The "10 Word Answer"

President Obama made an appearance at a senior center in Wheaton, MD to talk about the practical implications of the recent health care legislation as well as addressing specific questions from seniors on health care legislation issues. It is amazing to watch Pres. Obama as he takes on the role of 'educator-in-chief'. This is an extremely complex issue that will radically change the way that Americans get and pay for health care. The republican opposition will run, partly at least, on a platform that will include promises to "Repeal and Replace" the health care legislation and to put a stop to, what they call, a "big government take-over of the health care system".

It will be much easier to run against, rather than run on the health care issues. Simply put, it is not really possible to put the essence of the health care issues that face America and are addressed in the health care legislation passed this year into a "10 word answer" or an easy to chant slogan "Repeal and Replace", "Drill, baby, drill!", etc.

"Ten-word answers can kill you in political campaigns. They're the tip of the sword. Here's my question: What are the next ten words of your answer? Your taxes are too high? So are mine. Give me the next ten words. How are we going to do it? Give me ten after that, I'll drop out of the race right now. Every once in a while... every once in a while, there's a day with an absolute right and an absolute wrong, but those days almost always include body counts. Other than that, there aren't very many unnuanced moments in leading a country that's way too big for ten words." (From the television series The West Wing, season 4, episode title: Game On)

The only problem with the next ten words, and the 10 after that, and so on, is that the more complicated a situation is to explain, the less likely it is that you're going to be able to keep the attention of the American people long enough to understand it, let alone sufficiently long enough to actually embrace it.

It is easier to put together ten-word answers (a.k.a. "sound-bites") that can be repeated over and over again until you achieve something called the "Liberty Valance Effect" (thank you Robert Wuhl). "When the legend becomes fact, print the legend." The conservatives are really good at this, you may remember some of these gems from various neo-conservatives in recent years:

• "Drill, baby, drill"
• "Big government take-over"
• "Corporate Bailout"
• "Taxed Enough Already"
• "Free Markets will regulate themselves"
• "Government isn't the answer to the problem, government is the problem"
• "The American people know how to spend their own money better than the American government does"
• "Government has never, ever created a single job." I shit you not, Michael Steele actually said this!
• "Where's The Birth Certificate?"

The problem that the left faces in the debate is that the attention of the average American is so splintered in the 21st century. In this age of instant information, 24/7 news and live coverage of just about everything, just about anywhere on the planet there is precious little time to convey a complex message. The future of America and the future of our planet is an extremely complex issue with many components and no simple "ten-word answers".

What will it take to focus the American people on how to solve the energy issues that face us? The fact that 9/11 didn't do it, and the 1973 OPEC embargo didn't do it, really worries me. What will it take to rouse the sleeping giant once again?