Advocacy Tip: Speak For Yourself!

Since midsummer, I've been deeply engaged in Elizabeth Warren's campaign for President.

I should be clear about this.  I'm a volunteer, not paid staff.  As ever in a long life in politics, I'm what the old-timers called a free lance - a citizen volunteer doing battle for the candidate of my choice in an election of consequence. 

No one pays me. No one instructs me.  I don't work off a script.

And when this is all over, and Elizabeth Warren is - I fervently hope - President of the United States,  I expect I'll disagree with my new President and her policies and priorities from time to time.

Some will find this attitude incomprehensible.  Today's politics - fueled by Americans' obsession with media and sheltered by our shameful ignorance of the past - has steadily become the arena of artificially outsized personalities.  Like a super-hero or super-villain in a blockbuster movie, the  contemporary candidate is portrayed as larger than life, but also - in a personal sense - curiously shallow and two-dimensional. 

In such an environment, if you're for a candidate, you're expected to be "all in" - agreeing with everything he or she says.  This attitude is terrifyingly prevalent among Trump supporters - which should be a sufficient argument for caution - but it was (and is) almost equally true of Obama supporters.  And Bernie supporters.  Going back a bit, it was true of those passionate about Bill Clinton, Ronald Reagan, and JFK.

It is a significant risk in every candidacy.

Political commentators refer to passionate "all-in" supporters as a politician's base.  As a student of Shakespeare, base isn't a thing I aspire to be.   Moreover, as a lifetime student of history, I find such fervent, unquestioning loyalty incomprehensible - and dangerous.

No human being, in all of history, has been infallible.  In my lifetime, I can't think of a single political figure who has risen to the level of historic greatness. Winston Churchill was still alive in my childhood, but he had long since had his "finest hour".  I was born six years too late to live under FDR, the last great American president.  In my time, Bobby Kennedy might have grown into greatness, but he never got the chance.  Nobody else - in electoral politics - has come close.

There was a time in our history when Congressional figures could rise to that level.  Henry Clay, for example, never won the presidency, but was certainly greater than all but a handful of those who have.  But in eight decades of World War, Cold War, terrorism, and the rise of the techo-security state, the executive branch has come into the ascendant - dangerously so.  No one in Congress has had the opportunity to show towering greatness since at least the early '60s.

Curiously, in my lifetime - with the White House occupied by an alternating series of mediocrities and sociopaths - the greatest governmental figure was probably Chief Justice Earl Warren.  But the present court, divided into partisan factions, offers no opportunity for a Warren or a John Marshall.

But I digress. My point is that, in modern American politics, greatness is a vanishingly rare commodity.  Most presidential candidates attempt to pull off the trick of the Wizard of Oz - projecting an artificially commanding, but two-dimensional, on-screen presence, while concealing the all-too-ordinary individual behind the curtain. 

Given this reality, it's remarkable that so many Americans, whatever their politics, continue falling into the trap of the cult of personality.

Why must we feel that our candidate of choice is infallible - when a more realistic view offers so many advantages when we are out campaigning? 

May I explain?


In recent days, I've received several emails from fellow Warren activists asking how I would defend particular aspects of the Senator's famous plans - in particular, her insistence that Medicare for All should replace all private policies, immediately, even for Americans who would prefer to retain their current employee health insurance.

This issue seems to be arising more and more often.  Without question, this single concern is an obstacle to many citizens embracing Senator Warren.  It has the potential to become her Achilles' heel. 

But climbing down from that too-advanced position is a matter for the candidate and her strategic inner circle.  My challenge is to speak with real Oregon voters - and occasionally, to offer advice and counsel to friends who are doing the same work.

Here is what I do, and what I suggest, about Medicare for All, Right Now.  I speak - not for Senator Warren - but for myself, as a citizen who wants Warren to be elected President, but has not surrendered the right to think for himself.  I answer, truthfully...

