Jane Genova: Speechwriter - Ghostwriter

Tiger: We hardly knew ye

The Tiger tale is still front page material.  Today's headline in the NEW YORK POST reads "'He's only just coping - he's on the edge.' Tiger's Agony."  Last night there was a segment on "Nightline" exploring his future endorsement money. Meanwhile the mistress count hit 14 and no one expects it's peaked.

What this brings home is that we human beings never really know our fellow human beings.  In addition, we certainly didn't know Tiger Woods.  The odds are also high that Woods doesn't know Woods either. 

Socialism not primetime but Marx the Man hot, again

The marketplace is being flooded by books about Karl Marx and his followers, then and now. 

Our nation, although not ready for socialism, can't get enough of how false consciousness eats a society from within.  Among those books is this novel, which makes a low-cost holiday gift for those stirring awake from that false consciousness Download PRWebrelease.

Obamaville - Is this beginning of the end?

One of those homeless tent cities in Colorado has called itself "Obamaville."  Of course, the media are paying plenty of attention.  And so is Everyman.  Already, more than 700 comments have come in. 

The reference echoes the "Hover-ville."  And it was that association of Hoover with failed policies and programs to end the economic crisis that helped do in that president, then and throughout history.

Obama can save his administration, which isn't even a year old.  The public wants a head.  The best one he can offer us is economic adviser Larry Summers.  The worst move the administration made was having Summers on Sunday talk.  

Who can beat Boxer: That's what DeVore/Fiorina race comes down to

In this sustained economic upheaval, the lines between conservatism and moderate have been blurred.  The purity of ideology is being replaced by raw pragmatism.

Therefore, it might not help Chuck DeVore's positioning in the California GOP primary that he has a score of 100 in conservative matters.  That's what Jim Carlton informs readers in THE WALL STREET JOURNAL.  What's far more important is if he or his opponent Carly Fiorina has a better chance of defeating incumbent U.S. Senator Barbara Boxer.  That's the real issue for the GOP, which is just emerging from the political wilderness.

I interviewed DeVore before Fiorina entered the race.  The way he presented himself to me was a flexible policy-maker, not a leader wedded to any party line.  That impressed me.  Getting the things done which will pull the nation out of this economic crisis will require a U.S. senator who knows how to pick his shots, persuade his colleagues, and be practiced at arm-twisting.  DeVore has to let voters know he can do that and better than Boxer.  That's the message he had to deliver but at the same time shine more brightly than Fiorina.

Meanwhile, breast-cancer survivor whose hair still bears the carnage of chemotherapy, Fiorina has sympathy on her side.  That ordeal also might have provided her with a late-in-life rite of passage.  Unlike the ousting from Hewlett-Packard and the McCain defeat, this development seems to have made her real.  Fiorina 2.0 seems accessible and capable of listening.  If she keeps this up, voters may come to think of her as a sort of Hillary: A pragmatist smart enough to pick up on voters's minds and hearts and to change when needed.   

Amateur Hour: Obama Administration Puts Summers Out There

As Hillary said: Obama is not ready.  Neither is his whole Administration.  It put, of all spokespeople, Larry Summers out there as point man on the ABC talk show "This Week."  On it, reports Sam Stein, he said, "he expects employment levels in the country to rise in the spring."

There is no reason to believe him, no matter how much data he might present.  He's the one who personally oversaw the Harvard endowment that tanked so badly that the institution is in aftershock.  He also got kicked out of his presidency job at Harvard because he was, well, not the least bit a leader.

This leads us back to Hillary's observation.  Why would an Administration that had to prove itself hire this guy?  That's like hiring me The Jersey City Kid to head your care and feeding of foreign diplomats visiting the U.S. 

Game-changer in politics: Now most important issue is if he/she "is ready"

"Hillary Was Right."  That's the headline of Reihan Salam's article in THE DAILY BEAST. 

What Hillary was right about, explains Salam, is that Barack Obama was not ready to be president.  That had nothing to do with age.  After all, JFK was about the same age and was ready.  How badly Obama is stumbling has changed the game of politics forever.  In the 2010 elections and the race for the White House the most important issue will be: Is he/she "ready."

Based on that, we might have to rule out Sarah Palin.  No, she is not ready.  A brilliant public relations machine she is, but not anywhere near ready to perform as a leader. 

Lou Dobbs might demonstrate that he is ready if he can manage to reset his messaging and his TV persona.  The man seems as focused on getting a job done and as cunning about how to get it done as JFK.

Hillary will now be viewed with different eyes.  Actually, we welcome her raw pragmatism, after what has gone on during the past 11 months.  And, she has the benefit of the nation's knowing that she was right.

In the shorter term, because Obama was not ready, we can anticipate many upset victories in 2010.  For instance, Caryl Fiorina might have recently proved herself ready through her fight with cancer and loss of her father.  In her interviews she had dropped the tone of The Professional Woman and the Good Girl platitudes of The Barbie Doll.  California voters could conclude that Barbara Boxer is simply not ready to embrace current realities and elect Fiorina.

