Home > Blogs > About Rich's Work > Rich's Blog: Redeeming Hope
Printable Version
Tell a friend
Dear Barack:
-
Oct 23, 2007 Posted by Rich Harwood
(Photo: David McNew/Getty Images)Last week the Washington Post ran a front page story that Americans may be too angry to embrace your message of hope, and instead are aching for a heated partisan campaign of division and resentment. I think they’re wrong. But I also believe that you and other leaders who care about hope must be vigilant in how you engage Americans on hope. It is too easy to misstep here and for politics as usual to triumph. Thus I’ve listed below five key points for winning the public fight on hope. Know that my concern here is not your election, though I wish you luck; instead it is the task of rebuilding hope in our land.
One of the most searing insights I have gained from my 20 years of work across the country is the centrality of hope in people’s lives – and also its fragility. I say this after tirelessly seeking new ways for individuals, organizations, and communities to address social ills and act on their aspirations. And yet, the surfacing and expression of hope is uniquely beautiful, enabling people to stand up and step forward even in the face of adversity and when odds are dead set against them. But false hope is insidious, a contagion that breeds skepticism and leads to cynicism the likes of which causes people to retreat and disengage.
There’s been enough false hope in our society, we all know that. Nonetheless, many leaders continue to engage in an assortment of unseemly and nasty games in public life at the expense of our common interests. They tell those of us who care about hope that we should toughen up or get out of their way. The upshot is that those of us who pursue the path of hope – whether we are a presidential candidate or a local public innovator – must marry our conviction for change with the ability to be ruthlessly strategic in our actions. For if we fail in our current attempts to pursue hope, I fear we will squander the opportunity to re-engage and reconnect Americans.
Here, then, are five key points for us to consider in the pursuit of hope – you as presidential candidate and those of us who live in communities across the country.
Key Points for the Pursuit of Hope
1. We must always keep in mind an important distinction when talking about hope: the difference between false hope and authentic hope. Anyone who wishes to be a champion of hope must be clear about maintaining their focus on authentic hope. This will require immense personal discipline not to blur lines into false hope in the name of convenience or easy wins, and to maintain the clarity of purpose among those who surround you so as not to be pushed off course.
2. When opponents question your motivations, go after you on policy, or attack you personally, you must keep focused on authentic hope. The moment you engage in a tit-for-tat in public discourse, you will erode your own authenticity and your claim to authentic hope. BUT, this does not mean that you should never fight back. Indeed you should and must! But when you do, train your arguments on substantive matters and provide clear contrasts of vision. Do not back down; but nor should you fall prey to playing politics as usual if you want your position to be compelling and forthright.
3. Remember that “hope” is a result of your articulated vision and related positions, not proclamations about hope! When notions of hope become overly familiar – that is, when one makes it their stock and trade – it loses meaning and currency. Hope is not a message unto itself, but over time the byproduct of actions we take and results that emerge. Thus I would urge you and others not to overdo talk about hope; instead, people should see hope as a result of the change you wish to bring about. Otherwise, hope can become an empty slogan.
4. As strange as it may sound, none of us “own” hope. We must remember that hope resides within individuals and communities. Hope is the result of people tapping their own potential to make a difference and joining together to forge a common future. Anyone who talks about hope must know that they are merely a messenger or carrier for something larger than themselves. Therefore, when talking about hope, the focus must be on people, always the people. I know this is difficult because talk of hope can be personally intoxicating; I have experienced this in my own small way. We can mistake people’s response to hope to be about ourselves. When we make that mistake, we can lose our way.
5. We must deliver big on a message of change and authentic hope if people are not to fall sway to heated partisan appeals. This requires that we step forward and articulate a clearly different point of view; hold up a mirror to people so they can see their shared realities; make meaningful entreaties to people to re-engage and reconnect. Some people will aggressively attack you and others who take this path; so be it. But if you and the rest of us straddle the fence in presenting an alternative; if we seem to be accommodating special interests under the cover of new rhetoric; if attempts are made to soft peddle what must be said, then all that will be left is the muddled pursuit of hope. Then people will reach for partisanship and its fleeting comfort of surety rather than our lukewarm hope.
