They Laughed When I Sat Down At The Table
There is a classic bit of copywriting by John Caples, first
published in 1926, “They Laughed When I Sat Down At The Piano—But When I
Started to Play!”
Our hero (Jack) is at a gathering, and the host has just
performed a classical selection. He gets
up, does a little Paderewski, dusts off and spins the stool, and sits down to
perform. His friends expect a comedy
act, because everyone knows Jack can’t play a note. But then, he launches into Moonlight Sonata and the crowd listens,
rapt, and stunned. When it is over, “I
found myself surrounded by excited faces. How my friends carried on! Men shook
my hand -- wildly congratulated me -- pounded me on the back in their
enthusiasm!”
Jack’s
chopsticks-to-concerto secret was a correspondence course from the U.S. School
of Music. Even more remarkably, both he
and the school assured readers that no special talent was needed.
Caples
was touching on something much bigger than a keyboard: the transformational
myth. Women can go from duck to swan
with new haircut and a few dabs of makeup.
Men can unleash the beast with any number of items that populate my
email spam box. A new life awaits those with right tools and the energy to pursue
their dreams.
Of
course, there’s a political metaphor here (you knew there would be.) We have
always had plenty of ugly ducklings in government, but we seem to be outdoing
ourselves in the woefully inadequate and senselessly destructive. More and more people seem to believe that no
special talent, or knowledge, is needed. There are three key trends. The first is the rise of a Sarah Palin-type
“common sense” populism, which is dismissive of hard data and relies on
nostrums and slogans. The second is the ubiquity of opinion masquerading as fact.
The third is a sort Gresham’s Law of politics, where the bad currency of the
willfully ignorant and mindlessly aggressive pushes out the good of serious
lawmakers. Public service just isn’t very
attractive.
Which
brings us to where we are right now, shut down and about to default, or to quote
Woody Allen in a different context, between the horrible and the miserable. And
not many people to fix it, because government is overrun by people who just
aren’t up to the job, and don’t know it.
They took the U.S. School of Music’s class on how to play the electoral
cymbals, their neighbors tell them they sound really good, and they think they
are ready to go solo (as a violinist) at Carnegie Hall.
But,
deliberate, good lawmaking needs a variety of talents. The first is actual
knowledge of the subject matter beyond slogans. A second is knowledge of
self--you have to know your skillset.
You can be a terrific administrator but a dull speechmaker. A great policy wonk but a little low on
charisma. Or simply, a very smart and
dedicated legislator, but a lousy negotiator.
And
that is perfectly fine. Different tools
for different jobs, so long as the institution of government contains all the
necessary ingredients and they are properly deployed. Ultimately, the question becomes whether the
leadership has the emotional intelligence to know when to delegate. It starts at the very top. Clinton was a political polymath—he could
pretty much do it all, but Reagan, rather famously, knew his limits and when to
send in his team. Both were successful.
Mr.
Obama, I’m afraid, hasn’t quite grasped this.
I think he still believes that the oratorical skills that took him the
White House should carry the day at the negotiating table. What he misses is that the times are
different, the opposition simply hates his guts (there is no point in mincing
words) and he’s just not good at the give and take. The President is not a retail politician in
any way. He needs to step aside, just a
bit, and let others take the lead. Using
other people’s talents is not a sign of weakness.
John
Boehner, for different reasons, is even more of a disaster. Boehner, either through weakness or fatal
misjudgment, has allowed himself to become the tool of the obstreperous and
uninformed. He knows it, the majority of
Republicans, both in and out of government also know it, but he doesn’t know
how to deal with it. The simple fact is,
when you let the omnivorous egomaniac Ted Cruz become de facto Speaker of the
House, you have failed completely.
Fortunately,
there are some glimpses of light. Five
people have stepped forward. The first
is Paul Ryan, who has managed, in an editorial published in the Wall Street
Journal, to appear moderate in tone (his substance is another matter.) The
other four are two pairs of Senators, Harry Reid and Mitch McConnell, currently
planning to huddle together, and Susan Collins (Maine) and Patty Murray
(Washington State) who have just had what amounted to a well-bred shouting
match.
These
four Senators are perfect for their jobs.
McConnell and Reid are the same people; partisan, coldblooded gutter-fighters
who know every inch of the chamber they rule over and the details people are
(really) fighting over. Murray sits on
the Appropriations Committee and is the 4th ranking Democrat in the
Senate. Collins also serves on Appropriations, and is considered a “moderate”
bridge.
There
are two critical items that must be resolved.
The
first is simply process. Can you let a
minority hold hostage the operation of the government and the very
creditworthiness of the nation to achieve political ends? The answer absolutely has to be in the
negative. McConnell, who plans on being
Senate Majority leader in 2015 and beyond, knows that. His desire to restore regular order is the
key to resolving the process issue.
The
second is policy. Obamacare is just one of
countless policy items that were on the hit list of the GOP’s extortionist
wing. Here is where Collins comes in,
and why she and Murray were so much at odds.
Collins tried very hard to broker a compromise, but the “compromise” was
designed to satisfy conservatives in the Senate, mainly some fig- leafs with
regard to Obamacare, and, more importantly, the retention of the sequester
levels of spending for another six months in return for a short extension of
the debt ceiling until January 31, 2014.
Collins’ compromise breaches three key firewalls for the Democrats; it
locks in sequestration levels that the Democrats only agreed to as a short-term
measure in 2011, it confirms the effectiveness of extortion as a tactic on
Obamacare and other items, and it sets the stage for a reprise in January, when
the GOP can pull the same stunt again. Murray is upset because she knows that
Collins used her “moderate” credibility to interest a handful of conservative
Democrats (including Joe Manchin of West Virginia) in what is essentially
partial win for the Tea Party and a big win for the GOP in general. Collins gets a lot for the GOP and gives
almost nothing.
That’s
why Murray called her out, and why Reid immediately rejected the plan, while,
at the same time, praising Collins. If
you had any doubts as to how good it is for the GOP, McConnell expressly
embraced it on Sunday. So, it is dead,
for now, but what Collins has actually accomplished is resetting the
argument. It is up to McConnell and Reid
to now hash out the details, but a ritual spanking of the Tea Party, less
sequestration, more time on the debt ceiling, and maybe you have the outlines
of a deal.
Tony
Blair, on the occasion of his last speech as Prime Minster, said; “Some may
belittle politics but we who are engaged in it know that it is where people
stand tall. Although I know that it has many harsh contentions, it is still the
arena that sets the heart beating a little faster. If it is, on occasions, the
place of low skullduggery, it is more often the place for the pursuit of noble
causes.”
Blair,
like so many truly successful politicians, was an optimist. But the “pursuit of noble causes” begins with
people sitting down at the piano to do the nation’s business. Let’s see if they can play. Jack’s story notwithstanding, talent would
help a lot
MM
