Sometimes
you find wisdom in unexpected places.
I was
in a 7-Eleven this last weekend, feeding two of my more disreputable vices
(Tostitos and Diet Coke) and I had to wait to check out because on the number
of people buying Powerball tickets. When
I finally made it, the exhausted store manager asked me if I wanted
one. $900 million! For a moment, he tried to persuade me, and
then, he nodded and said. “You don’t
want to win. That kind of money changes
your life.”
It
was a very counterintuitive, very perceptive point. That kind of money changes absolutely
everything. The morning after, you would
be famous, for something you didn’t accomplish.
In the weeks to follow, you would be inundated by offers to sell you
things, crack-pot business ideas, requests for legitimate and not-so-legitimate
charitable contributions, perhaps even the proverbial long-lost relatives. You would be spending far too much time with
your new best friends—your lawyers and accountants. And after things had calmed down a bit,
after you had written a thousand checks, done all your good deeds, bought every
bauble you thought you would ever want, quit your job, partied, traveled, you might
start to wonder if you really had more, or had just messed up the things you
really valued in life.
His
comment reminded me of a three-minute clip I had seen of an old West Wing
episode. In it, Toby and Josh are stranded by bad luck and bad weather in a
hotel bar on some campaign swing in Indiana. Things aren’t going really well,
the stock market has just crashed, and they both look completely exhausted. A
middle-aged man ("Matt Kelley") is already there, nursing a beer, and he starts a
conversation with a reluctant Toby.
Matt
in town to take his daughter to see Notre Dame. It’s a great feeling to do
this, there's nothing like it, but he’s anxious about his life. He speaks with pride about his kids, he and his wife make a decent living together, but it’s
challenging, and he worries that it could fall apart—literally with the
smallest misstep. You couldn’t get more
ordinary looking than the actor who plays Matt, or more familiar a type: A stocky,
middle-aged, a bit stressed-out father and husband who wants to do right by his
family. He has his priorities straight,
he knows what he wants, he knows what gives meaning to his life. He wants the
challenge. “It should be hard. I like that it's hard.
Putting your daughter through college, that's-that's a man's job. A man's
accomplishment. And yet, he’s
looking for some sort of cosmic fairness. “But it should be a little easier. Just a
little easier. 'Cause in that difference is... everything.”
I
keep asking myself, are we in a “Powerball” Election, where people are going to
buy a lottery ticket and hope that their lives are going to be completely
transformed, or, are we in a “Little Bit Easier” Election, where the middle of
the electorate decides, like our fictional Matt Kelley, that they value much of
what they have, and just want things to get a bit better?
Since
1932, we have really had only two Powerball Elections: Johnson-Goldwater, and
Reagan-Carter. History has a tendency
to mark Goldwater as almost an experimental candidate, and Johnson was never at
any risk of losing. But Reagan, contrary
to the present impression of him as sort of a benevolent, sunny man who cut
deals with Tip O’Neill, was literally feared by a substantial portion of the
electorate. 1980 was my first exposure
to public polling, and the most persistent responses to an open-ended question about
Reagan (where the respondent volunteers an answer) was that he was too extreme
and would get us into a war.
Reagan’s
huge advantage, outside his personal charisma, was Carter’s failures. The
economy was bad, and the Iranian hostage crisis was on the news literally every
day. A lot of the electorate felt like
they had to make a change, even a risky one, so they bought the ticket.
Is
that where we are? Both intra-party, and in the general electorate? The short
answer is that no one really knows. To
start with, the focus groups and the public polling may have lost their
predictive abilities—fewer and fewer people seem to be willing to participate,
and if they do, to tell the truth. And,
the “nonpartisan” media is in eclipse, so there is less of an opportunity to
get impartial evaluations. If you happened to watch President Obama’s Town Hall
on guns, you saw an event in which there was divergent, but respectful dialogue
between participants—until CNN went to its talking heads after it was over.
The
Democrats began by basically sleepwalking in the march to Hillary—nothing has
changed, this just another conventional election, with fairly straightforward
issues, and (more quietly) Hillary is the one you should have nominated in 2008. Maybe they were right, but there turned out
to be two canaries in that particular coal mine—both named Bernie Sanders. First, Bernie addressed the growing sense among
part of the electorate that government is run for the benefit of the elites. Second, Bernie is remarkably popular among
college-aged women—far more popular than Hillary is. That is a shocker, given the historic
possibilities of electing the first woman President, and yet, there it is—for
that age cohort, the feminist battles seem past, and Bernie is the one who is talking
about issues that younger women (and men) care about. Hillary will still win, but it’s less of a
coronation than expected. The yen for
change is there.
As
for the GOP, they are off on their own planet.
Yes, the usual components of the Republican coalition are there—the
social conservatives, the traditional business types, the nativists, the 2nd
Amendment folk, the tough-talking muscular foreign policy types and the conservative
populists. But relative specific gravities
of these components have changed, and some no longer have any buoyancy. There is some talk that what the party may be
seeing is the beginnings of a permanent split between the business side, and what
would have been the old pitchfork Pat Buchanan wing, now energized by Trump and
the conservative media, and Cruz and his fascinating tango with the religious
right. In this analysis, the Establishment
is gnashing its teeth because Trump is a “black swan event” and he and Cruz
would look a lot less formidable, if only you didn’t have
Rubio/Bush/Christie/Kasich vying for the same slice of the “mainstream” electorate.
But, for
at least this election, I’m not convinced of that. The base likes Trump and Cruz, because they
like what they are hearing. For proof look
at the increasingly harsh rhetoric of the “Establishment” candidates, and what
you see is capitulation to the populists. If I had to place one single bet right now, it
would be that party elders would rather avoid a direct confrontation and a
floor fight at the convention—because they fear they would lose, and lose
control of the party apparatus. If
Trump/Cruz come in with strong poll numbers and delegates, one of them is going
to get the nomination, and the formal backing of the party. That doesn’t mean that the Establishment is
going to like it (and it doesn’t mean that a few people from the business wing
might not quietly vote for Hillary, who is true Establishment to the very core
of her being) but I think they will do it. The Establishment has no choice—they
have to close ranks behind the winner.
If a Trump or Cruz ticket helps sweep the general election, there will
be plenty of spoils. If it loses, the Establishment can say “I told you so” and
go back to business as usual.
So, are
we going to get a Powerball Election—a stark choice between Hillary’s “A little
bit easier” and a Trump or Cruz (or Trump/Cruz) “close your eyes and buy the ticket”?
I’m
going to check with the 7-Eleven manager. He seems to be the smartest man in the room. And I may need a lot of chips and Diet Coke on Election Night. Or something stronger.
Michael
Liss (Moderate Moderator)
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