Leadership
Watch for Rovian Tactics
It must have been a slow news day for Arena, but I thought this question was worth answering. Of course, both campaigns will be watching each other like hawks, hoping for gaffes to drop and then making much of them. But you have to admit Karl Rove is the grandmaster of whipping up attacks, whether the information transmitted is true or not.
Could we have a conversation about how to engage voters so they don’t a) get sidetracked from the big issues or b) become cynical and tune out all the noise?
Politico Arena asks: 
The Karl Rove-founded Republican group American Crossroads has issued an apology today just hours after suggesting in a tweet that Commerce Secretary John Bryson was drunk when he got into a car accident this weekend.
“How does @CommerceSec have 3 car crashes in 5 minutes and alcohol NOT be involved? ?#Skills,” the group tweeted early this morning.
“Earlier Bryson tweet with hashtag ?#skills? attempted levity (before facts known) and failed miserably. We took it down and regret the tweet,” the group said on Twitter shortly after 10 a.m.
Were critics of President Obama too hasty in their judgment of Bryson’s accident? What lessons does this incident offer about Twitter?
My Response:
Read MoreDoes Walker’s victory put Wisconsin in play for the GOP?
Pundits will be talking all day about the meaning of the failed Wisconsin recall election.
The bright spot is that the recall process has forced Walker to moderate his language if not his actions and if the numbers hold out, he will be faced with a Democratic majority in the state senate to slow down his union-busting, tea-party sponsored initiatives.
But I see an ominous cloud of Obama’s making for the national elections in November. Will he learn from this that it does no good to try to deflect controversy from yourself and let other people take the fall?
Politico Arena Asks:
Incumbent Republican Gov. Scott Walker has survived the gubernatorial recall election against Milwaukee Mayor Tom Barrett, the Associated Press reports. The victory comes after Walker divided Wisconsin by making changes to state laws governing collective bargaining for public employees. Though Obama won the state by 13 points in 2008, presumptive GOP nominee Mitt Romney is expected to be more competitive in the state this fall.
Does this victory put Wisconsin in play for the GOP in 2012?
My Response:
Read MoreIs Trump a liability for Mitt Romney?
Politico Arena Asks: 
Billionaire Donald Trump will join Mitt Romney tonight at a fundraiser in Las Vegas. The appearance comes just five days after the real estate developer aimed to re-ignite the debate about President Obama’s birthplace.
Tonight’s appearance could pose some political risk to Romney, political experts predict. Obama released his long-form birth certificate last year, which showed his birthplace to be Honolulu, Hawaii.
Is it worth the money for Romney to associate himself with a birther? Will this help or hurt Romney’s campaign?
My Response:
Any right winger, however wacky or outrageous, who aligns with Romney will bring in some votes. And as to the money Trump might bring, Romney has already shown what he is. He’s just trying to get the best price.
Read MoreIf You Don’t Sing Your Own Song, Who Will?
Analyzing gas prices isn’t usually my beat, but media messaging is. Is failure to talk about declining prices at the pump smart or self-defeating for Obama?
Politico Arena Asks:
Gas prices are expected to hit a two-year low this Memorial Day weekend, averaging around $3.66 a gallon, the Christian Science Monitor reports.
Some energy analysts believe prices could continue to drop through the summer months. The falling prices take away a key piece of the GOP’s platform against President Obama – however, the White House has been relatively quiet about the price drop and a recent AP-GfK poll showed the majority of Americans still disapprove of Obama’s handling of gas prices.
Will the dropping gas prices help Obama’s reelection chances – and should the White House work harder to highlight the decrease? Or will voters still be wary of Obama’s economic performance?
My Response:
Read MoreDoes Newsweek’s Cover Help or Hurt Obama?
If the fastest way to self esteem is to stand up for what you believe, President Obama is standing tall this week–even though it has taken a long “evolution” to stand up for marriage equality. What do you think? Will it help or hurt his reelection prospects?
Politico Arena asks:
The newest issue of Newsweek Magazine has declared President Obama “The First Gay President.” The cover features a photo of Obama with a rainbow-colored halo around his head. The cover comes less than a week after Obama voiced his support for gay marriage.
Does this portrayal help or hurt Obama’s re-election chances?
My Response:
Read MoreGrace, Grit, and Paycheck Fairness – When?
The annual hooplah over Equal Pay Day is over. At gatherings around the country last month, politicians and activists alike decried the persistent 20% plus pay gap between men and women. Now what? Back to work with our heads down as usual?
Not if you’re Lilly Ledbetter.
The namesake of the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Restoration Act—the first bill President Barack Obama signed into law while surrounded with the smart political optics of Ledbetter, bipartisan members of Congress, and other women leaders in red power suits—knows this:
- Securing fairness and equality in compensation requires each woman to be persistently aware of what she’s worth and stand up for herself in the workplace.
- Securing fairness and equality in compensation is a long haul process that requires changes to laws and policies so the system is fair to all.
The personal and the political are, as usual, intertwined.
Sure, negotiation expert Victoria Pynchon can coach you on how to negotiate compensation more effectively for yourself. And when I speak and teach about my book No Excuses and its 9 Power Tools, I emphasize #3—use what you’ve got—to help women identify just how much power they have in their own hands, including the power to make changes in their paychecks.
