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A frog found himself on a lily pad surrounded by alligators. If only I could hop far enough to clear the alligators and land on the next lily pad, he cried.

Why don’t you just take off and fly? said a voice. The frog looked up and saw a wise old owl sitting on a branch overhead. Just fly to the next lily pad, advised the owl.

The frog got a running start, flapped his legs and came down right in the middle of the alligators. Stupid owl, he shouted, trying frantically to escape the hungry alligators, frogs can’t fly!

That’s an implementation issue, said the owl. I just deal in concepts.

As we go through life simply trying to clear the alligators and land on the next lily pad, we are forced to confront our share of issues every day. We don’t have the owl’s luxury of dealing only in concepts. Concepts are abstract. Issues are concrete. They have consequences, as the frog quickly discovered. While both concepts and issues require thought and imagination, issues also demand involvement, action, and resolution. Concepts are born of ideas. Issues are born of exigencies. Concepts live in an environment of wonderment and what ifs while issues exist in an atmosphere of urgency. Concepts are pondered; issues are decided. Concepts are like Sunday drives in the country. Issues are like rush hour traffic in a big city.

Issues can be personal or public. They can involve making decisions that affect only one person or multitudes. And, while some can be decided quickly, others take years to resolve. But regardless of their scope, issues inherently involve elements of conflict, choice, and consequence. Let me offer two extreme examples.

Deciding on an anniversary gift for my wife is an issue for me (though forgetting it would be an even bigger one) because I’ve thought of several possibilities. This is a very personal issue. Its resolution will affect only my wife and me, and I can decide quickly without a great deal of consternation or consultation with other people.

Deciding on the best way to ensure the long-term solvency of Social Security is a much more complex and public issue. We will be able to pay only 75 percent of full benefits after 2032, so there is a driving need to figure out how to make up the other 25 percent. Conflict emerges because a number of alternatives are being proposed, ranging from modest adjustments, to alternative forms of investing Social Security surpluses, to scrapping the current system. Each alternative has consequences. Congress and the President will need to choose among the various options (or some combination of them), and that choice will have consequences, both for the people who need and benefit from Social Security and for the elected representatives who have to make the decision.

While these two examples are at opposite ends of the issue spectrum, they both get resolved through a process of persuasion and perception.

With so much information available to people today, the challenge of how to build and understand persuasive arguments that help people understand issues and become involved in resolving them, will determine whether we land on the next lily pad or in the stomach of the alligators.


Horace Deets has been Executive Director of the American Association of Retired Persons (AARP) since 1988.

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