Healthy Influence Blog

It’s not officially official, but Mrs. Clinton is clearly not going to be the nominee of the Democratic party despite my persuasion logic that predicted over a year ago that it would be hers for the taking to be followed by a general election victory over Mr. Giuliani.

Perhaps, my proxy of prior campaign experience is a poor indicator of persuasion skill?

Perhaps, I’m just an Idiot.

If you like quirky, independent movies, please see “Romance and Cigarettes,” written and directed by John Turturro. I found this to be one of the best “small” movies I’ve ever seen in my life. Turturro uses musical numbers featuring song and dance with his actors in a most unusual, entertaining, and compelling fashion. I have no idea why this movie didn’t get more buzz.

It is quirky. Independent. You know, like “Royal Tennenbaums” or “Swingers” or “Snatch” or gee whiz, I’d have to go to my Netflix account. If you don’t like this weird movies, then “Romance and Cigarettes” is probably not for you. James Gandolfini (the “Sopranos” guy) does a song and dance number in this movie that breaks your heart.

Did you know that when a woman bends over, a man sees a jelly donut?

Or . . .

. . . there are two things that a man should be able to do: be romantic and smoke his brains out.

If those observations don’t interest you then the movie probably isn’t worth your time.

Otherwise . . .

Found a great deal at Jury’s on Dupont Circle for the weekend and couldn’t resist a return Spring Break on the Mall. And I couldn’t convince Melanie to go to Acapulco and use our plane tickets on that winter vacation I’d spoiled with a sudden virus (but I did lose 5 pounds!), so this worked out well.

We had a fast and beautiful drive over the mountains on Friday morning. Traffic was lighter than usual. When we first moved out here in 1985 we didn’t hit heavy traffic until we were just a few miles off the Beltway on I-270. We’ve felt the growth of the area in that traffic push. Typically we now feel the heavy traffic shortly after we come off of I-68 onto I-70. That pressure showed up again this time, but it never really got bad. And, it was a beautiful sunny day. We hit Dupont Circle and Jury’s at noon then a quick check-in and off to lunch at Raku.

I didn’t want to leave. Did you have the soup? And the potstickers? Hubba-hubba. A great burst of taste and energy, then off to the Metro and the Mall. After stumbling through a bomb burst of children at the Natural History museum we finally got to the gardens on the Mall. You can just see the Capitol Building over Melanie’s shoulder as she stands in the garden at the East Wing of the National Gallery of Art.

We’d anticipated that Easter Weekend might be a low traffic time for the Mall, but it was teeming with kids, carriages, tourists, and all that aimless, where-the-hell-am-I wandering you get in DC. But, it was a beautiful day as this shot outside the West Wing of the National Gallery of Art shows.

That razor edge on the exterior is so cool. And, unlike last year, the blossoms were blooming or the blooms were blossoming.

I’m not sure what that Apple-like sculpture means. Is it a Steve Jobs contribution?

After tramping around the Mall all afternoon we worked up a powerful appetite that could only be fulfilled with a dinner at Obelisk. They gave us the same table as always (do they really remember us?). And, then, a fabulous dinner as always. Man, that chef can cook. Just the appetizers alone are worth the price and make his reputation. They started us with: a lamb meatball in a light tomato sauce; a shrimp and olive oil delight; a salad described as an Italian chicory; and thin sliced duck breast with onion jam. Oh, and the bread was pretty good, too. Then, the primi - she had beet ravioli and I had a beef broth clam soup - and the secondi - we shared a suckling pig shoulder with various spicy veggies - and the dessert - her ice cream and my Cardinal’s Hat with dessert wine. Oh, yeah, there was a cheese plate before the dessert. And, yeah, yeah, I forgot, the burata cheese after the appetizers. We didn’t bring the camera, but we have our memories.

Obelisk is one of the best foodie restaurants in the US. Only 11 tables with 36 seats, so call ahead. And, the price is great for the quality of the food, menu, preparation, and service. We’ve eaten at other great foodie places and afterwards felt like you had to take out a loan. This is a fabulous experience.

