Thomas: “That doesn’t seem to be the current philosophy of the party?”
Me: “No? Then tell me how a Republican Congress passed the DREAM Act, the most far reaching immigration reform bill we’ve had in decades. Again, progressive, and certainly not what Senator Obama thinks of us. If he doesn’t understand what we stand for, how does he think he will work with us to run the country? This is a nation with many different beliefs. He is a hard core liberal, which is fine as far as it goes, but he has to be able to work with people who aren’t, and I see absolutely no sign he can do that. John McCain has passed that test, if you ask me.”
Chuck: “Do you think Senator Obama is qualified to be the President?”
Me: “Well, the Constitution specifies that you have to be a natural born citizen, or have natural born parents, and you have to be 35 or older. He meets those qualifications. Other than that, no, probably not.”
Chuck: “Why not?”
Me: “A big part of this job is simply showing up and getting things done. You can throw out all the lofty rhetoric and speeches, but sooner or later you need to actually tell somebody to do something and make it all work. Now, this is simply my personal belief, not the official pronouncement of the President. Still, before I ended up here, I had commanded troops, had run a multibillion dollar business, and had been the House Majority Whip, another leadership position. John McCain had command in the Navy, and had been a committee chair in the Senate, a leadership position. Between the two of us we’ve been behind dozens of major legislative bills. Jeb Bush was a governor and then had business experience running things. Now, I like Barack Obama, even though our politics are different. He’s a nice enough guy, but would somebody please tell me what major legislation he’s ever been responsible for? What he’s ever managed other than his Senate staff? I’ll grant you that he gives a great speech, certainly better than I’ve ever done, but sooner or later you have to stop giving speeches and get something done. What’s he done?”
That caused a real consternation in the Democratic campaign apparatus! Senator Obama spent the next week trying to tell people what he really meant to say, and that he wasn’t naive and that he was able to work with anybody and that he had the skills to actually run things. Meanwhile the Democratic campaign loudly proclaimed how I was using the Presidency to actively campaign for my hand-picked successor. (They seemed to think this was unfair; our side thought it was business as usual.) John told me the next day that he loved my description of the party as progressive, since it both took the wind out of the Democrats’ sails for a few days, and shut down the conservative base for a bit. They hated being called progressive, but they couldn’t argue with the facts I had stated. Mind you, some of the current crop would happily repeal most of the laws I had mentioned, including the Emancipation Proclamation, but they weren’t getting a vote.
Nobody made any major gaffes between the conventions and the election. At times it seemed like the winner would be the guy who made the fewest mistakes, or the loser would be the guy who made the last mistake. Fortunes were spent on advertising in the few remaining swing districts. The polls consistently showed McCain beating Obama, but the margin was thin, in some places less than the statistical error rate. It was going down to the wire.
Election night we turned one of the conference rooms into a war room. I couldn’t be at McCain headquarters, since he had his own advisers and people there. I couldn’t overshadow his parade. Instead, Frank and Will set up a bank of monitors, each tuned to a different network, and then a mess of us sat down and watched. Besides Frank and me, Marilyn was with us, occasionally rooting for the other side, just to get our goats. She earned multiple raspberries for that. Marty Adrianopolis came over, and Mindy stayed late as well. Brewster even sat in, with his cell phone nailed to his ear the entire night.
Even though I wasn’t running, I still had duties to attend to. As was the tradition, I had to call all the new winners and congratulate them, Republican and Democrat, House and Senate. In a typical election year, this might work out to about 40 new Representatives and Senators. For instance, in my 1990 election to Congress, only 15 sitting Congressmen were tossed out, including Andy Stewart, who I had beaten. Probably about as many simply retired. Contrast that to the 1994 elections, when Newt and the rest of the Gang of Eight wrested control of Congress from the Democrats. There was a 60 seat swing in the House! Add in the Senate (another 10) and the various replacements from retirement, and Bill Clinton probably had made well over 100 phone calls that night. I had never had half of that.
The networks all trotted out their latest digital tricks to keep things exciting. In our war room, we brought out a bunch of white boards, and then made jokes about the networks. At 8:00, the first few races began to be called, and some trends became apparent. For one thing, Democrats were turning out in droves, but turnout also seemed higher in traditionally Republican districts. For whatever it was worth, having a black Presidential candidate had stoked everybody’s fires. You were either coming out to vote him in, or coming out to prevent that from happening.
Nothing much was decided as the first states closed their polls. Probably the first state to be called was Massachusetts, for Barack Obama. That surprised nobody. I couldn’t remember the last time Massachusetts voted for a Republican. I’m sure it must have happened sometime, but I wasn’t sure it happened in my lifetime. (I mentioned that to Marty, who corrected me. Both Eisenhower and Reagan had taken Massachusetts both times, but that was it.) As things currently stood, if Jesus was a Republican and Lucifer was a Democrat, Lucifer would win Massachusetts by a wide margin.
Slowly, though, a trend emerged. By 9:00, as blank spots on the television maps began to become red or blue, and as our white board began to be marked up, I looked over at Brewster curiously. “Is it my imagination, or is this déjà vu all over again?”
“That’s the way I’m reading it, at least so far,” he agreed.
Marty added, “I think everybody just wasted six billion dollars!”
“Christ on a crutch!” I muttered. It was crazy, but I think the only thing anybody had accomplished with all the money was make the investors of every local television station in the swing districts a bunch of money. The Northeast was going solidly Democratic and the South was still solidly Republican. Ohio and Pennsylvania, and a few of the Rust Belt states were still too close to call, so it might be a long night. Jeb Bush nailed Florida down, which John had hoped he would do; I had notably failed to deliver Maryland for George Bush eight years ago. We were going to be watching this until at least 11:00, before the West finished up.
Amidst all this, every few minutes somebody would hand me a name and a little Post-It Note with some details on a Congressional or Senatorial newcomer who had just won. A call would be arranged and I would congratulate them, and I would promise to meet them and congratulate them in person in January. It seemed like about the same number and tempo of newbies as the last couple of elections, though the Senate was going more Democratic. That didn’t surprise me, in that Senate elections are statewide, and gerrymandering doesn’t really help them. This didn’t seem to be developing into a watershed election, where the prevailing theme was ‘Throw the rascals out!’ I had seen that in 1994, when the Republicans cleaned out the Dems, and on my first go, it occurred in both 2008 and 2010, first for the Democrats, and then for the Republicans.