[to Flavius & Barefooted]

The poor or disenfranchised simply don't know where the levers are to do the most harm.

I know corrupt small businessmen and corrupt mega-multimillionaires. The difference is largely access. But I also know very ethical mega-multimillionaires. Money may provide a bigger venue to display corruption, but I glanced at the troopers in Paula Jones-gate yesterday, and besides lying in her case, they were already pulling other insurance scams. They simply had bad ethics.

Leadership isn't well taught, or MBA students would actually be heading companies, which they aren't. It's the school of hard knocks, the thousands of mistakes and learning from those mistakes. How do you recognize a leader? you see someone with people following. It's not terribly predictive. There are different kinds of bosses - understanding, inspiring, terrorizing, do-it-themselves, etc.

But for movements or business, frequently a razor focus on a single idea creates the most success. And far more failures. (I was reading about the fanatics around Suleiman's time, and how the most rabid, least-compromising took over - they were willing to play chicken with reality and commit hara-kiri as needed - something why Ted Cruz scares me more than Trump). 

Despite the rise of the internet and Unicorns like Twitter and Uber, most companies and people are a bit more diverse and handle a wider set of problems. It's exactly where we see the Bernie vs. Hillary question - Hillary is a Microsoft that is successful but has its share of failures and is still innovating and leading in many areas but open to ridicule in a lot of others. Bernie is an Uber or a lifestyle product like LAP-BAND - he's not specifically interested in growing his brand beyond a particular question, but like a Google going from Search to Android phones or Amazon going from books into all sorts of merchandise plus Cloud computing, the opportunities to diversify arise as he grows his audience.

There's an amazing book called "The Innovator's Dilemma" that addresses this conflict in tech terms. Why incumbents that have huge R&D budgets often aren't able to latch on to the "next big thing" ™ - it's not that IBM doesn't know how to innovate - they came up with the PC among other things, and are bigger today than 30 years ago. But there are some more disruptive new trends that don't pay to an incumbent *AND THE PAIN OF FOLLOWING THOSE NEW TRENDS* far exceeds the payoff, with no assurance that the new trend will ever arrive. Wearable devices are interesting new tech, but they don't pay service contracts of millions of dollars that an IBM or HP is used to. So a smart product manager or exec will shuffle it to the side and pay a small amount of attention. But a bored college kid with no bills to pay can spend a summer screwing around with a wearable bracelet and controlling program and find some buddies to help and make a website, and voila, it's there, and possibly viable.

The bread-and-butter issues of government are different from the developing crises that shape any particular administration are different from the specific movement issues that may determine both a primary and general presidential election cycle. And obviously they relate to whether you're in charge or on the opposition bench. Opposition to the Iraq War was important in 2002-2004, but was largely irrelevant as a critical general policy issue after that - the small war was over there, we were over here. Issues about banks and car companies and bankruptcy were important in 2009 - now replaced by talks about hybrids and energy efficiency and lack of wage growth.

The pitch about global warming reached its most peaked a couple years ago - despite the growing pronouncements of scientists, you won't see any more alarming stories on the front pages. It's passed peak chaos - maybe because of growing renewables we hope work in time, maybe because of economic issues that take our attention, maybe from fatigue... Instead, it's an issue we in general get very worried about for short time periods, and then it fades quickly behind issues that have much more staying power and hit closer-to-home, like wage inequality or Ferguson or the LA terror attack.

From my perspective, the razor focus on Hillary's speeches to Goldman Sachs is emblematic of this split. For someone on the outside, it looks like a special favor. For someone on the inside, it's part of the pattern of how things get done - who you talk to, relationships you maintain, long-term networking. If you look at IBM or Accenture's professional services and how much they charge for the dumbest things, it looks like corruption and extortionary pricing. But it's actually just the cost of getting things done with a serious corporate customer. I've competed head-to-head with Accenture as a small businessman, offering more value, providing a more effective solution - but I don't have the street-cred, the financial power, the guarantees that I'll be around in 1 year, 2 years, 5 years, 10 - there are lots of issues like risk and credibility and references and track record to allow a procurement department or Board of Directors to sign off on you. That's how government works as well. Usually.

