Subject: Re: book idea
From: "Rob Norton" <[email-masked]>
To: "Hunter Biden" <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 29 Feb 2012 16:50:56 -0500

Is it only Anderson Cooper, or do you dislike all gay people.

On Wed, Feb 29, 2012 at 4:15 PM, Hunter Biden <[email-masked]>wrote:

> I agree- but we have to be careful not to make this a copy o profiles in
> courage or a rip off of Anderson Cooper's "Heroes" series.  So as much as
> we profile actual people or small groups of people I think we should also
> make it about how the process can work when used for good.
>
> RHB
> 202.333.1880
>
> On Feb 29, 2012, at 11:50 AM, Rob Norton <[email-masked]> wrote:
>
> Also, I think we may want to refrain from labeling this "advocacy" and
> make the book more about service and individual heroes who have made a
> difference through extraordinary acts of advocacy. I bet if we asked
> several chiefs of staff to give us examples of people who did amazing
> things to get things done, we would get some interesting answers. We need
> about 5 stories like Gary's where some important public people will say
> that a big initiative wouldn't have gotten done without their work and the
> person themselves can tell a few war stories. I keep thinking about Gary's
> description of a few guys acting like ninjas to get shit done. Along those
> lines, it would be super cool to do one of the cases on Bob Geldoff when he
> put together the Live Aid concerts during the '85 Ethiopian famine... same
> idea - one guy doing dramatic things to help the world. Again, the goal is
> to be positive and motivational, so we need a wide spectrum of examples
> that cross party/idealogical lines, so that everyone can find something
> they can appreciate.
>
> On Wed, Feb 29, 2012 at 8:37 AM, Rob Norton <[email-masked]> wrote:
>
>> Thinking more about this and I think we should go with an "advocates
>> making a better world" angle and create a book that's positive and a
>> motivator to enter public service. This could be an introductory chapter
>> that may start by saying that advocates or "lobbyists" are often viewed
>> with suspicion, often with good reason, but a lot of good work has been
>> accomplished by people who do this work. Then we follow with (roughly) 5
>> accounts of how good work was accomplished by dedicated advocates who are
>> exemplary public servants. We need to select the cases carefully because
>> they each need to include 1-2 interesting anecdotes that involve public
>> people doing things that are unexpected. Gary Edson's PEPFAR story is a
>> great example and I think we need to try and get interviews with President
>> Bush (maybe Gary could even swing Bono) to reinforce this and give the
>> account a lot of cache. We'll need to identify 4 more cases that give us
>> opportunities to take the same approach and those cases will need to cross
>> party lines. In other words, the book needs to provide cool, behind the
>> scenes stories of all kinds of people working hard as advocates to make a
>> better world. Maybe one of the cases addresses Haiti so we could include
>> President Clinton.
>>
>> This approach gives a publisher a few hooks to promote the book. First,
>> it seems to me that there's a lot of opportunity here to highlight untold,
>> behind the scenes stories of public people working hard to do good work --
>> a human interest hook that may generate stories that one might see in the
>> Washington Post Style section or on the morning news/talk shows. The goal
>> should be to include at least one anecdote in each case that would be
>> newsworthy and worth a short discussion or highlight on a morning news show
>> -- the strange bedfellows approach or some other story that demonstrates
>> the humanity of the principals and will capture people's attention. Second,
>> we stake out a position that there are some advocates/lobbyists that do
>> good work and provide an interesting "side" for political talk shows...
>> "these guys say not all lobbyists are bad -- let's talk to them hear
>> why"... that type of thing. The key is having the hard examples and
>> anecdotes that allow us to tell the story and that will serve as hooks to
>> want to read the book and hear us talk about it. On a more basic level, we
>> would be able to do some promotion in the Washington area bookstores like
>> Politics & Prose, but if we have strong anecdotes maybe this can expand
>> outside the beltway.
>>
>> I'm biased, but this seems feasible. The key is having some good stories
>> to make it all interesting.
>>
>>
>>
>>
>
>
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