“The blunt reality is that there will be dwindling appetite and patience in the U.S. Congress, and in the American body politic writ large, to expend increasingly precious funds on behalf of nations that are apparently unwilling to devote the necessary resources … to be serious and capable partners in their own defense.”

Dwindling is right.

Europe should think about taking a note from Brian Cardinal and become a better teammate. They can still be a contributing role player in the world and enjoy our protection.

And they can keep sending Dirks over to compete at the highest level. We’ll send them back champions.

In the wake of LeBron James’s decision, there’s no shortage of debate, starting with whether superstars should team up.

Wilbon wisely points out the difference between the old school and the new school, noting how a true old school player like Charles Barkley observed:

“In fairness, if I was 25 I’d try to win it by myself,” Barkley said. “Not technically ‘by myself,’ but I would want to be the guy. LeBron is never going to be the guy.”

My observation on this decision is different, and like Wilbon’s it is too multi-faceted to put into a neat box.  At the heart of this is a massive narrative shift in our culture.  The dots being connected in people’s minds about whether this is a good or bad decision are being connected based on certain assumptions about winning.  But that is an essentially man-made construct, and Freedom always leaves the door open for altering those constructs with a new set of assumptions.  And I believe a new set of assumptions have won out in LeBron’s mind, and whether they win out in the broader culture will have a lot to do with the fruit of his decision.  Follow me?

What I love about Wilbon is he always has the presence of mind to see through sports into the broader culture and its inequities and hypocrisies.  That’s why he is an irreplaceable voice for those willing to listen, even if he can be a little more dogmatic than most people like in other popular voices.  Wilbon gets there is a big difference between the old and new school, and he does not profess to know exactly how the difference will play itself out before us in this new NBA.

Because the impact of LeBron’s decision will unfold before us all over time, this whole thing has the power to shape the contours of a new cultural narrative in the mainstream of our culture.  And because Wilbon gets these deeper connections, I am eager to hear his commentary on this unfolding saga.  Because like it or not, LeBron will lead the new NBA forward in substantive ways to shape the global, Internet-driven communication environment in which we will live.  And thus, we need cultural interpreters with both an old and new school appreciation like Wilbon to help us make sense of this.  I am excited about that.

That said, let’s not forget one all-important thing: whether the old school individualist or new school collectivist narrative wins out will be determined on the frontlines of the league and of the culture.  No commentator or news network or top-down institution will own this new narrative.  The new communication environment is too open to allow for that.  That is a decisive break from the past, friends.

Because this deep shift taking in the NBA reflects that which is taking place in the broader culture, it would be wise to studiously fix your eyes on these developments, at least at a basic level.  As you think this through, here are three questions by which to make your own comparison between the relative merits of the new school collectivist approach:

1. Does the beauty of the game itself increase with the new collusion between players off the court, so that they play well together on the court?  (don’t forget how great a passer LeBron is…)
2. Does the quality of intensity and competition produced night-in and night-out, especially in the playoffs, increase as a result of LeBron’s decision?  In other words, will other players do the same thing, and sacrifice the money and come together to compete against the new trio?
3. Will this teamwork translate positively into the broader culture?  More pointedly, will more young black men decide to come together and elevate their efforts in whatever they are doing, rather than just taking direct path to the biggest or easiest money?  Will they shoot for the rugged individualist’s pride or will they see the value of whole-greater-than-the-sum teamwork?

My prediction is that LeBron will be as big a new school leader as Michael Jordan was in the old school in his day…from a cultural perspective.   He may not be as much of a winner on the court as Michael, and perhaps he has as the old school guys have said, eliminated the possibility of being seen by the old school as an all-time great.   But the old school narrative is not authoritative, friends, and I think LeBron gets this.  His leap of faith–his decision to use the ESPN platform–is in my view a reflection on his awareness that he is on the forefront of a new cultural narrative, and perhaps he even sees that as a Black man and as an undoubted economic player in a global marketplace, this is the better path forward than the old school individualist path.

In other words, his impact on the broader culture narrative could be as seismic as Michael’s, if not more so, because he is coming of age in the middle of a global media shift that his generation will lead.  And now, with the vacuum left by Tiger Woods’ popular decline (though of course Woods course is not done), perhaps LeBron is smarter than all the old school stalwarts for knowing what time it is.  For the times they are a changing, more than we think.

This is a generational-media shift that I will elaborate upon later in detail in the not too distant future.  Standby.  Meanwhile, enjoy the competing narratives playing out in the popular debate.  It will be more than interesting.

After some dental work in the locker room, he put his hard hat back on and went out to work again.  Explains Belanger: “I knew I was in trouble, but what are you going to do? It’s the playoffs.”

I gotta think this is the kind of example that can provoke Belanger’s teammates to lay it all on the line each game the rest of the playoffs.  Knowing the disappointing performances of Caps teams in the past, I expect it will take such commitment to realize the full potential of this super-talented team.

