My teen daughter is bi-racial. (That’s how she identifies herself. Her twin brother identifies himself as black.)

She’s a big supporter of Barack Obama. She asked if I thought Obama could win, to actually become president. I said yes, that’s a real possibility.

She was excited.

And then she paused.

“Is he going to get assassinated?” she asked.

Still today, teens of color view America in that light.

Here’s my new definition of terror: God made my daughter gorgeous. And He put boys at her high school.

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Even chauffeurs are allowed out of the car: When I pick up my twins from high school, where they are freshmen, I am not allowed to get out of the car. Perhaps if I bought a Lincoln town car and put on a blue suit and blue cap I would be allowed to appear.

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All partisanship aside, but when did Washington, DC become the Disney Channel? I read a revealing account of the White House meeting where the administration, Congressional leaders, and the two presidential candidates were supposed to have hammered out the bail-out plan. It read like an episode of The Suite Life of Zack and Cody.

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A friend of mine, in commenting about the bail-out plan, said that she thought the government was supposed to be “for the people.” I asked her where she had ever read such an odd concept.

In my lifetime, no single law has changed the social landscape more than has Title IX, the federal law requiring that girls and women have equal opportunity to participate in athletics. When I was in high school, relatively few girls played sports. The quarterback dated the head cheerleader. Today, just about a generation later, countless girls play high school sports. The quarterback is more likely to date the captain of the girl’s soccer team.

I have friends who only have sons. They complain that Title IX has resulted in fewer athletic scholarship for boys heading to college because of how the U.S. Department of Education has mandated implementation of the law. That may be true. And I have two sons. But Title IX has made this is a much better world for girls entering high school, like my daughter, than girls in high school a generation ago.

It’s also what’s got me nervous tonight. My daughter was recruited to play soccer for one of the top girls high school soccer programs in the country. She was told she would either be varsity or starting on junior varsity. She wasn’t selected for varsity. And tomorrow she finds out if she made junior varsity or is relegated to the freshman squad. She’s done well in camps and tryouts. But, and here’s why Title IX has made me nervous, 80 girls are trying out. 80! I know sports. I know that, despite the very positive promises by a coach, stuff happens in sports.

So I’m nervously thankful for Title IX tonight.

(Blogenberg Bonus Parenting Advice: Don’t watch your son or daughter’s high school tryouts. I’m amazed at how many parents watch. I understand the desire. But they are in high school now.)

Worst mid-life crisis I’ve ever seen: I’m not making this up. I saw a mini-van with spinners. The fake, plastic spinners at that. What depths could this man have sunk to that he thinks the answer is to put spinners on a mini-van? Oh the humanity.

If Teddy Roosevelt were alive today there would be no Teddy Bears: I’m reading Edmund Morris’ brilliant The Rise of Theodore Roosevelt. He was the Assistant Secretary of the Navy for exactly one year to the day. In that one year, he completely reformed the navy’s personnel procedures, restructured naval war planning, kick-started the production of new warships that would make this country a world power, and strategically positioned the current fleet to be ready to annihilate the Spanish navy in the forthcoming Spanish-American war. All in one year. I have worked in the federal government. I know lots of people working in it now. Many of them are extremely talented. But today, it’s practically impossible to just get, for example, a federal rule written and published in one year.

This is going to be a very long election season. I just watched Campbell Brown of CNN break down the clothing choices of Michelle Obama and Cindy McCain using a telestrator.

Among the large amount of academic study of brand management, some of the most interesting is what might be called brand stretching. It’s what John McCain is wisely doing when he’s not sitting in front of the TV watching Clinton and Obama beat each other up.

Profitability of many products is driven both by market share and what category the product occupies. So, for example, whether premium brands or value brands dominate a category impacts how market share relates to profitability. And moving to or stretching into a new category requires careful planning and execution. Some brands have done it very well. Some brands have not. Mercedes did it flawlessly in introducing the C-Class. Jaguar stumbled when it introduced its “lower-class” model.

I’ve been intrigued to see John McCain stand on that famous bridge in Selma, or walk the streets of New Orleans stating the obvious-but-important observation that the current administration failed that city’s citizens (especially, and painfully, minority citizens) following Katrina.

John McCain, obviously, has very strong market share in his principal product category: Republicans. He also enjoys rather strong market share among independents. So, during this time of waiting for the conventions and an opponent, he decides to present perhaps a new picture of himself to categories where he’s not so strong: Democrats, African Americans, etc.

I’m not being cynical. Not at all. John McCain does not strike me as a man who says the President should have been on the ground in New Orleans, not up in a plane flying over looking down, if he doesn’t mean it. He doesn’t strike me as a man who pays tribute to painful memories on that bridge in Selma, if he doesn’t mean it.

And it strikes me that he and his team are doing some very smart brand stretching.

I start this post by noting that Senator Obama’s ascension means something to my family and me. My three children are the children of an interracial marriage; none of them considers his or her self white. Seeing an African-American man becoming a party’s presidential candidate is important for our family. But Obama has a slight church problem.

