The revision took a total of 60 hours. The book is now pushing 100k. So it’s out to Lovely Agent and beta readers. I have to say I had a blast with this book.
Romney starts the chapter with a quote his dad used to recite to him: “the pursuit of the difficult makes men strong.” Romney states that over the years, he’s come to believe that this idea applies to more than individuals—it applies to businesses and nations as well.
He maintains that America has always faced great challenges. He cites a few examples from America’s history and states that there really hasn’t been a time when we were free of challenges. It seemed, after Reagan and Bush had presided over the fall of the Soviet Union, many thought “peace and prosperity were here to stay—without threat, without sacrifice.” Of course, that proved untrue.
America has faced great challenges in the past and faces huge challenges now. He believes we will “remain the leading nation in the world only if we face our challenges head on.” If we do not face and overcome them, we will become “the France—still a great country, but no longer the world’s leading nation.”
The question is: what’s so bad about that?
The answer is that some other nation or nations would fill the power vacuum. Romney poses the fundamental question: “what nation or nations would rise, and what would be the consequences for our safety, freedom, and prosperity?”
Romney suggests that there are a number of nations and groups who are “intent on replacing America as the world’s political, economic, and military leader.” He states that there are, in fact, “four major strategies currently being pursued to achieve world leadership.”
The first global strategy to achieve world power is the one represented by the United States. It is a strategy based on two fundamental principles: economic freedom and political freedom. Those nations that follow this strategy have become economic powerhouses and account for more than 60% of the world’s GDP. They are also the countries who have given humankind the most freedom.
The second global strategy is the one pursued by China. Its fundamental principles are free enterprise and authoritarian rule. He spends a couple of pages discussing how well Chinese enterprise is doing. Then he believes China is intent on becoming stronger than the United States.
The third main global strategy is the one pursued by Russia. It’s fundamental principles are authoritarian rule and controlling energy. “By controlling people and energy, Russia aims to reassert itself as a global superpower.” He then explains how this could be possible.
The fourth main strategy for global power is the one pursued by the violent jihadists, who count many foreign leaders in their numbers. Their strategy is based on conquest and compulsion through a variety of tactical means.
Of these four strategies in competition today only one is founded on freedom. Romney then suggests that we can be confident that our children and grandchildren will be free ONLY IF the economic and military strength of America and the West endure. He suggests that our superpower status is not inevitable. “Three other global strategies, each pursued by at least one state or major actor, are aggressively being pursued to surpass us, and in some cases, to suppress us. The proponents of each are convinced they will succeed. And world history offers us no encouragement.”
Because of this, he believes that “our primary objective as a nation must be to keep America strong. I am convinced that every policy, every political initiative, every new law or regulation should be evaluated in large measure by whether it makes us stronger or weaker” because “our freedom, security, and prosperity are at stake.”
Romney next maintains that president Obama has introduced a foreign policy that “is a rupture with some of the key assumptions that have undergirded more than six decades of American foreign policy.”
He states that when World War 2 ended, America executed a “dramatic and profoundly meaningful shift in our relationship with the rest of the world.” Previously we had guarded our own hemisphere and attempted to stay isolated from the affairs of Europe and Asia. But we found with WW1 and WW2 that “our vital interests could not be secure in the face of threats to the cause of freedom elsewhere. At the dawn of the nuclear age, a third world war was unthinkable; it would mean the destruction of humankind.” So the president and leaders of both parties “shifted America’s foreign policy. America took on the task of anticipating, containing, and eventually defeating threats to the progress of freedom in the belief that actively protecting others was the best way to protect ourselves.”
This new order had three main pillars:
1. “Active involvement and participation in world affairs”
2. “Active promotion of American and Western values including democracy, free enterprise, and human rights”
3. “A collective security umbrella for America and her allies”
He talks about how all the presidents, Democrat and Republican, followed this new strategy. But President Obama is engineering a dramatic shift away from it based on his own underlying attitudes.