Without a Stanley Cup in the organization’s past, this team has the great opportunity and difficulty of breaking through every part of the team culture that does not support its ultimate goal of winning it all.

And I am pretty sure that nothing less than holding the Cup at the end of this postseason will be worth the pain and sacrifice and toothless grins needed to get there.

We who call Christ our Lord can call this day good because we have a means to be reconciled to God through what Christ has done.  No stairway to heaven, no special knowledge, no life of obedience to the dictates of any church or creed–nothing can reconcile us to God apart from Christ’s experience of unimaginable suffering on the first Good Friday.

I want to experience the good of Easter now and forever, and I want you to also.  My prayer on this holy day is that by God’s Spirit we can be the kind of people who live in the value of the meditation Luther describes, despite our hard hearts that we let rob us of experiencing Easter each day:

The whole value of the meditation of the suffering of Christ lies in this, that man should come to the knowledge of himself and sink and tremble. If you are so hardened that you do not tremble, then you have reason to tremble. Pray to God that he may soften your heart and make fruitful your meditation upon the suffering of Christ, for we of ourselves are incapable of proper reflection unless God instills it.

But if one does meditate rightly on the suffering of Christ for a day, an hour, or even a quarter of an hour, this we may confidently say is better than a whole year of fasting, days of psalm singing, yes, than even one hundred masses, because this reflection changes the whole man and makes him new…

I can wholeheartedly recommend STRATFOR and The Next 100 Years.  But more foundationally, I not only recommend but absolutely want to compel every reader here to consider political analysis a craft, a skillset that demands years of focus, objective evaluation, and iterative adjustments.  Once you develop a methodology for breaking down the issues within a broader frame of reference (which I would hope is rooted in our Constitution and its outlook on man, government, tyranny, and liberty), then one can move from political analysis to political forecasting–projecting your data-driven understanding of key trends into the future to make educated guesses on where things are going and what threats we need to be preparing for now.

I’d argue that the culture of compromise in Washington has been allowed to increase our national debt levels into the stratosphere because we the people have not had visibility into Washington’s machinations, and also because we have outsourced our political analysis to either the left or the right in the great left-right game.

As a Christian citizen, I am starting to see it almost as a sin to adopt the common left vs. right perspective of events.  At a minimum, adopting that frame of reference tends to produce certain temptations to judging one’s fellow citizens as beneath you if they sit on the other side of the partisan divide, and that kind of attitude is certainly sinful.  To minimize the inherent human dignity of anyone created in the image of God is a form of assault on the majesty of God Himself, at least in my limited opinion.

More than producing a temptation to self-righteously judge others, outsourcing one’s thought on politics to the leading voices in the left-right game (whichever side you choose) is, in my mind, an abdication of one’s sacred calling to be a faithful citizen and steward of our nation for the next generation.  Think about that.

And if you want to begin on the hard path of taking back your mind and your sacred duty from those in our political media culture (whether politicians or pundits), I suggest you begin with choosing to develop the craft of political analysis for yourself, with helpful guides like George Friedman.  A good place to start is with understanding STRATFOR’s own methodology and adapting into into your perspective, starting with what Friedman lays out right here:

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=92NlIr4BnVE]

President Obama in his interview with George Stephanopoulos has said, “The same thing that swept Scott Brown into office swept me into office.”  David Axelrod sounded a similar note in his telephone interview with Mike Allen, stating:

We’re FAMILIAR with the vote that was cast today: Some of the same sentiment that propelled [Brown's] campaign, propelled ours — the sense that this economy doesn’t work particularly well for middle class, working people … You overlay the fact that we’re in a recession — the deepest since the Great Depression — and people are understandably agitated.

I agree that there is a growing grassroots sentiment across America that sees Washington as far out of touch from the citizens our government is meant to represent. I also agree that this sentiment propelled Obama into office as it now has Scott Brown.  But Obama is using an interesting tactic to inferentially associate himself with his own opposition.  There should be no doubt that Scott Brown’s amazing run to the Senate was largely (but certainly not exclusively) fueled by national opposition to the President’s healthcare reform plan.

Amazing.  But let’s give the President his due before we question why he would make such an association.  Consider the book The Battle for America 2008 by Dan Balz and Hayes Johnson (HT: Mike Allen) who describe Sunday March 4, 2007.  This was the date of the first political event involving Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama following each of their announcements to run for the White House.  Balz and Johnson describe the prevailing political wisdom of that moment in time as follows:

Obama knows all too well that Clinton stands as the odds-on, even inevitable, winner of the nomination—and for good reason: She is the best known, has the most formidable political organization, the most money, the greatest expertise.  She’s backed by a network that has helped win the White House twice, something no Democrat had accomplished since FDR, and can recruit almost anyone she wants.  And everyone knows her name.

The prevailing wisdom had some good data at its disposal.  At this point, the Obama campaign had no bank accounts, no credit cards, no motorcades, no staff, no donor lists, and no website.  Even the plane leaving that first event was grounded with a dead battery.  Undaunted by the bad omen, Obama calmly told his aides, “I guess this really is a grassroots campaign.”  Indeed.