It’s not his controversial former pastor, whom I’ve blogenberged about previously. It’s that, with his impressive oratorical skills, he sometimes forgets he’s not in an African-American church. That’s what happened with his recent “bitter gate.” He didn’t say anything so awful. He didn’t say anything that would make a reasonable person conclude he’s elitist. But he gave attacks an opening.

I’ve been the only white face in an African-American church, at an African-American wedding, and in an African-American club. My wife often listens to the Sunday sermons at Andrew Rankin Memorial Chapel at Howard University, and I listen along. It doesn’t make me any darker than the average white guy, just a bit different in my insights.

Homilies at African-American churches often mix political with the spiritual. Not every line would pass a magazine’s fact checker (I’m not sure they would in my church, either) — or political opposition research, for that matter — but the meaning and the feeling are expertly communicated. Obama’s real good at that style of communicating. But, as he’s learning with “bitter gate,” it can be dangerous in politics.

Brands are sticky. Visceral reactions, emotions, gut instincts, what was spinning in your head the last time you were exposed to the brand — all have much more to do with how you respond to that brand than intellectual thought. That’s the mistake too many people make when it comes to PR and marketing: it’s the feeling, stupid, not the thought. And that’s the problem Barack Obama has right now and, unfortunately, for quite some time to come.

When it comes to marketing (and politics is the ultimate in marketing) feelings trump intellectualizing every time. People feel a brand. They feel a candidate. Relatively little deductive reasoning enters into their personal equation. And what they feel is the sum of lots of different feelings felt at different times. Permanently added into the sum of feelings people have toward the Barack Obama brand are the controversial words of his former pastor. For many people, that’s not going away. For them, it will color, at least a bit, how they forever view Barack Obama even if they forget all about Rev. Wright.

The big problem for Barack Obama? Brands are sticky. You can’t intellectualize away what sticks to a brand. That’s how the Obama team is trying to deal with the Rev. Wright problem. That’s all they can do, and they are doing it very well. Problem is, brands are sticky — for months to come.

Last Friday The Washington Post ran a front-page article slamming the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services for toning down a television campaign promoting breastfeeding following lobbying from the baby formula industry. The ads changed from scare tactic – one ad showed an insulin bottle topped by a nipple (highlighting a correlation between not breastfeeding and future diabetes) – to softer advertising that tried to highlight the positives of breastfeeding. Here’s my reaction, based on nearly a quarter-century doing public relations in Washington, DC: so what?

Let me be perfectly clear: I am an advocate for breastfeeding. My wife breastfed all of our children. It is clearly the healthiest choice, and I’m very thankful my wife did so. But, depending on what year you look at the data, only about 60 to 70 percent of new mothers attempt to breastfeed and, by the time their babies are six months old, the figure drops to 40 percent – at that age, less than 15 percent of mothers are only giving their babies breast milk. That means there are a whole lot of parents relying on baby formula. What ex-government official called what current government official aside, did we really need the federal government scaring the heck out of millions of mothers who do not breastfeed? (more…)

Nobody wants this war,
Fewer seem to understand it.
Talking pundits (the non-talking kinds are better) scream
behind me on TV about Scooter not going to jail.
24-hours news predicts “spectacular� terrorism this summer.
“Spectacular� – TV talking heads’ word, not mine.
Wow, “spectacular� I wonder – should they sell tickets?
I’m old enough to remember when this was not a violent society in which we lived.
I’m old enough to remember when as a kid I left first thing in the morning for adventure with directions to just be home for dinner.
How did I survive childhood without Dateline catching predators on TV seemingly every night?
We don’t get along. We can’t get along. We’re terrified of immigrants. We’re nonchalant about young mothers killed as collateral damage in gang violence.
Is this the remix that Sam, John, Thomas, George, and the rest of them thought they were starting in steaming disease ridden Philadelphia?
Maybe.
I’m confused.
But that’s good. ‘Cause I live where nobody can order me how to act, what to think, when to have faith, and when to be enraged.
I live in America.
It’s good to be confused; it shows I’m not too old to pay attention.
Happy 4th.

The principal at my twins’ middle school gets it. He understands how to make kids succeed.

Research shows that kids who are “connected� to their school are less likely to get into trouble, use drugs, or have emotional problems. And kids who aren’t in trouble, in any sense of the word, are more likely to succeed – in school and life. I’ve read the research, but always wondered how one creates a school that kids connect to.

My kids’ principal knows how. Apparently, it starts with a principal who cares about what students do with their lives outside of the classroom as much as he cares about what scores students get on the ubiquitous standardized tests.

At a time of budget squeezes, not only does he refuse to let music programs wilt, he’s expanding them, and puts everything he can behind two music teachers that should be on every rich private schools recruitment list. Hundreds of kids take part in orchestra, band, jazz band, chorus, chamber singers, and pop choir. The music program not only dominates county competitions, but mops the floor with schools from neighboring states. (more…)