David Gergen's Blog, page 10

America would like us to move on from President Obama's birth certificate

Bull City Forward happily celebrating first anniversary

Son Christopher and his great team at Bull City Forward happily celebrating first anniversary. Almost like a new grandchild for his old man. - David Gergen


Follow Bull City Forward's progress on Twitter @BullCityForward and on Facebook: Bull City Forward.







The Herald-Sun | Christine T. Nguyen
Bull City Forward chief Christopher Gergen is photographed in front of the offices of Bull City Forward. The nonprofit is celebrating is one year anniversary.




DURHAM -- Bull City Forward, a nonprofit that aims to support and grow social entrepreneurship in Durham, is turning 1, and is planning to celebrate that fact.

And with one year under its belt, the nonprofit that now operates in downtown Durham in offices at 101 W. Main St. is also looking to expand.

Christopher Gergen, the Duke University lecturer at the head of the entrepreneurship-focused organization, said the nonprofit is opening offices in the next month in Charlotte.

Gergen said that effort, called Queen City Forward, is part of a vision for a statewide network of social entrepreneurship-focused organizations. Ultimately, Gergen said he wants to see offices in five or six cities across the state in the next several years.

"The reason behind the statewide network is we believe one of the biggest values we can provide to the entrepreneurial community is relationships with one another," Gergen said. "By expanding into Charlotte, it's our first effort to try and enrich the network to create sort of a broader connection across from the Triangle down to the Charlotte region."

In Durham, Gergen said the nonprofit experienced a slower membership start. He said it recently met the 100-member mark, about 20 of which are full-time members, and its offices are now "starting to really fill up to capacity."

"Recently we've seen a really warm embrace by the entrepreneurial community," he said. "We are now seeing a steady stream of folks that are reaching out to us."

He said obstacles the nonprofit has seen is funding and also getting people to grasp the nonprofit's mission.

"We have a whole bunch of people who are really enthusiastic about Bull City Forward, but the funding's been really hard to come by," he said.

In the first year, Gergen said the nonprofit raised $100,000 for a planting grant. Since then the nonprofit has been on a "pretty good path" to raise more funds, but fundraising has been difficult.

Gergen said the nonprofit has found ways to augment its revenue through earned income opportunities such as contracts to run programs for government offices or other nonprofits.

For the current fiscal year, the nonprofit has a $500,000 budget that he said is expected to come 65 percent from grants, 15 percent from membership, with the remainder from contract work.

He said he believes financial partners have been in a "wait and see mode," but he said he now expects to see more long-term investments.

"People are starting to see that we're really delivering on our plan and delivering significant value to the community," he said. "As a result of that, the conversations we have now are continuing to become more and more exciting."

He said he believes the nonprofit is moving forward in meeting its goals. It has a four-part strategy: to grow more social entrepreneurs through programs in grade schools and universities, to create an environment that the entrepreneurs can grow in, to measure the impact their having, and then to advocate and communicate its message.

He highlighted some of the programs the nonprofit is developing in those four areas, including a partnership with Durham Public Schools. He said a program at two high schools is scheduled to launch in the fall that is part of the effort to cultivate social entrepreneurs.

He said the program will work with students to give them an entrepreneurial mindset, and will help them develop specific ideas for bringing about change in their communities.

"I'm feel really, really good about where we are, but I'm very excited about where we're going," Gergen said of the nonprofit's direction.

For the office in Charlotte, Gergen said the goal is to raise $200,000 for the launch. He said the city government is considering an investment in the initiative, as is the Foundation for The Carolinas, and he said Duke Energy has made a pledge.

The nonprofit will be housed in 3,000 square feet of a 90,000-square-foot building called Packard Place that he said is being turned into a hub for entrepreneurs.

He said there is interest in Charlotte in social entrepreneurship, he said, although the city's economy is based in the financial sector.

"They'd really like to spur the number of entrepreneurial firms that are emerging from the city," he said.

