Millions of people scoff at it. Millions deride it. People who do it are often a bit ashamed of admitting same. So they camoflage it with different names. Some call it “marketing,” for instance. When colleges do it they call it “development” or “institutional advancement.” They think this keeps their hands clean.
Few of our schools teach it - really teach it. And our leaders desperately need it. President Obama needs it big time.
“It” is, simply, the power of persuasion. Selling. That terrible thing that car dealers do.
Maybe you want to tell me our president does have the power of persuasion. He does know how to sell. He got elected, didn’t he?
Well, then, tell me please why a majority of the people of this country do not buy his “stimulus package”? He is on his honeymoon. During these euphoric weeks following his annointment, he should be able to sell us coal and call it chocolate.
He failed to. Pollsters tell us the majority of the public is simply not behind this package. The President failed to sell it to the American people.
He failed to sell it to members of Congress. This is supposed to be the greatest bill ever passed by Congress. Passed because calamity awaits us if we fail to pass it. Yet he failed to persuade Republicans to go for it.
He tried. He lunched with them. He lectured them. He lectured us all on the road, at town hall meetings. He tried during press conferences. His tactics did not work. He did a poor job of selling. He totally ignored the basics of persuasion.
Methinks he went to the George Bush School of Selling. (Which has apparently never scheduled a class.)
George Bush sent something like 18 messages to Congress to get them to rein in Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. Bush never sold them on the idea. They never bought it. If he had made the sale, our economy would not have imploded as it did. For it was the “stupid mortgages” that created the housing bubble. More than any other thing, they did. It was the “stupid mortgages” that collapsed the housing and banking and investment system. The “stupid mortgages” were Fannie and Freddie’s stock-in-trade.
