As Van Jones Leaves, One Less Innovation Advocate in the White House

It's hard to watch the national political debate these days and wonder whether our parents were wrong to suggest that bullies don't win in the end. The shrill caterwaul of Glen Beckism has claimed its first victim in Van Jones, the so-called Green Jobs czar, author of "The Green Collar Economy," and Echoing Green fellow. This is the sort of cynicism that makes social entrepreneurs turn away from government.

Van Jones is a big radical, according to Fox News host and apparent new king of US media Glen Beck. He's had the gall to call Republicans "assholes;" and as a young person he was in a group sympathetic to Maoists. The big "radical" stamp on his forehead however comes from a petition he signed in 2004 suggesting that there were unanswered questions about what the US government knew in advance of 9/11.

Over the past week, Jones has been subject to the constant onslaught of Beck and his ilk, finally succumbing and removing himself from the conversation by resigning. Change.org Global Warming editor Emily wrote a great post on why this was such a loss.

The political conversation around this is probably a bit beyond the scope of this blog, but I will say this. The issues that we face and that we have to address, not in a few years but right now, and not because they're important but because they're essential to the actual ability of this nation and this planet to survive, cannot be allowed to be reduced to soundbyte madness.

The problem is that the game is no longer about "who controls the narrative." The game being played is actually about the selectivity of facts. As a friend put it "they don't control the tone of the national debate, they create the debate itself around whichever unreality suits them." Doing a search for a photo for this piece I searched "Van Jones," which prompted Google to suggest the related search "Van Jones Communist." Really?

At the end of the day, Van Jones is far less important than the implications. I wrote the other day that social entrepreneurship needs advocates with real political power to rebuild and restructure economies. One person extremely well-positioned to be as close to that as we have is now gone and the question becomes, can this or any administration really be a partner in innovation?

(Photo: Van Jones surrounded by other known radicals like Texas oil billionaire T. Boone Pickens, via Center for American Progress on Flickr)