Applied Writing and Research for Political Professionals

CGU PP 311

McManus 35

Tue 7:00-9:50 PM 

J.J. Pitney

CMC Pitzer Hall 214

Telephone:  909/607-4224 

Office Hours:    MTW 3-5 and by appointment

E-mail:  jpitney@mckenna.edu

Web:  http://academic.mckenna.edu/jpitney

 General

This course will teach research and writing skills that students can use in government, practical politics, and corporate public affairs.  Students will learn to write speeches, memoranda and reports with a clear and direct prose style. They will also learn how to gather information quickly and accurately, using resources such as government publications and Web sites.  

 Classes

Class sessions will include lecture and discussion.  Finish readings before class because our discussions will involve those readings. Your effectiveness as a political professional depends on your knowledge of current events, so we shall discuss news stories in class.  You must read a good daily news source such as the Los Angeles Times or www.cnn.com/allpolitics.

Requirements and Grades 

• Revision exercise  (10% of course grade), in which students improve poorly-written documents;

• Research exercise (15%), in which students collect and analyze hard-to-find data;

• Policy exercise (20%), in which students examine a policy issue and offer options;

• Oppo exercise (20%), in which students profile a public figure;

• Speech & press exercise (20%), in which students write a speech for a public figure, along with the accompanying press release

• Participation and briefings (15%), which involve attendance, contribution to class discussion, and performance in short class presentations.   If necessary, I shall call on students at random.  If you are often absent or unprepared, your grade will suffer.

 Please check the due dates for all assignments.  I reserve the right to assign grade penalties to late work.

 Required Books

• Darrell Huff, How to Lie with Statistics (New York:  W. W. Norton, 1954).

• Richard Lanham, Revising Prose, 4th ed (Needham Heights:  Allyn and Bacon, 2000).

• Dennis King, Get The Facts On Anyone, 3d ed .  (New York: Macmillan, 1999).

• Mark H. Maier, The Data Game: Controversies In Social Science Statistics (Armonk, New York:  M.E. Sharpe, 1999.

• Willliam Strunk, Jr. and E.B. White, The Elements of Style, 4th ed. (Boston: Allyn and Bacon, 2000).  

Schedule  (Subject to change, with advance notice).  

Jan 16:  Introduction             

 [A]n effective aide shows restraint, screening matters closely and advancing them only sparingly to his boss’s agenda as decisions are required, preferably with recommendations attached for specific courses of action.

            -- Mark Bisnow, In the Shadow of the Dome

BRING A SHORT (3-5 PAGES) SAMPLE OF YOUR WRITING TO CLASS ON JANUARY 23.  I SHALL NOT GRADE IT, BUT I SHALL MARK IT UP TO POINT OUT MISTAKES.

 Jan 23:  Basics of Writing

 It is a good exercise to try for once in a way to express any opinion one holds in words of one syllable. If you say “The social utility of the indeterminate sentence is recognized by all criminologists as a part of our sociological evolution towards a more humane and scientific view of punishment,” you can go on talking like that for hours with hardly a movement of the gray matter inside your skull. But if you begin “I wish Jones to go to gaol and Brown to say when Jones shall come out,” you will discover, with a thrill of horror, that you are obliged to think.

            -- G.K. Chesterton, Orthodoxy 

• Strunk and White, all.
• George Orwell, “Politics and the English Language,” at  http://www.resort.com/~prime8/Orwell/patee.html
• Plain English Network, “Writing User-Friendly Documents,” at http://www.blm.gov/nhp/NPR/pe_toc.html

Jan 30:  Writing & Revision

 The present letter is a very long one, simply because I had no leisure to make it shorter.

            -- Blaise Pascal, Pensees 

• Lanham, all.

• National Archives and Records Administration, “Rewriting a Short Rule,” at http://www.nara.gov/fedreg/planrew1.html

 REVISION EXERCISE ASSIGNED JAN 30, DUE FEB 6.

Feb 6:  Basics of Research

For nothing is lost, nothing is ever lost.  There is always the clue, the canceled check, the smear of lipstick ... the twitch in the old wound, the baby shoes dipped in bronze, the taint in the blood stream.  And all times are one time, and all those dead in the past never lived before our definition gives them life, and out of the shadow their eyes implore us.  That is what all of us historical researchers believe.  And we love truth.

-- Robert Penn Warren, All the King's Men 

·        King, ch. 1-3; 15.

·        Charlie Harris, “Using the Internet for Research,” at: http://www.purefiction.com/pages/res1.htm

 Feb 13:  Basics of Data

 When statistics are not based on strictly accurate calculations, they mislead instead of guide. The mind easily lets itself be taken in by the false appearance of exactitude which statistics retain even in their mistakes, and confidently adopt errors clothed in the forms of mathematical truth.

-- Alexis deTocqueville, Democracy in America 

·        Maier, ch. 1-6. 

RESEARCH EXERCISE ASSIGNED FEB 13, DUE FEB 27.

 Feb 20:  Torturing the Numbers

 [I]n political arithmetic, two and two do not always make four.

            -- Alexander Hamilton, Federalist 21. 

• Huff, all.