Obama envisions an America that arbitrates disputes rather than advocate ideals. This is one of the reasons why he apologized to countries around the globe for American arrogance, trying to placate our enemies. This is also why it seems he has undercut many allies, including Israel, Poland, and Columbia. To be an arbitrator, you need to be equidistant from both sides. Not advocating for one or the other.
Another one of Obama’s assumptions is that “America is in a state of inevitable decline.” He, therefore, considers it futile to fight it; instead, it’s his job to help us manage our decline. Romney suggests Obama believes maintaining a dominant America is “a bad idea even if it were possible.”
Of course, Romney fundamentally disagrees with that assessment.
Romney suggests several things we can do to get back on track:
• Treat our allies like allies
• Strengthen the American economy
• Increase our defense spending
• Remind ourselves that the most attractive thing about us is our ideas—so we should “encourage democracy where we can, give aid and comfort to those who want it, and not undermine those who already have it”
Undergirding all of this, Romney suggests, “must be a certain conception of the goodness and greatness of America.” This “doesn’t mean America is a perfect country. We have made mistakes and committed grave offenses over the centuries.” But we should recognize that “No nation has shed more blood for more noble causes than the United States. Its beneficence and benevolence are unmatched by any nation on earth, and by any nation in history.”
Romney concludes by saying that he believes America is “destined to remain as it has been since the birth of the Republic—the brightest hope of the world” but only IF we face our challenges head on and work to keep America strong.
First, I don’t know if I’m going to have the time to capture each chapter in such detail. We’ll see.
Second, I found the discussion of the four strategies insightful. Particularly because it put in explained a number of questions I had about why Putin’s Russia does what it does. It also gave me insight into China, which I thought was still mostly economically socialistic.
I found the explanation of America’s shift in foreign policy in the 20th century interesting. As well as the shift Obama has made. I think I need to understand Obama better. Does he really think this? The actions and speeches Romney cites certainly are suggestive. Has anyone seen the movie 2016? It sounds similar.
It might appear the book will continue allocating space for attacking Obama, but I believe the six pages in this thirty-page chapter form probably the biggest appearance Obama makes in the book.
It’s clear that Romney’s business experience, especially as a consultant, has influenced how he sees things. The whole talk of strategy and challenges and competition reminds me of Michael Porter.
Porter is a Harvard professor and founder of Monitor, a strategy consulting firm that has been hired by corporations and countries. He is claimed to be the most cited author in business and economics. According to Wikipedia “He is generally recognized as the father of the modern strategy field, and his ideas are taught in virtually every business school in the world. His work has also re-defined thinking about competitiveness, economic development, economically distressed urban communities, environmental policy, and the role of corporations in society. . . his main academic objectives focus on how a firm or a region can build a competitive advantage and develop competitive strategy.”
The idea that America is competing with other nations is, of course, true. But I don’t think I’ve ever heard anyone running for president claim that their central goal, the goal any president should have, is to keep America strong because of the competitive threats we face. The talk is usually all focused on this issue or that without the broader picture I found here. I found Romney’s central tenet clarifying and refreshing. The rest of the book is going to be about how to keep our competitive advantages and strength.
Comments, observations, or issues from anyone who has read the chapter?
I posted my review of No Apology on a few sites the other day. I can understand how some folks might be skeptical that the book is nothing more than a PR puff job. But I’m surprised at how many refuse to even test their assumptions with ten or fifteen minutes of reading (or listening to a few minutes of the book on audio).
Too bad for them. They’re missing out.