After a long night’s nap we awakened to much cooler temperatures and a threat of rain. So, we shopped. This next picture explains much of my life as a married man.

Sure, you can get them chocolate or champagne, but in my experience if you really want to put them over the top, you buy them shoes or gems. From there on you’ve got the wind at your back and it’s smooth sailing. Normally this scene would be at a Nordstrom’s or a Bloomies and would be followed with a mule shot of me carrying several boxes and a glowing girl beaming into the camera. Today, no luck for Melanie. Nothing fit. Nothing. And she tried really hard. Instead we bought me a paisley tie and cuff links.

Then, after a hard day of shopping, you need a great dining experience to take the edge off. Last night, Obelisk, so this night someplace new, Zola!

Zola is in the wildly expanding Convention Center area of DC. We hadn’t visited this neck of the woods in a few years - my work is typically in Dupont or northern Virginia - so it was amazing to see the new construction out here (8th and F Street). Zola fits in well.

It is that new American style of place and menu. Clean lines. Sharp colors. Techno music surging just below your consciousness. The greeting staff wear suits - Zegna seems popular. I made our reservations through OpenTable.com and had requested a seat at a food bar or with a view of the kitchen. Our maitre’d gave us a choice of seats and toured us through the restaurant. We took a booth in the back of the place and asked our waiter to take a shot.

Like that red drape? I really enjoyed looking across the table all night with my blondie babe against that color.

Zola delivered a major good time with the room, the food, and the preparation. The bread was great. This is a repetitive theme in my blogging about restaurants, but it has become a truism for us. Great places serve great bread. If the bread doesn’t get your attention, it’s likely you’re in for a short, unhappy life that night. And, champagne helps, especially when she couldn’t find any shoes.

Where’s the Martini, you ask? Thank you.

DC serves the best olives in the US. No competition from New York or New Orleans or San Francisco or Chicago or fill in the blank. Smooth like chocolate. Hmmm. Also note the cuff links from Acapulco. Greetings to Harvey Gomez! And the paisley tie. That little gold band on my right ring finger commemorates our 25th wedding anniversary.

I had a cream of asparagus soup with prosciutto, then an Arctic char fish served with a thick, heavy brown sauce that was a bit sweet and filled with oysters and other little ocean delights. We also ordered a side of gouda fries just for fun. We brought most of them home. I know, french fries at a cool place is kinda uncool, but these were almost as good as the fries that Melanie makes. You know she loves you if she makes the fries. Here’s the way Zola does it.

Dessert was strawberries and cream, heavy, thick cream, like so thick and heavy if the Food Police at the Center for Science in the Public Interest find out about it, the cops might raid the place. And a nice port.

Zola did great by us. This is another chef who cooks like a crazy man and has that junkie palate I adore. Lots of salt and seasoning and fat with a light cooking touch. Everything is fresh and all that comes through, but the junkie seasoning highlights all the ingredients and pulls them all together (like that sauce with the char). We really liked it and will return at our next opportunity.

What topped off the weekend too was the success of the WVU basketball teams, both the men’s and the women’s. Each won through the first weekend of action. I’ve visited Duke a couple of times and worked with several Dukies and even tread the sacred court at Cameron Hall, so it was with just a little regret that I saw Old Gold and Blue take down the Devils. Better still was watching the Lady Mountaineers endure against the unbelievable NCAA system that had them playing as a much higher seed on the HOME COURT of their lower seed opponent. I thought college was about fairness and justice. How can anyone let a 12 seed play at home against a 5 seed? But, our women played tough. Let’s go, Mountaineers!

After a good weekend of the Mall, great food, shopping and basketball, we took a last look out our Jury’s window . . .

. . . then drove over the mountains back home.

Almost heaven, as we say in these parts.

