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If the Democrats wake up on November 8 having seized control of one or both houses of Congress, it will be for one reason – they had the better message. This is ironic, since throughout the campaign Democrats have been accused of having no message. That is wrong. Their message is: “We’re not them.”

What their critics really mean is that the Democrats have no program, which is true enough. But, in politics, if you’re the “out” party, you don’t need a program to have a message.

Politics in this country is a binary system – all zeros and ones, and voters get to pick one or the other. This keeps it easy – a good thing because voters have more interesting things on their minds – like their kids’ soccer games or who’s getting thrown off the island next week.

It has become a political cliché to say that elections are about the future. Not really. Elections are about the past – did you like it enough to continue it, or are you willing to risk the unknown? In that sense, voters in this midterm election face a dilemma. Most like their own congressman or senator enough to return him or her to office. But most are sufficiently disgusted with the status quo to want a new Congress – which can only happen with new congressmen.

Democrats understand this dilemma and have crafted their message accordingly. They’re not George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, Mark Foley, or Jack Abramoff. Forget that none of those folks is on a ballot. If you don’t want more of the same, vote for something different. Vote Democratic. This may be remembered as the “election of ‘49″ – not 1949, but ‘94 in reverse. In 1994, after 40 years of control of the House, the Democrats were tossed out resoundingly by the voters who had finally had enough. Newt Gingrich got a lot of credit for this because he had crafted the Republican “Contract with America,” which helped galvanize his party’s case. But, in all likelihood, the “revolution of ’94″ would have occurred with or without Newt’s contract.

This year, the Democrats have offered no such clear-cut alternative policy. But they have understood the importance – in politics, as in business or life – of a clear, simple, unified message. And, they’ve had the courage of their non-convictions – refusing to be bullied into taking unnecessary stands by frustrated Republicans or high-minded media.

Is a “throw the bums out” election good for the country It is tempting to say the country is voting for a “pig in a poke,” but the fact is that voters seldom know in advance what a new President will do, much less a new Congress.

Will a Democratic Congress end the war in Iraq, refocus the war on terror, repeal tax cuts for the wealthy, and rid the Congress of sexual predators? Probably not. But it would restore political balance and accountability in Washington, and that’s no small matter. That’s why “we’re not them” is not only an effective message, it’s an important one.

Starbucks’ chairman Howard Schultz recently told his top executives that they may be “watering down the Starbucks experience [and] soul.”? If the Starbucks “experience”? and “soul”? have anything to do with coffee, Schultz may be right that books, CDs, movies, stuffed animals, and egg, bacon, and cheese sandwiches distract from that soulful experience. What’s fascinating to me is how Starbucks has managed to display this diffused branding in the most public of places – on its coffee cups.

Starbucks’ cups, of course, were never just containers. They are also large, sorry, grande billboards. On one side is the ubiquitous Starbucks’ logo – the wavy-haired, large-breasted woman in the green circle. But the real branding begins round back where, on my particular cup today, a musician named Dan Zanes envisions in “The Way I See It #193″? a “21st Century America where families, friends, and neighbors gather together at the end of each day… to tell stories and jokes, to sing and dance with wild abandon.”?

This is a branding hat trick. First, Starbucks endorses open speech and wants to connect their customers with the trendsetters of today. Second, there’s Zanes, who is, presumably, cool (which I have to take on faith because he exists only in the world of Starbucks, not iTunes). Third, if you do want to hear Zanes’ music, you are told to go to “Starbucks Hear Music”? on XM Satellite Radio. More cool. By now, Starbucks is already way too cool for me.

But, wait, this cup overflows with even more branding. The cup also tells us that it is “made with 10% post-consumer recycled fiber.”? I’m not sure what that means. Post-consumer is a little scary, even apocalyptic sounding. The fiber part is, hopefully, not nutritional information. Anyway, this reminds us that Starbucks is not only cool, but also responsible. Cool and responsible is a little oxymoronic, but the company seems to pull it off. So, at this point, Starbucks has done as much branding as can be done on a single cup – even a grande one.

