On my first Persuasion Tuesday I posted about a concept that is near and dear to the hearts of the center-right: controlling spending. This time I want to talk about a more generic concept: How do you measure the success of your persuasion campaign? Since living within your means is a huge deal for me, I'll continue to use that example.
Hugh Hewitt, the Feline Theocracy's Patriarch of the Airwaves, has interviewed many Mainstream Media (MSM) journalists and editors on his show. His theme is that the MSM is severely biased and this bias is crippling their objectivity and wrecking their ratings. He asks a series of questions designed to determine who they voted for and where they stand on the issues. Allow me to suggest a different line of questioning. How much do they know about basic financial concepts and how much they owe because of government spending? Here's a starter list.
1. Do you have a 401K? Have you borrowed against it? Why?
2. How much credit card debt do you typically carry? Does it bother you?
3. Did you know that the US Government spends every penny of its 401K every year? What are the consequences of that?
4. Every man, woman and child in the country owes $28,412 because of government borrowing. When do you plan to pay your share?
The best metric for a persuasion campaign is to find out how much your target audience knows. Once you have that data you can further refine your education campaign. Remember, getting our initiatives enacted is a public education campaign, not a politician education campaign. They won't do a thing if the general populace doesn't want it. Since the MSM is still a great information distribution vector, it's crucial that they participate in this or at the very least, comprehend the magnitude of what's going on.
How much do they know? How much does it bother them? One would think that if you started pressing a person for just when they will pay off their $24K per person debt, they might start wondering just how they got into this problem in the first place and how they'd get out.
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