Washington Journal
June 17, 2008
How can one live in the nation’s capital and not pay attention to the presidential election process? Why bother to live here if one does not care about such things?
It is like living in the eye of the hurricane. While the actual campaigning and the deluge of television advertising usually take place elsewhere, the analysis and strategizing take place here. The thousands of commentators, newscasters, news analysts, pollsters, mavens, pundits and their attendant publications or broadcasts are usually based here. This year, somewhat unusually, both Hillary Clinton and John McCain had their national headquarters across the Potomac in Arlington County. Living in Washington gives you a ring-side seat to watch the fight.
Finally, in early June, we know for certain who the Democratic Party’s nominee will be. Hillary Clinton started out as the presumed front-runner, soon fell behind as Obama, Edwards and Clinton finished 1-2-3, separated by a single percentage point, in Iowa. She made a quick recovery in New Hampshire, won Nevada, lost South Carolina and emerged from Super Tuesday in early February with a slight lead in delegates.
Then came her nightmare: ten straight losses in caucuses and primaries, all by substantial margins, which put her behind in delegates and stopped the superdelegates, as long had been expected by this point, from declaring for her. Obama suddenly had the momentum and the money. He had out-organized and out-hustled what should have been the smarter campaign, a campaign run by two of the smartest politicians in the country and a host of experienced, battle-tested advisers.
She shook up her campaign, focussed her message, found Obama’s weak points, caught some lucky breaks and essentially re-launched her campaign. For all that Howard Wolfson, Harold Ickes and her other spokespersons have said about how her campaign has made a better candidate out of Obama, perhaps they could return the compliment, for it is certainly the Obama campaign that has made Hillary Clinton the focussed, energetic campaigner that she has been for the past couple of months.
But the last primary has taken place and it is clear that Obama has the delegates. As President-elect Richard Nixon said in 1968, after perhaps the bitterest year ever in American politics, and after an extremely close election, “I have won some and I have lost some. Winning is a lot more fun.”
Yes, winning is fun and defeat is a foretaste of hell. Yet defeat is the ultimate test of character. Only those who lose gracefully deserve ultimately to win. Usually they are the only ones who do. It is a rare politician who has not tasted defeat and tasted it rather often. Likewise athletes. The vast majority of them never win a championship. As the Ted Williams, perhaps the greatest hitter of all time, put it, “Even the best hitter in baseball walks back to the dugout looking foolish more than half of the time.”
There is some debate about the role of sports, particularly team sports, in American life. Perhaps these sports are over-valued in high school and college. Professional sports are awash in money and who knows, drugs and cheating. Nonetheless high performance athletes model for the rest of how to win and how to lose. In a highly competitive society, this is valuable behavior.
Generally, athletes don’t complain much. Their coaches do not allow it. They know that if you complain while being a loser, you will never be a winner. After the New York Knicks lost another heartbreaker to the Chicago Bulls several years ago, the New York papers showed photographs of what looked like fouls in the closing seconds. One member of the Knicks, I forget whom, responded with something like: “OK. There may have been fouls. But we still needed to put the ball in the basket, and we didn’t.” That was the end of it.
Richard Nixon did not lose particularly gracefully, but he did nothing to make it difficult for President Kennedy or Pat Brown to govern. He directed his bitterness toward the press, not towards the victors and eventually won his party’s nomination in 1968 because he simply did not give up. He toured the country giving speeches at every Republican Party gathering he could find. After a few years, almost every important Republican in the country owed him a favor. He was essentially unopposed in the Republican primaries in 1968.
This is a good lesson for Hillary Clinton, not to mention everyone else who is jostling for power in Washington, or wherever, which is just about everyone, sooner or later. She is in good health and can expect to live another twenty years. Compared to other Senators, she is not old and still will not be old in 2012 or 2016. In 2020 she will be as old as John McCain and younger than President Reagan when he ran for re-election. If Obama wins the coming election, she will be in good position to run in 2016, or 2012 if he loses.
Despite some disturbing signs from her and some supporters that they wanted to fight all the way to the convention, she stepped up to the microphones and klieg lights on Saturday to tell everyone to accept the verdict of the party, however it was determined, and support the nominee. If she and her supporters ever want to win in the future, they have to do this. How well they all do this will determine whether she will ever become an older and perhaps wiser president than she so ardently wants to be seven months from now.
- Richard Allen Hyde
Showing posts with label Elections. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Elections. Show all posts
Tuesday, June 17, 2008
Friday, October 26, 2007
Washington Journal
In Search of a Sense of Place
Washington Journal
Richard Allen Hyde
October 20, 2007
It has been a dry summer in Washington. There may have been two inches of rain since May. Grass that has not been watered turned brown in early August. The humidity has generally been low by Washington standards, although, of course, there have been days when your skin felt like it had thousands of tiny insects dancing on it within minutes of stepping outside. Now with leaves slowly turning and still no rain, the weather reminds me of Califonia, where late summer fades imperceptibly into fall and fall seems like it will last forever. In Asia they call this monsoon weather: Dry, dry, dry. Finally it rains.
