(TPJ 192)
by - Steven Jonas, MD, MPH
Editor/Publisher’s Note: Dr. Jonas’ column
today is unique – actually a private look at TPJ behind the scenes.
Dr. Jonas submitted his column for publication and requested that I respond to
him with my thoughts. I privately returned my thoughts (in red below) and
Dr. Jonas immediately responded that his column should run with my comments.
_____
Three weeks ago I ran a column on a “Game Plan for
Obama.” It assumed that he would win the Democratic nomination and
offered some thoughts on how he might best run his campaign for the
Presidency. (Actually at the time he didn’t have the nomination sewed up
and I noted that several of the ideas were applicable to both the primary
campaign and the general election.) As I write this on May 16, Sen. Obama
does seem to have the nomination sewed up; that is unless the Clintons have
been saving some bombshell that would make the “Rev. Wright controversy” they tried so unsuccessfully to use seem like it had been shot
from a bee-bee gun.
I have not been an Obama supporter from the
beginning of the primary campaign, but I must admit that I have been a Clinton
opponent from the beginning. I did not think that she could win the
general election, given her extraordinarily high negatives (Actually, I think
this fact may have prevented her obtaining the nomination. The query is
thus: if Hillary’s negatives had not been so high, would Rev. Wright have
doomed Obama?), and I did not like her approach to governing which shared with
George H.W. Bush an aversion to “the vision thing.” (George W. Bush, by
the way, has absolutely no aversion to “the vision thing.” He has a
vision alright, and he has been highly successful in
implementing it [see my TPJ columns “The Most Successful American President,
Parts 1, 2, and 3, TPJ nos. 155-57, in the list below]. He just never
bothered to share his true vision with the American people at large and his
Democratic challengers just never happened to reveal it for him.) Sen.
Edwards was my man until he dropped out. Then I began looking at Sen.
Obama more closely, particularly attracted by the fact that he is very much
into “the vision thing” and happens to have one for the future of our nation
that I like very much.
But with all of her negatives in the general
population and her lack of vision, could Sen. Clinton have won the nomination
anyway? I think that she could have. In this column I share with
you some thoughts about how she might have gone about doing that. It
would have required an entirely different approach to the task of winning the
nomination, in both substance and process, from the beginning. (Agreed, she
lacked an effective strategy as to either – telling for a woman that we
thought was at the top of the political strategist list) To help get a
handle on the process first, let’s look briefly at how the last two Democratic
Presidential candidates went about trying to get elected.
Al Gore clearly ran not to lose. He and his
people thought that George Bush would be pushover and that even with all the WJ
Clinton negatives (with which he tried as hard as he could to disassociate
himself) the Clinton positives would play for him. He did manage to win
of course, just not by enough to avoid having the election stolen from him by
the firm of Baker, Rove, et al. And even in the Florida, while the
Georgites, actually playing with the weaker hand (they knew that if there were
a state-wide recount, they would lose), played to win, Gore played not to
lose. And he lost.
John Kerry, apparently learning from the Gore
experience, played to win. His problem was that neither he nor his
people, headed by perennial campaign-loser Bob Shrum, knew how to do
that. The non-response to the “Swift Boat” attack was only the most
prominent of his campaign fiascoes. He never attacked Bush on his true
record, he never countered other outrageous personal attacks such as Bush
saying in a New York Times Magazine interview that appeared about a
month before the election “I’m going to step on his neck,” he never engaged in
the innocent question “what is that square box under the President’s jacket” as
it had appeared so prominently during one of the Debates, he never used the
President’s “war record” against him and so one and so
forth. Kerry most likely won anyway, but even though he had $15 million
in campaign funds left over and had said that he would use it for legal
challenges if indicated, he never engaged in Ohio even though it was clear that
the Republican Secretary of State, who just happened to be Bush’s Ohio campaign
chairman, had rigged the election there. (As to Ohio, I think you are wrong;
but allow that you could be right. But note, since Dems have been
in power in Ohio and have the power to determine the issue we’ve heard nothing;
a telling silence I think.)
Hillary Clinton has continued this pattern, altered
slightly. She ran to win, but made the huge mistake of thinking that she
already had. (Yep! I would have added here that she also misperceived the mood
of the American people. Americans do want change – reflected by the
historic “wrong track” polling results – but she allowed herself to be
painted as a part of the political establishment that is part of the problem
rather than an agent for change that Americans want. This was perhaps the
biggest “blunder” of her campaign.) In a sports analogy, she and her
campaign thought that they simply had “throw their jerseys out on the floor”
and the game was theirs. Thus for her, like the 2007 season Super Bowl
was for the New England Patriots, the contest became what in sports lingo is
called the “trap game.” You’re just so sure that you are going to
win that by the time you start playing to win, you’ve lost. And
so, here are some thoughts on how Hillary could have won, even given her
negatives.
