PA Bill Number: HB917
Title: Adopting the Uniform Family Law Arbitration Act.
Description: Adopting the Uniform Family Law Arbitration Act. ...
Last Action: Presented to the Governor
Last Action Date: Apr 29, 2024
What Apple And Senate Republicans Have In Common: A Messaging Problem :: 02/19/2016
As I write this, Apple AAPL -0.21% CEO Tim Cook struggles with something other than the beating his company’s taken amidst the recent market correction (as an Apple shareholder, these are words I didn’t enjoy typing).
The problem: Cook is refusing to go along with a California judge’s order that Apple help the FBI break into the iPhone left behind by Syed Farook, one of the San Bernardino terrorists (law enforcement’s been trying to crack it open for two months now, to no avail).
In a letter published Tuesday, the CEO explained his decision to Apple customers, saying in effect that going along with this one request could start the nation down a slippery slope of increased privacy-invasion.
Credit Cook with standing by his principle, if indeed this is what he believes.
Then, sit down whoever wrote the letter and explain why Apple’s messaging is out of whack.
Specifically, this passage:
We are challenging the FBI’s demands with the deepest respect for American democracy and a love of our country. We believe it would be in the best interest of everyone to step back and consider the implications.
While we believe the FBI’s intentions are good, it would be wrong for the government to force us to build a backdoor into our products. And ultimately, we fear that this demand would undermine the very freedoms and liberty our government is meant to protect.
What’s wrong with that sentiment? As with real estate, location, location, location…
The words should be at the beginning of the letter. Right after: “We know our nation is in struggle with terrorists who use technology to perpetuate their evil – and we want to help law enforcement win this fight.”
Instead, Apple buried the lead, leaving the “we believe the FBI’s intentions are good” language for the letter’s finish.
I mention this because Apple’s dust-up with the feds comes at the same time Senate Republicans struggle to find a cohesive message regarding how to proceed in the aftermath of Justice Antonin Scalia’s death.
Some senators want nothing to do with hearings for whomever President Obama chooses. Others are hinting that hearings might be possible.
It’s confusing and it smacks of weakness.
And, like Tim Cook and Apple, it buries the lead.
The story shouldn’t be about Senate process. Rather, it should be about the effect a reconfigured Supreme Court would have on the American landscape – specifically, those select few states that will determine both the presidency and control of the Senate later this year.
Why would Republicans agree to hearings? Out of fear that they’ll be portrayed as obstructionists and pay a price at the polls.
But about that backlash…
Four times now, America has held elections that served as referenda on Barack Obama, the candidate, or President Obama’s choices.
The two times it was a referendum on candidate Obama: He carried 54 of 100 states and earned about 14.5 million more votes than his Republican opponents.
But the two times it was a referendum on Obama’s policies (these would be the midterm elections of 2010 and 2014): Democrats lost 76 House seats, 15 Senate seats and eight governorships. In the House cycles, Republicans netted 12.1 million more votes than the Democrats.
What this suggests? That things work marvelously for Obama when the election is about him. But not so swell when it’s about his ideas.
Thus the smart move for Senate Republicans: change the conversation from process (i.e., dissing the President) and focus instead on the policy ramifications of a Supreme Court with five progressive justices.
How would that play out? Let’s take three states are home to pivotal Senates races this fall.
In Colorado, where gun-control legislation led to a recall election in 2013, point out that Scalia was part of the five-justice majority in 2008’s District of Columbia v. Heller, which affirmed the right to armed self-defense.
In Ohio, there’s this year’s 5-4 decision (again, Scalia siding with the majority) that brought a halt to Obama’s Clean Power Plan (the matter may resurface before the High Court, but not for a couple of years).
And in Wisconsin, where Gov. Scott Walker has battled public-sector labor unions, how Scalia’s death is possibly a death-knell to Friedrichs v. California Teachers Assn. – the expectation being that, in another 5-4 decision, the Supreme Court would have banned public employee unions from forcing non-members to pay so-called “fair-share” dues.
Republicans can quake in their boots and fear the ramifications of standing their ground against the White House. Or they can roll the dice, wagering that the Supreme Court isn’t as galvanizing a matter as ISIS, immigration or the economy.
Remember, President Obama crying foul is no guarantee of a hue and cry at the polls.
You can find me on Twitter: @hooverwhalen.
