterar bort oss för de tänker ”jag är ju inte kristen”. Vi behöver bli bättre på att berätta att du kan vara buddist, muslim, frälsningssoldat eller inte ha någon trosuppfattning alls, men ändå vara kristdemokrat.

Har man en politik som alla övriga partier kan identifiera sig med är risken att man inte sticker ut tillräckligt mycket. Man blir lagompartiet.

Och vill man sedan inte ta debatten på områden som väljarna upfattar som typiska kristdemokratiska hamnar man lätt i det sämsta av två världar. Damned if you do. Damned if you don’t.

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Krishantering: Harold Macmillan och Profumoskandalen!

SKANDAL | När The Spectator 2009 skulle ranka landets politiska skandaler utsåg man Profumoaffären på 1960-talet till den största.

Skandalen som tvingade John Profumo, premiärminister Harold Macmillans krigsminister, att avgå innehöll allt ifrån sex, politik och ryska spioner.

Clive Irving, som då ledde ett team av undersökande journalister på The Sunday Times, har nyligen i Newsweek berättat om händelserna och hur Macmillan försökte hantera media.

I call Macmillan’s press officer, Harold Evans (in this era the prime minister has no spinmeisters; Evans—not the illustrious namesake who later became editor of The Sunday Times—is a career civil servant, avowedly apolitical). I ask if I can submit a list of questions. Evans invites me to call and present them in person.

I take Wallington with me—his legwork is the reason our timeline has the goods. It’s obvious that Evans is well briefed on where we’ve been, who has talked, and how deep our knowledge is. He goes through the timeline and ticks every box, adding some details about who has been present during interrogations, but denying nothing. The final question then asserts itself: why did Macmillan leave the interrogation of Profumo to others?

Evans asks that we go off the record. Nothing he says can be explicitly used. We have to understand what kind of man the prime minister is—his life, his values, his scars. He sees himself as a statesman. Profumo’s behavior was beneath contempt: members of Macmillan’s clubs don’t lie. That was the shock—not the squalor of the scandal, but the total absence of honor.

I realize as I listen that there is probably only one door between us and the subject of our conversation. Macmillan is working in his study.

But Evans isn’t finished. There is more, he says, and this is absolutely unpublishable. Macmillan had been cuckolded. For 30 years his wife, Lady Dorothy, had been having an affair with a famous bad boy of the Tory party, the bisexual Robert Boothby, and there had been a daughter from the union. Evans is surprised we don’t know—it’s a mark of how wet behind the ears we still are. (Unpublishable but not unknown to older colleagues at the paper, as it turns out.) The prime minister just could not confront a sexual scandal and wished that it would go away—which it very nearly had.

At the time, this revelation had the desired effect on our final judgment on Macmillan in the book we published, that he had shown “willful amnesia.” On reflection, as bizarre as the Macmillan ménage was, its use as an alibi now appears to me to be weak. Double lives like Profumo’s (and other members of the Macmillan cabinet) were a commonplace—whether in domestic arrangements or espionage. As long as it seemed that Profumo could get away with his lie, Macmillan was not disposed to deal with it.

Bild: Lewis Morleys klassiska bild av Christine Keeler.

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Krishantering: JFK och Kubakrisen 1962!

TAL | Under Kubakrisen för lite mer än 50 år sedan höll John F. Kennedy ett tal som skulle förbereda nationen för ett eventuellt kärnvapenkrig.  

Efter TV-talet var det knappast någon amerikan, eller för den delen någon annan heller utanför USA, som inte insåg allvaret i denna uppgörelse med Sovjetunionen.

Därmed uppnådde Vita huset den primära uppgiften att informera och förbereda medborgarna samtidigt som man samlade landet bakom presidenten.

Professor Martin J. Sherwin skrev 2012 i Prologue:

The public learned that nuclear war was an imminent possibility on Monday, October 22, 1962, at 7 p.m. Eastern Daylight Savings Time.

”This Government, as promised, has maintained the closest surveillance of the Soviet military buildup on the island of Cuba,” President John F. Kennedy began in what has to be counted as the scariest presidential address of the Cold War.