Melanie and I moved to West Virginia and Morgantown in 1985. She hired on as an assistant professor and I as a doctoral research assistant in the Department of Communication Studies at WVU. While WVU had big time Division I sports in football and basketball, it was in other respects a nice little university and Morgantown was a nice little university town. While the geography of the mountains and hills makes travel slower and more difficult compared to, say, Lawrence, Kansas, you could easily get around town in just a few minutes. It was a great little place.

But, some people couldn’t keep the secret.

We started showing up on those damn surveys as being among the most “livable” small cities in America. (Here’s a recent WVU press release describing this.) And, then our senior Senator, Robert Byrd became the ranking Democrat on the Senate Appropriations committee. Money and people came pouring into our most livable little city and have destroyed it.

Two recent crime stories illustrate. A women has been indicted on Federal charges for running a large prostitution ring in Morgantown and several men connected with a drug operation in a local student bar have also been indicted in Federal court.

Now, I’m not arguing that before the world found out about Morgantown things like prostitution and drugs were unheard of. Of course not. This is 21st century America. Illegal sex and drugs occur everwhere. The big deal here is that the crimes have become Federal rather than local or state crimes. There’s enough money here now that truly evil people want to come here.

It grows worse with density and crowding every day.  And, it’s affecting peoples’ judgment.  Our Board of County Commissioners devised one of the craziest government plans for handling traffic congestion in Morgantown that required a 30 year “service fee” of approximately $100 a year for fulltime workers in the county.  The tax would have raised literally hundreds of millions of dollars with no serious project plan for controlling the spending.  It was small government run amok.  Our governor, Mr. Joe Manchin, did PSAs for TV extolling the virtues of this service fee.  All the smart people, including a lot of new folks at WVU talked it up.

It got voted down with nearly 80% rejecting the proposed fee.  That’s not a typo.  Nearly 80% of the voters voted against the fee in one of the worst electoral beatings I’ve heard of in my lifetime.

I want to believe that this is the beginning of the end of the stupid growth in my great little university town.  The big test will occur when Mr. Byrd is no longer on the Appropriations Committee.  Right now, the growth in this town is largely driven by public tax dollars and not by private capital in the free market.  In other words, it is a supply driven economy rather than a demand driven economy.  When that public money goes away, will there be enough infrastructure to keep growing?

In the meantime, growth continues for the foreseeable future changing what once was a nice little town into a crowded, overhyped, sprawl of people.

Barack Obama cannot win the General Election and he should not even win the nomination.

So, I’ve been arguing in this Blog for a year. According to my impeccable, unimpeachable, and unperturbable persuasion wisdom, he ain’t got It, with It being the persuasion skill and experience needed for winning in tight situations. He is just too young and inexperienced, more like Dan Quayle than John Kennedy in resume although more like JFK than Quayle in speechmaking.

Today I’ll give you another persuasion reason why Obama won’t win: All bad persuasion is sincere.

This is one of my persuasion rules and one of the most important. When your persuasion efforts come from the heart, authentically express your core beliefs, in other words, are a sincere manifestation of who you are, you’re telling me everything about yourself which is completely irrelevant in persuasion. I don’t care what you think. I care what the “other guy” thinks. Sincerity may attract, but it does not typically persuade and that’s a huge distinction.

As of this writing Obama is taking a lot of heat over the words and actions of his pastor, Reverend Jeremiah Wright. Much of the controversy revolves around race, theology, and politics. Hey, let’s have a quiet, calm discussion about color, God, and elections!

In the face of this controversy, when Obama has the eyes and ears of a lot of voters, what was his response: Sincerity. He told us what he believes and what he sees. I do not doubt for a moment the authenticity of his words. He really does believe it.

But, that’s not the point here. The point here is persuading people to vote for you. And, it appears to me that Senator Obama would rather be right than Presidential, he’d rather be right than wealthy or wise! (Right, a George M. Cohan 1937 musical). And in so doing he has wasted a huge persuasion moment.

