Unconventional Wisdom: Barbara Olschner’s "The Reluctant Republican"

If you listen to the pundits on television and radio, you might justifiably buy into one of the several “conventional wisdoms” about our country. The Fox News-ers among us are pretty well convinced that the vast, vast majority of the country is very conservative, and it’s only a liberally elite media that pretends otherwise—that same media that somehow managed to get Obama elected through fraud and deception. The MSNBC-ers (smaller in number, no doubt, but quickly becoming just as vocal) would instead have us believing in a 99% majority who are all for a more liberal America…a much more liberal America. The truth, however, is neither of these things. Most of the country, it turns out, fits the mold of moderately conservative, a place from which careful, thoughtful change comes in a logical, rational, fact-based package that remains remarkably free of sound-bite-driven hyperbole.

But if that’s the truth, why are there so few moderates getting elected to Congress?

Barbara Olschner, a self-proclaimed moderate Republican, found out  that it isn’t at all easy to get elected in these polarized times, and she details her experiences in an insightful and amusing memoir, The Reluctant Republican: My Fight for the Moderate Majority (from University Press of Florida, and available here).

The party in power often loses seats in off-year election cycles, and In Florida’s predominately Democratic 2nd District, incumbent Dem Allen Boyd is deemed vulnerable. A slew of characters quickly enters the race, one of them being the author, Barbara Olschner, a former attorney and second-tier tennis pro who loves a bit of competition, but insists on logic, reason, and facts—and naively assumes that the voters care about those things, too. Olschner, however, soon discovers that the way to endear oneself to the electorate is not to be thoughtful, factual, or reasonable, but instead to intentionally pull as many emotional triggers as possible. Here she describes the first time she heard Steve Southerland (a local undertaker, Tea Partier and eventual winner of both the primary and the general election). First noting his easy manner and ability to work a room, she goes on to comment that she was “completely unprepared when he began to speak.”

“Have you had enough?” He was using the wireless microphone—unnecessary in a room that small—and his words echoed off the walls. “I’ve had enough,” he said. “My family, all twenty-three members, has had enough! We have had enough.”

Wow, I thought to myself. That’s a big family. Was he Mormon?

“I’ve had enough!” He began to raise his voice. “My wife has had enough!” He tugged at his belt. “My four daughters have had enough.”

It was clear—even so early in the game—that Olschner would be fighting a wave, one where continued energy relied exclusively on whipping up people for all of the wrong reasons.

The book effectively covers several debates (which often serve as the set pieces for Olschner’s own ruminations on the process), and in each one things seem to continually move away from rationality and closer to a Marcel Duchamp set piece, inexplicable interesting yet at the same time maddening.  She watches, incredulously, as each of her four opponents quickly falls into lock-step, echoing the same far-right bellowings that Southerland uses so effectively, ones that eliminate any opportunity to talk about real issues. An excellent example comes with Olschner’s attempt to discuss the impact that localized drilling could have on the district’s beautiful panhandle shoreline (this was before the BP spill). She argues from a strongly economic point of view, suggesting that allowing close-to-shore drilling would be very risky to the district's growth (even pointing out that the rigs would be visible from shore, and what vacationer would want to see that?), yet she quickly finds herself under attack for not spouting the “drill, baby, drill” party line. There is no room for someone like her, someone who takes the time to understand questions and to give actual answers. The only thing the District 2 primary voters seem to care about is finding a candidate who is as strongly against them (and we all know who they are) as it is possible to be, and that translates into aping the far-right talking points, and nothing—absolutely nothing— more.

On the campaign trail I said: “If we are serious about the direction of this country, and solving problems, we cannot be satisfied to just elect any Republican…”  It is easy to see now that the antigovernment, anti-establishment movement fueled by the Tea Party meant that only ideologically pure conservatives were wanted, and for that, one is as good as another.”