For those who think they know Romney from what’s being reported in the press, I want to suggest you listen to or read Pat Caddell’s recent comments on 9/21/12 at the Accuracy in Media conference. Caddell is a Democrat, BTW. He is the founder of Cambridge Survey Research, a public opinion pollster, and an expert in analyzing public opinion. He’s been working for democratic campaigns for a long, long time. He started with the McGovern campaign. Then worked for the Jimmy Carter campaign, for Gary Hart, for Joe Biden, and Jerry Brown. His speech is titled “The Audacity of Corruption”. Find it here: http://www.aim.org/video/pat-caddell-the-audacity-of-corruption/
Back in college I took this class on epistemology (how we know what we know). It was fascinating. One of the best classes I took. One of the things the professor taught us was that the first step in examining someone’s ideas was to capture them. So he’d have us research all sorts of stuff and then write a short paper in which we restated the ideas in summary form.
A few years later I read Steven Covey’s 7 Habits of Highly Successful people. An amazing book. One of the habits was to seek first to understand, then to be understood. He pointed out that probably the best measure of whether you have actually understood someone is that you can restate their point in your own words to their satisfaction.
First seek to understand, then to be understood. Capture.
I’m going to try to do that here.
I’ll start by outlining the structure of the book.
CHAPTERS 1-3
Romney shares some interesting insights about the four main current geopolitical strategies being employed by major players around the world and the threats they pose to us. He also considers lessons from great nations in the past that have fallen—what were their mistakes and how can we avoid them.
CHAPTER 4
Romney discusses key ways we can grow American “soft power” and maintain our “hard power” abroad.
CHAPTERS 5-9
Romney discusses domestically what we need to do to remain internally powerful, and, therefore, prosperous and free. Topics include the economy and jobs (chapter 5), the entitlement programs social security, medicare, and medicaid (chapter 6), health care (chapter 7), education (chapter 8), and energy (chapter 9).
CHAPTER 10
Romney suggests that culture is a huge factor in the success of nations. He summarizes key values and practices he feels will promote a strong culture.
CHAPTER 11 – EPILOGUE
Romney provides a method for gauging how we’ll we’re doing—a set of national indicators—as well as a summary of all the things he discussed in the preceding chapters that he believes will make and keep America strong.
The central overarching theme of the book is that America will only remain strong if we follow certain principles. We’re at a point where many feel America is starting its demise. Romney rejects that must be the case.
In the next post, I’ll capture chapter 1 and make my few comments. I hope you join me 🙂
Political TV ads can be fun. And annoying.
Debates can be fun. And maddening.
You can indeed learn things about the candidates from watching the ads and debates. But fifteen and thirty second snippets of information really don’t give you the full picture. And sometimes they actually hide the facts, producing nothing more than informational smog.
Recently, I decided I wanted to really know what Mitt Romney thought. What he was about. What he hopes to accomplish if he wins the presidency. If Mitt was someone in my neighborhood, I’d go visit the man, and we’d have a chat.
I’d ask him about his ideas and past. I’d ask him to give me examples. Because of the nature of the issues at stake and the number of them, I imagine our chat would probably last a few hours. It might stretch over a number of evenings.
Of course, I’d want time to consider our chat and determine where I did and didn’t agree with him. I’d want to hear what others thought. And I’d want to look into his history, his successes and failures.
But the first step would be to go to the man himself and hear him out.
I hate it when people put words in my mouth. I’m sure Romney, or anyone else running, hates that same thing. If I were running, I’d would hope folks would take the time to hear me out. They may ultimately disagree with me on many or a few things. But I’d hope, as they are gathering information, that they would take the time to actually go to the source and listen to what I myself had to say.
Unfortunately, I can’t walk around the corner and knock on Mitt’s door. But he did write a book that was published in 2010, and it’s probably the next best thing to talking to Romney at his kitchen table. The book is called No Apology: The Case for American Greatness.
I’ll admit I thought it was going to be a dry guide book explaining his position on every hot political issue. It’s not a guide book. In fact, he leaves a number of topics out. Nor was it dry.
I also suspected it might be a scathing attack piece on the Obama administration. It’s not that either. Not even close. He does criticize some things where he and Obama differ, but he also commends him on a few things. Either way, Obama is a very small part of the book.
So what IS this book?