Against such long odds, where did candidate Obama find the confidence which permeated his speeches throughout his campaign?  Could it be that he firmly believed that history was on his side?  Or perhaps he believed he could control the narrative of Politics in 2008 by playing the part?  Let us use only charitable judgments here and accept the Balz and Johnson account that the hopeful insight of Obama’s lead strategist, David Axelrod, was that now is the time.  To wait to become more experienced is to risk never getting a shot.  Axelrod was proven right.  Obama was a better fit for the historical moment than Clinton, and his candidacy indeed had the potential to “spark a political movement and prevail against sizable odds.”

In being swept to office by seizing this moment, President Obama acknowledged that “the Internet served our campaign in unprecedented ways.”  Undoubtedly, it was unprecedented for an America only two generations removed from segregation to vote a Black man into the Presidency.  Amid this wonderful achievement, it is instructive to recall how Obama characterized our nation’s shortcomings and opportunities—certainly at arm’s length from the comments of Jeremiah Wright and Bill Ayers, but not completely at odds with them either.

The Internet amplified what the Obama campaign said about America to an audience that was ready to see certain longstanding structural barriers removed.  But was racism and socioeconomic inequity the barrier, or was it something more?  Again, let us make only charitable judgments at this point and recognize the good of having future generations come of age in this new cultural environment that is able to look back and see clearly that America has rejected the inherent hypocrisy of unjust political oppression—especially in the evil institution of slavery—and the self-evident truth that “all men are Created equal” that is enshrined in our founding documents.

Barack Obama shattered structural barriers that Martin Luther King, Jr. and others fought hard to chip away at over time.  Following the steady gains of racial justice in America, Obama was able to burst on the scene with the right message at the right time.  To deliver the message, he took full advantage of the Internet to reach beyond the traditional network of political potentates and insiders that stood poised to help send another Clinton into the White House.  By using the web in innovative ways, the Obama campaign’s Internet operation raised unprecedented amounts of money.  Half a billion of the $700 million dollars raised by the Obama campaign came from online donations.

From TV to Internet: A New Political Mentality

So we can see that the Internet has given the American grassroots the ability to make its voice known.  But does Scott Brown follow the same grassroots voice that President Obama did?  Only time will tell, of course, but I find it interesting to note that a major part of Obama’s pitch supporting healthcare reform was his assault on insurance companies and their ability to control the GOP.  This is certainly a grassroots pitch, because if the grassroots is united about anything it is in opposition to special interests and political donors having a bigger voice in Washington than the voters.

But where is he going with this?  Does anyone doubt that major special interests and political donors are as influential to the Democrats as to the Republicans?  Some interests and donors are different—though some are the same, most notably those from the financial community—but politicians are highly dependent on OPM (Other People’s Money), even more than they are on votes.  They only need votes on one big day, but they need money every day.  Knowing this obvious fact, I find it hard to accept our President’s accusation against the hypocrisy of the GOP, as if his party is not guilty of the same thing.

But when I look at the actions taken by our President to increase the centralization of our economy in almost every way he could, it is clear that he is not following the same voice as that which I believe swept Scott Brown into power.  The discerning reader should be quick to separate this President’s words from his deeds.  It is disappointing in the extreme to see this gap, given the kind of positive role model he could be as a man of integrity.  I am saddened that the Black community does not have leaders that do more than break the mold.  I recall the timeless words of MLK, calling on all Americans to judge one another by the content of our character.  In this world charged with political correctness and partisanship, one can hardly call out the lack of character by a public figure on the left without fear of major backlash, even if the case is clear.

The case should also be clear that we not feel hopeless or beholden about this environment.  The ground is shifting beneath our feet in ways that are deeper than we have yet collectively realized.  As Chris Anderson has expounded in his book The Long Tail, we have moved from an information environment of scarcity into one of great abundance.  This is game changing for politics, especially if we the people seize the moment. 

The Long Tail is a mathematical concept of power distribution.  This is a principle of disproportion where a given market sector or environment will predominantly favor and be shaped by a small set of choices (“hits” in the case of music or movies), while all the remaining voices or choices will have less influence in aggregate than the few choices at the top.  Translate this into politics, and it is easy to see how favoritism strains representative democracy when voices or groups down the “long tail” do not have the same voice as those at the top (i.e., in the head of the curve).

As Anderson explains, the disruptive power of the Internet is that it levels the playing field dramatically by giving the power of free information distribution to all participants up and down the curve.  In politics, for example, that means that the collective voice of the blogosphere can gain a large enough population of political information consumers to diminish the influence of the few voices who had exerted predominant control prior to the Internet.  This, of course, has changed voting patterns and electoral outcomes in many ways.  To understand the rising grassroots movement, one must understand the Long Tail effect at work here.  The Internet has elevated the voice of citizens—the political grassroots—to directly engage the political process as never before to influence one another, the media, and electoral outcomes.

