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The Screaming Moderate

Learn to R-E-S-P-E-C-T your free time

10/28/2014

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A lot of your daily life changes when you retire. For example, you don’t have to get up at a certain hour to get to work. That actually hasn’t changed a lot because I still wake up early but that’s okay – as I age, time moves faster so I feel I am enjoying more of the day.

Email, now that’s a change. For about 75 percent of my working life, email didn’t exist, and cell phones were only beginning to be used. We seemed to get along okay, I thought. And with fewer devices that allow immediate response, we seemed to actually talk to each other more.

The last 25 percent of my working life, though, email, work email primarily, dictated my life. For a while I slept with my smart phone near the bed. Then realized that was a little too much even for me and I moved it into the bathroom where it would charge overnight and I’d only check it on those occasions when, uh, well you know overnight.

Then, I retired. I handed in my work Blackberry and my work email was terminated. Of course I had to then buy my own smartphone. Now, I obviously don’t get as many emails and my “immediate response” is not required so immediately.

I saw a column in the New York Times recently reporting that some companies – mostly in other countries, and, surprisingly, mostly in productivity-obsessed Germany – are telling employees not to respond to emails after their work day ends and actually have used technology to enforce that policy. These companies believe doing this improves an employee’s work-day productivity and gives them their free time to be, well, free. I like it.

 In my old business – public relations and government affairs consulting – customer service was paramount. It was a keen and good message to send to clients that we respond 24/7. And I have to admit, I think that is a good idea. But it doesn’t mean that an employee needs to respond to his peers 24/7. Shouldn’t he/she be allowed to enjoy life the old-fashioned way? That is eight hours of work, eight hours of sleep and eight hours of free time, ideally.

We live too fast. Immediate email responses. Cell phones that we carry everywhere. Text messages! OMG. Text messages. Isn’t it usually just as easy and efficient to call someone, especially since the text comes to THE SAME PHONE?? Lordy.

Anyway, those are some of the changes when you retire. You do have to get used to living differently and not be married to your email, not worry about who’s doing what to whom back at your old workplace. After all, it is your OLD workplace and while you of course will still worry about the happiness and well-being of your friends there, the urge to know everything fades fairly quickly.

Retirement is supposed to be when you “retire.” It doesn’t mean you stop living but you start living differently. You hold yourself to different priorities. You don’t have to be “busy” 12 hours a day. Reading a book is okay. Working is fine, too, if that’s what you want to do.

So, my tip for those who may be about to retire or thinking about it down the road:  Let the Aretha Franklin classic play in your head, R-E-S-P-E-C-T. But change it to R-E-T-I-R-E.

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Quite the rogue

10/24/2014

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Ben Bradlee, a giant in the world of journalism, passed away the other day. He had a title at his old stomping grounds, The Washington Post, but at 93 and suffering with Alzheimer’s disease, his muckraking days were behind him. But, boy, did he have his days – the Pentagon Papers would have been enough for a career but he also had Watergate. And, he took a sleepy newspaper and made it one of the most respected and feared in the world. In his day, he was quite the rogue.

In a way, Mr. Bradlee’s passing is a metaphor for the news business. Its best days too are behind it – because of the Internet and cable television and the passing of a generation of “real newsmen and women” either by death or buyout. Walter Cronkite, David Broder, Mary McGrory – all were well respected, well known and long-term journalists. All now passed away.

B
ut there are others, maybe not as well known, and still alive, who are plying their trades not as journalists but as PR people, university spokesmen, ghost writers and other careers they never planned for, nor expected. Truth is, once printer’s ink gets in your blood, no transfusion can remove it.

Today’s journalists are different, with different needs to fill. Deadlines, at one time just once a day, now are minute by minute thanks to the Internet. TV news now is whatever captures the public’s fancy – be it OJ speeding away from the police at 25 miles per hour, a boy allegedly in a runaway balloon, Justin Bieber’s various run-ins with the law, and on. Happy talk, blonde hair and talking heads have taken over the airwaves, and the sonorous tones of Walter Cronkite’s voice are, sadly, history.

It isn’t that today’s journalists aren’t filling a desire from the consumers of news – but they have helped shift what is news from discussions of policy to political paralysis and the game of who’s up or down or, these days, just sideways.

It’s more a question of legitimacy. Is today’s journalism legitimate? Sometimes it is. Many times it is not. I really don’t care to watch hours of Justin Bieber being an immature, rich-too-soon-for-his-own-good moop. And rather than hear that Republicans and Democrats are gridlocked, I’d like more pressure from the media on why the gridlock rather than the name-calling that seems to make headlines all too often these days.

Broder, Cronkite, McGrory and Bradlee helped push that kind of journalism They are missed.

And, I’m hoping someone picked up the baton from Mr. Bradlee. I have a feeling, though, that the hand-off was bungled.



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True divided government, maybe not a bad idea

10/15/2014

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           According to the pundits and strategists who basically control coverage of politics these days, the Republicans are poised to take control of the United States Senate to go along with their majority in the U.S. House of Representatives. This sends shudders up the spines of many Democrats and strengthens the spines of many Republicans, who think this would be the first step toward taking back the country.   

            
I hope the Republicans do take control of the Senate but not for partisan reasons, for good government reasons. If the Democrats retain control, nothing will change. We will still have a standstill, gridlocked government in Washington, with each side's goal being to gain the upper hand for the next election or the next headline. If the Republicans take control maybe this will happen: Republicans will realize they are as responsible for what happens, or doesn’t happen, in Washington as President Obama down the street. They, too, will be held accountable AND responsible for progress/lack of progress for the country.