Now, it’s the lawyers’ turn. Lest anyone think that Starbucks’ actually endorses Zanes’ zany vision, we are told that “this is the author’s opinion, not necessarily that of Starbucks.”? Are there really lawyers in Seattle who think I’d sue the company just for endorsing a silly, utopian idea? I know our judicial system is messed up, but I can’t imagine that suit would go very far, even in “21st Century America.”? However, if while reading Zanes’ world view I spill scalding coffee on my crotch, I damn well would sue. But that’s covered, too. The cup warns, “Careful, the beverage you are about to enjoy is extremely hot.”? In other words, you won’t enjoy it in your lap.

You’ve got to hand it to Starbucks. It has carefully parceled out the real estate on its cups to the branding department, the music promotion department, the legal department, and the department of silly ideas. Cool, very cool.

What are the first two questions you ask yourself when you hear about a new PR disaster? Here are mine. First, what the hell were they thinking? Second, how can smart people do such dumb things?

Take the Hewlett-Packard leak flap. These are smart people. CEO Mark Hurd, in just 19 months, is turning the company around. Board chairman Patricia Dunn, as a member of the Conference Board’s center for corporate governance, is no stranger to corporate ethics issues. Nor is the HP boardroom populated by unsuccessful, inexperienced, or dumb people. So when Dunn proposed conducting a clandestine probe into boardroom leaks, why didn’t alarms go off in the head (or conscience) of at least one board member? Had no one read All the President’s Men (or even seen the movie)? Didn’t it occur to anyone that the whole exercise was ethically and legally questionable and, from a PR perspective, dangerous in the extreme?

Here are two explanations for these incredible lapses of judgment – one about the nature of the incident and the other about the people involved.

In my White House and Senate staff days, I learned that how you respond to leak probes can help either exonerate you or indict you. “Great idea, let’s get those bastards”? suggests that you have nothing to hide. “Do you really think this is a good idea?”? on the other hand, can raise all the other eyebrows in the room (there are only nine HP board members, and at least one of them was “guilty”?). This is why, even after approximately 99.99% of all leak probes have backfired, they are still proposed and endorsed by otherwise intelligent people.

And what about those people? Of the nine HP board members, six are techies, one comes from finance (Dunn), one from healthcare, and one is a consultant. Notice what’s missing? Here’s a hint by way of board members of similar companies. Apple: Al Gore. Xerox: Vernon Jordan. Dell: Sam Nunn. AT&T: Lynn Martin. United Technologies: Christine Todd Whitman. Intel: Charlene Barshefsky. No one on the HP board has any obvious political experience. It’s not even clear that there’s a lawyer on the board (at least no one is identified as such on the HP Web site).

Of course, having political experience is no guarantee of sagacity or even common sense on politically sensitive issues like leak probes. But, it is hard to believe that Gore, Jordan, or Nunn wouldn’t have sounded the alarm if they were in the HP boardroom that day. It is also unlikely that any of them would have been intimidated by the prospect of being suspected of leaking.

Possibly HP is now looking for a prospective board member with these kinds of credentials, but so far, its only structural reaction has been to take a giant step back from corporate reform and name Hurd chairman of the board. Circling the wagons may be the only political strategy less likely to succeed than probing leaks

I have just finished reading The Washington Post over a cup of Starbucks coffee – a morning ritual that occurs less regularly now than it used to. The Starbucks part still happens every morning. But the Post part happens a few days each week instead of every day as it once did. It seems to me the contrast says something about Starbucks and about newspapers.

Traditional papers are in decline. We’ve all heard the familiar explanations: the Internet, consolidation of advertisers, a new generation’s short attention span, increased competition. Wait a minute. There’s something wrong with that last one. In fact, it is dead wrong. The greatest cause of newspapers’ troubles – and the one seldom mentioned – is their historic lack of competition. And, if anything will save the medium, it will be the fact that they now have to fight for every reader.

Monopolies are not good for their customers nor, ultimately, for the monopolies themselves – and most major papers were monopolies until very recently. And, they acted like monopolies with arrogant disregard for the customer and a dismal lack of innovation. They probably would also have adopted the third characteristic of monopolies – price gouging – except papers make their money off ads and have always subsidized the subscriber in order to boost circulation.

