I believe in answer I do not know, Points to ponder, Political marketing through evidence, Wonders of moderate Muslims, Children must not be the authors of future

I believe in answer I do not know, Points to ponder, Political marketing through evidence, Wonders of moderate Muslims, Children must not be the authors of future, By Dr. Sohail Ansari

Conceived and worded by DR Sohail Ansari (originality of concepts and originality of words).

He believes that there can never be a zero scope for improvement and appreciates criticism if it is not for the sake of criticism.

·        Intellectual dishonesty to my mind is endorsing the opinions those to my mind are ridiculously unjustifiable; however, I rarely have this honesty of mind as I am much more gregarious in my mind than in my body and ‘may like to go alone for a walk, but hate to stand alone in my opinions’. I can walk alone; but can not bear to walk alone in a crowd.

I believe in answer I do not know

·       I believe in an answer I do not know is that what the missionary’s response__ when confronted with the challenge to address the inconsistency of the Book__ ‘I do not know the answer but I know there is an answer’ logically means.

Points to ponder

·       Intellectual stagnancy is because of the failure to understand that laws are the means to the ends and means can never be the ends; and this is because of the same failure laws become the indiscriminate blunt tool.

·       I know little of substance about my religion to say something of substance is often the response of the person who knows that religion of his has a little substance.

·       This is the significance of repetition not the repetition of significance if ‘it is more important for sales that people know of a product than they know something about it’.

Political marketing through evidences

·       Political marketing consultant peppers material (speech, articles) with evidences; however, the cited evidences presuppose what is to be proved; for example, he picks single instance of the proven case of incompetency to prove incompetency in general.  

Wonders of moderate Muslim

·       Enlightened and moderate Muslims can bring everything under the sun with in the realms of permissibility; and interestingly without transcending the framework of the doctrine; for example, music is the key for deciphering myths, hopes and fears not the means for self-titillation.

Children must not be the authors of future

·       Modern man loves in the era of ‘innovation’. Strides of technology render things thought to be perfect so far obsolete before long. Modern man tends to believe that new is always better and extends this belief to values and norms.  Indoctrination, consequently, is condemned as it deprives students of ‘an aura of the future’ and children cease ‘to symbolize the future’ when established realities and proven truths are forced on children.

Islamic values are the best already and these values can no doubt be superseded but no doubt by something inferior. Children brimming with creativity and individuality can construct future but they in doing so either innovate mediocrity and are condemned for creating new but inferior version or produce unorthodox version and are condemned for iconoclasm.    

BIRTH AND GROWTH OF POLITICAL MARKETING:

Invention of Telephone gave birth to the application of market research to political campaigning by making large-scale polls cost-efficient as well as easier. Presidential election in 1952 had the application of T.V as an effective tool of campaign by advertising agencies. 

By 1960 a move from quantitative to qualitative research had occurred and a generation of politicians grown up on polls had surfaced. 1960 presidential race was notable for is extensive research and extended time period of research (that was four years and two months). 1962 campaign had the birth of hot-button politics. Political marketing consultants guided politicians regarding issues voters were concerned so that they could address them specifically. By the mid 1960 advent of computer in election campaigns made it possible to gather any combination of psychographic or demographic by sophisticated manipulation of data. These advances in marketing research led to the explosion of information relating to political marketing research and campaign management, advances were so rapid that even the ad agencies could not keep pace with and thus emerged a new breed of business: independent political campaign consultants. 1970 witnessed the decline of quantitative research and Focus groups (also known as groups-depth interviews) as a new market research technique grew out of the behavioral sciences and succeeded to supersede public opinion polls in the 1988 U.S presidential election to onward.       

There have been two information channels through which the candidate can promote himself. “One channel is labeled push marketing, and the second is labeled pull marketing. Push marketing is synonymous with the distribution concept. Just as a product is distributed from a manufacturer to a wholesaler to a retailer before it gets to the consumer, so is the candidate's message about his political platform. One way of getting the message out is through traditional "grass roots efforts", relying upon local and state party mechanisms. Presidential candidates like F.D.R. and those before him were forced to rely on this method of campaigning to get their message out because television had not been invented yet. Additionally, the candidate must rely on these same people to get the vote out on Election Day. In the primaries and the general election, it is imperative that a candidate have an effective volunteer network to win”.

Pull marketing is the second information channel, and centers on the use of the mass media to get the candidate's message out to the voters through tools of political marketing. Several vehicles for this end are available to a candidate including the television, radio, newspapers.

Paradigm shift occurred in 1992 presidential campaign and not only sustained but reinforced itself in the subsequent campaigns. The tools of mass media by being surrogate volunteer seemed to have rendered the imperative (of having volunteers) of running election campaign either less important or redundant as 1992, 1996, 2000, 2004, 2008 USA presidential campaign indicate: “Ross Perot in 1992 relied on this same method of campaigning, but in a high tech manner. Perot used an "800" telephone exchange that he flashed on Larry King's CNN show to solicit volunteers to join his independent organization. In 1996, Bob Dole flashed his Website when he appeared on Larry King's CNN show to solicit volunteers, and both Al Gore and George W. Bush did the same in 2000”.

“All these presidential campaigns were “unique in American history because the candidates relied on very unorthodox promotional vehicles: e-mail on computers (in addition to the more traditional ones) to get their message out. In a word, the candidates took a more direct route to the voter, and in so doing, bypassed the traditional media outlets. This meant that candidates spent less time on network news programs and more time on cable programs”. Aided by precedent settled in preceding four campaigns Political marketing had to craft strategies to establish its relevance and worth (for waging battle) in relatively new realm in 2008 presidential elections of USA.

“One of the largest battles of the 2008 Presidential War is being fought on the online battlefield. Various Web Strategy programs, attacks, and counter-attacks are being deployed by politician using the internet as the battlefield to capitalize on Web that had become faster, cheaper and the number one medium in the workplace, and was quickly closing ground on TV at home”.

The announcement of Obama by using YouTube “Change happens at the grassroots” marked the beginning of an era in which politicians could have access to commoner somewhat similar to that of pre-industrial societies and testified to the successful meeting of this new challenge by political marketing practitioners.  YouTub attack against Hillary was a good example of on line battle which dubbed her  slick “mash-up” of Clinton speeches. 2008 election campaign witnessed “the convergence of visual with symbolic. Political discourse, messaging and campaign behaviors in a digital media were affected by the Internet. Candidates in the 2008 U.S. presidential campaign attempted to tailor their messages to very specific demographics and interest groups. The biographical sections of the sites were used in an effort to build intimate relationships with various voting publics. Fantasies of patriotism, family, heritage, multi-culturalism, and populism were employed by all “candidates”