[crossposted at Loaded Orygun, Oregon's Progressive Community and an early endorser of Steve Novick for Senate...]
There's no denying Steve Novick is a political animal. He loves policy, thinks government can be run well enough to be a net benefit to Americans, and takes on the rough and tumble of campaigning with aplomb--if not with a touch of the choirboy's naivete, as to what others might be capable of. There's no task that seems too formidable to fix for Novick, and he loves getting into the weeds on an issue.
But his singularity among political candidates is that he can walk into the weeds while leading people through them, acting as their guide and using everyday language, finally bringing them back out again to see the whole picture.
{lots more below}
Politicians usually come in two broad types: either the earnest but stiff and humorless type, efficient and hardworking; or the "have a beer with" guy, who thumbs his nose at nerdism and decides matters by following gut instinct, rather than flouncy things like reports and studies. Novick is the policy wonk who doesn't take wonkism that seriously, and talks like the guy you want a beer with. It's a compelling mix, and it's why people tend to forgive his occassionally dramatic rhetoric. There's almost an understood twinkle--at least in spoken commentary--that belies any precise belief in the assessment he makes. Oh, he believes what he's saying in principle, all right--but mind the rhetorical effects!
In the primary and as part of the more formalized parts of the campaign, most voters see the political side of Novick, the one making the detailed arguments and taking on causes, popular or not. But being on Steve's mailing list is sometimes a different story. His "attacks" on opponents include a Civil War football challenge, a rebuke for a candidate writing in one of his emails that 64, not 65 teams are in the NCAA tournament, and who can forget Talk Like a Pirate Day, 2007, where Gordon Smith was essentially ordered to walk the plank?
While a conversation on policy could go on for hours and satiate the wonky needs of the really unbusy few who read that kind of thing (like me), there's lots of political coverage of Steve out there, and certainly LO's readers know the whole surface story about him. You'd think that someone with so many brain cells occupied with very important data would have little space for the triviality of pop culture--or even familial ties. Frankly, people who are as obviously smart as Novick is, are often socially uncomfortable and discomfiting to others.
But Novick's cool factor with musicians and other creatives comes from being well grounded and having a mind tuned towards common honesty and integrity--which is a key part of any successful creative work: being true to oneself, and to the medium one works in. That's the Novick people might miss, so it's what I asked to talk about in my hour alone with the candidate.
Around dinner time on a still-wintry day in Oregon--the kind you start cursing in February and intermittently continue until May as the lingering remnants of monsoon season give you an affect disorder--I popped into the campaign headquarters in Southeast Portland. I found Steve in the "money room," finishing up what may have been a personal call, but which I will presume was yet another 'ask' for funds--the bane of the non-publicly-fundded candidate. Is Steve chained to a desk and a phone most of the day? Well, yes and no--he estimated the thousands of calls he had made, but apparently needs to be worked harder, because he had no grumpy words for manager Jake Weigler, the campaign whipcracker with a perpetual touch of worry tingeing the corners of his baggy eyes.
Having just completed some face time with Fox News for a formal feature piece, more time for a similar story by Fortune magazine, and yet another candidate intro article by The Oregonian's Jeff Mapes, Steve was ready to get out of the office for a bit. But before we left, I caught a sneak peek at "Pull the Plug," the latest ad from the Eichenbaum team that was released Monday. Everyone was mighty pleased with the results, especially some of the young volunteers who had made their way into a shot featuring a self-parodying Novick "reading to children," gathered around him on a brownstone stoop.
Novick accompanied me just down the block from HQ, to a nearly-hip, sometimes-Dem-hangout called Plan B (formerly known as Acme). After a long day, I figured he was ready to make like Clinton and kick back shots of Crown with the bigger people. As it turns out, Steve's choice is actually a New Deal* martini, no shot added. I took advantage of the somewhat obscurely available Pilsner Urquell on tap, and we retired to a corner of the very large outdoor patio, as far away from the outside speakers as possible.
I ordered the tasty quesadilla special, which Novick shared with me. I said I knew candidates often had a hard time getting a chance to eat, but Steve said he almost eats too much--BAD food is the problem.
I bounced around and asked several questions from different phases of his life and among different interests, I started with what I knew was a passion: baseball. Does it feel like the natural rhythms of the universe are in place when baseball season is in? "It would, if I was able to get any chance to watch some this year," Novick replied. Apparently the Learjet he uses to travel across the state is not equipped with satellite TV or the Extra Innings package on cable--clearly the sign of a campaign struggling for money.**
Are you ready for a tailor made scenario for sending Novick to DC? His favorite baseball team: The Washington Nationals--nee Montreal Expos, who left for more political climes in 2005. Montreal? Go figure...but he certainly knew the team, including perhaps its most famous player Jackie Robinson, who played in Montreal when the team was a part of the newly created "farm system" essentially invented by Branch Rickey of the Dodgers.
Owing to Jackie Robinson week in MLB, I did manage to stump Novick on Jackie's first pro team: the Honolulu Bears, a semi-pro football squad Robinson dropped out of UCLA to play for. He did however remember that before heading to Montreal, Robinson made his name with the Kansas City Monarchs Negro League squad, where Rickey had "found" the multi-sport star.
I guessed the answers to the next questions, but for the record Novick is against the DH (believing the year 1973 to be the non-coincidental decline of the American League) and also interleague play ("terrible, horrible!" were the terms used).
I also asked whether he had read the great book Moneyball, which discussed the revolution in "sabermetrics," the science of baseball statistical analysis, and the impact on the game made by early adopters like Oakland's Billy Beane. As someone with a love for wonky detail, I figured that Steve approved of the new emphasis on objective criticism of the hoary old baseball "rules" honed by players and managers during the game's first century. "I've read excerpts, but not the whole thing," Novick said.
"We had all the Bill James annuals at my house growing up, and we all read them," referring to the grandfather of sabermetrics, now a senior advisor to the Boston Red Sox and proud owner of two World Series rings in four years. Given his predilection for numbers and the proven success of the methods, I wondered aloud if there was any room for tradition and gut instinct:
I think there's definitely room for instinct, but it was James who helped changed some of the fundamental beliefs, like that a walk wasn't as good as a hit, or that home runs were worth a lot--I mean, people knew they were good, but not how much they could change a game.
He was one of the first to take the numbers and really test the things that people believed. When someone said that pictching was 90% of the game, James figured, "well, wouldn't that show up somewhere in the numbers?" Earl Weaver had it right--pitching, defense and home runs win the game--he just didn't have Bill James to show how right he was.
This was clearly a pander to attract crossover transplanted Baltimore Orioles fans, but I let it go.
Picking up on the reference to family life growing up, I asked what it was like growing up in Cottage Grove, a small town a few miles south of Eugene:
It's a great little town, a timber town when I was growing up, south of Eugene. There were some people for whom it was a bedroom community, commuting into town, but most people I think just lived and stayed there.
There was kind of a counterculture element, but it was mostly just a regular small town, literally an All-American town, whoever it is that decides those things. I used to work at the Cottage Grove library, and it was interesting the different kinds of clientele--you had the old Western lovers, Louis L'amour readers, you had the older ladies who read the Harlequin romances, the Danielle Steele crowd.."
And from the time I was six until I was 14, we didn't have TV. My parents saw us watching some Saturday cartoon--superheroes, maybe, and my mom freaked out about the violence, and that was the end of the TV. I liked to read, watch sports, things like that.
More in Part Two...
*A Portland Distillery!
**sarcasm