"Honestly, I agree with you. Forcing Americans to give up health care policies they have worked hard to earn seems neither wise nor fair.  On this issue, I think Elizabeth wants to move too fast.

"But that doesn't alter my support for her.  When I decide to support someone for President, it's not because of their plans, but because I trust them.  Because they have, in their careers, demonstrated certain essential qualities which have, historically, characterized our great and near-great Presidents:  good character; intelligence; vision; the ability to select and lead an effective team; the ability to communicate with fellow citizens; a high level of energy; persistence; common sense; and most of all, the ability to learn. 

"I don't worry much about plans.  Plans change.  When Abe Lincoln ran for President in 1860, the Republican Party's campaign slogan was 'Vote Yourself a Farm!'  Yep.  Lincoln ran on the Homestead Act - and the transcontinental railroad, and other related economic policies.  He didn't run as a war leader or an emancipator.  He  didn't expect the Civil War, and he had no idea that fighting it would provide the occasion to end slavery. 

"Or take FDR.  He knew, of course, that he'd have to deal with the Great Depression, but during his campaign, he promised repeatedly to do so by cutting taxes and balancing the Federal budget.  When he got into office, saw how the problem looked from behind the Big Desk, and talked to his economic advisors, he did exactly the opposite.  He borrowed and spent to stimulate the economy - and over time, he put America back to work.

"Now, throughout her life, Elizabeth Warren has proved willing and able to learn new things and leave old ideas behind.  Did you know she was raised in Norman, Oklahoma - and that she was a conservative Republican when they hired her to teach at Harvard Law?  What changed her mind was a research project focusing on the Bankruptcy Act of 1994.  She went in thinking bankruptcy was too easy on foolish people - that it let them off the hook for irresponsible decisions they had freely made.  What she discovered was the "predatory lending" industry - and that changed her whole view of how the American economy operates.

"Which is why I don't worry too much about her health care plan - or really, any of her plans.  I'm not interested so much in the details of her plans, as in how her mind works.  And what I've learned is that she is bold and visionary - ready to make what she calls "big, structural change".  At this point in our history, I think we need that.  Senator Warren thinks big, but she is practical enough to figure out how her new ideas will be paid for, and to make provision for that.

"Like FDR, I expect President Warren will change her mind about a lot of things when she gets to the White House.  Not her goals, but the details. I think her goals are pretty clear.   She has an appealing vision of the kind of America she wants us to build together.  But the ways and means will change considerably.  Senator Warren has proved in the past that she's smart enough to admit when she's wrong - and if it turns out she's wrong about moving to Medicare For All so quickly, I'm confident she'll adopt a more gradual course.

"And really, won't she have to?  I really hope the Democrats take back the Senate next year - and put Mitch McConnell out to pasture.  I think Elizabeth is the Democrats' best chance to do that, because people will come out to vote for her.  She'll have coattails.  But even if the Democrats win the Senate and hold the House, there are going to be enough moderate Democrats in both chambers to slow things down a bit.  President Warren will have to compromise with Congress, as all Presidents do.

"But at least she's starting from a posture of thinking big and acting boldly.  That's the only way to deal with Congress.  If you start off timid, you won't accomplish a thing.

"Anyway, that's my answer.  I'm for a more gradual shift to single-payer health care.  I'd like to say I agree with my candidate on everything, but I don't have to.  What's important to me is that I think she's the right person for the job - and that she's smart enough to adjust when her plans don't quite match reality.  That's why I'm working for her."

Not the sort of answer you would get from a paid staffer - or from someone who had drunk the Kool-Aid.  But that's not my style.  And really, it shouldn't be anyone's style - aside from people who are paid to echo the party line.

We're citizens of a Republic.  We're engaged in the business of choosing someone to run our government for us.  Nothing about that suggests that we have to accept every single word that comes out of a candidate's mouth. 

We're not electing an oracle, a monarch, or a man on a horse.  We're electing a chief executive.

The point is to pick the best person available to do the job.  If greatness happens - that's a pure bonus.