Game Change
by John Heilemann and Mark Halperin

Published in 2010, Game Change recounts the stories of the 2008 Presidential election with a behind-the-scenes perspective unlike anything I’ve seen elsewhere. The book reads like a novel (think Joe Klein’s Primary Colors or even a John Grisham work) and is simply fascinating to take in.  Chapter after chapter paint a nuanced picture of what Barack Obama, Hilary Clinton, John McCain and other candidates were experiencing from the time they decided to run until the election itself – it’s a narrative that the media simply couldn’t have assembled along the way.  Knowing of the extensive research and interviewing that the authors did to assemble it together made it all the more impressive.

Though largely retrospective in nature, much of it remains relevant today as we try to understand how John Edwards` campaign could have made it as far as it did (and how surprisingly successful they were at denying to themselves the truth about his character and actions along the way), just how unprepared Sarah Palin was or is to be in any kind of position of national leadership, and how hard politicians have to work to overcome or work around the personal turmoil that being a candidate can bring.

I admit that as a current candidate for local office, some of this reading was personal escapism – no matter what challenges I might face in my campaign, at least I don’t have to fly, drive and walk back and forth across the country for months and years.  But I think the book would be a page-turner for anyone who enjoys following national politics, or wants a more complete understanding of what goes into running for President.

Rework
by Jason Fried and David Heinemeier Hansson

Rework is a series of short and easily digestible chapters with common sense advice on how to succeed in business.  That particular topic – business advice – has surely been beaten to death by other publications over the years, so I was a little wary of Yet Another Business Book when a friend gave me a copy to check out.

It turned out to be the best single collection of business advice I’ve ever read.

It’s important to say again that it’s pretty common sense stuff, but that comes with the corollary observation that the traditional mainstream answers to the question of “how business should be done” are generally NOT helpful or good common sense, and that makes this book a bit of a revolutionary writing.

With advice like “don’t have meetings just to have meetings” and “get a good night’s sleep” and “fire the workaholics” and “don’t label everything ASAP – of course everyone wants things done as soon as they can be done,” it’s hard to resist the urge to smack one’s forehead over and over again while reading, if one has ever worked in a traditional corporate culture.  But make no mistake – this is not a cheesy, impractical and oversimplified “chicken soup for the business soul.”  Authors Fried and Hansson write from experiences of success and failure that are real and complex and always evolving.  They’ve been there and done that, and they have lots of good stories from others who have done the same.  Their approach is one that acknowledges the realities of business while balancing the humanity and emotional layers of what it means for a group of people to collaborate on something together – a rarity in business books, I think.

If I can think of any resource that, were it available 15 years ago when I was working with my business partner and then first employees to start our own business, and during all the management decisions I’ve made since, would have saved me lots of time, hand-wringing and self-doubt, Rework is it.  For that reason alone, I think anyone starting or running a small business today should read this book, especially those that traffic in information or technology (some pieces of the book don’t translate so well to more traditional brick and mortar business models).  There’s no substitute for direct experience and I don’t regret my own, but this book will be a head start and/or affirming encouragement to those who want to run a business well.

Confessions of a Public Speaker
by Scott Berkun

I’m fascinated by the art and science of interpersonal communication, and as I continue to develop my own profile and technique as a public speaker, I’m enjoying reading the advice of others who have been doing it for a while.

Scott Berkun’s book is much more than a how-to book, though.  It’s part telling of a personal journey – Berkun took a leap of faith to become a full time writer and speaker, and you can tell he’s still riding a wave of amazement that it’s working – part lesson in cultural anthropology and biology (asking questions like “why do we get butterflies in our stomach before a public talk?” and “what audience dynamics in a room lead to the most enjoyable sessions?”), and yes, part advice about the mechanics and logistics of giving a public talk.

Perhaps it’s just that my own sense of humor seems to match up to with Berkun’s really well, or maybe it was the no-frills, common sense approach to a topic that’s either over-analyzed or hyped up and mystified by other writers, but I found Confessions to be very enjoyable and refreshing.