Romney states its purpose in the introduction: it’s “about what I believe should be our primary national objective: to keep America strong and to preserve its place as the world’s leading nation” and “the course I believe we must take to strengthen the nation in order to remain prosperous, secure, and free” (2). It’s about his ideas on how to make sure America does not falter as so many nations have, but remains wealthy, happy, and productive.
I finished the book yesterday. I found it interesting, personable, sometimes surprising, and insightful.
I found Mitt Romney to be a man self-deprecating humor. He’s also a thinking man, one who likes to look at data to see what it shows. It’s clear he’s a man who does NOT think he knows everything or has a monopoly on every good idea, but he’s also a man who demands evidence. I also saw a man who is kind. He doesn’t talk much about his 14 years of service as a lay minister in his church in this book, but you can see how those years changed him as he discusses helping the unemployed, out-of-wedlock births, and single-parent families. Finally, I saw a man who loves, LOVES, America and is convinced she can remain the hope of the earth, but only if we do things that foster our strength.
This book outlines what he thinks those things are.
The book is written in a conversational and easy style with many examples from his personal experience, studies, and history. Romney’s record of accomplishments demonstrates his skills and hard work ethic. This book explains to what end he would apply that skill and work.
If you’re planning on voting this November for the president of the United States, I think you’ll find this book very useful. You may end up agreeing with many things he says. You may end up disagreeing with him on many points. But before you can do either, you need to understand what Romney’s position actually is. And the first step in doing so is to fully hear the man out, in his own words, from his own lips.
As a result, whether you end up deciding he’s your candidate or not, you WILL come away with important insights into the issues discussed.
I want you to know that I do not worship George, Ben, Tom, Adam or any of the other guys who formed our constitution and started this nation.
They put their lives and fortunes on the line for what they believed in. And I am immensely grateful for what they did. I enjoy tremendous freedoms because of their courage, determination, and sacrifice. Those guys, by-and-large, rock!
But I do NOT believe that their words are scripture nor that their ideas are sacrosanct—merely to be accepted and not to be considered and questioned and disagreed with.
Even so, these guys were gutsy and brilliant. They attempted something everyone thought would fail. Something that HAD failed every time it had been attempted in their recorded history. But they pulled it off and changed the world.
These guys believed in the common man. They believed that the educated common man was the best person to hold the reins of government. Thomas Jefferson thought up a rhyme to make the idea easy to remember. He said, “If a nation expects to be ignorant and free in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be.”
I can’t argue with that.
Of course, we’re not going to become experts on every policy issue. But we certainly can become informed on the broad principles and issues. And we can certainly become informed about the candidates.
Because I found No Apology so useful, over the next few days I’m going to summarize Romney’s main points, chapter by chapter, here. I’ll also point out interesting ideas and facts he shares as well as share any questions, quibbles, or disagreements I have.
I hope you find it useful. More importantly, I hope you read the book and join in the conversation.
I’m a bit irked.
I wish I could talk to a publisher about this. I should talk to a Barnes & Noble corporate book buyer. But since I don’t have one handy, I’ll discuss it with you folks. Maybe I’m up in the night? You tell me.
Here’s the deal. My wife is 7th and 8th grade language arts teacher. My wife is also a mom who loves books and wants her girls to read until their eyes bong out of their heads.
So we go to find books for her students and for our girls and, jeez, wouldn’t you know it, but this YA book features masturbation and that one features lots of fine words like F*** and S*** and this one is about giving the guys a blow job (tee, hee, hee).
Yeah, I know about YA saves. This isn’t about banning this or that content.
It’s about the fact that I’m a parent. And, geez, I have a certain way I want to raise my kids. My wife is a teacher who needs to provide books to her students that aren’t going to piss some parent off. Why? Because she’s providing a service to that parent. Because she wants to keep her job. And because it’s her job to help parents improve their kid’s reading ability not tell them how to raise a family.