This is a tectonic shift.  At the time of America’s founding, oral communication were supplemented by printed newspapers, books, and leaflets to constitute the political media ecology of the day.  In the late 20^th century, this media ecology expanded to include electronic media such as broadcast and cable television as well as talk radio.  Most recently, interactive tools of information consumption and delivery have burst on the scene through the rise of blogs, podcasts, YouTube videos, Facebook, and the rest of the Web 2.0 world.  These tools have altered power distribution in America’s political media ecology. Now, we see an American electorate with new habits of political data consumption and therefore a new outlook on politics as well.

These developments have a distinctly generational dimension.  The role of the Internet in politics continues to grow across the board, but for young people it now serves as the leading source of political campaign news.  This is a game-changing shift in and of itself.  The first exposure to politics of our young people is now through the lens of the Internet, not television.  The Internet, by its nature, is grassroots.  As Don Tapscott and Anthony Williams highlight in their book Wikinomics: How Mass Collaboration Changes Everything, the mentality engendered by Internet use is structurally different from its predecessor.  In the political media environment built around television and other non-interactive mass media, a winning communication styles involved “controlling the message.”  The inherent structure of mass media as a closed, broadcast platform supported a political logic Tapscott and Williams describe as “plan and push.”  This model favors centralization, while the structure of the Internet is “engage and co-create” and favors mass collaboration.

This distinction reveals the major difference between Obama and Brown and the wings of the grassroots that swept each into power.  Obama represents that side of the grassroots that is cool with centralization, while Brown hails from the conservative side that is wary of such centralization.  Both sides of the grassroots are America.  But what is interesting to me is the way the Internet favors mass collaboration, which to me is more a conservative phenomenon that removes the need for big government, big money donors, and opaque political parties to run the political game.  In other words, mass collaboration via the web cuts out the middle man.

Yet, Obama is quick to denounce the Supreme Court decision allowing unbridled corporate campaign contributions, while Mitch McConnell offered some bogus-sounding, backpedaling explanation to Greta Van Susteren of his support for the SCOTUS decision based on giving every corporation an equal voice even if it does not own a media arm to amplify its voice.  It’s hard to know what anyone really believes or stands for anymore.

We are in very interesting times.  My counsel is that wise political engagement means listening to every political voice charitably, but knowing there was some “plan and push” decision-making standing behind most every word they say.  The stakes are too high for the big donors, and the amount of money contributed to these politicians certainly did not come without expectations that we simply do not know about.  I am not saying we should distrust every politician, but I am saying we cannot fully trust any politician.

And the stakes are too high for us, too.  The future economic stability of the world our children inhabit is largely being decided by politicians now, rather than the taxpayers or the free markets.  Choose for yourself whether you engage or let the planners push our their agenda.  It could be that they are choosing to use whatever words may suit them to win over just enough voters to keep citizen accountability at bay, diabolical calculus though it may be.

But the mentality shift here means we now have all we need to fact check these politicians and hold them much more accountable, perhaps enough to stem the tide of this massive economic centralization and destabilization.  Bear in mind that President Obama openly allows a major gap to remain between his words and deeds—and he is always on the camera.  What do we think obscure politicians throughout Congress are doing?

Look again at the Long Tail and know where our representatives have been getting their biggest “hits.”  The great challenge for us is one of self-controlled ownership or self-organization.  Engagement is a far superior strategy than trusting the next new political hope, while remaining passive like TV viewers as the political world of the future gets determined before our faces.

I believe the grassroots movement that swept Scott Brown into office was less about Scott Brown and more about the American people finding their voice, picking a hill to defend, and engaging the fight against a bad healthcare bill and government overreach overall.  But the test is now that the crisis of that bill is over.  Can the grassroots sustain itself without much of a centralized capability and without that charismatic leader we have come to depend on so much?

Game-Changing Opportunity

The game changing opportunity here comes when you realize the changes produced by the Internet’s engage and co-create structure along with the Long Tail shift to information abundance.  We can awaken as citizens and take control of this seismic political shift looming.  It is one that cannot be easily resisted—at least not without some major planning and pushing of bureaucracy, government growth, and economic centralization.  Ironic that this is just what we see taking place in Washington today—at a breakneck pace.  It’s as if the planners and pushers know the end is nigh for their model of central governance.

Do you see that too, or am I just crazy?

We are now seeing why 2010 will be such a decisive year in politics.  The American people now have a sense of urgency and a path forward to create a much more representative model of self-government under our Constitution, a model that recognizes the great civil rights gains of recent generations while also extending that unique form of American liberty and egalitarian meritocracy which has, from the very beginning, revolted against the hierarchical—even monarchical—structures of Western aristocracy and colonialism that had prevailed in Europe before the American Revolution.

These plan and push structures are still at work in the world, and many in the grassroots know it.  Because TV is also plan and push, it is easy to see that many in the political firmament will never take the grassroots seriously, will never call them other than far right, and will never recognize the real hope for change and lasting reform that stands poised to reconfigure America around the primacy of the citizen, not the donor, in Washington.