”Within the past week, unmistakable evidence has established the fact that a series of offensive missile sites is now in preparation on that imprisoned island. The purpose of these bases can be none other than to provide a nuclear strike capability against the Western Hemisphere.”

Kennedy went on to explain that Soviet officials had repeatedly lied about the buildup. He said the United States was demanding that all the offensive missiles be removed from Cuba forthwith—or else—and announced that a ”quarantine” of Cuba (calling it a blockade would have represented it as an act of war) was only the first step toward forcing the removal of the offending weapons. And he added that any missile launched from Cuba would be considered to have originated from the Soviet Union and would require ”a full retaliatory response” upon the USSR.

”We will not prematurely or unnecessarily risk the costs of worldwide nuclear war in which even the fruits of victory would be ashes in our mouth,” he said, but warned, ”neither will we shrink from that risk at any time it must be faced.”

The blockade of Cuba, and the other responses detailed in the President’s dramatic 20-minute speech, had been devised by a select group of advisers during the previous week in secret meetings that often lasted late into the night.

[…]

Looking back at the Cuban Missile Crisis from the perspective of 50 years, it is clear that the dangers were greater than contemporaries understood: that most of the advice the President received would have led to war and that Khrushchev and Kennedy entered the crisis as adversaries seeking advantages but quickly became partners in search of a peaceful resolution. In all of this, good luck was an indispensable ingredient. Five decades of research also reveals why, absent revision, history petrifies into myth.

The crisis was the transformative event in U.S.-Soviet and U.S.-Cuban Cold War relations. It not only assured Castro’s survival (the putative aim of the Soviet deployment), but it reset the unstated rules of the U.S.-Soviet nuclear relationship.

Nuclear deterrence could no longer be viewed as a stable condition that allowed governments to brandish nuclear weapons for diplomatic advantage. The crisis had exposed deterrence’s fragilities, requiring that it be managed openly as a delicately balanced process. Kennedy had made the essential point in his October 22 address:

Nuclear weapons are so destructive, and ballistic missiles are so swift, that any substantially increased possibility of their use or any sudden change in their deployment may well be regarded as a definite threat to peace.

[…]

Expanding the boundaries of the 13 days to Castro’s revolution and the failed Bay of Pigs invasion (1959 and 1961 respectively) explains the circumstances that made room for the crisis but does not deal with its root cause. The root cause was the central role that nuclear weapons had come to play in the American-Soviet relationship.

Disregarding how those weapons were seen and valued by Soviet and U.S. leaders during the 17 years that preceded the crisis is analogous to explaining the cause of the American Civil War by focusing solely on Abraham Lincoln’s election in 1860 while ignoring the history of slavery.

Bild: National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) har publicerat tidskriften Prologue i över 40 år. Ovanstående tidskriftsomslag är höstnumret 2012.

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Krishantering: När PR och etik blandas ihop!

ETIK | Att banker inte står högt i kurs hos väljarna är ingen hemlighet. Och det finns mer än en anledning till detta.

Dan Munter, doktorand i affärsetik vid KTH:s filosofiavdelning, skriver t.ex. i Dagens Industri om bankernas interna etiska koder.

Dessa har många gånger mer formen av ”internhandbok och utåtriktat pr-dokument” än riktlinjer för sundare företgsklimat.

Bilden som många har av finansbranschen är en bransch med bristande etik, styrd av kortsiktighet och girighet. Etiska koder eller riktlinjer kan vara ett medel för att förbättra brister i företagskultur och minska antalet oetiska handlingar. Frågan är då om de fyra storbankernas koder kan tänkas ha sådana effekter.

Koderna vänder sig främst till de anställda och fokus ligger på instruktioner och påbud. Etiska skäl till varför en handling är påbjuden anges sällan. Centralt är i stället att banken inte ”betraktas” som oetisk. Etik verkar betraktas som ett medel för att generera förtroende hos allmänhet och beslutsfattare.

[…]

Då koderna till stor del består av dekret om påbjudna och otillåtna handlingar är det osannolikt att de kan bidra till en fördjupad förståelse för etikens olika dimensioner.

