EAPC - European Association of Political Consultants | Meetings | Innsbruck 2002

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Innsbruck 2002

EAPC • Europe Meeting • May 1 to 4, 2002 • Innsbruck /Austria

Speeches

Horst Becker
Erhard Busek
Michael Carmichael
Ana Fernandes
Peter Frei
Helmut Mader
Dominik Meier
Joe Napolitan
Fritz Plasser
Guido Schommer
Carlo Willeit

Joe Napolitan

New Challenges for Political Consultants

Our first challenge is to earn a living.

We must continue to professionalize our industry and try to establish and maintain high standards for those who call themselves political consultants.

Organizations like EAPC, IAPC, AAPC and ALACOP can help do this.

We must persuade competent and successful political consultants who have not joined at least one of our association that it is in their best interests, and the best interests of our chosen profession to do so.

We must give something back to the industry that provides us with our income and the opportunity to participate in exciting projects in our own and other countries. This means extending a helping hand to young people and to those of us who may be struggling or have come on difficult times.

We must keep abreast of the new technology but not be dazzled by it.

We must never lose sight of the fact that next to the candidate or the party, the most important factors in designing successful campaigns are strategy and message, and having the ability
to communicate those messages to target audiences. Computers and other electronic devices can make our jobs easier but there really is no substitute for the human brain.

We must seek ways of expanding our are horizons by adapting the techniques that have worked so well for us in politics to other areas. (Describe plan to help explain America's position to the world at the beginning of the war in Afghanistan.)

We must occasionally make hard decisions on whether to work for candidates and political parties whose views sharply conflict with our core beliefs. In essence, this means putting principles before profits. Sometimes these are not easy decisions to make. For many of us it is difficult to turn down a lucrative contract because of a conviction that the client we might help succeed could be a real threat to the democratic process.

We must recognize that our political opponents are not necessarily our enemies, that they may have convictions different from ours but equally strong, and as long as we all play by the rules there is no reasons why we cannot be friends as well as opponents.

We must recognize that as in every profession there are those who practice our trade who are not honorable or honest or fair, and we must continually strive to make certain their techniques, even when they are successful, should not alter our own more principled convictions.

We must explore opportunities that exist for people with our skills at organizations like the United Nations, the European Union, OAS, and various NGOs in Europe, America and the
rest of the world. (There are people organizing elections with no practical knowledge of the techniques involved in running campaigns.)

On a larger scale, these are some challenges we should collectively consider:

How can we use our skills as political consultants and communicators to make the world a better place to live?

How can we help bring peace to the Middle East and other troubled areas of the world.

How can we reduce, if not eliminate, discrimination against people based on the color of their skin or their religious beliefs?

How can we use our skills to help save the lives of the millions of children in the world who are undernourished, poorly housed, uneducated and in many cases without family or friends?

How can we reduce tensions between people of different cultures and beliefs living in our own countries?

As a wise man once said, for every major problem there is a simple solution - and invariably it is wrong. There are no simple solutions to the problems I have described. In fact, there may be no solutions at all. But collectively, we must ask ourselves if there is any way we can apply our expertise and our experience and our knowledge to the problems that plague the people of our Earth. Some may ask, "How can we afford the time or the money to do these things?"
Perhaps a better question would be "How can we live with ourselves if we don't even try to do something about them?"
That is the challenge we face - a challenge we share with all of humanity.