Her discomfort grows as the race plods forward. At times she considers leaving the party to run as an independent, or perhaps just dropping out of the race altogether. Good friends keep her fighting, people who remind her that “We don’t need people to quit when the party screws up…. We need real people to…tell the truth and make us all play better.”  Still, Olschner’s shares her near-palpable frustration, one that I, as reader, feel right along with her:

I did not know when I began this race that I would have to choose between trying to win and telling the truth. I could not star in this political circus because I lacked the character traits that would allow me to say anything to win. As a result, I was going to lose, and I knew it.

But she does stay in the race right up until the clichéd bitter end; she comes in fifth—out of five candidates—though she at least wins her home county.

The book is often sadly amusing, largely because Olschner effectively balances her carefully wrought prose with the absurdity of many of the situations in which she finds herself.  An early-season meeting with Pete Sessions, Chairman of the RNCC, is particularly telling, especially in the way that the seasoned political pro manipulates Olschner both into signing the Norquist pledge against new taxes, and into a photo op that Sessions wants and which she is unprepared for.

One of the most compelling things about the book is that, despite knowing the outcome, Olschner keeps us turning the pages. The book works primarily because it’s about her more than it is about the experience; we know she’s going to lose (and, early on, so does she), but with that loss comes a sense of clarity and of balance:

The strong views of the Republican Party are more about culture than policy or politics, and this culture lends itself to electing candidates based more on an ideological litmust test than on who is the best and the brightest.

She goes on to deplore that litmus test, that need for ideological purity, suggesting that the “truth is closer to the middle than to any extreme.”

I couldn’t agree more, and I’m glad to hear another voice—especially one as enjoyable and intelligent as Olschner’s—share that unconventional wisdom, that what the loudest voices tell us we should want in our candidates is most assuredly not what we need.

[The Reluctant Republican by Barbara Olschner is available here, and please join us as we interview Barbara about her experiences on The Middle Ground, Tuesday, March 12 at 8PM Eastern.]

3 Diplomatic Missions I'd Like to See...

One of two things happened this past week on the international front: either (a) we’ve entered a new Golden Age of diplomacy or (b) it is finally time to admit that we are all but the random fragments of Salvador Dali’s surreal imaginings. 

I’m going with (b).

The event that engendered said choice was the introduction of Dennis Rodman onto the world’s diplomatic stage. The Worm (as he’s sometimes semi-affectionately called) spent a bit of time over in North Korea, chatting, eating, and otherwise holding forth with the 28-year-old leader of the unfree world, Kim Jong-un. In fact, based on the photos that made it back, they were doing just about everything but swapping spit, so comradely did they seem.

But wait… maybe Dennis is onto something here. Maybe there’s an entirely new opportunity on the diplomatic horizon, one that could bring the people of the world closer together. After all, we learned from Rodman’s insightful analysis that Kim Jong-un is—to quote Rodman—“humble,” and a “great guy.” That got me thinking: what other diplomatic missions might we all want to see? What other opportunities do we have for casting new light on long-held beliefs?

Here are three that I think we’d all find fascinating (orat least I would…).

1. Snooki and Mahmoud Ahmadinejad: Assuming we get past the preliminaries (i.e., the part where Snooki would actually have to pronounce the Iranian president’s name), this could be a real bellwether for the future of diplomatic relations everywhere.  Like Snooki, Ahmadinejad only pretends to be important, basking in the glow of the cameras and the spotlights while the really critical stuff goes on somewhere else—usually wherever the Ayatollah hangs out.  Plus, I’m sure Snooki and Ahmi (that’s what we’d have to call him, but don’t forget that gutturally hard “ch” sound that reminds me of an eight-year old with phlegm in his throat), would have loads of laughs misremembering and misinterpreting history.  Hey, with a bit of luck we might just realize that Ahmi is really a lighthearted guy, though with an outsized ego, sort of like I imagine Donald Trump would be like after ten minutes with a tank of nitrous-oxide.
2. Honey Boo-Boo and Bashar al-Assad: This one’s a natural. Honey Boo-Boo is the perfect example of a human being that loves her family no matter what. They can exploit her, blast her across the televisions of millions, embarrass her, feed her the most horrendous diet, and dress her in the most god-awful outfits yet still she loves them unconditionally. Imagine if just a little bit of that rubbed off on al-Assad, just enough so that he realized that if he just loved everyone unconditionally, too (by demonstrating, for example, a willingness to cease killing his fellow Syrians), he might find himself embraced by millions—even if he doesn’t exactly deserve it.
3. Betty White and Vladimir Putin: Nobody in modern history has had as many comebacks as Betty White, and she could certainly tell Vlad a thing or two about how to do it properly.  While Putin, even at his height, was never more than a tenth as popular as the wonderful Ms. White, he was at least somewhat well respected, particularly for his impact on the Russian economy and the country’s overall political stability. Still, this time around he’s managed to bungle things up quite a bit, and his nation’s image seems to be suffering. But it’s not too late for a dose of Betty. She could tell him, for example, how best to re-invent oneself without pissing off everyone around you. She practically got drafted for the Democratic National Convention, after all, while he’s gotten himself into a verbal pissing match with Gorbachev, who recently called Vlad a “scaredy cat.”  Betty would never put up with that, but she’d make you loved her just the same.