I should say that I admire anyone who steps forward to illuminate possible pathways toward authentic hope. I know that attempts to generate deep change on issues before us will not yield immediate results; but I also know that we can and must place a stake in the ground about what we value and how we seek to move ahead. My own belief is that our task now is to make hope real for people. This too is a long-term endeavor. And no doubt there will be many enemies of the public good who will try to block us along the way. But people are waiting.
-
Re: Dear Barack:
Oct 29, 2007 | David Farrar | david.is.farrar@gmail.com
Having just finished Richard C. Harwood book, "Hope Unraveled: The People's Retreat and Our Way Back", I feel compelled to tell you; I, too, see individual hope as the key to achieving one's personal potential, and by joining others so motivated, achieve significant social progress. Our goals are the same, but like the premise of his book, our paths are different.
His emphasis on appealing to the "public good" rather than appealing to individual self-interest, forms the ideological basis of socialism itself. The Communist couldn't make that appeal work. The Chinese can't make that appeal work, no one can make it work. It cannot work because it violates Mr. Harwood's second and more essential point of appealing to people's "authentic" hope.
Self-interest, in my humble opinion, represents the only true authentic hope individuals have. If the political history of this country has demonstrated anything it has demonstrated that free, Individuals will pursue their own authentic hope with vigor if given half a chance. The problem is, in the political system we have today, most people believe their means of pursuing their own political self-interests has largely been bought out by lobbyists and special interest. In short, they no longer see politics as a legitimate means to pursue their political self-interests and, therefore, no longer participate in it. It is a perfectly natural human reaction to an act that no longer fulfills their self-interest.
And I also agree with Mr. Harwood, present day political campaigns, pumping out false hope day after day only increases skepticism and cynicism. Therefore, I would suggest your campaign focus not on achieving peoples' self-interests, but on a means to reinvigorate our political system to hear everybody's voice. To institute community structures that will bring peoples' issues forward and addressed, no matter how small, no matter how few. Indeed, the central theme of a winning campaign is not to tell people what you are going to do for them, but that their voices will be heard, their interests brought forward and addressed.
ex animo davidfarrar
-
Re: Dear Barack:
Oct 29, 2007 | David Farrar | david.is.farrar@gmail.com
Having just finished Richard C. Harwood book, "Hope Unraveled: The People's Retreat and Our Way Back", I feel compelled to tell you; I, too, see individual hope as the key to achieving one's personal potential, and by joining others so motivated, achieve significant social progress. Our goals are the same, but like the premise of his book, our paths are different.
His emphasis on appealing to the "public good" rather than appealing to individual self-interest, forms the ideological basis of socialism itself. The Communist couldn't make that appeal work. The Chinese can't make that appeal work, no one can make it work. It cannot work because it violates Mr. Harwood's second and more essential point of appealing to people's "authentic" hope.
Self-interest, in my humble opinion, represents the only true authentic hope individuals have. If the political history of this country has demonstrated anything it has demonstrated that free, Individuals will pursue their own authentic hope with vigor if given half a chance. The problem is, in the political system we have today, most people believe their means of pursuing their own political self-interests has largely been bought out by lobbyists and special interest. In short, they no longer see politics as a legitimate means to pursue their political self-interests and, therefore, no longer participate in it. It is a perfectly natural human reaction to an act that no longer fulfills their self-interest.
And I also agree with Mr. Harwood, present day political campaigns, pumping out false hope day after day only increases skepticism and cynicism. Therefore, I would suggest your campaign focus not on achieving peoples' self-interests, but on a means to reinvigorate our political system to hear everybody's voice. To institute community structures that will bring peoples' issues forward and addressed, no matter how small, no matter how few. Indeed, the central theme of a winning campaign is not to tell people what you are going to do for them, but that their voices will be heard, their interests brought forward and addressed.
ex animo davidfarrar
-
Re: Dear Barack:
Oct 23, 2007 | Rich Harwood | rharwood@theharwoodinstitute.org
The article was entitled, "Does Obama's Message Match the Moment? -- Reconcilation May Be Hard Sell to Angry Party," from Wednesday, October 17, 2007
-
Re: Dear Barack:
Oct 23, 2007 | Ed Wojcicki | edwoj54@yahoo.com
Exactly when was that article in the Washington Post?