Elizabeth Edwards: 1949 – 2010

There is no more difficult – nor ill-defined – role in American public life than the role of political spouse. There are simply no rules and the highest and most unreasonable expectations.

Every woman – and let’s face it the vast majority of political spouses are women – has to make it up every day. Like a circus high wire act, there is no net and, politics being politics, there are always opponents, score settlers and even campaign handlers who are quietly cheering for a fall from the wire.

Some spouses like an Eleanor Roosevelt of history or a Hillary Clinton of the Senate and State Department find a unique way to play the role. Others like a Cindy McCain or a Joan Kennedy never seem comfortable in the awkward public space that surrounds them.

There is an old joke among political operatives that on the campaign trial you can always find a way to manage the (male) candidate’s personality, it will be the spouse that presents the real challenge. I can only imagine that the old line was whispered regularly on every John Edwards campaign.

Elizabeth Edwards, who died yesterday after a excruciatingly public battle with cancer, an unfaithful husband and the tragic loss of a young son, seems to have had vastly more than her share of the ill-defined role of public spouse. As the Washington Post said, she lived her private pain on a very public stage.

Edwards was by all accounts – and not all were praising her – whip smart, extremely tough, resilient, opinionated, demanding, ambitious, unable to suffer fools easily or well. All that would be viewed as a compliment where it a description of a male candidate rather than a political spouse.

Still the vast majority of the recollections of this remarkable woman’s life leave one thinking that our politics would be better had she been the senator, the vice presidential and presidential candidate. Instead, it was the now-disgraced John Edwards who flashed upon the American political scene and seemed just as quickly to flame out in the wake of personal scandal. Elizabeth Edwards went along for the ride, but not as a bit player, and in the process became a bigger and vastly more admirable player than her clueless husband.

The best-selling campaign book Game Change will feature in many Elizabeth Edwards obits because of its lacerating view of her as the opinionated witch on the campaign bus. When I read that account in the aftermath of the 2008 election, it struck me, as Jonathan Alter has now written, that the frequently vicious culture of American politics was kicking her when she was down. Some were being critical of Edwards for seeming to enable her husband’s behavior before turning it to benefit her own personality and celebrity.

What was missing in much of the portrait of Elizabeth Edwards was the element of human understanding and the unique dynamics of each and every personal relationship – especially a marriage relationship. Many political spouses don’t, initially at least, get much say in whether they go along for the political ride. Once on the campaign bus they find a way to play the role they are assigned and most end up taking pride and affirmation from the candidate-husband’s ambition and success. When controversy or adversity arises, the spouse, as in the case of Elizabeth Edwards, is left to cope as best they can. Being human, some do it better than others.

As Alter and others have written, Americans – particularly the class of political elites in both parties and the press – like nothing better than to build up our celebrities before we bring them low. We forget, too easily, that they are just people who suffer loss, endure pain and rage against illness. They just do it in real time in front of a camera and on the pages of anonymously sourced political books. And, of course, the truth in public life is never as clear cut or unambiguous as the air brushed image. The messy, tragic complexity of Elizabeth Edwards’ story should make the truth of that statement all too obvious.

In the whole scheme of playing the incredible hand she was dealt, you have to say that Elizabeth Edwards didn’t play it perfectly, just better than most of us would have and certainly better than the man she – and many of us – thought could be president.

Press Secretary to a Good Boss

I once held the best job I can think of in government. For five years, I was the press secretary to a candidate for governor who then became governor. As I think back on that stint from 1986 to 1991, I consider it my “post graduate education” in communications, public affairs strategy, crisis management, handling of big egos and multi-tasking. It was about the best job – and the most stressful – I’ve ever had.

That’s Steve Early looking over Franklin Roosevelt’s shoulder in the photo. Early, a former reporter, was perhaps the earliest person in American politics to really be considered a “press secretary.” He worked on FDR’s 1932 campaign and took his considerable skills into the White House where he served every day of Roosevelt’s presidency. Based upon what I’ve read of Steve Early’s career, he was more than a gatekeeper. He advised on policy and often when FDR was away from Washington, Early was literally in charge. Almost a deputy president. Heady stuff.

Early went on to work for the Pullman Company and served in the Truman Administration as Deputy Secretary of Defense. Arguably, being FDR’s spokesman and policy advisor equipped him for just about any job.

[There is a good book on Steve Early and his role in helping FDR succeed that is a very worthwhile dip into Roosevelt’s political genius and his mastery, with his press secretary’s considerable help, of the media.]

The best and most successful politicians, I think, bring their press secretary or communications directors into the policy process. I was fortunate in my time as a press secretary to have a “seat at the table” in any meeting, easy and open access to the boss and real input into policy. I’m convinced it allowed me to do my press liaison job better. I wasn’t hearing things second or third hand. I was there when the decisions were made. I’ve always been glad I didn’t have to joust with reporters without a full, nuanced understanding of what the boss was trying to accomplish and why.

Many recent American presidents have had very good press secretaries, in part I think, because guys like Jody Powell (Carter), Marlin Fitzwater (Reagan), Pierre Salinger(Kennedy)and today’s Robert Gibbs have an advisor role as well as a spokesman role. Richard Nixon, by contrast, kept Ron Ziegler in the dark about most everything leading to the spokesman’s infamous phrase that “this is the operative statement. The others are inoperative.” In other words, I mislead you before, but you can count on what I just said. Bad territory for a press secretary.

There is nothing in the world quite like handling communication for a person in political life, which is just one of the reasons I’m so happy to welcome another person to our firm with that background. Anna Richter Taylor, the chief spokesperson and policy advisor to Oregon Gov. Ted Kulongoski is joining our firm’s Portland office early next year. Anna will be a stellar addition to our firm.

Anna will find, as I did some years ago, that being at the elbow of a governor who values the advice and perspective of a communications pro is about the best experience anyone can accumulate in politics and public affairs. It really is the best job in government. And that is an operative statement.

An American Critic

Chalmers Johnson, who died recently at age 79 in California, may be among the most influential foreign policy thinkers since George Kennan and too few people outside of the academy knew his name.

Johnson, an Asian scholar, was one of the first to understand and reinterpret the economic strength of Japan and China and, after spending his early life as a CIA consultant and a hawk on foreign policy, he transformed his thinking into insightful analysis of what he saw as the imperialist tendencies of the United States.

Johnson repeatedly asked a simple question that American policy makers rarely confront. Why is it that since the end of the Cold War, American defense spending has continued to escalate at a remarkable rate and why do we need more than 700 military installations in every corner of the world? Good question.

Johnson argued in a 2007 NPR interview and in his book Nemesis that America’s vast military complex, the cost to maintain it and the power it invested in the presidency was a fundamental danger to American democracy.

Johnson was in the tradition of great scholar/writers and politicians who were also foreign policy thinkers. He attempted in a careful, thoughtful way to place the American experience in the world in the context of history. He was not blinded, as so many political leaders are today, by the notion that America’s role in the world is somehow pre-ordained. The Romans and the British were forced, eventually, to come to grips with their lack of “exceptionalism” and that empire was a costly, ultimately futile (and fatal) exercise. The same fate may await the United States.

Chalmers Johnson argued that American democracy is the only aspect of our story that is truly exceptional and with so much attention devoted to American empire we are in danger of squandering the very thing that makes us great.