Get ready for a battle royale.  Indeed, in the spirit of engage and co-create, I am now calling on my many skeptic friends to engage and co-create with we the people, not leaving it to our representatives in either party to take the driver’s seat in American democracy.  Why settle for sweeping new politicians unexpectedly into office, when we can sweep aside this crooks, vultures, and hangers-on that run and fund the two political parties?

Are you allowed to end a sentence with a preposition like that?  Makes me think of that classic line by Winston Churchill: “That is the sort of bloody nonsense up with which I will not put.”

Matter of fact, I wrote that piece about some bloody nonsense up with which I will no longer put.  Word up.

But I do think that my major contentions for why the Skins would have a breakout year were sound.  Sort of.  I said I saw real greatness in Jason Campbell and Jim Zorn.  I stand by that, but more in the character sense at this point than in their game time execution.  Campbell seems much further along as a bona fide NFL starting QB than Zorn as a head coach, but both guys stayed steady and impressed me with their unflappable tenor all year.

Now there are so many big question heading into the offseason, with Zorn out and Shanahan in, from whether to keep Campbell and/or Clinton Portis to constructing a coaching staff to building an offensive line.

Knowing Where to Put the “X”: Priceless

And yet, there really is only one question: What to do about the fact that the Redskins culture has been built around Dan Snyder since he arrived here over a decade ago.  Snyder is clearly effective at building a business from a football franchise.  Yet, the culture has had to live the with a sort of hubris and the blind spots that come from that.  A businessman trying to run a football organization without football experience is a sort of hubris that the man at the top is allowed to have.

So will he relinquish the culture to Mike Shanahan now, or at least the football side of it?  I suspect he will.  But that must be proven.  And I think it could really work well to have a balance of power between the football and the business sides of the house.  That would be real culture change.

But the culture change I want to see–the change to a culture of winning–cannot occur without demanding football excellence.  Shanahan will have to impose that on Snyder in clear and in subtle ways, and then have that trickle down so that all the players see that the Redskins organization is not a retirement village for the old and overpaid.  We need more hungry guys.  We need mean streaks.  But we need discipline.

The combination of tenacity and discipline is what is lacking across the roster on a consistent basis.   The Redskins linebackers seem to have these skills.  The one player who I think shows the clearest lack of these combined traits–but the most potential to hit the next level–is Laron Landry.  He could elevate into someone closer to Sean Taylor, a player who he seems to have the tenacity to be like, if he were disciplined enough not to look for the killer hit on every play.

The culture of what Michael Wilbon calls “Celebrity Football” is the opposite of tenacity and discipline.  Snyder has built that.  Shanahan must undo that old culture before he can build his own.  This is no sure thing.  Shanahan is a celebrity himself.

Culture Change from the Grassroots Up

If I could make one bold move with a wave of the magic wand to ensure the culture change the Skins need, I would directly involve the Redskins fan base in a disciplined way.  When Jason Reid called the Skins fan base the smartest he has seen, I think he was hitting on a profound opportunity.

The Skins fans are Snyder’s biggest financial asset, to be sure.  But it could be a football asset too.  I have done a fair bit of research on the ability for blogs, Web2.0, and the like to reshape culture by bringing the top-down and the bottom-up together into more effective communication.

If the “new” Redskins regime with Snyder, Shanahan, and Bruce Allen at the helm wants to be more profitable, more focused, more vetted in its decisions, and more beloved by fans (especially Washington natives like me who view this organization as something of a sacred trust that is very much part of my family), then there is an incredible untapped opportunity to bring the fans even more into the football decision-making circle.  Concepts like Crowdsourcing and the wisdom of crowds are relatively untapped, but there are great opportunities.  Cut away the obvious haters on the Redskins Insider blog, and you have a passionate and intelligent group of people who have many valuable insights for Snyder and his team.

We have motive alignment: We want him to be successful!  The question is one of collective intelligence. How could you use a concept like Crowdsourcing to harness the insights of the Redskins fan base?  And how could you keep the passionate fans from drowning each other out?

For those skeptics who think this idea is silly, you may want to stop.  Our Democracy may have passionate citizens drowning each other out with partisan back-and-forth all the time, but the fact that American is the leading nation on earth says something about the power of (messy) cultural development from the grassroots up.

Of course, such development needs to be directed.  But with our interactive media ecology, all that would be needed would be some basic planning to get things started, some rules of engagement to keep things positive, and some goals to keep everyone pulling in the same general direction.

For the launch, imagine this grassroots fan engagement campaign kicked off with a big public event with guys like Jason Reid, Mike Wise, and Doc Walker coming together to frame things moving forward.  Let the Skins management be involved if they want, but not as the drivers.  No one would trust that.  Journalists and sports casters should have the name recognition, critical analysis skills, and financial independence to play the key role to bridge the gap.  And let them name the launch even something honest and forward leaning.  I dunno, maybe something like “The Public Trust: Connecting Redskins Fans and Management for Game-Changing Results.”

