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Carville: Dems need stronger narrative to win

By Elizabeth Gibson  Posted by Rob Kall (about the submitter)       (Page 1 of 2 pages)   1 comment
October 07, 2005
The problem with Democrat campaign speeches is "litany," and they need more narrative like Winnie the Pooh stories, political consultant and pundit James Carville said.

At a speech sponsored by the Northwestern College Democrats Thursday evening, Carville told the audience that Democratic candidates can't succeed by shouting out to every group in a crowd. Instead candidates should tell stories with the three elements of any good story -- setup, conflict and resolution.

"No Kumbayah crap," Carville said.

College Democrats brought Carville to speak in Cahn auditorium with funds from the $60,000 allotted by the Student Activities Finance Board for the group's fall speakers.

Jenna Carls, president of College Democrats, said the group decided to bring Carville after polling about 50 students in the spring.

The organization will use the remaining funds to bring another speaker later this quarter, Carls said.

All 1,000 available tickets for the free event were taken by 1:05 p.m. Tuesday, according to the Norris Box Office. Tickets went on sale Sept. 23, the same day as NU's Activities Fair. During the past few days, College Democrats worked to spread the word by placing more flyers and sending more messages to campus listservs, Carls said.

Carville helped lead Bill Clinton to victory in the 1992 presidential election. He has also worked on several foreign campaigns and co-hosted CNN's "Crossfire" for more than two years before the network canceled the show in June.

At NU Carville focused on what Democrats need to do to reclaim the presidency. The vocal impressions of President George W. Bush and former presidential candidate John Kerry and Carville's bouts of shouting in his southern accent had the audience alternatively giggling and freezing in silence.

In addition to breaking away from a laundry list of special interests, Carville said, Democrats need to learn that a candidate who can't campaign can't succeed.

"If you're not competent in campaigns, you don't have a chance to be competent in government," he said.

Using Al Gore as an example, Carville said being a smart candidate is not enough.

"It's actually possible to be wise, right and strong," he said.

But Carville added that no one in Washington likes anyone who is right too often. Howard Dean's accurate assessment about the failure of the war in Iraq helped kick him out of the running for president despite his passion, Carville said.

In the same way that intelligence and accuracy can't stand alone, strength without accuracy is a catastrophe, he said. His example: the Republican administration.

"If we just had mediocracy I'd be the happiest person in the world," Carville said. "You put political hacks in an important position and there are consequences."

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Rob Kall Social Media Pages: Facebook Page       Twitter page url on login Profile not filled in       Linkedin page url on login Profile not filled in       Instagram page url on login Profile not filled in

Rob Kall is an award winning journalist, inventor, software architect, connector and visionary. His work and his writing have been featured in the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, CNN, ABC, the HuffingtonPost, Success, Discover and other media.

Check out his platform at RobKall.com

He is the author of The Bottom-up Revolution; Mastering the Emerging World of Connectivity

He's given talks and workshops to Fortune 500 execs and national medical and psychological organizations, and pioneered first-of-their-kind conferences in Positive Psychology, Brain Science and Story. He hosts some of the world's smartest, most interesting and powerful people on his Bottom Up Radio Show, and founded and publishes one of the top Google- ranked progressive news and opinion sites, OpEdNews.com

more detailed bio:

Rob Kall has spent his adult life as an awakener and empowerer-- first in the field of biofeedback, inventing products, developing software and a music recording label, MuPsych, within the company he founded in 1978-- Futurehealth, and founding, organizing and running 3 conferences: Winter Brain, on Neurofeedback and consciousness, Optimal Functioning and Positive Psychology (a pioneer in the field of Positive Psychology, first presenting workshops on it in 1985) and Storycon Summit Meeting on the Art Science and Application of Story-- each the first of their kind. Then, when he found the process of raising people's consciousness and empowering them to take more control of their lives one person at a time was too slow, he founded Opednews.com-- which has been the top search result on Google for the terms liberal news and progressive opinion for several years. Rob began his Bottom-up Radio show, broadcast on WNJC 1360 AM to Metro Philly, also available on iTunes, covering the transition of our culture, business and world from predominantly Top-down (hierarchical, centralized, authoritarian, patriarchal, big) to bottom-up (egalitarian, local, interdependent, grassroots, archetypal feminine and small.) Recent long-term projects include a book, Bottom-up-- The Connection Revolution, (more...)
 

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