Apple by-passed the traditional phone industry and all its channels when it introduced the iPhone, just as it by-passed the traditional music industry in introducing iTunes and the iPod. There were important new telco protocols in the making for years, guarantees of customer and corporate security that Blackberry and Nokia spent a decade developing, with the help of Ericsson, Alcatel, etc. and the phone companies like Sprint and AT&T. To succeed in that market, you had to spend hundreds of millions, devote teams of engineers to compliance and standards bodies and a variety of far-reaching predictive efforts that even then could fail. And in this case, boy did they fail. Apple/Steve Jobs ignored security and interoperability, said "screw it, let's just do it all over IP", and went directly to AT&T with his content offering and drove a hole in the market. A few years later he added a bit of security, but he didn't care - what he offered was good enough. He also didn't care about whether it worked with Blackberry and Nokia - he drove them out of business. He had his own revenue stream and didn't need them.

But Apple hasn't been able to do the same with the TV business, for a variety of reasons - timing, lack of mass audience appeal, cost factors that mattered here but not there, etc., just as it's failed in other venues.

If you look at the iPhone, it's a rough equivalent to a regular phone, but it's not - it had enough phone features to fit expectations while doing something else. If you look at the 2000 election, Bill Bradley and Al Gore were considered rough equivalents, just as Al Gore and George Bush for some were interchangeable. The election wasn't won on who or what was different, but who or what didn't matter. Just like a Nokia or Blackberry, Gore had spent a career working on various issues - largely successfully - and by 2000 they were largely accepted as done and good enough. His edge was perversely dulled by his success. Do-nothing George was good enough. There were no big crises in 2000 aside from the dot.com one, which was an industry Gore helped pioneer. His brand was largely irrelevant to the next-gen progressives who wanted more return to machinery - what NAFTA and Chinese offshoring had diminished - and more focus on the core intractable issues of America like poverty and racism that we never have satisfactory solutions for.

Hillary is facing the same thing with feminism - she's an emblem of a heroic slogging through all sorts of unfair and misogynist attacks through the years - but for Female Startup 3.0 in 2016, e.g. college "co-eds" (is that word still used?) or new grads, it's largely irrelevant - there are female programmers and some CEOs and more and more professionals and world leaders and young professionals starting a variety of marketing and on-line business, and while there's still a lot of inequality and tilted playing field, it's largely down in the "micro-aggression"/background discomfort range. I'd guess that Obama becoming president broke the "anyone can become president" jar open as well, so for many, a female president soon enough is quite likely and as uneventful as the first Asian or Hispanic president. The huge goal of the incumbents from Gloria Steinem through Ann Richards and Barbara Jordan through the current female leadership has largely fizzled into "whatever", accepted as already done or inevitable, move on to more important things.

[it's also emblematic that old women are simply old, while old men are simply men, but save that "trophy wife/candidate" for another diary]

I'm pretty certain that Hillary will win this primary, but the process is illuminating - for me and her and a lot of others - some harsh truths - that once again the brand, the arguments of last election have passed their shelf-life, and like an IBM or Microsoft, she has to reposition yet again, find her Cloud 2.0 or whatever meme that's still relevant newly relevant to the new voters, new conditions, new energy, new world, while carrying over some of the better ideas and positions from before - cleaning out the political closet, re-making oneself yet again. It's not just young voters - I've changed, older people have changed - and change is getting faster.

It's a bit easier for Bernie - he's largely occupied the same position for 40 years as the issues have come back to him, and men are largely single-tasked. But women are also more attuned to changing fashion, finding something in new styles, new dances, what the kids are doing... (watching Michelle Obama's energy at 52 is pretty impressive, but I see women more Hillary's age still re-creating themselves, maintaining youth & vigor and more importantly the razor's edge on new ideas). Even if it's a feminist message, Hillary has to frame it as this generation's Feminism 2.0 struggle, not last generation or the 60's.

So I see a similar situation to spring 2008, where Hillary had to re-group and re-define why she was running, what her USP (unique selling proposition) is, what's the simple method to her madness, but more important, identifying what's inevitable and within reach and requires our work, and attaching herself to it, leading it, becoming it, building it. When Bill did the "Bridge to the 21st Century", it wasn't like the 21st Century wouldn't come without him, but he wasn't all "what did you do in the Cold War, granddad" either - he was going to be a key part of making that future certainty a better one, not focused on what did or didn't work before.  There may be something in incremental change that Hillary's good at, but even there, she has to package it, productize it, turn it from something inevitable into something that's new and improved and that no one can do better than her. She's halfway there, but as Nokia and Blackberry found out (or herself in 2008), sometimes that halfway/half-a-loaf still ain't good enough. What's the full loaf gonna look like and how we gonna bake it?