Even Palin's critic predicts her run for president

The Talented Mrs. Palin has gotten that hot.  Even her home-state critic former Alaska Senator Mike Gravel is saying that she will run for U.S. President.  In Politico, Jonathan Martin quotes Gravel as predicting "she's going to surprise a lot of people."

It should be added that Mom is getting more attention than her almost son-in-law Levi.  Apparently his soft porn spread in PLAYGIRL didn't bring in the paying eyeballs the powers-that-be expected.  Some blame the fact that he didn't take it all off, others that the publication is yesterday.

'Tis the season for symbolism, catchy sayings like, "No Billy, I'm not missing 'Happy Pony'"

With the 2010 elections coming up and the White House seemingly in-play, 'tis the season for symbolism.   John Kerry is leading the way on that.  Instead of going to Copenhagen in a private jet, Kerry is going commercial.  Of course, he could afford the private jet.

So, what kind of symbolism is Lou Dobbs going to roll out?  Just before Thanksgiving, Dobbs announced he had retained Bob Dilenschneider to assist him with reseting his stance on immigration.  Likely Dobbs was going to declare himself for some political campaign.  We expected plenty.  Here it is a few weeks before Christmas and not a message is stirring, not even one embedded in a pinata. 

Here's what I recommend to Dobbs:

Write a book, nonfiction.  About 120 pages would do it.  Make it heavy on symbolism of who you/America were and who you/America are now.   The last chapter can present the vision of America in 1212.  That date is key, not only because it's an election year.  But some predict a universal game-changer, bad or good. 

Write a book, fiction.  The advantage of fiction, says management consultant Tom Peters in "Re-imagine!" is that it provokes questions versus superimposing answers.  My first novel has attracted more new business than the combination of my earlier four nonfiction books.  Through a novel, Dobbs could break open parts of himself we don't know about.

Weekly, a new download on YouTube.  Once Dobbs establishes a pace to his messaging, he can try out all the combinations and permutations of humor.  As Larry Dorman asserts in THE NEW YORK TIMES, "Few things can inflict the damage of comic ridicule."  Cartooning was the key weapon Martin Luther used to bring down the Roman Catholic Church.

Compulsively tweet.  Make this twitter site the one that's most often retweeted.

Appear on "Martha Stewart" learning how to make the holiday versions of Spanish rice as well as becoming acquainted with all the nutritional value of the contents.

Do "Letterman."  Actually, that should have been listed first. 

Generate a catchy line, like "No, Billy, I'm not missing 'Happy Pony.'" 

Good luck, pols, each and every one.  Without politics and now that the Tiger story is fading, life in America can be all work and no fun.

Full Disclosure:  From the mid '90s to 1Q '09, I did freelance writing for The Dilenschneider Group.

Where's Lou?

The tide has come back in for conservatism.  In fact, in THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR, Quin Hillyer warns the movement  against overconfidence.  Winning the 2010 elections, never mind taking back the White House, won't be a piece of cake.  Hillyer deconstructs the obstacles.

So, we watchers are wondering where Lou is, that is Lou Dobbs?  Just before Thanksgiving, he got on the radar, big time, with his exploratory toe in the water for something political.  Then he was, as he should have been, in key media slots such as NEW YORK Magazine and Politico.com. 

Now, nothing, at least not high-profile that would be useful for the issues reset he needs as well as fund-raising.  Eight-million-dollars just goes so far.

Meanwhile The Talented Mrs. Palin is everywhere.  Her poll numbers are good.  She weathered the soft-porn career path of her almost-son-in-law. 

What should be next for Lou? 

A book.  But not just any book.  A provocative take on conservatism, capitalism, socialism, aging and youth. 

Also, a fresh approach is a work of fiction.  That can rivet and put this anchor turned pol out there as an interesting thinker/creator.  

Establishing online social communities, which are free on Ning.com.  Volunteers who want to learn more about the web can make those. 

Tweets that get compulsively retweeted.  That means studying the Twittering ways of Ashton Kutcher @aplusk, with his 3.9 followers.  

Of course, there's never enough YouTube.  The video trailer for my novel is selling the book nicely on Barnes and Noble. 

The crowd expects its pols and possible pols to be out there every day, several times a day.

THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR, still overconfident

Obama stumbles.  With their war chests, books and Daddy Dick Cheney hovering over, conservatives gear up for 2010, and more even more aggressively for 2012. 

In THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR, the thinking conservative's read, Quin Hillyer warns his people not to become overconfident.  The irony is the placement of this word-to-the-wise. 

It's in TAS, which never lost its arrogant tone, even when conservatives were driven into the wilderness, and may have even stepped it up a bit now.  Incidentally, TAS was the publication which gave President Bill Clinton the moniker "Boy Clinton."