Feb 27:  Researching Business, Economics, and Social Issues 

Actuary – one who goes from an unfounded assumption to a foregone conclusion.

            -- Old insurance joke. 

• Maier, ch. 7-10

• King, ch. 8, 14.

 Mar 6:  Researching Government and Politics 

Elections are won and lost in the library.

            -- Ken Khachigian 

• Maier, ch. 11-12.

• Congressional Research Service, “Legislative Research in Congressional Offices: A Primer,” at http://www.house.gov/rules/95-657.htm.

• U.S. Office of Management and Budget, Budget System and Concepts.  Click “Budget Documents” at http://w3.access.gpo.gov/usbudget/index.html

• Stacy Stern, “Finding What You're Looking For Online: A Primer Geared Toward Legal Research,” at http://www.findlaw.com/info/helpers/primer.html

• King. ch. 9

 POLICY EXERCISE ASSIGNED MAR 6, DUE MAR 27.

 Mar 20:  Policy Analysis & Testimony

 Senator:                        Mr. Smart, how many arrests did Control make last year?
Maxwell Smart:            I don't know.
Senator:                        Who's the number one man in your organization?
Smart:                          I don't know.
Senator:                        How many cases were assigned to Control last year?
Smart:                          I don't know.
Senator:                        What would you do if you were fired, Mr. Smart?
Smart:                          They can't fire me. I know too much.

            -- Get Smart 

• Richard E. Neustadt and Ernest R. May, "What to Do and How:  A Summary," in Thinking in Time: The Uses of History for Decisionmakers (New York: Free Press, 1986).
• California Legislative Analyst’s Office, “Implementing Proposition 36,” at http://www.lao.ca.gov/2000_reports/prop36/121400_prop_36.html
• Col James T. Currie, “Testifying on the Hill:  A Guide to Success,” at               http://www-cgsc.army.mil/milrev/English/MarApr99/currie.htm
• Congressional Research Service, “Hearings in the House of Representatives:
  A Guide for Preparation and Conduct,” at http://www.house.gov/rules/96-623.htm
• Examples of testimony, TBA.

 Mar 27:  Policy Analysis

 This is the essential fact:  The government did not know what it was doing.  It had a theory.  Or, rather, a set of theories.  Nothing more.

-- Daniel Patrick Moynihan on community action, in Maximum Feasible Misunderstanding

• Policy analysis presentation.  Details TBA.

• Kevin Hassett, “My View from the Bus,” at http://www.findarticles.com/m2185/3_11/61402626/p1/article.jhtml

 OPPO EXERCISE ASSIGNED MAR 27, DUE APR 10

 Apr 3:  Oppo

 If the handshake is the threshold act of politics, what can one say of oppo?  It is the primal impulse, the headwaters of all tactics and strategy, the oldest and most dishonorable exercise linked to the Will to Power.  The Greeks did oppo; they learned it from the gods.

            -- Joe Klein, Primary Colors 

• King, ch. 4-7, 10-11.

ORAL BRIEFINGS WILL TAKE PLACE DURING APRIL CLASSES

 Apr 10:  Speechwriting and Rhetoric

 It seems the Minds of these People are so taken up with intense Speculations, that they neither can speak, nor attend to the Discourses of others, without being rouzed by some external action upon the Organs of Speech and Hearing; for which Reason those Persons who are able to afford it always keep a Flapper (the Original is Climenole) in their Family, as one of their Domesticks; nor ever walk abroad or make Visits without him. And the Business of this Officer is, when two or more Persons are in Company, gently to strike with his Bladder the Mouth of him who is to speak, and the right Ear of him or them to whom the Speaker addresses himself.

            -- Jonathan Swift, Gulliver’s Travels 

• Congressional Research Service, “Speechwriting in Perspective,” at http://www.senate.gov/~dpc/crs/reports/ascii/98-170
• Ronald Reagan, 1983 "Evil Empire" speech in Orlando:  both the manuscript (handout) and the final version (http://academic.mckenna.edu/jpitney/Orlando.html)
• Craig R. Smith, “Speechwriting in the Nixon and Ford White Houses,” at http://www.csulb.edu/~crsmith/nixford.html

Apr 17:  Dealing with the Press I

 Don’t worry, Jim.  If that question comes up, I’ll just confuse them.

            -- Dwight Eisenhower to press secretary James Hagerty.

• U.S. Department of Education, School to Work Initiative, “Media Outreach,” at: http://www.stw.ed.gov/states/outreach.htm

• Ruckus Society, “Media Manual,” at http://www.ruckus.org/man/media_manual.html

• Media prep materials, TBA.
  

SPEECH & PRESS EXERCISE ASSIGNED APRIL 17, DUE MAY 1.

 Apr 24:  Dealing with the Press II

 I would never lie. I willfully participated in a campaign of misinformation.

            -- William Mulder, The X-Files 

• Lanny Davis, “Scandal Management 101,” Washington Monthly, May 1999, at http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/features/1999/9905.davis.scandal.html
• Robert L. Holding, “The Day `Inside Edition’ Called,” at http://www.asaenet.org/newsletters/display/0,1901,118,00.html
• Crisis management materials, TBA.

May 1:  Wild Card      

• Students will choose the topics and readings for this week’s class.

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