Then have these journalists pose specific questions (the kind that should bubble up after hours and hours of coverage of the team, whether on print, radio, or TV) about every aspect of the organization.  Start with evaluating the salary cap. Not every fan understands it, but some do. And other perspectives, like that of an everyday contract manager, could be highly valuable. Same with evaluating personnel. A mom calling in or emailing responses to questions about how the players talk negatively in public about the coaches (like DeAngelo Hall did about Zorn) may bring in the winning ideas. If a mom said to let the alpha dog (Snyder) back up the coach by chastising these young, rich loudmouths in public, we would all know she is right. That’s culture change.

The journalists could then take all that they have heard from the fans at this event, aggregate it into a collected series of report (written and video), and then publish it prominently at a website for ongoing evaluation of team performance. That would take blogging to the next level, no. How fascinating would it be to see over the course of the season if the wisdom of the collective grassroots proved to be superior against the small circle of decision-makers at the top.

Let the data speak for itself.  If the fans overwhelmingly wanted to keep Jason Campbell but not Clinton Portis, but the Skins front office went the other way, we may see some surprising results over the ensuing year.  The fans collectively may have a better idea of what to do than the front office.  Or not.  Knowing one way or the other would be helpful.

Of course, there are all sorts of scenarios where apples vs. oranges comparisons would come in.  How do you compare Jason Campbell’s success (or lack) at another team against his track record here?  Or against his future projects.  The beauty here is that you could break down mechanics, stats, intangibles, etc. and there would still be a level of inconclusiveness that would keep it interesting.  Folks would still talk and debate, probably even more because there would be a sense of ownership by the fans.

And if Dan Snyder embraced this, I suspect there would be a strong bridge built between him and the fans as a result, which would only strengthen his ability to make bold moves to get the kinds of players the collective decision-makers identify as critical to future success.  Snyder’s tenacity at getting the players he wants is a great asset–but it needs discipline.  Shanahan and Allen plus this grassroots approach could provide that discipline.

Web 2.0 tools could capture all this, from live video of the launch event to posting of the “report” created by the journalists/sportscasters to ongoing comments, polling/voting, and in-season coverage.  It would be totally fascinating to the entire sports world as well, as it could even become a model for integrating the fan base into the team culture, and vice versa. Why not? Fortune favors the bold!

For Real?

Yeah, for real.  Absolutely.  It is not as silly as you may think.  One key reason why I think this can work is because Shanahan and Allen can be fired by Snyder.  The clock is already ticking on them.  Not so with the fans.  Thus, we are not locked into the culture of Snyder’s Redskins the way team management is.  This is a new football realpolitik, where we cannot be fired by Snyder, nor can we fire him.  Within that tension, we might as well take our shared motivation forward towards winning Super Bowls and work together.

Building a culture of success is very hard.  Wanting it, paying top dollar for it, bringing in previous winners is not enough.  We have learned that the hard way.  I fear we will learn the hard way again, with more top down attempts to create something that simply takes time.

If we want to accelerate things, I think getting more structured, channeled input from the fans as laid out above could not only bring in more insight on the process, it could also bridge the gap between the fans and management to make everyone feel a sense of shared ownership.  That would probably give Snyder a better sense of how to market his franchise more efficiently (and thus freeing up resources for better players, coaches, and facilities).  It would also ease the tensions among the grassroots towards Snyder, which I think would give him the sense of support one needs to be patient and let the culture naturally emerge from all the parties working together to produce a consistent winner.

For real for real, the data is in that supports this.  People are motivated toward mastery in what they do.  That means tenacity+discipline will organically come with patience if you set up the conditions forward and get motivated people in the right places. That means you need to celebrate small, incremental, ongoing successes when things are going in the right direction slowly. This is not Celebrity Football, but it is moving towards mastery. It is the creation of a culture, and this approach can include the fans with journalists/sportscasters playing the critical intermediate, independent role.  It’s what players do every day in practice.  Refinement, isolation of weaknesses, transforming bad habits into winning ones.

Fans kept out of the process of such engagement–when the tools of doing so are readily available–not only strains a public trust, but it also may prove to be a bad strategy.

What Could Be Lost

The downside risk of more Celebrity Football, in my book, is the loss of Jason Campbell.  We saw Jason stand and deliver all year.  Not  perfectly, but pretty consistently.  He kept getting sacked and kept getting up.  He became more fiery as the season went on.  And when Clinton Portis seemed to call him out in public, he bit back harder and then took the high road to squash things from becoming an offseason distraction.  Well done!

Look at the skills and leadership of the three Skins QBs who led them to Super Bowls, then look at Campbell.  Don’t tell me he can’t get it done.

This is my opinion as one fan, but that is what this is about.  So I guess I am kicking off this grassroots fan ownership and culture change right here. Let me draw my line in the sand and state clearly what kind of culture I want: 

Keep Jason Campbell.

He has enough mastery of the skill of being an NFL QB and enough greatness in him as a man to be an effective leader. He can lead a good Skins team from good to great–from where they are today to the promised land of winning Super Bowls. 

