“It’s not enough to win elections, you have to know how to govern.” On November 18, 2014, Professor Mark Kennedy of George Washington University was a guest speaker at a conference at LUISS entitled Making Democracy Work, part of Professor Michele Sorice’s course on Theory of Communication.
Mark Kennedy is an American congressman who served three terms as the Republican state representative for Minnesota from 2001 to 2007. He left Capitol Hill after running for the Senate in 2006, and today is the director of the prestigious Graduate School of Political Management at George Washington University, which is located just four blocks away from the White House. In addition, he was a consultant on trade for Presidents Bush and Obama and a business executive at major multinational corporations.
“In representative democracies,” explains Kennedy, “the biggest challenges remain unresolved not because of a lack of political solutions but because of the inability to reconcile conflicting opinions to get concrete results.” For this reason he has proposed what he calls 360° Vision, which, according to the former congressman, is necessary not just for success in politics but also in economics, in international affairs and more generally in everyday life. “This is the only way,” maintains Kennedy, “that politics can add its piece of the puzzle, its contribution to making the world a better place.”
Kennedy has identified three “mandatories,” that is, three fundamental aspects to bear in mind in order to “make democracy work.” First of all, you must be “firmly anchored, otherwise you risk not having any political credibility.” The second aspect is focus, “the central issue to focus on”: “To reconcile conflicting opinions you need to be flexible, to know what you want but also what you are willing to renounce.” This brings us to the third aspect: “Coalition-building. Politics is a game of addition, not subtraction. You will never be able to convince anyone on the opposing side if you don’t try to understand their point of view, in order to reach a final solution that combines the goals of both parties. To quote Benjamin Franklin: ‘There are no gains without pains.’”
Professor Kennedy’s study is based on the American political system but, he explains, “It is even more applicable to Europe: The legal system in the EU is more complicated and problems need to be brought even more into focus in order to reach a goal. In Italy, for example, coalition is a big issue: you have very fractured politics with a lot of different parties, while in America it’s black or white: there are two coalitions, each one with its own point of view, but if every Republican only agreed with other Republicans (and the same goes for Democrats), nothing would ever get done.”
For example, according to Professor Kennedy’s vision, part of Barack Obama’s success is owed to his exceptional focus in his electoral campaign, which emphasized the keywords "hope" and "change." But in the wake of the defeat of the midterm elections, the American president should use the nine months that remain before the beginning of the new presidential campaign to “extend a hand to the Republicans and work with them on other outstanding matters. If he can’t, he risks ruining the legacy he will leave the country after his second term.”