So why in the Sam Hill can’t publishers rate their books?
There are millions of their customers who would find this useful.
Well, here’s one answer I was given by a writer friend I respect.
Everyone in the industry is really pushing back against the idea of a rating system. Let me see if I can explain why.
A friend of mine, ZZ [name removed], is the nicest person in the world. Volunteered for years at a prison to help people learn to express themselves by writing. Her older brother was a closeted homosexual for years, contracted AIDS, died too young. She wrote a book recently called [title removed], about a family in the restaurant business (as hers was) who have a “late” baby and the problems it causes for the older teens, one of whom is coming out as gay. It’s a soft, quite, sad, moving book. And it would be part of the “rating” system and banned from a bunch of schools. ZZ also wrote a book a few years ago about teenage pregnancy. Also beautifully written, kind, compassionate. But it would get tagged by schools as “inappropriate.” ZZ feels strongly that there are kids out there who need books, kids in your wife’s school system who need to be told they are not alone.
I don’t see any way to have a system that distinguishes between books that I see as anchors to kids who need help and those books which I see as genuinely offensive and encouraging bad teen behavior by glorifying it. The only system I know is me recommending the best books I see. And I’d much rather see librarians and school teachers go through books on a case by case basis, deciding whether they personally think it fits the values in their community than to have someone else not attached to the community do the same thing.
Uh huh.
If this is accurate, it shows the industry’s stunning lack of creativity AND arrogance. Because if publishers really were listening to parents, they could come up with a solution.
No, really. They could.
Why, there’s already one out there. They don’t even have to expend even one creative molecule to find it.
Look at the Kids-in-Mind rating system: http://www.kidsinmind.com/. It rates movies 1-10 on sex, violence, and profanity (SVP).
There’s no age stipulation in their ratings.
Unlike other rating systems, there’s no “children under 13 not admitted.” No “appropriate for teens.” No recommended range for this or that group or this book is good and that one’s bad.
It just rates the content and gives it a number. You, as the user, determine what level you’re comfortable with and then find the movies that fit.
I’m a 4-10-4 on sex, violence, and profanity. You might be a 5-2-9. That’s not good or bad. It’s just what it is. More importantly, the rating allows me as a consumer to EASILY FIND AND PURCHASE THE PRODUCT I WANT.
I know some folks have never heard of it, but consumer choice is a really cool thing.
And if I hear about a movie that’s amazingly good, but I see it doesn’t match my normal levels, then I can make an informed choice to watch or not watch. The King’s Speech, for example, is a bit above my normal profanity setting. But this didn’t prevent me from watching the film (it was a fabulous movie, btw). SVP just gave me a couple of pieces of simple data I find useful as I make my choices. Data I’m already looking for.
If publishers were to use a similar rating system, every librarian could peg the levels they wanted in their school and be done with it. As well as consider special cases. Teachers could peg the level for their classroom. Parents could search and find and buy. And they could guide their kids in their purchases as well.
Make it easy for them to go case-by-case. And don’t imagine librarians and teachers and parents are going to read every YA book published to find those that fit with their values. They don’t, can’t, do that now. They won’t in some utopian future. If you give them SVP ratings, it will help them spend their time, case-by-case, on books that they’re likely to buy. Which probably means they’ll buy more.
Write about homosexuality, rape, whatever. But make it easy on the consumer to see if it’s the kind of product they want to buy.
Some might say, but themes of homosexuality and rape and child abuse etc. etc. are important and would be automatically excluded!
No, they won’t.
You can write a story about those themes that scores low on SVP. You can write about those themes and score high. Themes are outside the SVP scale.
Some parents, librarians, and teachers may want to avoid some themes. Others would seek them out.
So, good golly, here’s an idea only a rocket scientist could come up with. OR someone who took the issue a tiny bit seriously and wanted to serve their customer. How about a little box under the SVP rating that contained “sensitive” themes.