It also made me realize, unfortunately, just how many ineffective presentations and public talks I see on a regular basis,  even by those who are held up as great public speakers. It isn’t always that the speakers themselves are executing their talks poorly (but sometimes it is), it’s often that some of the many other factors Berkun identifies as critical in successful public speaking haven’t been given any regard.  The size, layout, and decor of the room.  The time the speaker has given them self to practice and get setup.  The way that Q&A sessions are conducted.  The way feedback is obtained and used.  These are things I’ve thought about before (and even blogged about), but I’ve never seen such a useful distillation of the issues at stake.  In each case, Berkun makes a simple, straightforward argument for why these things matter, and offers his experience in how to do them well.

I highly recommend Confessions of a Public Speaker to anyone interested in public speaking and effective communications in group settings.

• we should stop doing some stuff that’s not good for the country
• we should do more of the things that are good for the country
• there are some special guests here whose personal stories will make you cry
• everything will be great, you’ll see
• USA is #1 YEEAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH!

It seems like if you have an audience of millions for an hour in prime time, you might mix it up a little bit.  Maybe some flip charts or a talking puppet or something? Oh well.

But, there were two ideas from the speech that I found a little different, and that seem worth following up on if they were offered in sincerity:

• it’s okay to think about the possibility of cutting military funding
• it’s possible that the departments of the federal government aren’t organized in the most efficient way possible given the modern technological tools available for conducting business

If even some small percentage of someone’s time is spent acting on those ideas and bringing about some change as a result, then I’ll be grateful they were held up during the speech.

Otherwise, thanks for all the fish jokes, see you again next year.

But then something curious and possibly amazing happened.

Someone, probably a White House aide who thinks a little differently than her or his colleagues, realized that there might be another way forward.  Someone suggested that maybe if the parties involved in this escalating conflict sat down together and talked in person, a better outcome could prevail.  And apparently that suggestion got whispered in the President’s ear, because Gates, arresting officer Cambridge Police Sgt. James Crowley and Obama are expected to sit down together this week.  Over a beer.

It may seem like a small thing, but it really does represent a total departure from the cultural norm related to how we resolve conflicts.  The idea of just sitting down to have a conversation instead of “lawyering up” is not the direction most of us take, and if you believe the evening news, we often go really far in the other direction of perpetrating further injustices on one another.  But here we have the President of the United States suggesting an in-person conversation, and we have the other men involved responding positively.  The lawyers are stepping back, the media circus is calming down, and there’s going to be a conversation.  Nice!

Of course, there are a lot of obstacles to overcome, and a lot of pressures that make this a less than ideal conversation scenario.  It probably would have been hard for either man to say “no thanks” to the President, and so both are somewhat compelled to participate.  The White House isn’t exactly the most neutral setting for any conversation, and talking through complex issues while slightly intoxicated is probably not ideal.  Both men have ratcheted up the stakes involved – for Gates, it’s about calling attention to racial profiling and for Crowley, it’s about defending the integrity of his and his fellow officers` actions – so neither can easily walk away from the conversation and just say “it’s all good now” without having hoards of special interest groups and supporters demanding further action.  (And yes, there are legitimate and serious issues around racial profiling and law enforcement practices that need to be addressed here.)

But regardless of the outcome, it’s heartening that a seed has been planted: there are other ways to resolve our conflicts.  And the seed is there at the highest levels of a governmental system that generally eschews considering the humanity and complexity of any given person involved in any given dispute.  Might we call that progress?

The forthcoming gathering at the White House may not follow its principles directly, but Restorative Justice is an approach to conflict resolution that tries to foster dialog between all of the parties involved in a wrong-doing – the victim, the offender, witnesses, family members and friends affected, etc.  It tries to build up “mutual responsibility” for addressing wrong-doing in our communities, instead of perpetuating the notion that when a crime or wrong has been committed, accountability and punishment are handed down by some externalized and detached authority.  And it’s working in communities all over.  Here in Richmond, the Conflict Resolution Center trains mediators to facilitate a similar kind of conversation that, while not strictly part of Restorative Justice practices, still encourages that kind of dialog and reconciliation.

What might these kinds of conflict resolution practices look like in your community?  Are there conflicts in your life where a facilitated, face-to-face conversation might have made all the difference in resolving them?

Here’s hoping that Crowley, Gates, and Obama make the best use of their time together, realizing that they may just be helping to model something transformative for, well, the rest of the world.

At a local business networking event tonight, someone noted that they’d heard a rumor I might be getting involved in politics locally.  We had a good conversation about it, and I thought I’d use it as a jumping off point to share a little more about my own political aspirations.