Dessutom, när etik blir en fråga om förtroende, kan det tolkas som att oetiska handlingar är tillåtna om hen kommer undan med dem, och förtroendet därmed inte skadas. Riktlinjernas förtjänst är om den typ av oetiska handlingar förhindras som annars skulle ha utförts på grund av informationsbrist.

Klokt. Munter glömmer dock bort att detta inte är unikt för banker.

Även inom många företag och offentliga verksamheter plockar man fram etiska policydokument som mest innehåller snömos.

Dokumenten kan man vifta med om det behövs krishanteras när negativa händelser briserar i media.

Ledningen kan sedan alltid hävda att man minsann gjort vad man kunnat. Beviset är själva dokumentet.

På så sätt blir det aldrig interkulturen det är fel på utan bara att någon enskild medarbetare gått över sina befogenheter och inte följt de ”interna regelverken”.

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Opinion: Dåliga siffror för Alliansen i februari!

KRIS | Regeringspartierna slår det ena historiskt negativa rekordet efter det andra.

Sedan Kristdemokraterna kom in i riksdagen 1991 har partiet aldrig hamnat under fyraprocentspärren tillsammans med Centerpartiet under samma månad i en Sifomätning.

Den traditionen bryts nu när båda hamnar på 3,6 %.

Och i United Minds opinionsundersökning – också för februari – uppmäter de fyra regeringspartierna sitt lägsta stöd sedan valet.

Tidigare i månaden såg vi att både YouGov och Demoskop hade likande dystra siffror för Alliansen.

Hos YouGov hamnade både Centerpartiet och Kristdemokraterna under riksdagsspärren.

I Demoskop är det däremot ”bara” Centerpartiet under riksdagsspärren med 3,4 % medan Kristdemokraterna tog sig över med sina 4,4 %.

Vad som borde oroa regeringen är att dåliga siffror för ett parti inte verkar kompenseras fullt ut av att väljarna istället väljer ett annat av Allianspartierna. Regeringspartierna tappar väljare på vägen när det går dåligt för ett av dem.

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Opinion: Vad är det för fel på republikanerna?

IMAGE | Republican Party är idag synonymt med världsfrånvändhet. Frågan är om man ens hinner återhämta sig till nästa presidentvalskampanj.  

Det har blivit allt tydligare att Team Obama hade ett enormt teknologiskt försprång kring bl.a. sociala medier under valrörelsen. Och detta berodde inte bara på att Mitt Romney kom igång sent med sin valrörelse. 

Snarare handlade det om att partiet aldrig riktigt förstått betydelsen av att föjla med i den teknologiska utvecklingen.  

Barack Obama var dessutom inte sen att hjälpa till att sätta bilden av Mitt Romney som en person vars värderingar fastnat i 1950-talet.

Robert Draper, The New York Times Magazine, beskriver i en artikel två fokusgrupper som försökt utröna hur amerikanarna idag uppfattar republikanerna.

Den som genomförde fokusgrupperna var Kristen Soltis Anderson. Hon är vicepresident i Winston Group och är en av många yngre republikaner som har försökt få partiet att inse att man måste moderniseras om man vill kunna överleva.

One afternoon last month, I flew with Anderson to Columbus, Ohio, to watch her conduct two focus groups. The first consisted of 10 single, middle-class women in their 20s; the second, of 10 20-something men who were either jobless or employed but seeking better work. All of them voted for Obama but did not identify themselves as committed Democrats and were sufficiently ambivalent about the president’s performance that Anderson deemed them within reach of the Republicans. Each group sat around a large conference table with the pollster, while I viewed the proceedings from behind a panel of one-way glass.

The all-female focus group began with a sobering assessment of the Obama economy. All of the women spoke gloomily about the prospect of paying off student loans, about what they believed to be Social Security’s likely insolvency and about their children’s schooling. A few of them bitterly opined that the Democrats care little about the working class but lavish the poor with federal aid. “You get more off welfare than you would at a minimum-wage job,” observed one of them. Another added, “And if you have a kid, you’re set up for life!”

About an hour into the session, Anderson walked up to a whiteboard and took out a magic marker. “I’m going to write down a word, and you guys free-associate with whatever comes to mind,” she said. The first word she wrote was “Democrat.”

