During the current campaign, I keep hearing, from both sides, how the candidates for president (although both are senators in Washington) are outsiders, riding into town to give our federal government a good cleaning and a fresh new face that reflects the will of “real” Americans. Because they are “mavericks”, that is supposed to make us feel that they are a new trend, bent on changing the old ways of doing things. But is that really so?
My first act of voting ever was to vote for “maverick” Washington outsider Jimmy Carter for president in 1976. In 1980 Carter, by then considered an “insider” (especially when he hid “inside” the White House during the Iran hostage crisis to avoid campaigning against challenger Ted Kennedy), was thrown out by the new “maverick” Washington outsider, Ronald Reagan. Reagan’s successor, George H.W. Bush, did turn out to be a true insider. But after only one term in office, another “maverick” Washington outsider, Bill Clinton, defeated him. In 2000, “maverick” Washington outsider George W. Bush defeated insider Al Gore for the presidency. In reelection bids for the “mavericks”, they (with the exception of “Daddy” Bush in 1992, who was an insider anyway) defeated insiders in their reelection bids (over Mondale in 1984, Dole in 1996, and Kerry in 2004).
And now we come to 2008. And we’re supposed to be excited by a couple of “maverick” Washington outsiders. Oh, please! In the first place, neither candidate is a true outsider. In McCain’s case, that claim is totally preposterous, with his twenty-plus years of Washington residence as a U.S. senator. Now McCain’s running mate, Sarah Palin would fit that description. But so would just about any run-of-the-mill American picked out of the crowd at random. Which probably would have been a better choice for McCain. Isn't it about time we realize that voting for candidates because we perceive them as "outsiders" is just worn out, stale reasoning? After all, it just might be worth noting that, for 28 of the past 32 years, America has been governed by them!
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Indeed, to all of it.
ReplyDeleteAnd to add to that, Mr Carter (arguably our best ex-president ever) was an ineffective president largely because as an "outsider" he thought he could run Washington the way he ran Georgia. When it didn't work that way, he and his young, inexperienced gang (Jody Powell and Ham Jordan, instrumental in helping Carter get elected, were in their early 30s at the time) didn't have a "plan B" and didn't know what to do.
"Outsider" may play well in Peoria, but only because people underestimate the extent to which these folks need to understand intimately the way things happen in the legislature. An outsider really can't come into the executive branch and change it just because s/he's convinced the voters that s/he will, and s/he certainly can't succeed through ignorance. Jimmy Carter demonstrated that.
I was so excited back then in 1977 when Carter became president. He had all of these great things that he wanted to do. His own Democratic-controlled congress let him down, in large part due to the southern "boll weevil" Democrats who chaired several of the important committees he needed to get his agenda moving into legislation. Nowadays, these boll weevils have pretty much gone over to the Republican Party.
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