Author: David Yaden

How many times have you heard, “we know what the solution is, we just need the political will.” Or, ”we just need to educate the public”?

The next time you encounter these pretensions at political analysis, buy yourself a ticket to a different movie. They are examples of my favorite lame expressions that say something true but not very helpful.

Let’s put some of these pretensions at political smarts through a work-out to see just how analytically muscular they really are. Maybe I’m a bit cynical after 60 years tromping around the political vineyards, but I bet a few of you also roll your eyes when you hear some of these pontifications.

“We know what the solution is, we just need the political will”

One realistic translation of this trope is, “we advocate this solution but admit others may not agree.” Or, “we think this is the right solution but we can’t make the politics work.”

The lack of political will advertises itself as the problem in need of solution. Moreover, I am willing to bet that the solution arrived at through building political will be different from that initially claimed to be “known.”

Good policy and good politics start with broad agreement about a well-considered statement of the problem. Getting sufficiently broad agreement on the scope and and nature of the problem is a necessary first step toward creating the will to act.

Of course homelessness is a “problem.” Is it the problem to overcome for helping the homeless? For that, look to the failure of governments and organizations to unite and be accountable for a common strategy encompassing the impacts for both those on the street and the communities they inhabit.

Truthfully, it is an oxymoron to say “we know the solution but don’t have the political will.”

Creating political will is what politics is all about. Below are a few different examples of why we should be wary of claims about “political will,” both claims that we have it and the solution is therefore in hand, or assertions that we just need to find some.

• In 2015, newspapers reported that we had found the political will to solve homelessness:

“Hoping to cut by half the number of homeless Portlanders living on the streets, city and county leaders on Wednesday abruptly pledged $30 million to combat a newly dubbed “housing emergency.…for shelter beds, affordable apartments and rental protections to prevent Portlanders from becoming homeless.

But it won’t come close to fully solving the problem, projected to cost $50 million annually for two decades.…

“Getting to this point has been the hard part, getting the political will around the table,” said Deborah Kafoury, chairwoman of the Multnomah County Board of Commissioners. “But you see the commitment today from the people here, because we know that ending homelessness in our community is that important.”

• From “Up for Growth,” a national advocacy group: “We simply need the political will to make housing a national priority and support proven smart growth policies, increased investments, and scalable solutions.”

• In 2000, Oregon adopted the Quality Education Model that was supposed to “take a lot of the guess work out of budgeting and provide a policy—and a political—justification for a particular [school funding] budget number…. We must create the political will to raise revenue for funding schools at the level identified by the QEM. “

In 1946, after India and Pakistan were split into two countries, disrupting and displacing millions, a distraught citizen was heard wandering around asking , “does anyone know where I can find my government?” Does anyone know where we can find our missing political will?

“It’s all a matter of leadership”

True enough, in the sense that nothing gets done without some direction, some executive function. But it leaves too much unsaid about what leadership is.

We hear the plea for leadership when the ship of state seems adrift. For the most part, the image of the leader conjured up is heroic. The captain at the helm. Joan d’Arc, sword in hand, decisive in her strokes.

Complaints about want of leadership always have some basis in governmental failure. Often, however, these are failures of competent management. True enough, political leadership should be accountable for firing competent managers.

But we should expect more of leaders than hiring competent managers and posturing as decisive leaders of the parade.

Studies of leadership teach that it is much more a matter of the relationship of leaders and followers that fosters “political will.” The literature about leadership is quite direct in comparing leadership to teaching in which followers become elevated to higher levels of purpose and capacity for collective action. This gets a bit wonky so I’ll keep it short.

Daniel Yankelovich, in his book Coming to Public Judgment:

In a democracy, one of the major qualifications of leaders is that they develop the skill to move the public toward consensus by playing a constructive role at every stage of the public judgment process—consciousness raising, working through, and resolution. For this to happen, the culture has to broaden its definition of leadership to incorporate this ability.

James MacGregor Burns from his book Leadership:

The leader’s fundamental act is to induce people to be aware or conscious of what they feel—to feel their true needs so strongly, to define their values so meaningfully, that they can be moved to purposeful action.

Pres. Harry Truman (at his non-wonky best):

Leadership is the art of getting other people to run with your idea as if it were their own.

