Got goals

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Got goals?

• Steve Kirschstk_at_propel.com

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Agenda

• What are long-term goals?
• Do we have any? Why not?
• Are they important? Can they help win elections?
• How you can help change this (in lt 10 minutes)

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Today

• If you vote for me, Ill do good things. Ill
  work for better education, a cleaner environment,
  universal health care coverage, more jobs, and
  more!
• I believe in small class sizes,
• it sounds pretty good, doesnt it?
• but lets see how it sounds in a business
  setting

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Would you invest in this company???

• CEO says
• No business plan
• No product roadmap
• No ship dates
• No revenue or profit projections
• No marketing or sales strategy
• No engineering plan
• but
• Ill make money for you
• I support good health coverage
• I will treat my employees fairly

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What is a long-term goal?

• A key milestone in achieving your vision
• Vision Eliminate the use of polluting fossil
  fuels
• Goal Reduce our dependence on foreign oil by
  20 from 2000 levels by 2020
• gt3 year time horizon. Quantifiable Dates,
  numbers.
• Specific, measurable, important to achieve.
  Deadline. Specific enough to form the basis of an
  implementation plan (business plan).
• Bold and inspiring. Example
• I believe that this nation should commit itself
  to achieving the goal, before this decade is
  out,of landing a man on the moon and returning
  him safely to the earth
• That was 40 years ago! Can you name another
  national goal that survived gt3 years since then?
• MoveOn used the same goal in their goals effort
  since they couldnt think of a more recent one
  either!

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Dont we already have goals?

• No, not at a party level or even individual level
• Whats the 5 year Democratic goal for education?
  20 year goal? Answer none
• Whats the goal for energy? the environment?
• Can you name ONE that you can find in writing
  somewhere that has numbers and dates?
• Ive asked Members for their top 10 long-term
  goals
• Invariably, I get back a list of legislation they
  are working on now.
• Most cant name a single long-term goal they have
  (and most tell me its a great question)

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An example Education

• We dont have a long term goal for education
• Without that, we cant develop a plan to get
  there since we dont know where there is!
• Are we trying to
• Close the achievement gap? How much?
• Reduce the dropout rate? How much?
• Improve average test scores? By how much?
• Achieve international parity?
• Achieve the high test scores on an international
  basis?
• All of the above?
• Some of the above?
• Something else?
• Each goal requires a different plan
• Our current situation no goal, no plan. NCLB
  focused on accountability. But we have no clue
  what we are supposed to be accountable for
  achieving other than parity with the status quo.
  There is no direction for improvement .

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The excuses

• Term limits (from California State lawmakers)
• Irrelevant since it is a commit to support a
  goal (in votes and actions while in office), not
  achieve a goal
• Were too diverse a caucusZell Miller/Boxer
• Didnt seem to stop Gephardt/Daschle in 1996
  from uniting the Democrats behind Families
  First (the Demo version of Contract)
• Strong leaders (Bush, Clinton) seem to have
  little trouble aligning Democrats on key issues!

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Should Democrats have goals?

• How do we expect to get anything accomplished if
  we cant even agree on what it is we WANT to
  accomplish?
• If you dont know where you are going, any path
  will take you there
• How can you responsibly vote on current issues
  (such as NCLB) if you dont know
• what the key objective is
• what the best strategies are

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Should Democrats have goals?

• Leaderships first task Define clear goals
• Goals tell people what you commit to TRY to
  achieve if you get elected (it is NOT a guarantee
  of what you WILL achieve)
• If you cant explain your vision, why should they
  donate and/or go out and vote (for you)?
• Democrats constantly complain about messaging and
  the lack of party unity
• A set of stable, long-term goals provides the
  foundation for message and unity

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Lawmakers need to treat policy like fundraising

• Policy (no goals, no plan)
• We want to reduce our dependence on foreign oil
• Fundraising (clear goals, clear plan)
• We have to raise 25M by March 31. In addition,
  we have 12 other events already planned for the
  rest of the year in 10 cities (here are the
  locations and dates ) to achieve our 100M
  fundraising goal by December 31.

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Can goals win elections?

• Absolutely.
• They get everyone on message and provide party
  unity
• Clintons advice to Presidential candidates
• Pick 2 or 3 signature goals
• You must paint a positive vision of where you
  want to take the country
• Contract with America (1994)
• 100 sign-on of House Republicans
• First Republican majority in the House since
  1954
• 9 seats in the Senate
• 52 seats in House (unprecedented!)
• 11 governorships

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A proposal

• Group of interested donors brainstorms a menu of
  30 long-term goals (in person/via email)
• Larger group (50 people) modifies/approves the
  list (can be done via email)
• Each candidate spends then only has to spend a
  few minutes checking off goals they agree to TRY
  to achieve
• Website posts the positions of each candidate

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Desired outcome

• Input to the Kerry campaign/Democratic Convention
• If they adopt just 2 or 3 of the goals, were
  way ahead
• Energize the voter base if any of these goals are
  adopted by Kerry and/or Democrats
• A pre-requisite for giving (youre helping the
  party by helping them to articulate their
  message/vision)
• A tool for achieving party unity
• A tool for assessing where candidates stand
  before you invest your time, money, or vote
• A tool for holding lawmakers accountable
• A tool that facilitates the creation of strategic
  plans (business plans) and policies organized
  around stable long-term objectives

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An opportunity to get involved

• If you are interested in working on this, let me
  know
• It will be a modest effort at first producing 30
  goals that a candidate can just check off if
  they agree (with space for write in suggestions)
• It is not intended to be comprehensive nor
  definitive it is intended to be a good start

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