Again, please keep the distinction between attraction and persuasion clear. I think that Obama’s sincere speech about race, religion, and politics makes him attractive as hell, but then he’s attracting people who are attracted to him. That’s not persuasion. That’s just walking in the room, taking a closeup, then walking towards everyone who swooned.

Persuasion is taking the measure of the “other guy” then using words to change the way that other guy thinks, feels, or acts. Obama’s speech was not persuasive, it was attractive. And it was attractive because he was sincere.

So, Senator Obama should be a beautiful loser.

Stay tuned!

Yesterday, President Bush delivered a speech on the current economic challenges we face and what to do about them. Whether you agree or disagree with his plans or policy, most folks will agree that he is not a great public speaker and that this speech is yet another bad example of his poor technique. Gail Collins, an editorialist with the New York Times, offers a fair assessment.

This is not the first time Bush’s attempts to calm our fears redoubled our nightmares. His first speech after 9/11 — that two-minute job on the Air Force base — was so stilted that the entire country felt like heading for the nearest fallout shelter. After Katrina, of course, it took forever to pry him out of Crawford, and then he more or less read a laundry list of Goods Being Shipped to the Flood Zone and delivered some brief assurances that things would work out.

O.K., so he’s not good at first-day response. Or second. Third can be a problem, too. But this economic crisis has been going on for months, and all the president could come up with sounded as if it had been composed for a Rotary Club and then delivered by a guy who had never read it before. “One thing is certain that Congress will do is waste some of your money,” he said. “So I’ve challenged members of Congress to cut the number of cost of earmarks in half.”

Besides being incoherent, this is a perfect sign of an utterly phony speech. Earmarks are one of those easy-to-attack Congressional weaknesses, and in a perfect world, they would not exist. But they cost approximately two cents in the grand budgetary scheme of things. Saying you’re going to fix the economy or balance the budget by cutting out earmarks is like saying you’re going to end global warming by banning bathroom nightlights.

I saw the speech on CSPAN and would have to agree with Collins’ evaluation. Like almost every policy speech I’ve seen Mr. Bush deliver, there just not much speaking skill there. (Realize that we’re not talking about the speech content, right, just the delivery.) Especially when he is giving a speech that has any serious persuasive intent, he tends to come across as wooden, rote, somewhat bored, and definitely eager to finish the damn thing so he can finally get to his dessert. I suspect that he really doesn’t like these kind of speeches.

However, when the speech does not have persuasive intent, Mr. Bush is an effective public speaker. If you’ve seen any of his White House Correspondent’s Dinner speeches, Mr. Bush is funny, at ease, and focused. He enjoys the moment, slows down a bit (for him), and connects with his message and audience. He is also an excellent ceremonial speaker when recognizing others. He comes across as sincere, thoughtful, and, again, connected to the message and the audience. In those ceremonial settings, as when giving awards, he comes across as someone who feels the humanity of the moment and who wants everyone to understand and like the award receipient.

Thus, there is a clear interaction going on here. Mr. Bush is not a poor public speaker. He’s just not a great persuasive public speaker. In persuasive contexts, Mr. Bush’s words are guarenteed to generate conflict, while in ceremonial settings, this conflict is less likely. Then he can relax, not worry too much about how the “opposition” will react and just give a natural, at ease performance.

I further speculate that Mr. Bush has learned through painful professional experience that unless you have great persuasive speaking skill, when you’re in a fight, such speeches will not be the crucial tool in your success or failure.

Please consider this thought experiment. Imagine that Mr. Bush is as good a public speaker as . . . Martin Luther King, Jr. or Winston Churchill or John Kennedy or Ronald Reagan . . . but he did everything else (most notably, Iraq) the same way. Do you believe that the editorial board of the New York Times would have a significantly more positive view of Iraq as a result? Wouldn’t he just be a more artful liar?