Transactional leadership has been defined as acts of mutual bargaining around an issue with no long-lasting bonds built. In contrast:

Transcending [transformational] leadership is dynamic leadership in the sense that the leaders throw themselves into a relationship with followers who will feel ‘elevated’ by it and often become more active themselves, thereby creating new cadres of leaders.” (Burns)

We really should be saying, “its all a matter or leadership and followership.”

It takes a deeper dive to delve into “leadership,” but for now read what Dan Weiden of Weiden+Kennedy advertising fame said in 2005:

It’s time to recognize “the gravity of the situation we face in Oregon. The leadership vacuum in our state is not only profound, it’s systemic.…

Old hierarchies have broken down and, no matter how much we might long for knights on white horses, fresh posses of can-do powerbrokers are not about to ride to our rescue.

What we need is a totally new approach to leadership. What we need is extreme cooperation…We may wring our hands and cry about a lack of leadership, but there are plenty of people out there who are ready. We just need to work, together, from the bottom up.

We see you, Ron Herndon, Rukiayah Adams, Tony Hopson, Jr. for your leadership of Albina Vision. And I give a bow to Gov. Kotek for showing what effective transactional leadership should look like. Here’s hoping she develops into a transformational leader.

“We just need to educate the public”

This ranks right up there with “we just need political will” as the equivalent of “the dog ate my homework.” It signals we haven’t done our political homework.

As with “it’s all about leadership,” it is almost always true. Just not very helpful. Often it is merely a sigh of resignation.

Just in my reading today, I see “need to educate the public” in reference in stories about getting people to respond to surveys, to tolling highways, to placement of affordable housing, to state budgeting, to the importance of Oregon agriculture. (List is incomplete.)

There are two phrases that have grown together and are never separated: “need for tax reform” and “need to educate the public.” The rare sightings of tax reform should educate us to lower our expectations for educating the public as the route to political success.

We know from research and experience a few things about political “education:”

• People cling to their beliefs and resist information that does not reinforce those beliefs
• People selectively attend to what interests them, and pay little attention to what does not
• Communication that seeks to change behavior happens through emotional and mental shortcuts, and it takes time

Yet most campaigns to “educate the public,” go at it as though it is homework, a matter of getting people to absorb more information. Outreach campaigns can be effective in mobilizing people already interested in an issue. They are less successful in reaching the much larger audiences of the marginally interested. Information campaigns to “educate the public” are often disappointing because they fail to account for context, the role of value and emotion, level of interest, and have unrealistic expectations for how people accept and process new information.

So, even if “we just need to educate the public” comes with an ostensible plan to do so, be skeptical.

“It’s too urgent to wait, we need to act now”

In 1993, the state legislature was preparing to send to the voters a major tax overhaul, including adoption of a sales tax. The impetus was passage of property tax limitation Measure 5 in 1990 that was eating into both school and state General Fund revenue.

At the time, I argued to state Senate President Bill Bradbury—bless his soul – that the referral was doomed to defeat without a longer-term effort to deeply engage voters in constructing the measure before it went to the ballot.

Bradbury’s response: “it is too urgent, we can’t wait.” My response to that was: “in that case this will be just the latest tax reform measure to hurry up and fail; then it will be another 10 years before we get another chance.” The measure did get 25% “yes,” and it was another 10 years before another serious consideration of tax reform.

Wise politics requires sussing out the difference between what is truly urgent—meaning that even failure is better than no action— and what is so important that it is worth taking the time to get it right.

“We need an action plan”

Closely related to “It is so urgent we cannot wait.” Time and again I have seen organizations rush to create impressive spreadsheets with actions and due dates and “measurable goals.” Time and again I have seen these become little more than exercises in checking boxes

Progress gets measured by what is being done (inputs, as they say) rather than what has gotten done (outputs, results).

Like “leadership,” you can’t do without an action plan. It is a shame how few deliver real accountability for results.

When I was doing consulting work I often preached the difference between having a strategy vs an action plan. A true strategy owns you in the sense that it is so clear and compelling that you don’t need to consult it to see what to do next. A robust strategy almost has a narrative quality that says, here is where we are, there is where we want to go, and here is a roadmap with a variety of routes. If you need to look at your action plan to see how you are doing and what to focus on, you don’t have a robust strategy.