Maybe Someone Needs to Go

If a football coach – say for the Dallas Cowboys – had the kind of season that the leader of House Democrats has had they would be looking for work. But, politics ain’t football, obviously.

Eight games into the season, the Cowboys tied the can to coach Wade Phillips. Someone had to be held accountable. This is the big time, after all. The final straw was the Cowboys’ 45-7 drubbing by the Green Bay Packers on Sunday. Sorry Wade. You are the responsible party. It’s been nice knowing ya.

Nancy Pelosi suffered a loss just as lopsided, just as devastating to an historic franchise, but with no commensurate accountability. Pelosi’s decision to serve as House Minority Leader when Republicans take the majority in January is at once a testament to her determination as a political infighter and an indication of just how out of touch she is as a leader of a national party.

In fairness to Pelosi, she is going to get a demotion, but she’d be doing her party and herself a favor by stepping off the political stage entirely. For all kinds of reasons, Pelosi, the liberal Democrat from San Francisco, has become the unpopular face of Washington, D.C. Conservatives are rejoicing that she will stay as the party leader in the House. Her continuation in leadership will be both a distraction for Democrats and a gift to those who have succeeded in making her the principle issue in many races, including the First District of Idaho, where she served as a deadly drain on moderate Democrats.

I’ve been reading a fascinating new book – Churchill Defiant – by Barbara Leaming that focuses on the career of the great British Prime Minister after World War II. Churchill lost a crushing re-election campaign in 1945 just as the Allies had secured the long, hard victory over Nazi Germany. Churchill was badly hurt by the repudiation of the English people and, as anyone would, he took the defeat very personally.

Like the Minority Leader-in-Waiting, Winston insisted in staying on as leader of his party despite the opposition, some of it very open and nasty, of most senior Conservatives. Churchill’s health and even mental abilities, as Leaming carefully and sympathetically shows, were sharply in decline, but still the great man held on. Churchill, again like most of us, infused with basic human motivations, simply couldn’t abide the notion of stepping down. His wife wanted him to, his friends and political associates thought it best, but he held on.

In 1951, Churchill finally recaptured Downing Street, more because of the ineptness of the Labour Party than any other reason, but at age 77 he had become a shadow of what the British electorate and the world had come to expect. Leaming gives Churchill credit for being a fighter, but mostly he was fighting the inevitable decline of the British Empire and clinging to the idea of personal power no matter the cost.

Understanding basic human instincts, it’s easy to see why Nancy Pelosi wants to stay. She has been caricatured, at times in an unfair and truly vicious manner, as the Cruella de Vil of the Democratic Party and she clearly doesn’t want to be shown the door by her political enemies. She passed historic, if hugely controversial, legislation and understandly wants to protect it from the long knives of her opponents. And, while she will have a secure place in the history books as the first woman Speaker of the House, she simply can’t bring herself to walk off and leave the battle to others who will undoubtedly have a better chance to reconnect with the broad middle of the American electorate.

Nothing Winston Churchill did after his rejection at the polls in 1945 helped define him for the history books. Had he left public life at that moment, his enormous reputation, as arguably the greatest figure of the 20th Century, would have been secure. The famous Iron Curtain speech was made while Churchill was leading the opposition in the House of Commons. Had he delivered that speech as a private citizen it would have had just as much impact and who is to say that his warnings about Soviet domination of eastern Europe wouldn’t have had even more importance coming from a senior statesman with no personal agenda at stake.

Even the greatest leaders are driven by ego and the need for personal vindication. It is hard to known when to go.

The principled departure is something most American politicians have never embraced. It is a shame because it can have real power both for the person leaving and those left to carry on.

Winning and Losing

In the cold, grey aftermath of the drubbing Democrats received on Tuesday, President Obama is too reserved, too buttoned down and too cool to use, at least in public, the language of a long ago unsuccessful Democratic candidate for the California Legislature. But, he must be thinking what Dick Tuck once said.

Tuck was a political operative and self-proclaimed “dirty trickster” who bedeviled Richard Nixon and once opened his own State Senate race with a speech in a cemetery. Dead people needed a voice in politics, too, he said.

After a Nixon-Kennedy debate in 1960, Tuck paid an elderly women to approach Nixon and say: “Don’t worry, son. He beat you last night, but you’ll win next time.” Good stuff, but not as good as his classic quote.

After his State Senate loss in 1966, Tuck said at his concession, “the people have spoken…the bastards.” Obama must feel something similar, but his now well-established detachment – is that part of his problem – keeps him from expressing such sentiments and showing any genuine emotion.

As we total up the winners and losers from the Democratic debacle this week, the now profoundly challenged Obama heads the “L” column. As much as he has been tested by a controversial preacher, Hillary Clinton, a Great Recession and two wars, his political challenges are just beginning. Adversity can make or break a politician. This is Obama’s political test.

The best – and most successful politicians – have an knack for self reflection; an ability to check and recalibrate long held assumptions. Obama has a tendency to describe all circumstances he faces in terms of a policy choice, but what he faces is fundamentally a leadership challenge. We will see soon enough if he is up to the challenge.

Here is one suggestion. Before too much time passes, Obama should get Speaker-to-be John Boehner on the golf course. Seriously. Boehner loves the game – Golf Digest lists him as the 36th best golfer in Washington – and Obama loves to play, as well. It’s more difficult to talk past some guy you’ve played 18 with, even if he gives you strokes and then beats you. Seriously.

