This is great.No, what he said was, "[T]he test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in the mind at the same time, and still retain the ability to function." That's what you have to do: you have to be confident in your potential, and aware of your inexperience.
I agree, it's an awesome quote. But I think even more so when you apply it to external things. I had a fantatsic high school philosophy teacher that persuaded the class of two opposing philosophies on consecutive days. American media and politics really hammers in the illusion that there are two sides to every issue, and that you need to choose one. Subtlety in worldview is so unfashionable these days.
I enjoyed this insight in to the H. Clinton/Obama nomination battle: Let the Conversation Begin Ready for Change, Ready to Lead Working for Change, Working for You Strength + Experience = Change. Which leads to the lesser known corollary: ( Strength + Experience ) / Change = 1. And then, my favorite: Big Challenges, Real Solutions: Time to Pick a President. Which he had printed on the side of a bus but it was basically too small to read. So, I'm putting these slogans into speeches and I look over at an Obama campaign rally on cable news and they have one slogan. It's just the word "CHANGE" in big letters. That seemed better. But I was timid; and a lot of us just assumed, or wanted to assume, that more experienced people must know what they're doing. But that wasn't true. So the campaign ended, my candidate lost, and I ended up as a presidential speechwriter anyway, which was cool. But the lesson I drew from that campaign, other than the fact that it's always a mistake to run against Barack ObamaBut there is another side to this coin, which brings me to lesson number two: Sometimes you're going to be inexperienced, naïve, untested and totally right. And then, in those moments, you have to make a choice: is this a time to speak up, or hang back? I worked for then-Senator Clinton during her campaign for president -- and I believed in her, still do. But I vividly remember feeling like things weren't right in that campaign; a lot of the young staffers felt that way -- it wasn't a secret that there were problems in how the campaign was run. The campaign pollster for example, rolled out so many slogans it was impossible to keep track. Here's a sample:
I did too. This is a great example of what can go wrong with a campaign that a layperson might not pick up on. To be honest I didn't know that any of those slogans had been a HRC slogan for her campaign...which is another indicator that they weren't successful, imho.
It gets you thinking, the world is run by marketers. A good branding campaign, delivered properly at the right time and your in the white house. Words, images, sounds these are the things that shape our world. Oh... and somewhere in there are actual ideas.
Hm. Perhaps his first election, but the last one felt pretty conventional to me. I also wonder if we have really reached peak bullshit when so much of what I hear these days sounds like doublespeak. John Stewart draws an audience, but I haven't yet seen a politician backpedal after being called out by him. News organizations trade in opinions these days, and facts are forced to be equally measured against them. I'm not entirely cynical about this, but IMO the death of investigative journalism has created a large vacuum for BS to fill; and now the DOJ attack upon journalism might prevent it from being reclaimed. I don't think Bullshit is on the ropes.I believe Barack Obama represents this movement, that the rise of his candidacy was in part a consequence of the desire for greater authenticity in our public life.
Yeah, funny an Obama speechwriter is in a position to call out anyone for being full of shit. Obama is jacking up the bullshit meter to heights that are only surpassed by Congress, their 9% approval rating being the one and only reason his presidency still has legs.