Ramblings

I’ve been reading a book called Applebee’s America. According to the subtitle, it’s about “How Successful Political, Business, and Religious Leaders Connect with the New America.” The book was recommended to me by E. J. Dionne, a columnist with the Washington Post (and syndicated to others) when he gave a lecture at our school this past fall.

I’ve only read about the first 50 pages of the book, but I can already see how it will fit into my class. I will probably demote one of my books to a few select chapters as the students have really hated the book. Applebee’s America will most likely replace The Agenda. I really like The Agenda and much of what it showed about how the federal government works, but the students spent more time thinking about how they don’t know Clinton than realizing that we could have written about anyone’s presidency and the lessons are the same.

One advantage to the Applebee’s book is that it’s co-written by both democrats and republicans so it has a perceived balance rather than appearing to be a liberal view of the world. Our campus tends to attract a fair number of republicans.

In the first 50 pages, the book talks a lot about how the Bush campaign – both elections – utilized personal data to develop a lifestyle profile of potential voters. Clinton did this to a point, but Bush’s group spent 3 million dollars to develop the idea.

It’s not surprising that many people can’t run an effective campaign with that type of money being spent. Especially since this was only used to decide how to best reach out to these voters. The book speculated that most targeted voters received between 50 and 60 pieces of mail during the campaign.

For the past 3 semesters, I’ve had my students write a paper on whether the American Culture is ready for a Female President or Vice President – and why we haven’t elected one in the past. I’m not sure if I want to use the paper topic this close to an election (then again, if all women and minorities have dropped out of the race by next Sept, then I will keep the paper)

This book has led me wonder about having the students write about the use of personal data in politics – is it ethical? Why do the democrats seem hesitant to use the profiling? Are the stupid? Concerned about the ethics? We had another speaker this fall that talked about internet security and addressed the privacy issues.

I know that I can put together an interesting set of lectures. My students last fall didn’t seem as concerned about the use of their data. The fun is trying to decide when something good can become something intrusive. And, why we, as a culture, seem willing to give up some of these rights.