I’m sure there are at least a dozen others we could all come up with. I can imagine, for example, Prince Charles meeting with the leaders of Hamas just to commiserate on how hard it is to get one’s own country.  And I think I’d also like to see just about anyone from Hoarders have a chat with a couple of Chinese leaders about the importance of tidying up just a bit, especially when it comes to things like peeling lead paint and unbreathable air.

Just imagine how diplomacy could blossom.  Thank you, Mr. Rodman, for showing us the way, and I invite my readers to share their thoughts in the comments. What kinds of diplomatic combinations would you like to see?

Just The(se) Facts, Ma'am...

Facts—such as they are—have enjoyed quite the resurgence in political circles. Thanks (at least in part) to the ubiquity of fact-checking sites like Politifact and Snopes, we are undoubtedly more likely now, when faced with some specious sounding evidential ort, to hunt for confirmation.

Ahh… but there are facts and there are facts, I’m afraid, and I now too often see people shielding their opinions with facts, not even aware that in the simple choice of which facts they choose to present, they are introducing opinion, skew, and bias into their arguments. The result is often a puzzling oxymoron—the indefensibility of an argument made up exclusively of facts.

I would like to offer up as an example some recent information about the man I most monitor, the pundit to whom I owe my status as an incredibly minor public figure: Mr. Glenn Beck. Just recently Mr. Beck went and got himself into a bit of a scuffle with the WWE over a particularly villainous character, one that seems decidedly Tea Party-ish. That conflation—Tea Party and bad guy—clearly riled the Beckster. Glenn used his show to spout off on the topic, after which the WWE decided that a bit of confrontation was in order. The confrontation never happened, but why it never happened…well…that depends on which set of “facts” you prefer. This, from a pro-WWE perspective:

The pro wrestling company challenged Beck to come to this Monday's Raw. Beck declined…. One of Beck's employees told Cole that Beck was booked "doing anything else."

In the above example, Beck is made to look rather cowardly through the use of words like “challenged,” and the use of “one of Beck’s employees,” an unnamed person who delivered a message that most likely consisted of more than the three words shown. Certainly, it was a “challenge,” but it could have been a “request” or an “inquiry.”  But that’s not what the writer chose. And the use of a sentence fragment like “doing anything else” only reinforces the impression the writer wants to leave us with, that Beck yellowtailed it in a way reminiscent of Snagglepuss saying "Exit, stage left!"

Contrast that particular lens with this one, reported by Mediaite:

[W]restling commentator Michael Cole showed up at Beck’s studio in Texas to try to ambush him into an impromptu interview. Beck had previously declined the WWE’s offer to go on Monday Night RAW after he spoke out about being offended by the company’s new Tea Party-inspired villains.

A completely different feel here. In this case, it’s Beck who seems more in the right, since who, pray tell, would not want to avoid an “ambush,” particularly after merely speaking out about being offended?