Closer to home a big winner this week is the once and future Governor of Oregon John Kitzhaber. With a deep red tide running nationally, Kitzhaber grabbed a narrow win, the first third term in Oregon history and a chance to make a mark on Oregon’s feeble economy. As noted here in the past, comebacks are hard – particularly for former governors, but Kitzhaber joins former and future Governors Jerry Brown in California and Terry Branstad in Iowa as some of the comeback kids in this cycle.

There are many, many Republican winners this week – Boehner, Haley Barbour, Marco Rubio, John Kasich, Idaho’s Mike Simpson (new Appropriations and EPA oversight clout), Oregon’s Greg Walden (Boehner’s transition leader) and on and on, but in raw political terms there is no bigger winner among the many Democratic losers than Harry Reid.

Considering the dynamics of Reid’s race and the fact that he is loathed by many of his constituents, the fact that he survived against a Tea Party rival, even one as fundamentally flawed as a candidate as Sharron Angle, is remarkable. Steve Friess writes at The Daily Beast that Reid won the old fashioned way by running a dogged, determined campaign that left no detail unattended.

“By the time he strolled onto the stage on Tuesday arm-in-arm with wife Landra wearing a Cheshire Cat grin,” Friess writes, “all of Reid’s best-laid plans had gone perfectly and he had not only won but done so convincingly.”

But, back to that jokester Dick “The Voters Have Spoken” Tuck. Maybe we could use some of his mostly harmless good humor in our current polarized political culture.

Time magazine noted back in 1973 that Tuck briefly attached himself to then-Sen. George McGovern’s presidential campaign against Nixon, but as it turned out with limited success.

“McGovern did not seem to appreciate a good joke much more than Nixon,” Time reported. “When [Nixon] and some fat cats were about to pay a visit to [Nixon’s Treasury Secretary] John Connally’s ranch, Tuck proposed sending a Brink’s armored car to the scene followed by a Mexican laundry truck. But the McGovernites vetoed the suggestion.”

In place of the ultra-nasty political air wars we’ve all endured, we could use a few more clever, not mean, political pranks like Tuck’s. Humor in politics is a good thing.

Here’s wishing – for both winners and losers on Tuesday – that they find a way to add a little humor to the necessary post-election self reflection and that a healthy dose of modesty now replace the bombast and hyperbole. And, of course, no talking during the back swing.

A bitter election and the serious problems confronting the country now demand the best of all of this week’s survivors.

Commercials You Might Remember

Unlike the famous – or infamous – Daisy ad from the 1964 Lyndon Johnson – Barry Goldwater campaign, most political commercials today are cut from a predictable pattern. In the typical ad the opponent is rotten, the other guy is a genius. It is the rare commercial that breaks the mold and breaks through.

Political junkies know the story of the famous ad man Tony Schwartz who filmed the adorable little girl pulling the petals off a daisy with her innocent image ultimately fading into a nuclear blast and a mushroom cloud. The ad aired only once during a CBS Monday night movie in September 1964, but is generally credited with helping ensure Johnson’s landslide victory. The ad is famous enough that it was mentioned in the first paragraph of Schwartz’s obit when he died in 2008.

In my searching around, I’ve found nothing on par with the Daisy ad, but have identified a handful of ads worth remembering this year; mostly positive and one just a great example of raw, effective political propaganda.

The campaign of California’s comeback gubernatorial candidate, Jerry Brown, has actually produced two of the better ads of the season. This side-by-side mash up of soundbites from unpopular current Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and current GOP contender Meg Whitman is not only well done, but very effective. But, it is Brown’s closing ad reminding Californians what he had done as governor that likely seals the deal.

Republican Marco Rubio appears to be coasting to a Senate victory in Florida. His closing ad asking for the vote is one of the best I have ever seen. It’s long – two minutes – but the length allows him, in a very compelling way, to tell a story – his story. In the best tradition of some of the great Reagan ads, it is inspiring, aspirational and positive. Keep an eye on this guy.

Tom Barrett is the Democratic candidate for governor in Wisconsin and the current mayor of Milwaukee. The polls indicate he is not likely to win, but his campaign gets points for a skillful and compelling spot featuring his wife as she talks about her husband getting attacked while trying to help a grandmother ward off an assault. The whole thing could have been awkward, even tacky, but it isn’t and like the Rubio spot tells the viewer a good deal about the candidate.

My final spot of note – the Chinese Professor ad – has already become an Internet sensation. Writing in The Atlantic, James Fallows says this spot will be the one we remember in 10 years. Could be. It has all the elements – a story, Chinese students in 2030 considering the demise of the United States economy; just enough truth to get you thinking and until the very end there is no hint that this is about policy and politics.

As Fallows says, as truth the ad is really good propaganda since the spot “has the Chinese (professor) saying that America collapsed because, in the midst of a recession, it relied on (a) government stimulus spending, (b) big changes in its health care systems, and (c) public intervention in major industries — all of which of course, have been crucial parts of China’s (successful) anti-recession policy.” Still, it wouldn’t be good propaganda were it not effective.

You know the Chinese Professor ad is effective because it has already spawned a parody that turns the original message on its head.

So few of the thousands of political ads are good enough to be memorable, its worth pausing to celebrate the handful that are. It is also worth noting that the really good ads, like this small collection, tell a compelling story and avoid talking down to the viewer. There is an element in each ad that says, in a way, we trust you to vote intelligently. A nice thought.