Because of all the diligence and drive invested in him and by him already, I believe that he will learn how to win it all here. He will learn to master all the in-season and in-locker room machinations needed to call forth the best efforts of his team to seize victory on the field. He has shown it when the team has been down. Wait until the get some real momentum under Shanahan! My guess is that Jason will get such a strong taste for success that he will gain a leonine hunger to get back there again. That is the killer instinct missing this year on the field, the very thing that must be established for winning culture change on this team. I still believe Campbell has that killer instinct in him, and we have seen flashes of it already (especially against the best teams the Skins have played against).

There is so much downside risk in a culture of Celebrity Football. Celebrity Football says you need a fiery guy like Jay Cutler or Mark Sanchez, but that’s silly. It also may be a projection of the kind of guy Snyder sees himself being on the field. But this season has shown that a strong but silent personality at the QB position can still win the respect of the team, and the fans. A recent Redskins Insider poll has shown this emphatically.

Getting rid of a guy like Jason Campbell is the biggest risk that this organization faces right now. If he will still have us, I say he must stay!

Look closer and deeper at how JC has been treated in the pursuit of these flashy QBs, examine how he has responded as a man of real character, see how the players have stuck with him, and recognize how his game has improved steadily (though slowly at times). How can anyone conclude that we know his upper limits yet, as a passer and as leader of this team?

Give Jason Campbell more time.  Build a culture of discipline, tenacity, and patient mastery around him. Let Snyder, Shanahan, Allen, and the rest of the football organization–and even the collective wisdom of the fan base–come together around him. Let him know this thing is on his shoulders, and we are all standing by to follow him to the promised land, even though it may take longer than we want.

If our team were to really do this, I suspect we’d see what we all really want–us and the whole football world chanting “Hail to the Redskins” again–before we ever thought possible.

What is it that enables a group of four men to stand together for over 30 years and keep climbing, keep elevating, keep withstanding cultural changes and the inevitable crush of being idolized by millions of people?  You have to be a little crazy to make it through that.  Could it be that Someone let them in the sound, so they can see from the quiet place inside the chaos that a long-term change of heart is something that you nudge forward, one lyric, one note, one fan, one concert, one album at a time?

With this new album No Line on the Horizon and with this 360 degree tour, there is a growing urgency to this powerful group of four men, and I think we should all take note of this.

What do I mean exactly?  Later on that.  For now, I’d say I am heeding Bono’s advice.  Each of us may want to find our own quiet place in the chaos, and know precisely what within us would be right to release us to “stand up for your love,” to reboot, to go crazy in this crazy world.  Bono is far from the only one who sees the line on horizon being slowly but systematically wiped away. Every change of heart–whether to a line or to no line (between right and wrong?)–takes time.

“I’ll Go Crazy If I Don’t Go Crazy Tonight”

She’s a rainbow and she loves the peaceful life
Knows I’ll go crazy if I don’t go crazy tonight
There’s a part of me in the chaos that’s quiet
And there’s a part of you that wants me to riot

Everybody needs to cry or needs to spit
Every sweet tooth needs just a little hit
Every beauty needs to go out with an idiot
How can you stand next to the truth and not see it
Oh, a change of heart comes slow

It’s not a hill, it’s a mountain
As you start out the climb
Do you believe me or are you doubting
We’re gonna make it all the way to the light
But I know I’ll go crazy if I don’t go crazy tonight

Every generation gets a chance to change the world
Pity the nation that won’t listen to your boys and girls
‘Cause the sweetest melody is the one we haven’t heard
Is it true that perfect love drives out all fear
The right to appear ridiculous is something I hold dear
Oh, but a change of heart comes slow

It’s not a hill, it’s a mountain
As you start out the climb
Listen for me, I’ll be shouting
We’re gonna make it all the way to the light
But you know I’ll go crazy if I don’t go crazy tonight

Baby, baby, baby
I know I’m not alone
Baby, baby, baby
I know I’m not alone

Oh oh oh

It’s not a hill, it’s a mountain
As you start out the climb
Listen for me, I’ll be shouting
Shouting to the darkness
Squeeze out sparks of light

You know we’re gonna go crazy
You know we’ll go crazy
You know we’ll go crazy if we don’t go crazy tonight

Oh, slowly now
Oh, be slow

So I ask you in all sincerity, my friends, what I believe U2 has asked us:

Could you go crazy?

Could you let go entirely of the narrative of you given you by this world?

Do you have another basis, in a land “as white as snow,” upon which to place your roots?

From that other basis, could you shout to the darkness and squeeze out the sparks of light that are your unique identity–the one arising not in this crazy life, but in life itself–where the streets have no name?

Going into this season, I thought the Giants game would be a barometer of the Redskins offseason preparation and their readiness to contend this year.  After the first game, I am confident this team can compete at a high level, but they can also stay mired in a mechanical style of offensive play.