Yes, it has also been hot. It is always hot in Washington in the summer. This summer was about normal in that respect. But it has not rained. The grass on the National Mall is in desperate need of rain. I am told that there is no money in the National Park Service’s budget for watering.
Literature majors know that this is the background of T.S. Eliot’s Wasteland. Even non-majors probably know that too much has been made of that poem already. Nonetheless, it has never been more apt. Weather is not the only dry phenomenon in Washington these days. Washington waits for a new president as anxiously as farmers await the rain; people here are just as surly as when the rain does not come and the crops are ruined. The rain, the actual, physical rain, will come a lot sooner than the change of government, probably before even the first primary election, which is still months off.
The Bush Presidency staggers on. Everyone, including Republicans, is sick of it. As in some species of ants, the main body is long since dead, but the stinger, the vaunted public relations team, keeps on fighting. Elsewhere, the whole political apparatus is afflicted with the dry heaves. Politicians keep opening their mouths to speak, but nothing comes out.
Yet unselfish acts occasionally take place in this city. The Bush administration announced stronger sanctions against and froze the assets of the weird generals who run Burma. President and members of Congress warmly welcomed the Dalai Lama and gave him a medal, which left the Chinese government fuming. Acts like this remind us that freedom is still the name of the game in Washington, and throughout America. Our government, like all government, everywhere, makes compromises. Likewise, it makes clear occasionally what it ultimately values. In this country, it’s freedom.
I have been reading David McCullough’s biography of President Truman, the unremarkable man who became FDR’s third vice-president after the charming and personable Henry Wallace became just a bit too loopy to be vice-president to an obviously ailing President Roosevelt. The unremarkable Truman became a remarkable president.
When he first arrived in Washington, as a senator, in 1935, he generally walked from his apartment on upper Connecticut Avenue to the Capitol (over five miles), arriving so early that he was issued a special key to get to his office. As President, he made momentous decisions. He was his own chief of staff. He was the last president to write his own speeches and the last with only a high school education. He reorganized the entire foreign policy apparatus of the government, combining the War and Navy Departments to make the Defense Department. His Secretaries of State, George Marshall and Dean Acheson, were perhaps the best ever to hold the office. The Marshall Plan, which loaned or gave Europe billions of dollars when a billion was still a large number, has been characterized as one of the most unselfish acts ever undertaken by a government. It was also one of the wisest. Europe is free today because of it. Where would we be without it? Truman held 324 press conferences.
Harry Truman certainly waged the most remarkable election campaign for president in the history of the office. After being counted out by pundits and pollsters from beginning to end, he won the popular vote by over two million. His party won both houses of Congress by wide margins. Disregarding the polls, the people spoke. Democracy worked.
The often-overlooked fact of this storybook campaign is that a shift of less than 50,000 votes in Illinois and California would have given the election to his opponent, Thomas Dewey. This is something to ponder, for it is quite possible that the popular vote winner of this coming election in 2008 will lose the election. There is no telling at this point whether the disgruntled winner/loser will be a Republican or Democrat.
Let us assume that Hillary Clinton and Rudolf Giuliani, both of whom are intensely disliked by members of the opposite party, will be the nominees. It will certainly be a close, hard-fought election. How will the supporters of either of these candidates feel about winning the popular vote yet losing the election in the electoral college? It is not clear who will be more insufferable, as winner or loser, with such a result. George Bush won a contested election and has not had a popular presidency. Can we afford to do this again?
Let’s face it: the electoral college has long outlived its usefulness, if it ever had any to begin with. The primary system worked fairly well, for a while, but now it is time for it to go as well. It is high time for a complete federal election overhaul: one national primary day and abolishing the electoral college. Federal election standards, and funding, for all elections. I believe it is in the interest of both parties and the entire electorate to do this.
I know the argument for primaries: it gives at least a few voters the opportunity to see candidates up close and ask questions. But why should this privilege go to voters in the same states year after year? Further, I submit that the system no longer works to give lesser-known candidates a chance. The candidate with the most money and backing from party leaders usually wins, and that candidate has often been a second-rate candidate. We have had numerous chances for a fresh faces: Gary Hart in 1984 (four years before he self-destructed), Bill Bradley in 2000, Howard Dean and John McCain in 2004 all would have been more interesting candidates than what we ultimately got. They ultimately were done in by superior funding, powerful backers and television. Bill Clinton is the notable exception. Can anyone even name whom he was running against in 1992?
So why bother with the charade? Either reform the primary system or let the party leaders and a few super-rich folks get together and choose the candidates in a beautiful, air-conditioned corporate retreat center (the proverbial smoke-filled room is long gone) in July and start the campaign right afterward. Save everyone a lot of time and trouble.
Copyright, 2007
Richard Allen Hyde
Washington Journal
Richard Allen Hyde
October 20, 2007
It has been a dry summer in Washington. There may have been two inches of rain since May. Grass that has not been watered turned brown in early August. The humidity has generally been low by Washington standards, although, of course, there have been days when your skin felt like it had thousands of tiny insects dancing on it within minutes of stepping outside. Now with leaves slowly turning and still no rain, the weather reminds me of Califonia, where late summer fades imperceptibly into fall and fall seems like it will last forever. In Asia they call this monsoon weather: Dry, dry, dry. Finally it rains.
