Observations from a Political Junkie

"I am a political junkie.”

Those were the odd words with which I opened my essay 24 years ago applying for graduate school. They were also true. I became converted to politics at age 14, living in Richard Nixon’s hometown (Whittier, California) and walking precincts for his opponent, Senator George McGovern. Over the course of a decade I worked as a campaign volunteer, then as legislative staff and then an advocate at the California Capitol. I also kept my hand in presidential politics, including heading off to the snows of New Hampshire for Senator Gary Hart the same year I applied to graduate school.

So it is with intense interest that I follow the drama of the current campaign in the United States, in an age when the Internet is almost like being there. With that explanation, here are some observations from a self-professed “political junkie.”

1. Barak Obama and the Democratic Holy Grail

Since Ronald Reagan sent the Democratic Party into a confused and downward tailspin in 1980, the party of Jefferson has often been torn by an internal debate between two competing strategies. Strategy One: Accept the electorate for what it is and go after the swing vote and independents. Strategy Two: Change the face of the electorate by rallying low-income and ethnic minority voters to the polls. The first strategy was ridiculed as moving the party to far to the right, and the latter was ridiculed for being too naïve.

Somehow, in a way that still escapes full explanation, Senator Barak Obama has placed his hand on the Democratic Party’s Holy Grail. He is doing both at once. No one else ever has. Independents and Republicans are voting for him in droves. And at the same time, so are new voters. In GOP dominant South Carolina, for example, his primary vote surpassed all of the Republican candidates combined, the product of waves of new voters. Now, this may not last, but it is in fact, for the moment, wildly historic.

2. In Politics, You define Yourself by What You Can Rationalize

Having worked for quite a few of them close up, and having come eerily close to becoming one myself a long while ago, I can tell you that inside the mind of a politician is an ongoing math equation. To be sure, decisions and choices are weighed on the merits, but then comes the other factor – politics. Inside most politicians echoes the logic of rationalization. It goes like this: “Even though I don’t think this is the right thing to do, if I refuse to do it I will lose and the person who will beat me will do it anyway, and a lot of other bad things that I won’t do.” Translated to math: 1 bad thing < many bad things = rationalization.

It is hard to find many people today who really believe that Senator Hillary Clinton’s vote to authorize President Bush’s War in Iraq was actually a sincere expression of what she believed was right (despite her proclamation at the time that it was a “vote for peace”). Alongside others who did the same, such as Senators John Kerry and John Edwards, Clinton and other Presidential wannabes made a calculation that the war was a given and that going on record post 9/11 as a hawk and not a dove was a simple act of political survival. Senator Obama famously took the other side, though as a candidate for Senate, not a Senator. Voters aren’t stupid and they know this: If your political conscious allows you to rationalize a vote for war, it likely allows you to rationalize almost anything. People don’t like that.

3. Echoes of Bob Dole

One of the least memorable presidential campaigns in recent history was that of Senator Robert Dole against President Bill Clinton in 1996 (for ten “political junkie” points name Dole’s GOP running mate without looking it up). His campaign was almost the definition of never getting any “political traction.” The venerable Senator and World War II hero was reduced in the final weeks to a fit of frustration at the nation refusing to see the Clinton administration the same way he did. “Where is the outrage?” he declared to a nation that just wasn’t outraged.

There is an echo of that as another decent public servant, Senator Clinton, seems to be watching her own long-held Presidential ambitions evaporate into thin air. “Let’s get real!” she proclaimed to an audience in New York yesterday. Just as Senator Dole saw crystal clear that her husband’s administration was morally bankrupt but couldn’t get the nation to see it that way, Senator Clinton seems stunned that she can’t get Democratic voters to see Senator Obama as completely ill equipped to occupy the Oval Office. Candidates frustrated in this way are painful to watch.

4. Political Phenomena

Lastly there is the tale of Presidential political phenomena. Like clockwork, in every election I have watched, some candidate emerges as the phenomenon, the surprise that no one expected. And, like clockwork, they are almost always short-lived. In 2004 it was the frenzy over Howard Dean, a phenomenon that burned out by Iowa. In 2000 it was Straight Talkin’ John McCain, who got rolled by George Bush. In years past there was Pat Buchanan and the pitchfork crowd toppling George Bush the elder in New Hampshire, Ross Perot showing what a millionaire with pie charts could achieve, Jesse Jackson winning real elections for a time, my old hero Gary Hart carrying New Hampshire, and on and on.

In all these cases, going back decades, the only phenomenon candidate who made it all the way to the White House was President Jimmy Carter. But Richard Nixon and Watergate made for special times.

Regardless of whatever else one thinks of him, Senator Obama and his campaign are quite definitely a phenomenon and win the trophy for that distinction in 2008, no matter what happens next. But this year, unlike it others, the phenomenon has a real shot at going all the way.

So far November looks like a match-up between Phenomenon model 2008 vs. Phenomenon model 2000. And that is a phenomenon in itself.

And that is how it looks to this political junkie.