Pushing too hard?

A fascinating retrospective on the resurgence of the whaling issue (which provocatively asks 'did the greens help kill the whale?!) from the BBC has raised a key issue involved in campaigning - in setting ourselves the highest standards of a vision of the future do we end up pushing an issue beyond the zone of what is currently feasible and over the edge? Put differently, campaigning can sometimes push targets too hard and turn them around completely in the other direction.

This is an entirely valid point, and one that every campaign on any issue must confront. On one hand, I generally work on the logic of setting the bar high, and in the process even if progress doesn't reach that lofty standard, things will probably still be better than if a 'realistic' target had been set. The point is to make big demands even if we're well aware that those aren't easily achievable, but in the process, that offers a bit of space for compromise and negotiation for something that at the outset would be an entirely acceptable outcome.

On the other hand, as the journalist suggests was the case for Japan in the 1980s, keeping the pressure at boiling temperature might create a backlash where our campaign target, already hesitant to move on the issue, completely turns around for a flat-out, uncompromising 'no'. This lesson suggests the need to maintain a sense of pragmatism and, in what is perhaps incredibly difficult for all of us who want to see change tomorrow, patience.

Is there a right answer? Set the bar too high can end up in never seeing complete success, but setting the bar too low can also end up in falling well short of the necessary solution to a problem.

But I think that to set the bar lower just in thinking that 'there's no way in hell that we're going to get that' is to concede ground before the debate and campaign has even begun. We aim high because that's what we believe in, and believe is necessary. To be sure, we modify and compromise as things unfold and twist and turn. But campaigning must always be ambitious and winning some probably goes side by side with losing some.