It’s Tuesday, October 16^th, about two hours before the second presidential debate.  Gerald Seib’s article below talks about what President George H.W. Bush called the “vision thing.”  When I watched the first debate I was struck by how much of the air time was caught in the past and present domains.  We know from the Applied Leadership Seminar that,

…unless you learn to recognize, manage, and shift out of past-domain conversations, you will never be able to deliver on your fundamental responsibility of a leader – creating and sustaining a viable future.

I suspect we are going to hear tonight a lot about the future, an area we call the Domain of Possibilities.  Both of the candidates surely have been coached by their handlers to step into the Leadership Field.

I’m going to listen carefully to hear the Stump Speech about Setting Direction.  Remember, it sounds like:

• This is where we are going
• This is why we are going there
• This is who is going with us
• This is how we get there

The winner of the debates will be the candidate who talks about courage, integrity, and has the most powerful future orientation.

Al Bolea

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Obama’s Debate Task:  Focus on the “Vision Thing”

By Gerald F. Seib

WSJ October 15, 2012

A seasoned Republican operative, in a conversation just before the first presidential debate, said he had just seen a new two-minute-long ad from President Barack Obama. Speaking directly to the camera, the president talks about fostering a new “economic patriotism” and summarizes a four-point plan—”my plan”—that he says will create jobs in America.

Many Democrats argue that President Obama needs to recover from a weak performance in his first presidential debate by “getting tough” with Mitt Romney on Tuesday night. But a review of that first debate suggests the president’s real problem may have been rooted elsewhere, as Jerry Seib explains on The News Hub. (Photo: AP)

It’s a powerful ad, the GOP operative said, because it’s personal, substantive and forward-looking. It was a precursor, he implied, of what he expected to hear from Mr. Obama during the debate.

That conversation is worth remembering as the second presidential debate on Tuesday approaches. Many Democrats argue that Mr. Obama needs to recover from a weak performance in the first debate by “getting tougher” in attacking Republican nominee Mitt Romney.

Maybe. Yet a review of that first debate suggests that the president’s real problem may have been rooted elsewhere.

There was a surprising shortage of discussion by the president of what he would do to create jobs and growth, and what the core purpose of a second Obama term would be. It was, in short, light on what former President George H.W. Bush once called “the vision thing.”

Mr. Obama started the debate by reprising the two-minute ad—spend more on education, develop energy sources, revive manufacturing and divert money from wars in Iraq and Afghanistan to “rebuild America.”

But after that, there was more emphasis on what he wouldn’t do: raise taxes on the middle class or cut Medicare benefits. And he talked a lot about what he said Mr. Romney would do: raise taxes on the middle class, give millionaires a tax break, cut Medicare benefits, balloon the deficit.

Mr. Romney answered that debate’s first question by rattling off his own “five-point plan” for creating jobs, and repeatedly returned to its elements—particularly the virtues of cutting taxes for small businesses.

The truth is that both economic “plans,” as they are presented in ads and debates, are a bit flimsy, more statements of goals than detailed road maps of how to get there.

Mr. Obama’s promise to fund 100,000 more math and science teachers, for example, is a fine way to train a workforce to strengthen the economy a decade from now, but doesn’t say much about how to lower the unemployment rate in, say, the next two years.

And Mr. Romney’s call for an “energy independent” North America also is a good long-term goal—he says it can be achieved by 2020. But how and when that translates into the three million or four million new jobs he promises—the number varies—is unclear.

The point is that Mr. Obama’s real challenge in this week’s debate may not be the one many of his allies are framing, which is to pick apart Mr. Romney’s plans and to be harsher in critiquing them.

Trying to do that, as it happens, will be particularly tough under the format of the second debate, which is to be conducted as a town hall. By definition, that means taking questions from voters and answering those voters directly.

It isn’t a format designed to open the door for attacks on the other guy, or even to call out the other guy over the evasive, inaccurate or slippery answer he’s just given. In fact, voters in such a setting often are annoyed when attention is shifted away from them to the other debater.

As it happens, though, a town hall is a pretty good format for talking about “the vision thing.” A lot of the questions amount to, “What are you going to do in the next four years to improve the economy, create jobs and make my health care more affordable?”

Voters in such a setting tend to be less interested in re-litigating policies of the last four, eight or 12 years.

Both Mr. Obama and Mr. Romney say the election is a choice between two starkly different views of the role of government in the 21st century economy. If that’s the case, then the imperative for Mr. Obama is to articulate how his vision of a government more actively involved in the economy translates directly into growth and jobs.

To this point, the Obama campaign has done a surprisingly good job of transforming the campaign from a referendum on the incumbent, which is what re-election campaigns normally are, into a choice between a relatively well-liked president and a relatively less well-liked Republican opponent.

But the campaign actually may have done that job too well, creating more focus on the Romney approach than on the Obama vision.

Tuesday’s debate represents an opportunity for the president to spend less time arguing about the former and more time explaining the latter.