And sure, as the Daily Muse pointed out, it’s good that the U.S. Department of Labor held an Equal Pay App Challenge seeking an app to educate people about the persistent problems of equal—or rather, unequal—pay.
But clearly these individual actions, as important as they are, constitute isolated drops in the deep blue ocean of needed systemic change.
Ledbetter’s new memoir, Grace and Grit: My Fight for Equal Pay and Fairness at Goodyear and Beyond, takes the personal and weaves it together with the political as she describes how she became a leader in the fight for equal pay.
Read MoreMemo to Julia Louis-Dreyfus: How Veep Can Lead Without Power
I could hardly wait to see Julia Louis-Dreyfus in her new life-after-Seinfeld sitcom, Veep.
As a student of women’s relationship with power, I made sure to be curled up in bed for Veep’s 10pm edt HBO premier last night, ready to soak it up and take notes on my equally charged up ipad.
My excitement deflated minute by minute.
Entertainment Watch’s plot overview is one reason:
Louis-Dreyfus’ Vice President Selina Meyer is a veep without much influence constantly trying to gain some, a ripe premise for comedy.… In the first installment of Veep, we saw V.P. Meyer trying to advance her green initiative with the introduction of cornstarch-based utensils in government offices, a move that irritated (“outrage” being too strong a word to use for anything a Vice President introduces) the plastics lobby.
Now, I know that Franklin Roosevelt’s vice president John Nance Garner (do you even know who he was?) described the job as “not worth a bucket of warm piss.” And when Veep Meyer asks her former senatorial colleague what she’s been missing since she left the Senate to take the vice-presidency, the senator replies, “Power?”
As the tension between corn starch versus plastic utensils mounts, Veep receives repeated messages that the White House doesn’t want any mention of anything that could bring down the wrath of Big Oil’s mega lobby. The President himself is never seen or heard—rubbing the wound of Meyer’s perceived powerlessness with sea salt.
But that’s just the beginning of the narrative by which Veep renders the foul-mouthed Meyer less than influence-commanding.
Read MoreRosen’s gaffe does not equal Ted Nugent’s threat
Should a politician have to answer for what his/her surrogates say? That’s the question Politico’s Arena asked yesterday.
I see a big difference in the comparison between the two examples given, however. Here’s my answer–what do you say?
Politico Arena Asks:
The Secret Service has taken an interest in comments by rocker Ted Nugent about President Obama. At an NRA convention in St. Louis on Saturday, Nugent, a Mitt Romney supporter, said, “If Barack Obama becomes the president in November again, I will either be dead or in jail by this time next year.”
The Romney campaign has disavowed Nugent‘s remarks. And last week President Obama’s team denounced comments by supporter Hilary Rosen critical of Ann Romney’s role as a stay-at-home mother.
Should Romney be tied to Nugent’s tirade, as the president got linked to Rosen’s remarks? Or should candidates be absolved of responsibility for what supporters say about the campaign?
My Response:
All leaders get tarred or starred by the people they bring with them. It’s how leaders react that counts.
Read MoreWill Equal Pay Make You Submissive in Bed?
I raise this question because today I experienced the disorienting juxtaposition of Equal Pay Day with the retro notion that women’s growing economic power makes us want to be dominated during sex.
Equal Pay Day marks the day in April when women wear red to signify we’re in the red, earning (by 2011 calculations) but 77.4 cents to men’s $1. And for African-American and Hispanic women the differential is significantly more extreme.
This marker of financial non-power came just after Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker disappeared the state’s equal pay law. It also coincided with author and journalism professor Katie Roiphe’s implausible analysis of the S and M-loving novel Fifty Shades of Gray.
A paradox in her own mind, Roiphe opines:
“It is intriguing that huge numbers of women are eagerly consuming myriad and disparate fantasies of submission at a moment when women are ascendant in the workplace…when—in hard economic terms—women are less dependent or subjugated than before.
It is probably no coincidence that, as more books like The Richer Sex by Liza Mundy and Hanna Rosin’s forthcoming The End of Men appear, there is a renewed popular interest in the stylized theater of female powerlessness…We may then be especially drawn to this particular romanticized, erotically charged, semi-pornographic idea of female submission at a moment in history when male dominance is shakier than it has ever been.”
Really? And whose preferred narrative do we think this zero-sum “power-over” social model is?
Read MoreRometty’s Epic #FAIL to Lead at Augusta
Talk show bloviator Rush Limbaugh calls 30-year-old Georgetown University law student Sandra Fluke a slut for advocating insurance coverage of contraceptives. Republican National Committee chair Reince Priebus compares women to caterpillars. And the Augusta National Golf Club’s perfectly manicured greens remain firmly planted among those last bastions protecting male hegemony over society’s most powerful economic and political institutions. 
The all-male golf club, based in Augusta, Georgia, has failed once again to award its coveted green jacket to a woman who clearly deserves club membership—IBM’s president and CEO Virginia “Ginni” Rometti. IBM is one of three major corporate sponsors of the club’s vaunted Masters golf tournament, and Rometty is Big Blue’s first female CEO.
But as much as I’ve excoriated Augusta’s male leaders for perpetuating this exclusionary practice, and as much as I believe IBM’s board is culpable for not standing up for their own CEO, I’m even more distressed over Rometty’s failure to take this unprecedented opportunity to lift up not only herself but all women aspiring to the upper echelons of corporate leadership.
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