Home | Careers & Education | Career Skills | How to Run for Office: Preparing to Run

Why is it important to understand my governing philosophy, the values I represent and the public image I want to convey?

Currently 0.0/5 Stars.
1
2
3
4
5

To properly view this site, javascript must be enabled and Flash version 9 or higher must be installed.
Get the latest Flash player

View All Videos In This Series

Ron Faucheux: I am Ron Faucheux. I wrote a book titled Running for Office and I teach courses in Political Campaign Management and Running for Office at The Graduate School of Political Management at George Washington University. We have been talking about what it takes to be a political candidate and now, we are going to talk about what you have to do to prepare yourself to run for office.

Speaker: Why is it important to understand my governing philosophy, the values I represent, and the public image I want to convey?

Ron Faucheux: When you run for office, you really need to know who you are. You need to know what you are and what you stand for and that includes your governing philosophy; what motivates your philosophy of government; what motivates how you look at government and public policy and public issues; that's very important. You also have to look at what values that your political philosophy is based on. Voters don't want to just hear a laundry list of policy proposal. They want to have some sense of what values do you represent; what's important to you, what will help guide the decisions you make over the course of your term of office and of course you have to have a sense of what you want to project to the voters in a way that's honest, that's a realistic and that really is you. There are political candidates who get in the political campaigns and they think they can have makeovers and they think they can project something other than what they are and that is a very hard thing to do and extreme makeovers may work fine on television programs, but in political campaigns, you really need to be yourself.

Expert: Ron Faucheux

Ron Faucheux is one of America's top political and public affairs analysts. Contributor-at-Large for Campaigns & Elections magazine - a nonpartisan publication he previously published and edited - he writes a column on politics and public opinion. Currently head of government affairs for the American Institute of Architects, Dr. Faucheux is a former state legislator and cabinet secretary. He's the author More »