It's been said that politicians campaign in poetry and govern in prose. Maybe that explains why voters keep hearing nursery-rhyme solutions to enormously complex problems.

As I write this, thousands of faculty members in schools of communication, journalism, and related disciplines all across the country are beginning a new academic year. While estimates vary, it is safe to say that more than 50,000 - perhaps as many as 75,000 - students of communication, journalism, PR, and similar majors are cutting the tags off their new backpacks, scuffing up their flip-flops, and saying goodbye to their summer friends as they head back to campus.

Are terrorist groups like al Qaeda a "major threat" to the American people? According to a recent Pew Research Center survey, 72% of Americans think so.

Boards of directors are often unpleasantly surprised when an investor becomes an activist and launches an attack on the company, pushing them to put the company up for sale or to spin off a unit. They are caught off-guard not necessarily because they were unaware of the investor's dissatisfaction with performance or pace of growth, but instead with the timing of the attack.

A wall poster caught my eye on a recent visit to a San Francisco company that provides online customer support. "Customer service," it announced, "is the new marketing."

With news of volatile stock markets, soaring gas prices, housing foreclosures, and bank failures making headlines, every conversation about new business understandably centers around one basic question, "Which industries should we pursue?"

This month, I'll shift from internal management to issues management, and our case study comes straight from the past few weeks' headlines:

Anyone who has spent time lately in college classrooms speaking to students in PR and communication disciplines has seen first-hand an unmistakable trend. The field is finding it increasingly difficult to attract male students.

The recent announcement that Gershon Kekst was selling the firm that bears his name to the French giant Publicis might signal the end of an era, though Kekst himself would surely scoff at the idea.

Bill Clinton got a hard lesson recently in a new rule of politics. Sen. Barack Obama (D-IL), meanwhile, tried to make some new rules of his own.