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Politics is the art of the possible, the art of the compromise. Project management is, ultimately, the set of tools by which political process turns into laws and functions that govern our society and politics.
In theory, every politician represents his constituents first and foremost, at whatever level of government he operates at, while balancing the demands of his constituency with the overall needs of the state. In practice, very few politicians who can match this near Platonic ideal are capable of winning an election. Just watch the riotous electoral process for House and Senate seats in the United States, or the upcoming feeding frenzy for the 2008 Presidential elections, and you’ll see the problem.
In order to win the election, each candidate has to say things to appeal to blocks of swing voters, who are often keyed pro or ante to specific issues. For example, in the 2004 elections, with two wars on, the subject of gay marriage was considered a litmus test issue in the United States – not because gay marriage was, ultimately, more important to the governance of the country than actions in Iraq and Afghanistan, but because campaign managers mobilized groups of voters to come out on that issue. In this way, blocs of voters outweigh single voters, and voting blocs, organized by unions, or political action committees tend to dominate the electoral process. This means that, as product and program managers, the workers who make up an election campaign have a lot of work cut out for them in trying to use good management techniques in the context of society and politics.
Fortunately, like all large operations, the process can be distilled down to a set of steps as thought in a project management training. The ultimate goal is to get the candidate elected; towards that aim, the desires and needs of the electorate need to be gathered. This is done through telephone surveys, and by placing carefully worded ads on television and radio, meant to elicit responses. And, as mentioned above, mobilized blocs of voter are polled for what issues they will vote for, or against.
Unfortunately, this results in candidates who seem to stand for everything, particularly if it involves puppies and cute children. It’s very hard, in this modern era of sound bite, program managed candidacies, for a candidate to express anything resembling a sense of personal conviction or belief. We hold our candidates up as mirrors to ourselves, and want to see ourselves reflected in them…which results in blurred composite images that nobody’s happy with.
As the election cycle progresses, several strategic resources have to be allocated and built – the candidate’s time has to be managed down to the hour – including scheduled time for them to sleep! The candidate has to be fed information constantly, about each new group of people he’s addressing, Food has to be laid in, telephone calls have to be budgeted into the time, and everything has to be signed off for in terms of campaign finance requirements, both for funds coming in, and expenditures. On top of all of this, the campaign manager, in trying to generate a candidate who will properly reflect the current mores of society and politics, has to keep track of what the opposition candidates are doing. There will always be October Surprises – the sorts of political revelations that are meant to shake faith in a candidate just prior to the elections in November. Every campaign should know what their own likely October Surprises will be, and have their responses ready at hand.
Once the campaign is over, the role of project managers in shaping society and politics doesn’t end. Most of the campaign staff can, after a brief hiatus, expect to get jobs on the political staff of the newly elected member of Congress. Most of them will reprise their existing roles, feeding information, controlling access to the politician, and keeping an ear cocked for rumors of political interest that can be used to stake out a position, or undermine a position of a member of the opposition. Again, all of these processes work from the assumption of an end goal, discussion of needs and objectives, and budgeting of limited resources, with the candidate’s time being the most limited resource possible. Politicians rely on their staff, and their staff relies on project management training, because handling every request from every voter personally would quickly mean that the officeholder, on the national level, would never have time to go sit in Congress. In a lot of ways, this is a result of our modern, communications driven society, which has had a great influence on politics. Prior to the 1920s, when sending a message to Congress was expensive, Congress’ influence was limited – if you needed something local changed, you worked with the local Alderman, or on the County Board, or with the State Assembly. Who your local Mayor was vastly outweighed who your Senator was, in terms of influence on your life.
Now, every elected member of the Federal government has toll free telephone lines, fax lines, email addresses that are publicly known. Furthermore, the increase in Federal power during the Roosevelt administration, with the use of Commerce Clause being used to regulate everything from education to road building to power and telephone line systems, meant that the Federal Government was legitimately involved in, well, everything. What used to be held as the province of the States has been suborned into a sprawling federal bureaucracy, and the constituents now have the means of making their voices heard – provided the project managers find it important enough to bring to the elected representative’s attention.
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