They don’t have to do what Scholastic does with its school catalogs and label them “mature” themes, which might suggest “mature audiences only.” They’re not “mature” themes. They’re not “bad” themes. They’re not “good” themes. They’re just sensitive themes.
SVP and Sensitive Themes: four little pieces of data consumers would find oh so incredibly helpful.
But no. The industry can’t be bothered with that. And, consequently, reveals its arrogance and total lack of respect for a HUGE portion of their customers.
I guess they think librarians are mindless idiots. Never in a million years, if a librarian is tuned into the needs of her community and thinks a book on homosexuality would be important, would she search on that sensitive theme and her SVP ratings. And parents would never do that for sure (do you know how many gun-clinging troglodyte parents there are out there!?)
I guess the industry thinks because it sits in an office in NY City that it knows everything about raising kids. It knows so much it must dictate to parents how to do it right.
Yeah.
Or maybe what this really shows is that the publishers have got a book they want to sell. They want to make a buck. And, dang it, this might hurt sales. Because then people wouldn’t buy things they didn’t want.
They really don’t seem to care about what many of their customers want. Because if they did, and they realio trulio cared about these sensitive topics and saving the world, then they’d publish books high on the SVP because they’re just sooooo goooood, but they’d also publish books on those topics that are equally as goooood with SVP ratings that the majority of parents and school districts would be comfortable with.
And they’d let the customer choose what they wanted to purchase.
Customer choice. Customer service.
Wow, what revolutionary concepts.
They even might find that if you delight the customer, they’ll come back for more.
I know, I know. I’m living in fantasy land; delighted customers coming back for more . . . as if.
Question is: will the publishers listen?
We’ll see. I truly hope I’m wrong about their arrogance and disregard towards huge swaths of their customer base. In the meantime, you might want to think about talking to the manager of your favorite book store about this. Strangely enough, books stores have a lot of pull with publishers.
You also might want to look at Kids-in-Mind. It seems to make a lot in advertising. Looks like there’s money to be made in a review site like that for YA books. I know a lot of people who have said they wished they could just read books for a living. Anyone feeling entrepreneurial? Anyone?
EDIT
Two more points.
First, what’s sensitive for one person may not be for another. But that’s the beauty of this. This only identifies subjects that would be sensitive for reasonable sections of the market. For someone with your reading tastes, you’d say, eh, homosexuality, big deal. That’s not a sensitive subject. For others, they’d say, hum, have to think about it.
It’s just giving data. A respect and recognition of different tastes. Not a prescription of what someone’s taste should be. Or what people should or shouldn’t feel is sensitive subject matter.
For this reason, I don’t think publishers would want to use the word “controversial” because that implies controversy. Just sensitive (or some other similar label). Or even “Potentially Sensitive Themes.” This is just giving data about content areas SOME parents might want to know about.
Second, the SVP is not going to be 100% perfect. But something is much better than nothing. And having some clear standard for rating, whatever it is, pegs things so you can figure out where you are. As long as the raters are fairly consistent, then you can tell if something is close to the type of product you’re interested in. There will be goofs. No doubt about it. Huge goofs would be probably very infrequent because a ten-point scale allows you to make gradual distinctions. But I’ll take some goofs now and again over nothing at all.
Furthermore, because it’s NOT age-based like the MPAA and prescriptive in the target audience, it’s not telling parents what to do. There is no “good for your kids” and “bad for your kids” rating. Just the level you’re comfortable with.
Finally, some people object to ratings because “how can you boil a book down to a few numbers?” I don’t think this boils a book down. It’s only a couple of pieces of data about a book. Data parents are already looking for. The cover, recommendations, word-of-mouth, flap, description, buzz–these are all pieces of data as well.
In fact, you and I exclude many books based on genre labels alone. And yet we don’t worry about a genre labels much. They’re useful pieces of information. Are they always perfect? No. But they’re by-and-large very useful. I don’t see that this is much different. Just another piece of data to help consumers find what they want.
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