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  • Why Iran deal faces rough sailing in U.S.

    Months into my campaign for Seattle city council, a neighborhood business owner invited me to meet voters (and potential donors) after the service at his synagogue.
     
    Doing my best schmoozing, I introduced myself hundreds of times. The synagogue had fantastic food, ranging from stuffed grape leaves to sweets — certainly much better than the donuDavid-sipress-i-m-north-korea-he-s-iran-new-yorker-cartoon, courtesy of condenaststore.comts-and-coffee affairs I remember after St. Philomena masses when I was a kid.
     
    Eventually I was introduced to a woman, conservatively dressed in black, who supposedly pulled purse strings throughout the community. I explained my proposals to improve transit, create more walkable neighborhoods, provide broadband internet and address homelessness as convincingly as possible. Then I asked which Seattle issues mattered most to her.
     
    "Well, Israel, of course," she said, as if it were completely obvious.
     
    I stammered something about being a big supporter of Israel and having the deepest possible respect for that country's accomplishments, cultural and economic. However, um, policy on Israel isn't really within the purview of the city council, I thought.
     
    This experience came to mind again this week in the lead-up to the groundbreaking agreement with Iran, when politicians of every stripe voiced pro-Israel support. Consider the reports of bipartisan near-consensus against even the concept of negotiations (for example, Foreign Policy: "When war breaks out with Iran, blame this New Jersey Democrat"). Is the awesome blowback, starting minutes after announcement of the deal, merely domestic U.S. political opposition?
     
    The fact that campaign contributions never materialized from the Seattle synagogue I visited isn't the point. It was one indication of an impressive integrated strategic communications apparatus that starts at the grassroots level. It may be unmatched and is certainly more relevant than ever.

  • 3 easy votes to break from status-quo politics

    I moved away from Seattle last month to join the U.S. Foreign Service but my hometown is still home. For everyone who has asked how I'm voting, here are a few thoughts.

    Voters in Guinea's first democratic election; from cnn.comFrom my temporary perch in Washington, D.C. — on my way to a tour in Mexico City — the potential of Seattle is more clear than ever. It's also obvious that Seattle desperately needs a break from its status-quo politics. The ongoing generational shift is bringing new ideas for business and culture to the growing city, yet political power has barely shifted. Life in Seattle may be too good to encourage radical change so here are three easy votes that could help improve the direction of the city:

    McGinn for Mayor. Mayor Mike McGinn is generally right on policy: creating more livable neighborhoods, improving transit, promoting high-speed internet and taking care of the homeless. I'm impressed with his authentic outreach to communities throughout the city and attention to neighborhoods where residents don't write checks to campaigns or have the luxury of attending many town meetings. He has strong principles and stands for his convictions, plus he has steadily improved as a manager. His accomplishments so far have required overcoming active opposition since day one from the Seattle Times, the downtown business community and the city council, where several members actively sought to block him because they wanted his job. This is also a vote against state Sen. Ed Murray, who has run a vacuous campaign filled with half-truths and who has patched together a coalition by not actually standing for anything.

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  • Where politics needs good people

    I was frustrated with politics in my hometown. Then I went to Bosnia.

    Best known among Americans for the genocidal wars of the 1990s, the country of Bosnia and Herzegovina today is a safe, fascinating place to visit with rich culture, great scenery and excellent food. Yet the divisions left over from the war are just below the surface and recovery has been painfully slow.

    MostarWhat I saw reinforced the importance of government. We live in an era when the public sector is maligned for so many problems, yet it alone can set the table for private enterprise and the productivity of individuals.

    As a former candidate for public office, I think it's important for competent people to run and we all benefit if strong professionals want to work in government. Sometimes it's tempting to think that voters get what they deserve. But if enough good people try, then the odds of good policy improve.

    In Bosnia, as other places, politicians cave to and facilitate ignorance. It's easy to see how a war started along the historic divisions between Orthodox Serbs, Muslims Bosniaks and Catholic Croats. 

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  • When downtown isn’t about people

    Downtown Detroit is undergoing a renovation boom that's bringing new office space and housing to a long-suffering urban core. Despite the investment, however, the area seems almost hostile to people.

    Detroit Woodward Ave 4 pm WednesdayAt 4 p.m. on a recent Wednesday the main streets were almost devoid of pedestrians.

    While it's easy to be pessimistic about resuscitating Detroit, there's a more interesting lesson for Seattle and other cities that still prioritize mobility of cars over people.

    During a recent visit to Detroit I saw gorgeous old buildings and lots of well-publicized new development. There's buzz about a rebirth in downtown, with new offices, hotels, stores and residents on the way.

    Yet the area is dominated by interstates and thoroughfares that are designed to keep cars moving through downtown. The Renaissance Center complex housing General Motors' headquarters sits like a castle separated from the city with massive walls. Parking garages dominate many city blocks. Skybridges encourage people to stay inside and the city's people-mover transit system is designed to keep people separated from the streets at all costs.