Both stories are factual, aren’t they? Yes, they are, such as it goes. But the people who report, write, deliver, comment on, and otherwise extemporize about what goes on in the news every single day—they all make choices on how they want to present the very same facts. The bottom line is simple: there is no such thing as complete objectivity. We say what we mean to say, and mean it based on a long-list of host factors: our writing styles, our favorite pundits, our chosen media, our audiences, our egos, and—yes—our beliefs. It is fundamentally impossible, I assert, for anyone to say anything without leaving an impression, sometimes purposefully and sometimes accidentally. There’s no way around it; there is only a way through it: honesty and admission.

The Glenn Beck example I’ve used is trivial, of course, and that’s by intention. I wanted to make my point using an example that I thought unlikely to ruffle too many feathers.  But I ask you to think now about what you hear on other, much more important, topics:

The sequester. The voting rights act. The violence against women act. The filibuster. The Citizens United decision. Gerrymandering. Right to work. Afghanistan. Iran. The defense budget. Poverty. Too big to fail. Health care. Taxes. Job creation. Abortion. The war on women. Education. Unemployment. Corporate profits. Income inequality….

Every one of these topics (and many more) is filled with narratives, and those narratives are filled with facts.  But nearly always, people would prefer that you hear “just these facts, ma’am.”

[Note: I’m aware that Sgt. Joe Friday never actually said “Just the facts, ma’am.”  Still, it’s a great line, and part of our culture now….MC]

And the Oscar (Mayer) Goes To.... (The Best Political Baloney of 2012!)

In honor of tonight’s Oscar Awards, I thought it timely to present my Oscar Mayer Awards, given in honor of the most spectacular baloney of the past political year…

Best Original Screenplay: Bqhatevwr

Written by Scott Brown

This short, pithy title barely does justice to the deep-rooted psychological drama that lies beneath its simple incoherence. Is it the story of an accident, a mistake? Or is it somehow a deeper tale, one that strikes to the heart of a man’s relationship with his family, his public—and with an ever-present female pundit who, though occasionally given to snark, is clearly his intellectual superior?

Best Adapted Screenplay: Independence, USA

Written by Glenn Beck

Working from the templates of all the utopian fantasy ever written, Beck has crafted a stunningly modern story that is at times ironic (a free market that isn’t free!) and pathetic (teaching kids the “truth” about history). Part Thomas More, part Philip K. Dick, and part Walt Disney, Independence, USA is at once funny, solemn, sad, and hopeful. But what sets Beck’s writing apart in this particular story is his ability to present fantasy and science fiction as if it were documentary. Brilliant!

Best Actress: Debbie Wasserman Schultz in My Akin Heart

In this fantastic musical comedy, Wasserman Schultz shines as she tap dances from interview to interview in attempt to link candidate Mitt Romney’s position on abortion with the draconian viewpoints of Todd Akin, who famously offered that quote about “legitimate rape.” Schultz, who shares the screen with everyone from Anderson Cooper to Don Lemon to Piers Morgan, never flags, her energy staying high, her smile staying wide as, all the while, she continues to offer a performance that seems part Mary Poppins, part Annie, and part Harold Hill, the con artist from The Music Man. Well done, and well danced!

Best Actor: Paul Broun in The Deerhead Hunter

An amazing soliloquy given in front of a wall of deer heads is the reason that Broun gets the nod this year. The passion of the performance (and the ability to appear actually to believe the ridiculousness of what he’s saying) makes his performance as a religious fanatic all the more powerful. Though facing some very tough competition this year (including Mitt Romney in The 47-Percent Solution and Rush Limbaugh in The Fluking Truth!), Broun’s performance is one for the ages—the Dark Ages.

Best Picture: Aargh! Oh!

Written and Directed by Fox News, starring Megyn Kelley and Karl Rove

This picture tells the brilliant story of a once-proud but now-fallen architect who learns, on election night, that all of his plans, expectations, hopes, and dreams have been shattered. With a stunning performance by Rove as the architect who refuses to come to turns with reality, and a surprisingly effective performance by Kelly as the naïve yet plucky reporter who reluctantly reveals the truth, this Oscar Mayer winner stands out for a number of reasons, including an amazing seven-minute continuous shot that takes Kelly from the confines of her anchor desk all the way back to the research room where she then makes her stunning revelations. This film is absolutely riveting, and we can expect to hear about it over and over again for years to come.