Sometime during my college experience, I decided that I was going to run for the Presidency of the United States of America.  I was mostly serious. I mean, I announced it on the Internet for crying out loud, so you know I wasn’t just messing around.  I figured out that I would be old enough to be elected President in the 2012 elections, and I dreamed my dream from there.

I’ve since figured out that national politics is probably not for me, at least not anytime soon.

It’s not because I dismiss the importance that the political process at that level plays – indeed, I think it’s having quite an impact on our lives every day, and needs people of integrity, values and passion to participate.  But when I wrote about the things that I thought a successful politician needed to be or do, I didn’t realize how incompatible they are with the current state of the national political scene:

This will mean not campaigning about issues, but rather exposing the wounds of our culture and offering suggestions for healing. This will mean recognizing positive social interaction as the most important part of successful citizenship and promoting such interaction to the end that the will of the people may be more clearly and immediately heard. This will mean refusing to propose “programs” and budget changes as possible solutions to our country’s many problems, but rather addressing the problems at their source and empowering the individual citizen to get passionate enough, excited enough, and angry enough to enact positive change. This will mean refusing to participate in the handicapped, ineffective political process, but instead inventing new and creative ways to create a government that is truly belongs to its people and not to its own members or processes.

What I believe now is “right here” is the place I can be most effective and rewarded in my desire to contribute something significant in my time on Earth.  In other words, changing the world is, for me, no longer about going “out there” and making a difference for “those people.”   It’s not that I don’t care about out there and those people, it’s that I know I can help them the most by being attentive to the land I call home.  This feels more sustainable (“what if we all cared more deeply and actively for the people and places in our own communities?”) than what national and global politics tend to be about (“what if we all went out and tried to make laws and coerced agreements about how everyone should live, enforced with fear and oppression?”).

The sayings are cliche, but it’s because they ring true: “All politics is local.”  “Think globally, act locally.”

None of this negates my passion for politics at all levels.  I can’t help but follow the daily goings on of Washington D.C., the dreams, successes and missteps of our President, the behind the scenes power plays in Congress, the drowning pool that is our news media.

And that translates very much to the local level – even though there may not seem like a lot that can stir one’s blood in a City Council meeting in Richmond, Indiana, or in the finer points of comparing two mayoral candidates, this is where I now find the real fascination with political influence and maneuvering.  These are the people who live around me, who know this place for what it is, who have to look me and our neighbors in the eye every day and think about how well we’re doing.  Local politicians are the ones who can (if they want) care enough to actually make a difference.

So am I going to get involved in local politics?  A run for Mayor or City Council, maybe?   I don’t know.  There’s certainly part of me that thinks I have some skills and perspectives that could make a positive difference in the community, and I would be honored to be able to pursue them in that context.  But there’s another part of me that wonders how it might limit me, how it might change my ability to actually get things done.  What would I have to sacrifice?  How frustrated would I be with enmeshing myself in the political realities of a firmly entrenched governmental and social structure that isn’t serving all of its citizens (let alone other forms of life) very well?

And then there’s the possible meanness.  The person I was talking to at tonight’s event noted that Richmond is a town where people can get beat up upon pretty badly when they dive into the political scene.  Whether it’s party politics or personal agendas, fear or ego, I could imagine that things could get pretty nasty pretty quickly.  I’m not afraid of standing up for what I believe, and doing so against tough challenges, but I’d need a good reason to put myself in those particular tough situations.

All of these considerations plus some logistical concerns (e.g. a business to run) lead me to no firm conclusion at the moment, and if I figure that if I’m going to jump into politics, I need to be darn ready and sure about it.  The last thing I want is to have another “I will run for President!” moment only to realize later that I would have been more effective following another path.  But there remains a rumbling in my heart and mind that says “hmm, you might be able to do that, do it well, and make a difference that matters.”

I will pay attention to this rumbling and see where it takes me, be it toward politics or in some other direction entirely.  Stay tuned.

…at this particular moment, with the private sector so weakened by this recession, the federal government is the only entity left with the resources to jolt our economy back into life.

I think this is not only incorrect, but also quite counter to the “grass roots we can do it yes we can” message that got Mr. Obama to the White House.  If we accept that the only way to heal a broken economic system is through the actions of the federal government, we absolutely dis-empower and even discourage individuals, families, local communities, and regional partnerships from taking action, taking responsibility for their own way of life.  I think it’s irresponsible of Mr. Obama to suggest that we must turn to the federal government’s resources for something better, that there is no alternative.

