I spent a decade early in my life in politics, politics of all sorts:
campaign, legislative and administrative. I am not skilled at the arts
of politics but I am capable of understanding some of the basic
concepts. Most of these are widely agreed to but seldom published.
First
politics is: the art of putting together coalitions as large as
possible by reconciling differences in power. The best political
outcome is that competing powers are balanced against each other.
This is one blog as part of a series that I call Politics 101. This is part 1.
By the balls. The object of any good politician is to get as many as possible of his peers and opponents by the balls. What does that mean? In politics everyone can be an ally one day and an enemy the next.
When you have someone by the balls it means you have
(1) information about that person that will be damaging to them if you are forced to release the information. The information can be of any sort; sexual, financial, historical, corruption or plain deceit.
(2) You have secondary information that will damage your opponents ability to raise money, repay obligations, carry out commitments or publicly defend one of his allies.
(3) You have the power to grant your
opponent some favor or reward that he desperately wants (for himself,
his family or his supporters).
What you find in the political realm is that each political operative has his balls being held by dozens of other people. Such a political person is simply unable to move decisively in any direction, take a clear cut stand or be outspoken on any political issue.
One of the most skilled politicians in American history was Willie Brown, former Speaker of the California Assembly and Mayor of San Francisco. He had everyone by the balls. The publicly acceptable phrase is 'he knows where all the bodies were buried'. He also knew how to raise money to help his preferred political supporters. He often created imaginary attacks on business (claiming California would tax all resident corporations on their global revenue) to get the corporations to make political contributions to Willie's campaign fund.
This is one blog as part of a series that I call Politics 101. This is part 1.
By the balls. The object of any good politician is to get as many as possible of his peers and opponents by the balls. What does that mean? In politics everyone can be an ally one day and an enemy the next.
When you have someone by the balls it means you have
(1) information about that person that will be damaging to them if you are forced to release the information. The information can be of any sort; sexual, financial, historical, corruption or plain deceit.
(2) You have secondary information that will damage your opponents ability to raise money, repay obligations, carry out commitments or publicly defend one of his allies.
What you find in the political realm is that each political operative has his balls being held by dozens of other people. Such a political person is simply unable to move decisively in any direction, take a clear cut stand or be outspoken on any political issue.
One of the most skilled politicians in American history was Willie Brown, former Speaker of the California Assembly and Mayor of San Francisco. He had everyone by the balls. The publicly acceptable phrase is 'he knows where all the bodies were buried'. He also knew how to raise money to help his preferred political supporters. He often created imaginary attacks on business (claiming California would tax all resident corporations on their global revenue) to get the corporations to make political contributions to Willie's campaign fund.