          Together, maybe those two elements will break the gridlock. It's happened before. Books have been written on how divided government can work. Some think what we have today (a Republican House and Democratic control of the Senate and White House) is divided. But that isn't the true divided govern. Control of Congress by one party and control of the White House by the other;  that is divided government.


               Accountability tends to make one responsible. It’s easy to shoot off your mouth when there’s nothing you can do about something. When you are accountable, there’s a lot less mouth shooting.  As things stand today, Republicans can block the President and claim (in their minds) victory. The President can point to the “Tea Party” blocking all the good he wants to do. No one wins. Except maybe those who raise money for each side.

               But, with a Republican Congress and a Democrat in the White House, I don’t think that politicking will fly with the voters for long. They will expect progress.

               So, let me be clear, having extreme Right Wingers in control scares me. They tend to be sanctimonious and driven by a doctrine many find wrong.  Not my cup of tea. Nor are extreme liberal Democrats who seem to have a knee-jerk reaction to anything that threatens their theology or arrogance. Neither animal is built to govern, only to block, oh, and to pontificate.

               But with a Democrat in the White House who is concerned, as are all Presidents at this stage of their tenure, with legacy; and a Republican-controlled Congress that wants to stay in control, maybe, maybe we can get off the dime and get some things done. 

                I hope.



 


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Will the last election be re-Mitted?

10/14/2014

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“They” keep the rumor alive that Mitt Romney will run for president again in 2016 largely because the potential field on the Republican side seems so weak. It isn’t unusual for one or the other party’s field to look weak at this stage, largely because most of the field hasn’t run for president yet (see Rand Paul) or, if they have, it was a short distance run (see Perry, ,Rick).

An old boss of mine, the late Lee Atwater, used to say you had to “go around the presidential track at least once” to be a serious candidate for president and to have the experience to be a good candidate for national office. Many of the 2016 hopefuls haven’t even stepped foot on the track, so, naturally, it is the now “weak field.” Fields typically pick up strength as they run, and get better known – both their policy positions and their personalities, again see Perry, Rick who never quite got the hang of national politics last time around.

So, there is a vacuum and the most recent guy on the track, Mitt Romney, all of a sudden apparently looks pretty good (in comparison). Even Republicans weren’t embracing Romney tightly last time around but, to read the papers lately, you’d think he’s the GOP Hillary Clinton, preparing to be anointed the candidate. Some say now that Romney has run for president, he’s ready and they even compare him, in that context, to Ronald Reagan who ran for chief executive a few times. But, Reagan was the standard bearer only once -- and he won that race. Romney has been the standard bearer once and was beaten. Not a good position to be in. Plus, if he did run, he wouldn’t be compared to a weakened Barack Obama, he’d be compared to, probably, Hillary Clinton.

It’s great that Romney is looked upon more positively now, or appears to be. With time, we all have better perspective on many things – especially former presidents (see Bush, George H.W., who people now better understand actually was on watch when the economy came roaring back, but that wasn’t the appearance at the time, so he was voted out of office).

I’m fine with Romney being perceived as the leader of the party, for now, as the most recent presidential nominee is until we have another one. I’m happy he has the opportunity to improve his image/reputation. But I don’t think he’ll be the GOP candidate. While anyone’s ego would get a boost from that appearance, especially after losing an election, the aura will fade as the new crop of candidates become better known.

Who will emerge as the GOP candidate, way too early to say.

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Putting "secret" into Secret Service

10/2/2014

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The Secret Service has been even more secret than we expect, keeping information under the cone even from the person they protect – the President of the United States.

The now-former director did the right thing by offering to resign, an offer than was accepted almost before it was offered. When your people allow an armed contractor, who they did not know was armed, into the same elevator as the president, that’s putting too much “secret” into the Secret Service.

This after a few other episodes of an armed intruder climbing the White House fence, barging his way into the White House, overpowering a guard, and making it all the way to the Green Room before an off-duty agent tackled him. There’ve been enough jokes about how long the armed, clearly disturbed, man was in the White House before being subdued, so I’ll ignore the temptation. Fact is, had he known his way around the President’s House,  he could have climbed the stairs to the First Family’s residence, but he ran past that stairway apparently not knowing where it led.

 Clearly, the Service has issues, especially when Service employees, uniformed and non, are fearful of challenging their supervisors when they know they are wrong – for example not acknowledging that shots were fired at the White House, chalking the noises up to car backfires (tell me, when’s the last time you heard a car backfire?) or gang shootings right outside the White House. And, really, if they thought the noises were shots from gangs, shouldn’t the police have been called?

So, naming a woman to lead the Service was a smart political move, because it came after male agents were caught carousing with prostitutes in South America and it showed there was a new sheriff on watch, but she, too, apparently was part of a culture that desperately needs to be changed. As a Washington Post columnist pointed out today, it also reinforces in the average citizen the fear under which we all live with terrorists afoot, when the President himself can’t be adequately protected.



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    B. Jay Cooper

    B. Jay is a former deputy White House press secretary to Presidents Reagan and George H.W. Bush. He also headed the communications offices at the Republican National Committee, U.S. Department of Commerce, and Yale University. He is a former reporter and is the retired deputy managing director of APCO Worldwide's Washington, D.C., office.
    He is the father of three daughters and grandfather of five boys and one girl. He lives in Marion, Mass.

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