Starbucks, by contrast, was an upstart startup just a few years ago, taking on the coffee giants like Dunkin’ Donuts and McDonald’s. And Starbucks acted like startups do – it broke the rules, listened carefully to customers, and innovated like crazy. The greatest threat to Starbucks now is that it has become so ubiquitous it may soon look – and act – like a monopoly. But Starbucks and newspapers have (or,at least, had) one important trait in common: They are driven by habit. Therein lies more depressing news for newspapers. I have two college-aged sons. Both have already developed the coffee habit. Neither has developed the newspaper habit. Unless newspapers can find a way to reverse this trend, they will soon look like tobacco companies – dependent upon a dying generation of “addicted”? users.

The good news for newspapers is that they seem, finally, to understand their new situation. Increased competition – mostly from nontraditional sources like all news Web sites and blogs – has caused them to think competitively, to listen to their customers, and to innovate with their own Web sites, online communities, localization, blogs, and RSS feeds. Even the traditional dead tree product is susceptible to innovation, as The Wall Street Journal has recently shown.

If newspapers can continue this pattern of innovation and find ways to make newspaper reading – in whatever format the reader chooses – a habit again, they will not only survive, but prosper. The invention of TV was supposed to doom radio. The VCR was going to kill the movie theater. Neither prediction proved true, but only because radio and theaters started innovating and finding new ways to meet customers’ needs (think Howard Stern and the multiplex). Papers can survive in the same way – now that they have finally woken up and smelled the coffee.

In business and in life, we all depend on role models to help shape our decisions and behavior. Countless “how-to”? business books testify to this. I was reminded of this when I heard that President Bush’s summer reading list includes two books on Abraham Lincoln.

I suspect Lincoln is Bush’s presidential role model. After all, Lincoln faced a defining moment in our history – a mortal threat to our nation’s existence. Bush sees the “global war on terror”? as just that. Lincoln had a singular focus – to win the war at all costs. Ditto, Bush. When others wavered, or thought the cost of war was too great, or the outcome too uncertain, Lincoln was a rock. Just like Bush. Lincoln would not be deterred by constitutional niceties like habeas corpus. Bush remains determined to adopt “all necessary means”? – Lincoln’s phrase – to win the war on terror.

To those worried about the direction of Bush’s war in Iraq, the Lincoln analogue might be reassuring. But if Bush is modeling himself on Lincoln, he seems to be doing so selectively. Particularly in terms of communication with the American people, Bush would do well to study Lincoln’s example more closely.

Lincoln understood the importance of maintaining popular support for his war effort, famously asserting that, “With public sentiment, nothing can fail; without it, nothing can succeed.”? He also understood the importance of language in rallying the support of the nation, and no President has been more eloquent. Bush disdains eloquence, preferring to use language to convince the average American that he is one of us. Americans want their leaders to lead in words as well as in deeds, especially during wartime.

Lincoln also grasped the practical and non-ideological nature of the American people. Pressed by Abolitionist supporters to declare the Civil War one of emancipation, he refused, claiming that he would free all the slaves or none if either course would bring victory and preservation of the union. Bush insists on framing his war in Iraq as one of liberation and democracy (at least since the WMD rationale evaporated).

Lincoln’s flexibility of character helped him maintain public support throughout the Civil War. He ran through five “Generals-in-Chief”? before settling on the successful Ulysses Grant. Bush, however, seems determined to stand by failed appointees in order to avoid the perceived sin of his father – vacillation. And, in contrast to Bush’s “God is on our side”? view of world affairs, Lincoln said, “In the present civil war it is quite possible that God’s purpose is something different from the purpose of either party.”?

Perhaps Bush should add one more book to his list: a biography of Franklin Roosevelt. The most eloquent president since Lincoln, FDR was committed to government by trial and error – always experimenting, acknowledging mistakes, correcting them, and moving on. If Bush considers Roosevelt too liberal and flexible a model, he might consider that FDR was the preferred model for a recent and, so far, more successful conservative President – Ronald Reagan.