Second:

Obama and others keep talking about how if we don’t act with this stimulus package, we “could turn a crisis into a catastrophe.”  I really don’t like the framing and implications here:

• We have to support this package because if we don’t, it will be our fault that things get worse
• This package is our only hope of things NOT getting worse
• The unemployment rates, suicides, rampant crime, amplified oppressive poverty, and general breakdown of our society is not a catastrophe

And if this is just a crisis, what does the catastrophe look like?  No one seems to be willing to paint a picture and follow it to its natural conclusions, but that’s a blog post for another time.

With these statements, Barack Obama is reinforcing the notion that a top-down, old minds, “the government will save us” approach is all we’ve got, and that you’re complicit in facilitating a catastrophe if you’re not on board with that.  There is no alternative.  Trust us.

There will be good things to come out of the Obama administration, I’m sure, but this is not one of them.  This is a shameful reversion to policies and framing that have very much hurt this country, not helped it.  I bet he could do better.

As his team prepares a final judgment on whether he can keep using e-mail, perhaps even in a read-only fashion, several authorities in presidential communication said they believed it was highly unlikely that he would be able to do so.

Diana Owen, who leads the American Studies program at Georgetown University, said presidents were not advised to use e-mail because of security risks and fear that messages could be intercepted.

“They could come up with some bulletproof way of protecting his e-mail and digital correspondence, but anything can be hacked,” said Ms. Owen, who has studied how presidents communicate in the Internet era. “The nature of the president’s job is that others can use e-mail for him.”

Surely there’s some middle ground to keep a President as tech-savvy as Barack Obama from being forced off of e-mail altogether? I mean, this is the guy who announced his VP pick by SMS text message, for crying out loud.

Here are some scenarios to explore:

It’s clear that the President could probably not have a public e-mail address that was directly addressable from any other e-mail account, and that was expected to be read by the President himself. It would be flooded hourly with requests, comments and threats from around the world, and instantly become useless as a form of effective correspondence.

The White House does already have a public e-mail address, comments@whitehouse.gov, but they make it clear that they probably won’t respond, and that you can’t even send graphics or attachments. (How the heck are we supposed to share funny photos of our cats, then!?) I suspect that they have some serious hardware and network capacity dedicated just to receiving and processing mail sent to that address – there’s no way that much or any of it will make it’s way to a laptop on the President’s desk.

Here’s one option: the President could have a private e-mail address that is directly addressable within the executive branch of the U.S. government, using a private domain (e.g. president@whitehouse.gov.private) and set of mail exchangers. This would allow Barack Obama to e-mail with other government officials who have established addresses, taking advantage of the utility of e-mail for more direct conversations and unfiltered access to information. Anyone wishing to reply to his messages could send e-mail like usual, and as long as they were on that private network, it would go through.

When the President wanted to send e-mail outside of this private network of addresses to a regular e-mail address, his message would be intercepted by a correspondence manager who could insure that the message was free of sensitive information, and that it would not be a source of embarrassment for anyone if delivered to the wrong hands.

Here’s a hard part: should that recipient with a regular e-mail address be able to reply? If it’s to some other regular e-mail address, e.g. “barack.obama@whitehouse.gov,” then that just wouldn’t do, because the address would eventually leak out and become just as much a target for a flood of messages as “comments@” might be now.

BUT, a variation on that might work. The President’s outgoing message could be dynamically rewritten to appear to come from an address that had an expiration date, and that used a unique hash token to prevent guessing it – this is common in software like TMDA and other special e-mail submission systems. So instead of

From: barack.obama@whitehouse.gov

it might be

From: barack.obama-JLK23ADSF23423K@whitehouse.gov

and it would only work for, say, up to 70 hours (or a week, or…). The next time the President responds, it comes from a different address, which also only works for 70 hours. In this manner, correspondents of the President with regular e-mail addresses could carry on an e-mail conversation and not worry about the address becoming public in a way that mattered. If someone tried to e-mail the expired address, they’d get a bounce back saying, “sorry, please e-mail comments@whitehouse.gov.”

For someone with a regular e-mail address to initiate a conversation with the President, we’d have to take a slightly different approach – the addresses would essentially need to go on a pre-approved list of correspondents whose messages would be allowed to go to “comments@whitehouse.gov” and be automatically filtered straight on through to the President’s internal (not publicly addressable) account.

