Does social change occur more from the top down or the bottom up?
My view generally is that it can be either/or, but truly transformational change comes when it's both/and.
Looking back at history and politics, and your own experiences, what do you think?
Commentators David Brooks and Mark Shields on the PBS NEWS HOUR pointed out that Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama have different theories as to how social change happens.
"What strikes me is they really do have two different theories of how change happens," Brooks said. "Obama has a loose, decentralized, bottom-up theory, as you'd expect from a community organizer, that it's not really top-down organizations, that you build a base in the country and you activate people, and then they create change at the top.
"I think Clinton has a much more traditional theory of change: You gather the smartest people in the room, union leaders, business leaders, government leaders. You create a policy that you then can spread around the country. So one's a much more bottom-up theory of how change happens; one's much more top-down."
JIM LEHRER: But do you think that's being understood and acted upon at the voter level?
DAVID BROOKS: I do. I mean, Obama talks about it quite a lot, about two different theories of change. And I think for young people, I think that's one of the attractions.
If you grew up in the age of the Internet, which is a decentralized, self-organizing system, you do eBay, you do "The Sims," you basically have that sense. You have a sense that Bono communicates, that you do social change through social action.
And in the world, we're faced with a whole series of transnational problems that are not going to be addressed by traditional politics but are going to be addressed through mobilization.
And I think Obama adopts that language. I think it's a lot of language that especially people under 40 is their natural way of talking about politics.
JIM LEHRER: You read it the same way, Mark?
MARK SHIELDS: Well, I do. There's a little difference, Jim, and I think it seen in the structure of the two campaigns.
Barack Obama just set a record. He has a million individual contributors to his campaign by the month of February. In the month of January alone -- we don't have his figures for February yet -- he raised $28 million online in individual contributions.
Ninety percent of those contributions were under $100 each, which is just remarkable. It's exactly the group David was talking about, people not of great income. It's what we've always wanted to have in politics, where there aren't just a few big money guys, that people are contributing.
But they take those contributors, and it's not simply the passive act of making a contribution. You are then enfolded into a community. You're encouraged to go to meetings, to events.
You're regularly communicated with. You're urged to canvas, to make phone calls, to become part of an activist political company, if you would, of like-minded citizens. And that's what's been remarkable.
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