It’s reasonable enough to expect candidates for public office to know why they want to run. But voters might be surprised by how many of them—whatever the party—really seem to have no idea.
It’s a question that stumps even the most intelligent, driven, and ambitious people. No less than former Republican presidential candidate Lamar Alexander, who had earlier served two terms as Tennessee governor, had trouble answering the question during the infancy of his last presidential campaign. Asked about it at one point, Alexander was reduced to an awkward string of “uhs” and “ums.” Aides had to tell him to work on articulating his political raison d’être. And this is a smart man who—don’t forget—is currently teaching at Harvard University.
Many of the candidates salivating over Democratic Congressman Bob Clement’s seat—hoping he abandons it next year to run for governor—say they want to run because the seat finally might be open. You don’t hear them saying they want to be in on increasing military spending or co-writing HMO legislation, or saving the Alaskan wilderness.
Meanwhile, Democrats are betting an awful lot on winning back the governorship next year as the salvation of a fragmented party whose only successful statewide
race since Gov. Ned McWherter's reelection in 1990 was Sara Kyle's 1994
election to the now-defunct Public Service Commission. They really want to be in the governor’s office, and they really need to tell people why. But what they may not realize is that they’re sort of on the hot seat. What are they planning to do that’s going to be any different from what’s already been done? What is their ultimate purpose? Does anyone really think Bob Clement or Congressman John Tanner would reform the state’s troubled tax structure or propose an income tax? So why run?
The answer, pretty clearly, is personal ambition. There probably would be policy differences between a Democrat and a Republican, but nobody is explaining what they would be. Mostly, they’re saying that they just want to win, because losing...well, losing sucks. But while that may be true, it’s hardly a way to rally the populace. The insular, self-important meetings going on between the prominent Democrats are all about whose face they should put forward—and not about what they need to be promoting.
Unfortunately, if the lack of message is the diagnosis for what ails the Democratic Party, healing it might not be so easy. Republicans rose to become the prevailing party in 1994 by whistling a reform theme. So far, Democrats are still searching for their 2002 refrain.
The real irony—and tragedy—in all this is that the candidates who do know why they want to run and really have something to say are generally the very ones dismissed outright not only by the electorate but also by their own party.
Witness Democrat Carlton Cornett, who has announced a congressional candidacy for Clement’s 5th District seat. He’s a social worker who supports the creation of a national health insurance program. As if those weren’t already two strikes against him—translation: he’s poor and liberal—he’s running as a self-described “openly gay” candidate. It’s hard to know who’s going to run away from him faster—leading members of his own party or the relatively conservative, if mostly Democratic, voters of the 5th District.
Cornett will have an infinitely harder time raising the necessary cash to run a real race than most any of the congressional wannabes who go silent when you ask them what made them wake up one day feeling qualified to represent 600,000 people in Congress.
It’s sad that the one guy who stresses issues from the start has a candidacy that’s pretty much dead on arrival.
Hot on the, er, tail
On a lighter note, Nashville City Paper offered a Jay Leno-worthy headline this week about Cornett’s candidacy: “Openly gay candidate seeks Clement’s seat.”
Shopping around
Nashville got a new fire chief this week, which is a pretty tedious development in the scheme of things. What’s notable, though, about Mayor Bill Purcell’s appointment of out-of-towner Stephen Halford to the job is the fact that he’s the first mayor in 200 years of Nashville history who is going outside the city to find department heads.
It’s not popular among Metro employees, but Purcell appears to be trying to break up the internal politics within Metro and the inherited ways of doing things. In the past, mayors have always tried to build up internal patronage machines to advance their political standing.
Purcell seems to be saying that the best politics is to do a good job.
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