“Young people,” one woman called out.

“Liberal,” another said. Followed by: “Diverse.” “Bill Clinton.” “Change.” “Open-minded.” “Spending.” “Handouts.” “Green.” “More science-based.”

When Anderson then wrote “Republican,” the outburst was immediate and vehement: “Corporate greed.”“Old.”“Middle-aged white men.” “Rich.” “Religious.” “Conservative.” “Hypocritical.” “Military retirees.” “Narrow-minded.” “Rigid.” “Not progressive.” “Polarizing.” “Stuck in their ways.” “Farmers.”

Anderson concluded the group on a somewhat beseeching note. “Let’s talk about Republicans,” she said. “What if anything could they do to earn your vote?”

A self-identified anti-abortion, “very conservative” 27-year-old Obama voter named Gretchen replied: “Don’t be so right wing! You know, on abortion, they’re so out there. That all-or-nothing type of thing, that’s the way Romney came across. And you know, come up with ways to compromise.”

“What would be the sign to you that the Republican Party is moving in the right direction?” Anderson asked them.

“Maybe actually pass something?” suggested a 28-year-old schoolteacher named Courtney, who also identified herself as conservative.

The session with the young men was equally jarring. None of them expressed great enthusiasm for Obama. But their depiction of Republicans was even more lacerating than the women’s had been. “Racist,” “out of touch” and “hateful” made the list — “and put ‘1950s’ on there too!” one called out.

Showing a reverence for understatement, Anderson said: “A lot of those words you used to describe Republicans are negative. What could they say or do to make you feel more positive about the Republican Party?”

“Be more pro-science,” said a 22-year-old moderate named Jack. “Embrace technology and change.”

“Stick to your strong suit,” advised Nick, a 23-year-old African-American. “Clearly social issues aren’t your strong suit. Stop trying to fight the battle that’s already been fought and trying to bring back a movement. Get over it — you lost.”

Later that evening at a hotel bar, Anderson pored over her notes. She seemed morbidly entranced, like a homicide detective gazing into a pool of freshly spilled blood. In the previous few days, the pollster interviewed Latino voters in San Diego and young entrepreneurs in Orlando. The findings were virtually unanimous. No one could understand the G.O.P.’s hot-blooded opposition to gay marriage or its perceived affinity for invading foreign countries. Every group believed that the first place to cut spending was the defense budget. During the whiteboard drill, every focus group described Democrats as “open-minded” and Republicans as “rigid.”

“There is a brand,” the 28-year-old pollster concluded of her party with clinical finality. “And it’s that we’re not in the 21st century.”

Bild: Tidskriftsomslaget är The New York Times Magazine den 17 februari 2013.

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Strategi: Gräl är oundvikliga i koalitioner!

PROBLEM | I Storbritannien finns inte samma långa erfarenhet av koalitioner som i vissa andra länder ute i Europa.

”England does not love coalitions” är ett citat av Benjamin Disraeli som fortfarande sammanfattar ganska väl hur man ser på samregerande i landet.

Nuvarande allians, bestående av Conservative Party och Liberal Democrats, är den första riktiga sedan 1945.

Spänningar kommer alltid att finnas inom alla regeringar. Detta oavsett om de består av ett eller flera partier. Hur man hanterar trätorna kan däremot vara avgörande för valutgången.

Charles Moore, tidigare redaktör och numera krönikör på den konservativa The Spectator, har upptäckt något som kanske inte skulle förvåna i övriga Europa.

Here is a point about the coalition which is so obvious that I have not seen it expressed. When a single party is in power, the approach of a general election is the key discipline: almost however much colleagues disagree, they unite. When there is a coalition, the opposite applies. Each partner needs to disown the other. Because the coalition foolishly legislated to fix the life of this Parliament, the parties are bound together until May 2015. It is like the pre-war situation of marriage as satirised by A.P. Herbert in his novel, Holy Deadlock. The only means of divorce is to behave appallingly. The effect is that what began well is almost bound to end badly.

Läs mer: ”Coalition Governments: Hung or Dry?” av Ian Garrett.

Bild: En från BBC på David Cameron och Nick Clegg.

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