There s a door here we could walk through to a better world. Politicians are like soldiers and debaters. Soldiers and debaters take positions. You don t move. And then you win or lose.
Political platforms are collections of a party s or candidate s positions on the issues.
Platforms are what candidates stand on as they lob cannonballs, soundbites and spin-doctoring at each other. We can learn a lot about positions from the field of negotiation. Let s imagine Sam and Charlie are negotiating. Using an old style of negotiation, Sam cleverly gets Charlie to give up lots of what Charlie wants so that Sam can get more of what Sam wants. Or they inquire into them.