What’s most interesting to me to see today, from a tactical perspective (from my very limited viewpoint, of course) is whether they will change their committment from “establishing the run” to “establishing the pass.”

Before the season started, I saw this upcoming 5 game stretch as key to the Redskins season, if they are to finally break through and establish themselves as an elite team.  After last week, I believe that more than ever.  And if they are to break through, the answer as I see it is very simple: Allow and encourage Jason Campbell to let it fly out there.

The Redskins defense has been the strength of this team since Campbell’s arrival in Washington.  And when I look at Greg Blache, I think he is another guy who has greatness in him at his role as a defensive coordinator.  I love his mentality and approach to make the defense even better as a group, despite the relatively lackluster performance last week.

This  Washington Post story on Blache today is another indicator of the tough, team-first approach he takes:

Entering the second game of the season, Blache is feeling out his defense and its personality, learning how it drives…Much of the focus after last week’s loss was on quarterback Jason Campbell, on Coach Jim Zorn and the play-calling, on how the Redskins would score enough points to win games.

But the defense, on paper, is easily the strength of the team. The formula is simple: Take a unit that gave up the fourth-fewest yards per game in the league a year ago, add all-pro defensive tackle Albert Haynesworth and promising rookie linebacker-defensive end Brian Orakpo, and how could there not be improvement?

“Doesn’t mean anything,” Blache said.

That’s old school.  He knows it takes time for a defense of many potential playmakers to gel on the field and get a feel for each other.  You can’t force it.  It has to happen on the field of battle.  The sports media coverage may not get that, but it’s true.  Blache clearly gets that.

No wonder Blache has little patience for the short-term, narrowly-focused mentality behind the barrage of questions he gets from the media.  Ask Trevor Matich.

The same principles of “gelling together” hold true on offense.  However, I think there also needs to be the clear assertion of a team’s personality through the leader most responsible for putting points on the board.  That can be the running back, if a team is really a dominant running team. It seems this has been the Skins approach for its history.

But in this case, I think this team needs to gel around the quarterback position.  This is a passing league, Clinton Portis is getting worn down a bit, the Skins need to be more unpredictable, and, most of all, Jason Campbell showed last week that he is ready to go.

But he needs a rhythm established early in the game for him to get in position to take charge.  Consider this game and the following 4 games against lesser opponents as the time for him to establish his rhythm for the entire season.

In this 5 game stretch, I believe the best thing the Redskins can do is to allow Jason Campbell to BE the leader only he can be.  He seems poised to unite several things together now: all the years of learning, the offseason of being slighted, the reality of this pressure-cooker season for his long term career, and even the spiritual reality of being a Christian leader in our society.

But he can’t be thinking about all this.  He simply needs to let it fly.  Then all these things will be like the wind in his sails.  He needs to be post-cognitive.  He needs to be allowed to fail and succeed, pick himself up again, and over these next 5 games turn this offense into a reflection of him and his unique personality.

This is a relatively low-risk, high-reward proposition, and the benefits of it will become clear in the close moments of games throughout the second half of the season.

“Let your hands go” is something that boxers are told to do in the grind of a fight.  All the tactical and technical components developed in prep time are important to guide a boxers decision-making over the course of a fight, but when two men go toe-to-toe, those components can be a barrier to success of the boxer is too mechanical.  He needs to let his hands go.  Yes, this will open him up to taking punches–even a knockout punch–but you can’t win a fight strictly with your mind locked on what you prepared for.  You have to land your biggest and best blows fully focused on your opponent in the field of battle.

This is exactly what I think Jason Campbell needs to be allowed to do over these next five games.  Trying to revert to a run-first team will be a big mistake, in my view, because this really is a pass-first league.  The Skins have great weapons in the passing game, given that Campbell is very accurate and can make every throw.  He does not need elite receivers to make plays for him.  Also, Clinton Portis is getting older.  He is better suited to being the hammer that comes in after the defense is on their heels.  If the Skins want to “run downhill” with Portis, I think Campbell needs to be the first option.

No more run on first down, run on second down, short pass on third down, punt.  That is the bad muscle memory built up from the Brunell years (and yes, from ultra-conservative Joe Gibbs–whom I still love as a coach).  The players on this offense are ready to be unleashed.

Jason Campbell being allowed to let it fly can absolutely change the direction of this organization.  I am not sure that this will happen, but I hope it does.  Because I think that the current configuration of this Redskins team would quickly gel behind this man and follow his lead to a new plateau, into the elite teams in the NFL.

I really believe that can happen, and until it does not, I believe it will.  I believe this is the new state of play this team has been building towards since Gibbs returned.  But, ultimately, it can only happen on the field.  No weaknesses or strengths in the front office can ultimately hold this back, if the players and coaches are determined to make it so.  And now, with this five game stretch, starting with the game today against the Rams team that overturned the Skins’ promising 2008-09 campaign, they have a chance to set a new tempo and direction.

I will be on the edge of my seat hoping and praying for signs of breakthrough.  We needs it.  Time to let the hands go.  Eye of the tiger.  HTTR.