1. Never assume that you
have the game in hand. Obama isn’t doing so, even as I write. (Ok.)(You
also miss a larger political reality here. AA voters were a large part of
Clinton’s base. Bill Clinton constructed victory without a plurality of W
votes; but enough W votes coupled with AA support to win. When BO started
locking up AA’s, he was effectively cutting HC from her base and an easy
victory. BO also garnered W Northern and Collegiate intellectuals who
have never liked the Clinton’s and who found a more “pure” progressive in
BO. That has been BO’s winning coalition.)
2. Hire the right team, with
no potential conflicts of interest, that will provide full-time
leadership. Mark Penn, for some odd reason her numero uno, was negative on both counts. (Ok, as far as
it goes. However, the larger issue is that if you have to run a campaign
to explain a vision of change, Penn, et al is not the right man for the
job. Refer back to Kerry’s campaign for example.)
3. Spend some time figuring
why you really want to be President. Ego? Power? Get something
done? For your party? For
your primary funders? For the majority of the
people? For your country? Clinton
didn’t really seem to know, likely the major reason why the focus of her
campaign has been all over the place, even at times from day-to-day. (You’re
onto the central issue, but more clarity is needed. Hillary does represent
change, so what examples would you give? How should she have packaged them
– what was the overarching “vision” that would have convinced Americans.)
4. Establish your principles
of governance and governing first. Use focus groups to figure out how to
present them. Don’t use focus groups to establish your principles.
The first is leadership. The second (which the Clintons have done
forever) is “followship.” (Really? I think you’re correct as to the first
sentence to the extent that one never got an overarching theme to her candidacy
– but was it because she followed? Don’t think so.)
5. Learn the lessons of the
Dean Campaign. Vast sums of money can be raised on the web. But
financing is only the beginning. Money without organization, which is
what Dean had, gets you what Dean got: nothing. Joe Trippi, his Campaign
Manager, invented modern web fundraising. He also got to Iowa there
thousands of “Deaniacs.” But they largely sat on their hands because
there was no plan for organizing them. If you rely mainly on large
donors, like Clinton did, and you run into trouble, your money will eventually
run out, like Clinton’s has. (Correct …. Horrid ground game. But, isn’t that what you get with
the likes of Penn et al?)
6.
Specific campaign policy mistakes:
a. The refusal to totally
disavow the War-on-Iraq vote, without any “if I had known then what I know now”
equivocation, probably doomed the campaign from the beginning. (Really?
It certainly hurt her with the intellectual intelligista,
and that helped provide critical support for Obama; but that is about it!
As for average Americans the anti-war movement has been a dismal failure. Anybody on the streets? Any civil disobedience
afoot?)
b. The drivers’ licenses for
undocumented aliens thing, the first sign of a chink in the Clinton
armor. It would have been difficult to think the following answer up on
the spot, but they could have had in hand by the next day: “You know
what? I did take two contradictory positions. That shows just how
complicated this issue is and how the simplicity of Cong. Hunter, echoed by so
many Republicans, simply will not work.” (I agree.)
c. Rev. Wright. As for
Clinton, how much better she would have been served had she, when the Rev.
Wright thing broke, said words to the effect of: "This issue has no place
in the campaign. One's religion and religious views, and the views of
one's pastor for which one is hardly responsible, have no place in the
campaign. That is they have no place as long as one is not trying to
impose them on others, as the Republican Party tries to do regularly on such
issues as abortion and homosexual rights. The Rev. Wright has not
endorsed Sen. Obama. (Factually incorrect. The problem with Rev. Wright
for BO was NOT that he damned America – free country; you can damn
America all you want. Problem was that BO had him on his national
campaign staff. So, if Hillary had to be careful about aides who have “conflicts
of interest,” BO, who had to know Rev. Wright’s views, exercised terrible
judgment in associating him with the campaign in any regard.) These
attacks are out-of-bounds, and some would consider them racist in nature.
Now, when it comes to ministers who step into the political arena, like Sen.
McCain's Rev. Hagee, that's another story." (You’ll have to explain
the difference to me and millions of other Americans.