Yes, it has also been hot. It is always hot in Washington in the summer. This summer was about normal in that respect. But it has not rained. The grass on the National Mall is in desperate need of rain. I am told that there is no money in the National Park Service’s budget for watering.
Literature majors know that this is the background of T.S. Eliot’s Wasteland. Even non-majors probably know that too much has been made of that poem already. Nonetheless, it has never been more apt. Weather is not the only dry phenomenon in Washington these days. Washington waits for a new president as anxiously as farmers await the rain; people here are just as surly as when the rain does not come and the crops are ruined. The rain, the actual, physical rain, will come a lot sooner than the change of government, probably before even the first primary election, which is still months off.
The Bush Presidency staggers on. Everyone, including Republicans, is sick of it. As in some species of ants, the main body is long since dead, but the stinger, the vaunted public relations team, keeps on fighting. Elsewhere, the whole political apparatus is afflicted with the dry heaves. Politicians keep opening their mouths to speak, but nothing comes out.
Yet unselfish acts occasionally take place in this city. The Bush administration announced stronger sanctions against and froze the assets of the weird generals who run Burma. President and members of Congress warmly welcomed the Dalai Lama and gave him a medal, which left the Chinese government fuming. Acts like this remind us that freedom is still the name of the game in Washington, and throughout America. Our government, like all government, everywhere, makes compromises. Likewise, it makes clear occasionally what it ultimately values. In this country, it’s freedom.
I have been reading David McCullough’s biography of President Truman, the unremarkable man who became FDR’s third vice-president after the charming and personable Henry Wallace became just a bit too loopy to be vice-president to an obviously ailing President Roosevelt. The unremarkable Truman became a remarkable president.
When he first arrived in Washington, as a senator, in 1935, he generally walked from his apartment on upper Connecticut Avenue to the Capitol (over five miles), arriving so early that he was issued a special key to get to his office. As President, he made momentous decisions. He was his own chief of staff. He was the last president to write his own speeches and the last with only a high school education. He reorganized the entire foreign policy apparatus of the government, combining the War and Navy Departments to make the Defense Department. His Secretaries of State, George Marshall and Dean Acheson, were perhaps the best ever to hold the office. The Marshall Plan, which loaned or gave Europe billions of dollars when a billion was still a large number, has been characterized as one of the most unselfish acts ever undertaken by a government. It was also one of the wisest. Europe is free today because of it. Where would we be without it? Truman held 324 press conferences.
Harry Truman certainly waged the most remarkable election campaign for president in the history of the office. After being counted out by pundits and pollsters from beginning to end, he won the popular vote by over two million. His party won both houses of Congress by wide margins. Disregarding the polls, the people spoke. Democracy worked.
The often-overlooked fact of this storybook campaign is that a shift of less than 50,000 votes in Illinois and California would have given the election to his opponent, Thomas Dewey. This is something to ponder, for it is quite possible that the popular vote winner of this coming election in 2008 will lose the election. There is no telling at this point whether the disgruntled winner/loser will be a Republican or Democrat.
Let us assume that Hillary Clinton and Rudolf Giuliani, both of whom are intensely disliked by members of the opposite party, will be the nominees. It will certainly be a close, hard-fought election. How will the supporters of either of these candidates feel about winning the popular vote yet losing the election in the electoral college? It is not clear who will be more insufferable, as winner or loser, with such a result. George Bush won a contested election and has not had a popular presidency. Can we afford to do this again?
Let’s face it: the electoral college has long outlived its usefulness, if it ever had any to begin with. The primary system worked fairly well, for a while, but now it is time for it to go as well. It is high time for a complete federal election overhaul: one national primary day and abolishing the electoral college. Federal election standards, and funding, for all elections. I believe it is in the interest of both parties and the entire electorate to do this.
I know the argument for primaries: it gives at least a few voters the opportunity to see candidates up close and ask questions. But why should this privilege go to voters in the same states year after year? Further, I submit that the system no longer works to give lesser-known candidates a chance. The candidate with the most money and backing from party leaders usually wins, and that candidate has often been a second-rate candidate. We have had numerous chances for a fresh faces: Gary Hart in 1984 (four years before he self-destructed), Bill Bradley in 2000, Howard Dean and John McCain in 2004 all would have been more interesting candidates than what we ultimately got. They ultimately were done in by superior funding, powerful backers and television. Bill Clinton is the notable exception. Can anyone even name whom he was running against in 1992?
So why bother with the charade? Either reform the primary system or let the party leaders and a few super-rich folks get together and choose the candidates in a beautiful, air-conditioned corporate retreat center (the proverbial smoke-filled room is long gone) in July and start the campaign right afterward. Save everyone a lot of time and trouble.
Copyright, 2007
Richard Allen Hyde
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