It’s interesting how things travel on the Internet. I received an article today that was written by Jeremiah Denton, a retired Navy Admiral and Senator from Alabama. If you’ve got a minute, you can read a quick biography here. Without going into too much detail, here are some highlights of Jeremiah’s life that might give you some perspective:

In June 1965, he was assigned to Attack Squadron 75 on the USS Independence flying the Grumman A-6 Intruder. On 18 July 1965, while pulling up after leading a bombing attack on enemy installations near Thanh Hoa, he was shot down and captured by North Vietnamese troops. While held prisoner, Denton became the first American subjected to four years of solitary confinement. In 1966, during a television interview by the North Vietnamese and broadcast on American television, Denton gained national attention when, while being questioned, he blinked his eyes in Morse code, repeatedly spelling out the covert message “T-O-R-T-U-R-E”. During his captivity he frequently served as the senior American military officer in numerous camps in and around Hanoi.

In November 1980, Denton became the first retired flag officer ever elected to the U.S. Senate.

Now, the reason I bring all of this up…

I received an article written by Admiral Denton that appeared in the Mobile (Alabama) Register on March 10, 2004. In it, the Admiral addressed his concerns about John Kerry running the country; concerns that he expresses in a clear, concise, truthful, and relevant manner. You see, Admiral Denton was a Democrat who has switched parties. He also served in the Senate with Kerry. Beyond his criticism of Kerry, he speaks eloquently about how we are engaged in the battle for the “soul of America” and how many politicians today seem bent on “abandoning our historical effort to be “one nation under God” in favor of becoming “one nation without God,” with glaringly unfavorable results.” Stop whatever you’re doing today and read the full text here.

Now, while researching the origins of this email, I was reminded of another issue related to the good Admiral that I could hardly believe (but have subsequently found to be true.) The Democratic-controlled California Assembly refused to allow Admiral Denton speak on the floor and thusly cancelled any Independence Day celebration this year. Read an account of the situation on WorldNetDaily or the memo written by California Assemblyman John Campbell.

With only a few weeks left, I think it’s important to re-visit the whole candidate issue. My liveliest political conversations often come at the hands (expense of?) my friend, Tom Gasta, who — though often diametrically opposed to whatever I think — normally ends a conversation with, “I don’t think we’re all that different on the big issues.” I suspect he’s right. The problem, of course, is the definition of the “big issues”.

I’ve tried several of the candidate selectors available online, some good, some awful. I think my favorite is the one at President Match. After going through the entire questionairre, you’ll then have the opportunity to see side-by-side comparisons of the candidates. After completing this exercise, I can see why the Nation is so divided on this election. The problem is (at least, this is what I think the problem is…) that very few of us see things as black and white. While we might favor a stance on one issue, we could easily hold the opposite stand on another. And many of these things we might “somewhat support” or “somewhat oppose” and the candidate “strongly supports” or “strongly opposes”. So, in the end, although tools like these are helpful, we’re left to our own devices to make a decision. And when we get to that point, all of the intangibles that can’t be articulated or measured swing into play. Issues like morality, character, principles.

I’m interested to know how you scored, so be sure to let me know. In the interest of full disclosure, I was 51% Bush, 39% Kerry. But I can easily see after viewing the comparison that a couple of nudges in either direction on just a few issues would sway the results. Interesting…

One of the things our customers get from us is the truth. At times, this puts us in a delicate position of having to disagree with something they might feel strongly about, or cause us to recommend something they haven’t thought of. I think it’s one of our greatest strengths: we never sit down at the table to play the role of the “Yes Man”. I was reminded of this when I heard this story about one of America’s great space heroes, Max Faget.

Paraphrasing commentator Andrew Chaiken, on NPR:

Every great achievement in space begins in the mind of an engineer on Earth. Last week, SpaceShipOne captured the $10 million X Prize because of some brilliant out-of-the-box thinking by its designer, Burt Rutan. More than 40 years ago, NASA’s brilliant out-of-the-box thinker was a small, wiry engineer named Max Faget. He was never a household name, even at the height of the space race. But his genius was crucial to NASA’s space triumphs.