    The result is great mobilty between downtown and the suburbs, which have boomed through the decades while the metro area's core declined. Is it possible to reverse course?

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  • Former Gov. Booth Gardner, R.I.P.

    I didn't make it to the funeral for former Gov. Booth Gardner this weekend but still I'm in awe of the man and the dedication to public service that he inspired. My smirk in this old photo belies deep respect.With booth gardner

    In the mid-80s I was a working-class kid from suburban Seattle who was over the moon to intern at the state capitol in Olympia. Though I was literally the least important of his constituents, Gov. Gardner took time to chit-chat and pose for an official photo. (Too bad I couldn't be bothered even to take off my trench coat, straight from the Burien Lamont's!).

    Gov. Gardner was a class act whose two terms made the state a fairer, more sustainable place. He also helped inspire me to get involved in public policy — there's a squiggly line from attending dry hearings of the Puget Sound Water Quality Authority as a middle school student to running for public office 20 years later. I felt his influence again a few years ago when I was organizing an event on the "death with dignity" initiative for a community group and gave him a call. Though he wasn't well enough to make it, he still found energy to share his views.

    No doubt many thousands of people were touched far more than me, which is exactly the point: our state and country need more like him. May he rest in peace.

  • 5 terms to leave back in 2012

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    One of the best pieces of advice I've seen this year-end season is to read more broadly. As you may know, I couldn't agree more.

    If I'm asking people to read more, it follows that writers should up their game. More precise writing is high on my list of New Year's wishes, which hopefully would lead to less of the following terms:

    Fiscal cliff. This is a masterful phrase because it gives a Washington, D.C. budget standoff the drama of a Roadrunner cartoon. Nevermind that the reality is more of a fiscal slope, with a gradual drop in spending, and that voters support more progressive taxation in general. The breathless will-they-or-won't-they news stories are a disservice because they create a false equivalency between the two sides.

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  • Somber reminder during a wet holiday season

    I recently attended a fundraiser for a cause that almost everyone ignores: homelessness.

    That's where Operation Nightwatch comes in. The group provides basic services and housing for people who don't have shelter — more than 2,500 people on an average night in Seattle.

    Read that again: that's TWO-THOUSAND FIVE-HUNDRED people. The equivalent of six fully loaded 747s without shelter.

    Homeless_Seattle9The group's annual luncheon was held in Seattle's ornate Union Station and drew some 450 people, which qualified it as a garden-variety luncheon downtown. Homemade sandwiches, cookies and Tim's chips passed around each table were a distinctive touch.

    But the real impact was in the simple message that we must take care of each other.

    That's a stretch in our new Gilded Age, where everyone aspires to great wealth even if their chances of achieving it are diminishing. More than 11% of Americans live in poverty, according to the OECD, though you'd never know it from the topics discussed during the recent election season.

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  • Poutine, great bagels and smart development

    Imagine a
    growing mid-sized city just south of the 49th parallel that has a booming
    technology sector, a diverse, international population and innovative
    approaches to transportation and land use.

    My family
    and I recently visited this place: Montreal.

    downtown montreal courtesy of gotoohlala.com

    Seattle and
    Montreal are roughly comparable in metro population and economic size (Montreal: 3.8 million people vs Seattle: 3.5 million; Montreal GDP: $148B, Seattle: $235B). But one seems to be making strides when it comes to
    livability.

    Last time I
    visited, in the early 90s, the economy was slumping as Quebec bled business,
    the city’s population was declining and infrastructure was uneven.

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  • What “Cathedral” can teach about communicating

    One of the dirty secrets of the PR and communications business is that many people who work in it can’t really write. PowerPoint and “talking points” are no substitute for crafting paragraphs.

    Carver-at-the-typewriterOne of the best ways to get better at writing is to read, and read widely — from all kinds news to literature. It was frustrating to see the lunch table at a corporate communications department where I worked littered with puffy photo magazines like US Weekly and People — and no sign of a New Yorker, Economist … or even a Vanity Fair.

    This has been on my mind recently while taking a short story reading class at Seattle’s Richard Hugo House. Instead of focusing on high school English topics like symbolism, the idea is to focus on how a writer assembles a story, their word choice and approach to dialog. We’ve read great writers from the U.S., Germany, Argentina and elsewhere. (I was on the board of Hugo House for seven years.)

    Anyone who cares about writing needs to be reading and pushing their personal boundaries.

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  • When critics lack the courage to sign their name

    Anyone who sticks their neck out knows one of the downsides of modern media: anonymous online comments.

    Internet-anonymity.jpg"They are ugly, they are racist," said former Seattle Mayor Greg Nickels during a conversation on KUOW radio. Until recently, "you had letters to the editor where you had to sign your name and they checked whether you actually existed. I think we need to bring back some of that civility back to our civic discourse."

    People don't think twice about saying something online that they would never dream of in person. So what do you do about it?

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