If you're a good numbers person, you're a bad language person.

The second most important attribute of winners, after understanding the human dimension, is knowing what questions to ask, the rhetorical nature.

It has to be simple, but then you deliver them a principle: The simple truth is, as a matter of principle, we cannot spend more than we take in. Something - that changes the tone of the debate.

The principles behind explaining and educating the product or the elected official is similar, even though the actual execution of it is very, very different.

If you just heard 90 percent of dentists recommend something, it's too statistical. Nine out of 10 says: Well, it's just virtually everyone. It leads you to think of that joke about the one dentist. But so much of communication.

Believe in better, which is a corporate phrase rather than a political phrase. We don't want more. We're not looking for quantity. We're looking for quality. Believe in better suggests intergenerational change. It suggests product innovation. It suggests something better for the future.

The perfect opening is the word imagine, because imagine allows you to communicate in the eyes and the vision of the listener rather than yours. And the best illustration of that is "1984." Room 101 in "1984" - everyone's read it, and we all have our own imagination of what that looks like.