Bull City Forward has plans to celebrate its one year anniversary with an event at the nonprofit's offices from 6 to 9 p.m. Friday. Guests are asked to RSVP at http://bullcityforward.org Twitter @bullcityforward

By LAURA OLENIACZ

loleniacz@heraldsun.com; 419-6636

General McChrystal Talks Student Service

By JUSTIN C. WORLAND , CRIMSON STAFF WRITERPublished: Tuesday, April 26, 2011T [image error]
[image error]DILLON S. PLUNKETTRetired General Stanley A. McChrystal delivers the keynote speech at Honoring Those Who Have Served, an event honoring Harvard's veterans at the Sheraton Commander Hotel yesterday. The event was organized by the Harvard Center for Public Leadership. David T. Ellwood, Dean of Harvard Kennedy School and David R. Gergen, Director of the Center for Public Leadership also delivered remarks.In what organizers, attendees, and speakers said was a testament to the strengthened relationship between Harvard and the military, Harvard student veterans gathered yesterday evening at an event honoring their service.Retired General Stanley A. McChrystal, former commander of U.S. and international forces in Afghanistan, delivered the keynote address, speaking candidly about his experiences as a military leader and about current foreign policy issues.Harvard Kennedy School Professor David Gergen said that the event—hosted by the Center for Public Leadership at the Kennedy School—was likely the largest gathering of Harvard student veterans since World War II. Though said in front of a large crowd that packed a ballroom at the Sheraton Commander Hotel, most of McChrystal's remarks were off the record."When Harvard embraces veterans and families like [it] did tonight, it sets a tone and a trend," McChrystal told The Crimson after the event, echoing one of the themes of the evening. "That ability to articulate specially that this institution, which is one of the most important in the nation, goes to this level of effort impacts everyone. Harvard [is a] bellwether for education."McChrystal, who resigned after openly criticizing President Obama in a magazine article last summer, also said more broadly that he hopes more students will consider service careers."I would personally like to see everyone at institutions like this [to] first think: where am I going to serve?" he said. "I would like them to think, I've got to do something that makes me feel like I've given something to the nation."Seth W. Moulton '01—who served in Iraq with the Marine Corps and is now a resident tutor in Quincy House and a student at HKS and Harvard Business School—said he has been impressed by the number of students who have taken up service careers in recent years."One of the things this dinner shows is that it's a hard choice, but that it's a good choice," he said. "Harvard isn't holding a dinner to celebrate all the veterans of Wall Street."Taylor B. Evans '14—a five year Marine Corps veteran—said the dinner was the latest in a string of happenings that have improved the public impression of relations between Harvard and the military."The last few months have been very positive for [the military's] relationship with higher education," he said.In remarks at last night's event, HKS Dean David T. Ellwood '75 attributed much of this success to the leadership of University President Drew G. Faust."From the day she became president ... she was the most committed person I knew to making ROTC happen at Harvard," Ellwood said in reference to bringing the Reserve Officer Training Corps back to Harvard. The University recognized ROTC this March for the first time since the Vietnam War.The event, which was attended by approximately 200 student veterans primarily enrolled in graduate schools across the University, is the third annual dinner honoring student veterans.Gergen followed McChrystal with forward-looking remarks directed at the veterans."We honor you for your service, for what you have done, but we do it in the spirit of what you can be," he said. "[There] is a sense that you can be the next Greatest Generation. You have in your capacity the power to do things that this country so desperately needs."McChrystal said that he could not agree more.—Staff writer Justin C. Worland can be reached at jworland@college.harvard.edu.

Presidentials Powers Debate

Added On April 22, 2011CNN's John King talks to David Gergen and Nicholas Burns about Pres. Obama's handling of the military mission in Libya.

Elon University Convocation

I spoke about current issues the United States government  is facing today. This conversation occurred during Elon University's Spring Convocation for Honors April 7, 2011.

NC NOW

Excerpt: Brian Williams/Anchor, NBC Nightly News--North Carolina NOW will present an excerpt from Elon University's annual spring Convocation for Honors that was held on April 7, 2011. NBC Nightly News Anchor Brian Williams moderated a panel discussion called "We can be better: Courageous voices confront our greatest challenges." The panelists included David Gergen, Senior Political Analyst for CNN and former presidential advisor; David Walker, former U.S. Comptroller General and head of the U.S. Government Accountability Office; Dr. Shirley Ann Jackson, physicist and president of Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, former chair of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission; Eboo Patel, author, journalist, member of President Barack Obama's Advisory Council on Faith-Based Neighborhood Partnerships, and founder and president of the Interfaith Youth Core, which promotes religious pluralism and David Levin, co-founder of the "Knowledge is Power Program," a network of high-achieving KIPP charter schools that serves 27,000 mostly low-income minority children in 20 states and Washington, D.C.