I strongly believe that persuasive skill in public speaking is a valuable leadership quality, but it is by no means the most important or even crucial attribute. Mr. Bush clearly knows how to develop strong interpersonal networks with key people, then activate those connections to deliver resources when he needs them. He is smarter than many political leaders at identifying correctly the essential people and resources he must attract to achieve his goals. I think he uses persuasive public speaking to generate just enough support from “the people” to keep a hot pot from boiling over.

This offends people who believe in “the word” and the art of speaking - the chattering classes who populate mass media. If you make your living with the word, then a guy like Bush, who clearly doesn’t have the same value, annoys you greatly. But, you need to take a broader view of leadership and persuasion. No one gets to be elected and the re-elected President without having great persuasion skills.

My sincere regrets at this unconscionable delay. We attended the ECA Annual Conference in Providence last April (yes, 2007) and I’m just now posting on it. Been busy . . . getting old . . . feeling better! Really.

Let’s start with business. Melanie organized a panel on humor and communication. She included several serious people who actually study humor and try to explain it. And then try to be funny. The panel was well attended (usually academic conferences feature panels with more presenters than audience members) and everyone had a rocking good time. I took many furtive pictures, trying desperately not to look like Melanie’s proud relative at graduation. Almost all the shots were blurred, shaky, or out-of-frame, except for this one with Melanie and her colleague, friend, and former doc student, Melissa Wanzer.

Melissa is at Canisius University where she is a campus star and continuing source of fun, delight, and professional skill. She’s also just plain funny. Melanie had many other responsibilities because she’s a Big Shot and a former President of this Association. She has so many ribbons and tags that she looks like General Grant on the Fourth of July. I’ll try to get a picture of that sometime. It’s quite impressive. I don’t know whether to salute or . . .

While she’s handling her profession, I like to visit art galleries and museums. The fabulous Rhode Island School of Design (RISD) is located near downtown Providence, just a short walk from our hotel, the Westin. They’re doing a major renovation of the place and here’s what you’ll see now.

It’s quite a nice building for something that is so accessible and cozy in the neighborhood. You feel like it’s your place rather than a national monument. Luckily for me, they were holding an exhibition of rare Japanese prints featuring Hiroshige. They let you take pictures as long as you didn’t use flash. Here’s the Opening Poster:

I tend to go on and on over pieces I see in museums and it drives Melanie crazy. She says, correctly, that its like listening to someone’s travel movie. So, I’ll be polite and just show a couple of shots, including my last one in this exhibition.

You’ll note the flash reflection in the glass. A nice docent struck me on the head with a rolled up “Notes on an Exhibition of Hiroshige” catalog, pinned my arms behind my back, and confiscated my Canon SureShot camera. I did not protest. I did not have proper control over all the many wonderous and confusing features of this modern piece of technology and I’d been warned a couple of times before about flashing . . . seriously, they scowled at me and rightfully so, and I put the damn camera away. Until I got to another part of the museum and saw this:

One of the coolest art moments of my life. They were (obviously) setting up for a major new display that opened a couple of days after we left town. Perhaps they’d heard about me and my flashing? The blue of the room is gorgeous, just one of my alltime favorite tones. And, all that excellent art from many different artists hanging in one large, well lit room is just a gas. Beauty, grace, just great fun to stand and stare. It was like those study visits I’ve had at the Metropolitan in New York, the Fogg at Harvard, and the Freer in DC where I’d go “backstage” and handle and view original masterpieces in study rooms. (I’ll blog on those experiences sometime.)

The RISD is one of the great art surprises of my life. It holds an oustanding range of work in a pretty, sophisticated, and comfortable space. This place alone warrants a visit to Providence.

And, so do the restaurants! Man, Providence is one great eating town and Melanie and I give it two Big Thumbs Up! You could almost get me to consult anywhere in Providence for just expenses. Big expenses. As brief overview we ate at Mill’s Tavern, Chez Pascal, Cafe Nuovo, and a nice place in Federal Hill. All were really good. And right now I’m blanking on the correct name of the Italian place in Federal Hill; my travel notes show scratchings that look like “Panne and Vino” but that can’t be right - sounds like the show name “Martin and Lewis” used before “Martin and Lewis.” If you’re a foodie, please help me before I defame again.

