| Wednesday, February 16, 2005 |
11:30 - iChairman
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2005/2/15/162223/276
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According to Drewthaler of Daily Kos, Howard Dean will be to the Democrats what Steve Jobs has been to Apple.
I was working at Apple the day Steve came back, and I've been in and out of the company a few times in the years since. I've watched with interest as he literally reshaped the company into what it is today. I wanted to write a bit about the parallels that I've seen, and how I think Dean's chairmanship will be good for the Democratic Party.
Some of you are saying: "But Drew, Apple doesn't have a lot of marketshare. They are hovering in the single-digit percentages and the market is literally dominated by the other manufacturers. Is that really the model we want?"
You'd be almost right in that concern, but for one thing. Computers and politics are not the same. Computers are expensive physical objects, and there's a lot more inertia in the computer world.
There is one thing Apple did not have in 1997, and now has in spades. Something that is the lifeblood of any political party:
Influence.
An interesting read, if a little pie-in-the-sky. I'm always a bit leery of attempts to draw parallels between historical events, particularly ones in very different kinds of circumstances, because you inevitably end up with "Israel = America = Nazi Germany" kinds of comparisons. And there's been so much improbable success on the Apple side of the equation since Steve's return, success which I don't think necessarily would have been repeated if it were played all over again in a parallel universe, that modeling one's own trajectory on it seems rather foolhardy. When your big variable is the charisma of an extremely exceptional individual, the slightest flutter in that charisma can bring the whole edifice down. I think most of the computer world has pretty decent respect for Steve Jobs, even when they think he's a nutcase—his accomplishments are difficult to deny. But Howard Dean still has to build a portfolio of such accomplishments to overcome the caricature he made of himself last year.
Also there's the factor of autocratic control. Jobs has it; he rules Apple according to his personal vision, down to the last little screw and pixel. He's about the best illustration there ever was of why a benevolent despot can be great for a company, but would be a horror in a position of political power. Not only would it be worrisome for Dean to have that kind of control over his followers—but I don't think he would anyway. The Democrats are as broad a spectrum as the Republicans are, ranging from the loony fringe (visible as it insists upon making itself) to the rational center. There's a whole lot of mixing up and down the scale, perhaps more than usual, these days. But that doesn't mean that Dean can outline some grand vision and they'll all follow it. We're talking about people's opinions and values here, not a product launch cycle.
If the Democrats want relevance, they're going to have to earn it, by presenting a platform that people want, that they're willing to pay for in the marketplace of ideas. Jobs' vision managed to achieve this, through Mac OS X and the retail stores and the iPod. Will Dean be able to sell his vision to the American public any more convincingly than he did in his candidacy? What's his iPod?
I guess we'll find out.
Via Aziz Poonawalla.
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Brian Tiemann