In 1958, aerospace engineers were struggling with the biggest problem of space flight: protecting the craft and the astronauts from intense heat of re-entry. It would have to withstand temperatures hotter than the surface of the Sun, if anyone could figure out how to build such a craft. Most scientists favored a sleek needlenose design to minimize air resistance. But Faget had a different idea. He had heard researcher Harvey Allen talk about a ship with a blunt shape, allowing it to slam into the atmosphere, creating a shock wave that would deflect most of the heat away from the spacecraft. Allen’s idea went completely against conventional wisdom, but Faget knew it was right.

When the experts gathered for a conference in March, 1958 to discuss needlenose designs, they got an earful from Max Faget.

“You’re all wrong,” Faget said. “If you’re serious about putting a man in space anytime soon, a blunt body is the only way to go.” His outspokenness helped convince the skeptics and he designed the spacecraft for project Mercury with a blunt heatsheild. It was anything but sleek. But Faget’s Mercury capsule successfully carried the first American astronauts into space, inlcuding Alan Shepard, John Glenn, and Gordon Cooper. Faget went on to design the Apollo command module that carried astronauts from the Earth to the Moon and back. He even led the early design of the reusable space shuttle. But Mercury was always his proudest accomplishment.

Max Faget, Designer of the Mercury capsule and Apollo command module and clearly nobody’s “Yes Man”, died on Saturday at the age of 83. Here’s to you, Max.

Following just on the heels of the war on terrorism, the rising cost of health care is likely the top hot-button topic for this election. (That is, of course, unless you’re talking to someone who doesn’t care who’s elected, as long as it’s not George Bush.) For the rest of us, we’re probably going to be considering the impact on our personal lives when we make a voting decision and, with an estimated 27 million people without health coverage, I suspect this issue will be a driving factor.

The real question then, is which plan has a better chance of providing the promised coverage without hindering freedom? Strangely, even after spending considerable time trying to determine the specifics of the Kerry plan, I wasn’t able to find anything more specific than “We have a plan.” Personally, I think Health Savings Accounts (HSA’s), which were a part of the Medicare reform and are already a reality, are the better bet. In a nutshell, here’s how they work:

First, you buy a high-deductible ($2,500 – $5,000) insurance policy. Since your deductible is higher than most other plans, your premiums should be considerably less. Then you put tax-free money (up to $5,150 for families) into your Health Savings Account. When you go to the doctor, the payment for the visit comes out of this account. If you exhaust the entire deductible, the insurance kicks in and picks up 100% of the tab. (This provides the “safety net” of catastrophic insurance.) If you don’t use all of the money in the account, it rolls over to the following year. The money can be used for medical purposes at any time without tax. Once you hit 65, you can begin withdrawing the money for retirement. Since you have complete control over how this money is spent and get to keep the remainder, the theory is that you’ll become a wiser consumer (looking for better prices, buying generic medicine, etc.)

You can get more information about HSA’s at the HSA Insider.

I just spent the last two days at the first-ever Exact Excellence User Conference, an event aimed at advancing the best practices for the growing field of e-mail marketing. The conference covered a variety of issues related to the subject, including deliverability, dynamic content, list building and segmentation, small- and medium-size business success stories, and more. I co-chaired a discussion titled “Creative Best Practices for Email Marketing”, which was essentially a primer and prod to the industry to do a better job crafting their messages.

One of the primary benefits of e-mail is also one of its chief problems: it’s too easy. Because it’s so easy to create and send a message, the creators don’t spend enough time sweating the details. Far more than the subject line, we need to be concerned with the content and copy, headlines, the images used, the emotion of the piece. I think people forget that the final product will be a marketing message designed to communicate something about your product and company. The same care and caution that goes into crafting other marketing messages should be (but – sadly – often isn’t) apparent.

The keynote address was given by Seth Godin (pictured above with me), author of several books including “Permission Marketing”, “Purple Cow”, and “Free Prize Inside”. Seth is arguably a marketing genius, but I think the cover of Purple Cow describes him best: “Perhaps the most intuitive marketer on the planet” (or something like that.) The point is, Seth has a grasp of what feels right, and it’s a simple litmus test we should be applying to all marketing communications.

As for e-mail, Seth points out that every marketing message you send to your list should be anticipated, personal, and relevant. And, like a purple cow, it should be remarkable. If it’s not worth remarking about, why would anyone feel compelled to either act on your message or pass the information along?