John, from the Westin, toured us around town and taxied us on two occasions to our dinners in the English cab. The vehicle is quite nice. Roomy, great sight lines, and easy for well dressed women to enter and exit without putting on a floor show for passersby. John gave us a great travelog and town history on our drives. If you stay at the Westin, take the English cab and ask for John, too. Please extend our regards.

Here’s Melanie in Little Italy, or Federal Hill as it is known locally. We almost didn’t make to our restaurant. So many delights in the window displays and food fragrances wafting onto the street through open doors. It’s a long and tempting walk to get to your destination.

We forgot to bring the camera along to Cafe Nuovo and I regret that. We also forgot to bring two umbrellas and to trust my sense of direction. Melanie planned this one and knew decisively that it would not rain on our walk and where the place was located. After 30 years, you’d think I’d know better, but love is blind, stupid, and unteachable. We wandered all over Providence in a steady rain with one small umbrella (I love, but don’t always trust) for 30 minutes before I dragged us into a dry cleaners to get directions. We only missed by a mile or less. Melanie considered it a victory for her sense of direction while I was really happy to have shared a small umbrella with a curvy babe for 30 minutes.

Nuovo has (had?) one of the great chefs we’ve tasted anywhere. Had a great server, too, who connected with our style immediately and provided excellent recommendations all night. I had a serving of raw oysters with a glass of champagne, then a main dish of veal and shrimp served on fettucini. The chef’s touch with everything was great. All the key tastes came through simply and clearly, yet played well with everything else in the dish. Cafe Nuovo is one of the best restaurants I’ve eaten in and I hope it’s still going.

Chez Pascal is close competition, but in a more romantic, bistro style. I had to touch up the photo due to poor lighting effects (need to read the damn manual again), but this shot gives you a sense of the place.

Champagne again with a three cheese appetizer, then a pinot noir with a roasted chicken dish in the line of coque au vin, closed with a fabulous custard desert and I’m not really a fan of custard. Just that nice neighborhood Frenchy joint. After dinner we walked into the night waiting for John and the English cab. People were out on the street just walking around enjoying the night. We talked with a young couple about Chez Pascal and sang its praises. Then a nice fella out walking his dog chatted us up about food, Providence, and dogs. He raises pure breds and let us have a Ken and Barbie picture.

Fun moments like this happen on all of our travels. Strangers are nice to us and share fun events and point our interesting features. They like Melanie a lot I think and most of the time if I take a picture of them with her, they’ll take a picture of me with her, too. I tend to be somewhat wary in a strange city (imagine that, plus I got robbed and mugged at gunpoint in a city when I was a young man), so I keep a careful eye out, yet nice folks still find us. We tend to stick out so that everyone skips the obvious, “You’re not from around here, are you” line and gets to the fun right away.

Once we were hustling out of a nice Baltimore restaurant at the Inner Harbor on a cold night getting into our taxi when a slightly, but clearly, drunk man ran over to us like a dog on the hunt, began shaking my hand and telling me that he recognized me and told the taxi driver to be careful with this ride because he was carrying a famous cargo. This was many years ago when I was wearing extremely long hair. Like this.

I ran into Janet Reno and her body guard on the street in the Federal Triangle in DC looking something like this. The body guard stepped between Janet and me, then saw Melanie and took his hand out from under his jacket. Then in a little-known hallway in a DC hotel I got backstage while President Bill Clinton was speaking, scaring the hell out of the Secret Service contingent. Had many people think I was Al Pacino or Dustin Hoffman scouting out locations or else the lead singer in either a rock or nuvo country band. Then I got a hair cut, went to work for the Fed, and everyone just hands me the check.

I’m really quite mysterious, aren’t I?