So, to initiate an e-mail conversation with the President, you’d either have to be a known associate with a known e-mail address, or you’d have to be an employee of the Federal government with an established e-mail account. Better than nothing, right?

Another pitfall: the President would still generally have to consider any content sent via e-mail, whether it was to a private internal address or not, as up for public scrutiny. Until whomever controls Presidential records passes a law identifying some kinds of Presidential communications as truly private, it’s just the reality of the thing. And even if that did happen, we all know how easy it is for an e-mail that wasn’t meant for you to make it into your hands, so it’s probably just safe to assume that’s happening anyway.

From the article:

For all the perquisites and power afforded the president, the chief executive of the United States is essentially deprived by law and by culture of some of the very tools that other chief executives depend on to survive and to thrive. Mr. Obama, however, seems intent on pulling the office at least partly into the 21st century on that score; aides said he hopes to have a laptop computer on his desk in the Oval Office, making him the first American president to do so.

Well, that’s my brain dump on how it might work to let the President of the United States of America have an e-mail account he can actually use. What do you think?

This victory alone is not the change we seek. It is only the chance for us to make that change. And that cannot happen if we go back to the way things were.

It can’t happen without you, without a new spirit of service, a new spirit of sacrifice.

So let us summon a new spirit of patriotism, of responsibility, where each of us resolves to pitch in and work harder and look after not only ourselves but each other.

Congratulations to President-elect Obama, and to all of the people who put themselves into the political spotlight during this campaign to seek change in their communities at all levels. May the integrity and dreams of a better world that got you this far continue to ground you in the years to come.

The problem is, McCain has done nothing to question the underlying thinking and assumptions that have fueled these fires. By passing them by he essentially reinforces the dangerous framing, and does little toward any truly just treatment of the issues that have come up.

Take the exchanges in this town hall meeting, for example. A man says he’s scared of an Obama presidency, and McCain says that you wouldn’t have to be scared of an Obama presidency, but doesn’t say why, or why whatever there was to be scared of in the first place isn’t really a legitimate concern.

A woman says she’s worried because Obama is an Arab. McCain says no, he’s a decent family man. So, according to McCain, being an Arab man is the opposite of being a decent family man? Not only is this a minimally effective request for respect toward Obama, it’s essentially an endorsement of the racist premise of the remark.

No, the recent tempering of the tone doesn’t seem to be much more than a shift in political strategy and perhaps a move that makes McCain himself feel a little better about getting up in the morning. But until some of the underlying awfulness that’s driving things can be confronted, there will be only temporary peace without any sort of justice.

I know this practice is not at all constrained to Republican politicans, by the way. It’s rare that a candidate of any political persuasion confronts a difficult or controversial issue head on at a level that really moves the conversation forward, so I know I shouldn’t expect much here. But I do expect better than this.

I’ll note too that it shouldn’t be lost on anyone interested in framing that while all of that was going on, President Bush was cautioning in his speech about the financial crisis that “anxiety can feed anxiety.” WOW – is it possible that an administration that has based much of its public relations around major policy decisions on feeding Americans with anxiety and fear could now be admitting that maybe this isn’t always the most useful practice?

Is it possible that John McCain and George Bush are both realizing at the same time that when your citizens are so riled up with misinformation and doubt about their future, they don’t ALWAYS decide to act exactly how you want them to? Let’s see how well that works out for them.

UPDATED on 10/13/08 to add this great segment from On the Media: Smear Campaign.

It wasn’t problematic for me because the attack was being used against candidate Barack Obama, although I didn’t find it to be an effective or useful expression of concern about his qualifications. Instead, I think that it was just plain insulting to the many people in communities across the world who devote their time and energy to making their local communities better places to live. Further, I think it was a hypocritical and problematic assertion given some of the other selling points being used to present Palin and McCain to voters. Here’s why:

Community organizers are people who look at the concerns and opportunities in their neighborhoods, cities, counties and regions and ask, “what can I do to make good things happen here?” They connect people with resources, people with people. They make the case to decision-makers so that better decisions can be made, though they don’t necessarily wait patiently for the machinations of government when they can be more effective using grassroots methods. They take pride in the place they call home, and aren’t afraid to acknowledge its shortcomings while presenting the case for hope in the future.