I don’t see any real differences.) When the obits and then the history of
her miserable campaign are written this monstrous mistake (in several senses)
will be featured, I'm sure.
d. Prof. Ayres. A similar
approach: politicians who engage in guilt-by-association just take us
back to one of the tawdriest eras of American history. (As for the
“Kindergarten” gambit, that one should have been left in the sandbox to begin
with.) (Well, I am not as strong on this one as you are. Most American children are taught by their grandmothers that
“if you lay down with dogs you get fleas.” I think who you surround yourself with is important. Haven’t we been making that
point about Bush and PNAC? Are we being hypocritical here?)
e. When facing a candidate who assumes that the electorate is intelligent, you have to
do it too: no “gas tax gambit.” (You would really list this as one of the
biggies?)
f. Recognize right up
front that what the nation needs, and wants, most is change. Use your
experience to fortify you position that you are thus best situated to produce
it, not to put it up against a candidate running as a change-maker first and
foremost and make fun of him simply as a good speech maker. (Here it is, the
“rub” of the matter I think.)
g. Attack the Limbaugh/Republican
Operation Chaos. Don’t accept its supposed benefits because your
candidacy will always be suspect, even if OC were to turn out to not have been
a factor.
h. Right from the git-go, think of Obama as your running mate. (Yep!)
But Clinton didn’t do any of the above. She
will go down in history just as another brilliant but politically flawed “shoulda-coulda-woulda,” in the mold of Senator Douglas and
Gov. Seward from the Civil War Era.(Maybe, maybe not!)
Let’s just hope that Obama will prove to be the Lincoln from that time, without
the Civil War, of course. (From your lips to God’s ear!)
(This was fun. But, let’s look at some realities for BO as
our nomine – serious ones! Consider this as a gratuitous expansion
of your original question.)
1. He has cobbled
together AA’s and the intellectual elite and some urban W’s into a winning
coalition. Excellent construction and it worked. But, Hillary has
exposed his weaknesses – BO has little appeal to “lunch bucket” Democrats
and especially Independents. McCain will “move to the center” to capture
these voters. If he does, BO will go down in history as a McGovern rather
than Kennedy.
In the Dem Primary,
about one third of all voters describe themselves as “liberal.” In some
primaries that figure has reached 40%+. In the general election, the
percent of self-identified liberals will fall to 19% on a good day.
2. Quick. Name 3, 5, 10 of BO’s economic policies. Can’t do it? I
can’t. No one else I know can do it. The point being
….. Well, he attacks NAFTA, CAFTA, etc., but the reality is that we have
already passed that bridge. There is no walking back from globalization;
the question now is how do we survive and thrive in the new reality. I was
APPALLED that while he was attacking NAFTA his advisors were calling the
Canadians to reassure them that it was just campaign rhetoric.
Vision? Leadership? Honesty? Looks like a
standard, RANK, political ploy to me.
3. BO is talking about
transcending Parties? Say what? What does that really mean?
Can you tell me? Are he and Republicans going to sit down and sing Kumbaya at the policy table? I question his judgment.
4. Vision vs. reality.
BO was in North Carolina talking about making NC a battleground State in the
General Election. NC Democrats would eat sand to see that happen.
Well, the primary is over and BO campaign closed their campaign
headquarters. Will they be back? Vision? Honesty? Moral
character? Politically, the decision to leave NC may or may not be smart.
But, is this how BO delivers on his promises? Telling I think.
5. In NC, several polls are
showing that 1 in 4 DEMOCRATS will be voting for McCain. Repeat, 1 in
4. While Obama campaigned here, he never left the big cities. In
fact, five cities gave him his winning margins. But, did he travel to
rural NC. Did he talk with W rural poor people? NOT
ONCE! Smart politically in the short term, but it will not help him
win NC or a lot of other States.
6. I truly believe who one associates with is a legitimate issue. We held
Bush to account for his associations; and not to do so with BO is
hypocritical. BO’s judgment on Rev. Wright was horrid, simply horrid.
But, MORE IMPORTANTLY, the advisors around BO do not understand American
cultural values. I have written you before that in NC they were playing ads of
two yuppies discussing political issues in a Starbucks. Even BO
supporters were scratching their heads. If he does not understand who he is talking to, he will never capture the Americans he
needs to win.
7. AND, he walked away from
W Virginia. Again, smart politically, but politics as usual is not what
he promised. And, if he is unwilling to engage the less educated, W,
culturally conservative citizens of W Virginia, what does this say about his ability
to form a winning coalition in November? Telling I think. Doc, he
walked away and the political left has given him a pass on it. BAD! What
does that say to people about his “new politics?”
The political left is going to get its candidate. It will
either be a transitional election of historic proportions or it may look more
like McGovern “gone wild.” I hope and will ardently work for the former;
I fear the latter.