Many Thanks

Many thanks to the hundreds upon hundreds of you who voted Bull City Forward . You have given Christopher's project a great worthy boost. -David

2012 Campaign Going Full Bore

Obama -- brilliant politician, timid leader

Cambridge, Massachusetts (CNN) -- In his budget speech yesterday, President Obama showed once again that he is a more masterful politician but less courageous leader than we might have imagined. What that will mean for the country's economic future remains deeply uncertain.


The president entered this year confident of re-election, but just to be sure, he adopted a clever political strategy to deal with a growing debt crisis: His budget would duck the hard question about deficits, leaving a vacuum for Republicans to fill. Around the White House, the thinking was that whoever went first in the budget wars would leave themselves vulnerable to heavy attack.


Unafraid, the Republicans went first. Rep. Paul Ryan of Wisconsin, chairman of the House Budget Committee, proposed a daring plan full of concrete specifics that would cut deficits by some $4 trillion over a decade. Ryan deserves credit for courage, but inevitably his plan has political vulnerabilities. On Wednesday, Obama pounced -- hard.


Karl Rove argued in the Wall Street Journal on Thursday morning that Republicans will benefit most from the budget debate because Obama has presided over massive increases in spending while bobbing and weaving on deficits. Rove may turn out to be right in the long run, but for the moment, Obama is the one who has framed the argument more shrewdly.


In essence, Obama is putting this question to voters heading toward the 2012 election:
Would you like to cut Medicare benefits in order to save tax increases for the wealthy? Or would you rather increase taxes on the wealthy in order to save Medicare?


Duh.
On the hard issues -- the ones that are really hard -- the president once again isn't leading; he is delegating.


Republicans, of course, say this is a complete distortion, etc., etc. Some of their points are valid. But as the Clintons learned with their health care plan some years ago, any time a politician wades into a contentious policy dilemma and tries to propose tough, honest answers, he is almost certain to leave himself open to withering attacks. That is what happened to the Ryan plan.


Inexplicably, Republicans in the House are now moving to embrace the Ryan plan by formal vote and by so doing, will make it not just Ryan's plan, but the central GOP position in the 2012 campaign. Given how easy it will be for Democrats to demagogue it, one wonders why. Once a Republican majority votes approval in the House, can any Republican nominee run away from the plan without splintering the party?


As a politician, Obama was also smart Wednesday in leaving so little for Republicans to shoot at in his own "plan". On every hard policy question -- e.g., would you start taxing employees for health benefits paid by employers -- he said he would leave the answers to someone else. On a national dilemma that will inevitably require public sacrifices, he didn't put forward a single, concrete proposal of his own that would disturb a majority of voters. Clever!


But it is that very cleverness that undermines his reputation as a leader. We look up to leaders who have been willing to make hard choices on their own, put them forward with courage and rally people to join them -- think of Lincoln, Churchill, Mandela and many more. The historian Michael Beschloss wrote a stirring book about the courage of past presidents. Where is that courage in the White House today?


Obama said in his speech that we must reform the tax system to produce more revenues. How? Let Congress figure it out, he said. We must limit the growth of Medicare to GDP plus a half percent a year. How? Leave that to an Independent Payment Advisory Board. We need built-in guarantees to reduce the deficits. How? Leave that to a failsafe mechanism that will automatically kick in around 2014 (never mind that Obama's former budget director says it could be unreliable.


We have been here before. Writing a stimulus bill? Leave that to Congress. Coming up with a health care plan? Leave that to Congress. Asserting control over Gadhafi? Leave that to NATO.
There have been times when the president, to his credit, has stuck his neck out. On tackling the nation's finances, he deserves credit for finally asserting that we must cut the deficits by $4 trillion over 12 years. Personally, as one who is fortunate to be in the high tax bracket, I also believe he is right to seek a return to Clinton era tax levels for the affluent. That, however, is an easy call for the White House: A majority of Americans agree. But on the hard issues -- the ones that are really hard -- the president once again isn't leading; he is delegating.


No one can tell for sure where Wednesday's speech leaves the country. Republicans are angry the speech was so partisan, and the gulf between them and the White House is dramatic.
The best hope is that the "Gang of Six" in the Senate comes up with a bipartisan plan that can break up the deadlock now emerging. If not, we likely won't see serious entitlement or tax reform until after the 2012 elections. And it will be a very close call whether Washington can come to an agreement that avoids a near-crisis over the debt ceiling this summer. These fun and games may be good for electioneering and for television ratings, but they aren't good for the country.

Obama takes 'incredible gamble'