Community organizers are the thorns in the side of people who block progress by clinging to “the way things have always been” and “our best days are behind us.” They ask “what about the suffering among us?” and “how can we do more with the resources we already have?” Community organizers are the old timers, go-getters, entrepreneurs, social butterflies, visionaries, and humble leaders that serve as cornerstones in the circles they traverse – often unrecognized, but not in it for the recognition.

Are you sure you want to laugh at community organizers? Are you sure you want to paint them as people who aren’t qualified to be leaders?

I suspect that Sarah Palin and others thought laughing and finger pointing was appropriate because “Community Organizer” is a title that doesn’t fit very well into the patriarchal, bottom-line focused hierarchy of status and power that comes along with national politics. It’s like “Stay at Home Mom” or “Poet/Writer” or “Homemaker” in that all of these ways of spending time are still seen as somehow less worthy than “CEO” or “Mayor” or “President.” They don’t pay as well, you can’t list out your accomplishments as judged by some globally accepted standard, and they don’t command as much awe and respect from the workaholic, instant gratification culture that only cares about how many people you can get to do your bidding at a moment’s notice.

And so it was easy to throw the pitiable “Community Organizer” up there next to the all-important “Mayor” and laugh and point.

“Of course a Mayor is a better station in life than Community Organizer! Of course Mayors always get more done, are better leaders, and because they have an official job description, of course they’re more accountable and effective!” But when you stop to think about it, most of us can say with some certainty that this is a false narrative, and that in any given town, the Mayor (or State Representative, or Senator, or President) can be as incompetent and poor at leadership as anyone else. In fact, there’s that old adage that someone who can get themselves elected to a given public office perhaps isn’t actually qualified to be there. I don’t think all or even most elected officials fall into this category, but the point is that there’s no generalizing or assuming. Especially not when you’re talking about someone who might get to control nuclear weapons.

I was also surprised to hear Palin make this laughing comparison and then hold up “Hockey Mom” as a bullet point on her resume. Like Community Organizers, Hockey Moms (and sometimes Dads) tend to be people who put passion, love and energy into supporting their children, attending local events with enthusiasm, being involved in the local school system, building stronger communities, and holding it all together through the highs and lows. Surely Hockey Moms want to know that their lives and the way they spend time have worth and importance in our culture even though they too do not fit into a narrow corporate structure of how human lives are valued? It’s disingenuous to hold up one kind of non-traditional life choice as laughable while rallying around another, and it just reminds us how scripted and fake the rhetoric is.

If you read this blog regularly, you know that I don’t spend much time hoping that the federal government will Do Something to make my life better. Indeed, I think most of us know that if we want to experience change in our lives, we actually have to go out and make that change happen ourselves. When I see someone who has devoted their time and energy to not only changing their own lives for the better, but also reaching out into their community and organizing for change that benefits others, I stand in awe. I do this because I know it is these among us who play a big part in actually making progress possible – people who inspire and lead, who bleed the blood of their neighbors and who celebrate loudly when joy comes to their town. This is the stuff that strong communities are made of, the stuff that makes bloated government even more unnecessary and in the way.

I can only assume that anyone who would look down on this and laugh so condescendingly is just scrambling get to the top of the power and wealth pyramid as fast as possible, no matter who they have to step on, and I see no honor or integrity in that.

For me, if my life were being remembered by friends and family, and the most that could be said was that I acted passionately for the benefit of my community, I would have lived a life that mattered.

• That we have to choose between a candidate from the Republican party and a candidate from the Democratic Party.
• That within a given political party, we have to choose a single candidate who is the best and only choice.
• That the party conventions are a time when the will of the people is represented and expressed in the form of a meaningful vote, and not just a time for the powerful and well-connected to party on someone else’s dime.
• That we have to vote for the person who can win, instead of voting for the person that best reflects our own values.
• That we must choose the candidate with the most political experience, since the presidency is no place for on-the-job training, instead of choosing a candidate who could be the most effective once in office.
• That we have to choose between efficient, accurate, secure electronic voting machines with no paper trail and slow, unreliable, corruptible traditional voting methods that leave a written record of our choice.
• That it is possible choose a President who will represent us individually and work to address the concerns that affect us on a day-to-day basis, instead of working on those concerns ourselves within our community.

What other false choices are we asked to make? Feel free to add your own in the comments.