As this is my first diary post, it also feels a bit like that first dance long ago. I just hope I get all the steps right.
By way of brief background to set up this diary, I experienced presidential politics from the trenches in 1976 and again in 1980. I began as a volunteer field staff to Carter in Ohio in January 1976 when he was listed in the Gallup polls as an asterisk. In 1980 I served as the National Director of Administration for the campaign. In between I worked on the White House staff and with the EPA. Now looking back I can see the fabric of those elections much clearer, and today I sense some déjà vu in observing the Obama campaign. This blog is written from that perspective.
There is a certain aspect to the Obama candidacy that brings back memories of the 1976 campaign by Jimmy Carter. In looking back now on those years, I believe that Carter was almost too decent to be President. Obama carries that same sense of decency. It may turn out that Carter was just ahead of his times, as many of my fellow Carterites will claim. It may also turn out that we need that decency now more than ever in our conduct of democracy.
Beyond the comparisons of decency in these two men, there are other eerie signs of déjà vu. Both have been extremely fortunate to have risen rapidly on the national scene and to have emerged as front runners in highly contested campaigns against so many better known politicians. Carter bested; Sen. Scoop Jackson, Sen. Fred Harris, Sen. Birch Bayh, Rep. Mo Udahl, and in the end, Governor Jerry Brown. While the others bowed out one-by-one through the series of primaries and caucuses, Jerry Brown persisted until the final primary day, even though he could not possibly win. Brown became the stalking horse for the “anybody but Carter” clan. Obama’s campaign, so far, has followed a similar narrative. Many better-known politicians falling by the wayside as Obama rolls up delegates. But not enough to get a persistent Hillary Clinton out of the race. Carter’s plan for winning the nomination had been crafted in a two page memo in 1974 by his young aide, Hamilton Jordan. Changes in the campaign financing laws created an opportunity for an unknown to compete against the better financed politicians they would need to defeat. After a disastrous 1972 campaign with GOP slush funds awash in the election, the new laws provided for Federal matching of contributions up to $100. It also capped individual contributions at $1,000. Under the direction of Morris Dees (later the founder of the Southern Poverty Law Center), the Carter campaign built a grassroots organization the could solicit small matchable contributions. The success of this strategy was evident in the ability of Carter to maintain a state-by-state organization that could outspend the opposition. The better known campaigns relied on fat cat contributors with their $1,000 checks where only the first $100 could be matched under the new rules. So every $1,000 Carter raised became $2,000. And every $1,000 the opposition raised became $1,100. We see the same sort of strategy in the Obama campaign, building on smaller donations from the grass roots organization built through the Internet. Clinton, on the other hand, tapped out her fat cats early on and has struggled to compete for dollars ever sense.
Carter and Obama both campaigned as outsiders to the establishment, brandishing a new style of politics. Carter’s mantra in 1976 was, “I will never lie to you.” A message that resonated well in the post Watergate environment. Similarly, Obama presents his candidacy as a “post-partisan” movement. Also a message that resonates well in today’s environment. While both have campaigns that were skillful in advancing negative messages on their opponents, both candidates have a brand identity of being truthful and trust worthy. That trust worthiness is also reason for cynic to believe both men to be inexperienced in the ways of politics. As a result, their snafus get extraordinary media attention, where more “experienced” (and less trust worthy) candidates get a free pass on their gaffes. In the waning days of the 1976 primary Carter managed to choose the wrong words when talking about the unintended consequences of the Federal urban renewal programs that often resulted in families being uprooted from bulldozed neighborhoods to make way for urban development. He commented that he supported the ethnic purity of neighborhoods and opposed programs that forced people to move. That statement was interpreted by black Southerners and their Northern cousins as being opposed to integration. Immediately the damage control effort engaged Martin Luther King Sr. to make a commercial along side of Carter to dispel that he was a closet segregationist. Obama too has been the victim of his own thinking out loud, as many politicians do in long campaigns. The comment on the bitterness in rural America related to the failure of government to serve their needs is one example of poorly chosen words that get misrepresented in the media. The media moves with a fury to define these interlopers with old school gotcha.
Both Obama and Carter have been viewed as interlopers to the process. In fact, it so galled the Kennedy courtesans that in 1980 they sought to challenge his re-election on the basis that Ted was the rightful heir to Camelot. Similarly, Obama has had to contend with the female version of Ted Kennedy, Hillary who appears to have run to restore the Clinton court (the royal entitlement.) Looking back on the 1976 election of Carter, it was the establishment’s view of him as an outsider and interloper that sewed the seeds of his problems as President. The distain for the “Georgia mafia” was everywhere in Washington DC in January 1976. Polite, but not accepting that Carter was experienced enough to govern or entitled to lead their company business – politics in DC is the company business, regardless of party. This was evident to me one night when I joined other Carter friends at a Georgetown bar. The floor was covered in peanut shells in honor of the peanut farmer President. Four years later the DC Democrats lined up behind Kennedy as their rightful heir to the throne. Obama faces the same distain from the insiders, which now includes the media.
Much to his credit, Carter has gone on to become a role model for an ex-President and that legacy will surpass anything from his Presidency. Obama, like Carter, may be just too good to be an effective President. Both have shown brilliance in their ability to campaign. But campaigning is very unlike governing. Campaigns are sport – governance is war. People’s lives aren’t really changed by promises made in the course of a campaign. But people do suffer from the from the deeds of governance. Bush promised not to be a nation builder, then took the country to war to build his own nation in Iraq.
If Obama is in fact Carter déjà vu, then we can expect a decent and trustworthy man to sit in the Oval office. We will be proud once again of the leadership our democracy produced. But we will likely not resolve the major issues of our time. His decency may limit his ability to govern. There will be a Clinton court in exile, much as there was a Kennedy court in exile for Carter. The company business will limit his ability to move an agenda. Carter’s energy policy was thwarted by his own party, and today we suffer the consequences. It is also just possible that we may learn from the lessons of the past and this time support that decent person in the White House. It may be that Obama will have the country behind him because of the desperate need for decent leadership. It may be that Obama too knows the lessons from the Carter presidency.