 There were lots of honorable mentions, of course, but those are my top five. What awards would you give out?

Has Rachel Maddow Joined the Dark Side?

One of the few bright spots in the all-too-fetid punditsphere has been Rachel Maddow. Highly educated, articulate, thoughtful, provocative, funny, and fact-based, Maddow could teach real journalists a thing or two about analysis. Frankly, even mentioning her in the same breath with her so-called competition (Hannity, O’Reilly, Sharpton, and Schultz, for example) seems an insult.

I’m a Republican and even I can admit that much.

I’m not alone. Maddow has received quite a few compliments in her time, including this one, from Elise Jordan, a former speech writer for Condi Rice, who says that “[i]t's impossible not to be wowed by Rachel's intellectual bona fides… She engages you on a human to human level — her criteria [sic] is intellectual honesty, not partisan politics.” Jordan’s not alone. Steve Schmidt, the former campaign manager for John McCain said of Maddow that, “[s]he is very smart. Very good on TV and a very nice person. Her arguments are well conceived — intellectually honest and delivered without malice and venom." Similar comments could be found from other conservatives, including Senator James Inhofe and even Roger Ailes.

So here is this beacon, someone who is doing things differently (though not without an agenda), is shining a light toward the shadows of specious argumentation and out-and-out lying. And—wonder of wonders—she’s actually drawing viewers. Her ratings climbed rapidly between November 2011 and the 2012 election, soaring 72% in that period. Ratings continue to grow (especially in the most important demographics), giving the Fox juggernauts a regular run for their money.

Ah… but that’s not the only category in which Maddow is catching up to Fox. Rachel has apparently learned that one of the best ways to get those extra eyeballs is to worry a little bit less about intellectual honesty and care a little bit more about hyperbole.

Exhibit One is this recent piece on Scott Brown and the infamous pocket tweet, “Bqhatevwr.” While nowhere near as titillating as  Anthony Weiner’s virtual imagery, former Senator Brown’s odd tweets recently took a sizeable byte out of our never-ending news cycle. Apparently, somewhere around the time when he was snarkily shooting words into the Twittersphere, he also sent out that incomprehensible string of letters, and then later claimed it was an accident, a so-called “pocket tweet.”

Okay: so to expect that Rachel might skip this story altogether would be asking too much. She is, after all, a left-wing pundit with a purpose and, no matter how much she rises above the others of her species, it’s still her species. I knew she’d hit that, and knew, also, that the story would be accompanied by her often impish grin as she suggested that Brown was evasive, embarrassed, and perhaps less than totally honest with his awkward (and difficult to implement) pocket-tweet excuse.

But instead she surprised me. She began the segment with a reminder of how Scotty had teased his daughters in a speech from last year, and then went on to drop in three different references to how the tweeting incident occurred on a Saturday night and how, therefore, he perhaps might have been in less than complete control of himself, etc., etc., etc. The words were fuzzy but her intent clear; the between-the-lines implication was that Brown had had a few too many before hitting the old Twitterverse. She then goes on to say that it would be okay if that had been the case, but—hey—own up to it, Scott, okay?  She then ends with yet another reference to the teased-daughters episode.

For a minute there I thought that Sean Hannity had put on a Rachel mask and taken over the show. The segment was everything that Rachel has always avoided: it was illogical, irrational, and mean. She presented absolutely no evidence that alcohol was a factor, but nevertheless dog-whistled quite clearly that it was. She drew reference lines between teasing and drunkenly belligerent tweeting that reminded me of Glenn Beck and his chalkboard, worthless yet hypnotizing.

The whole thing was embarrassing—but not for Scott Brown.

Is that what it takes, Rachel, for you to maintain your popularity? Have you sunk to the same depths as the others, worried only about pulling an emotional trigger and firing hyperbole straight into the hearts of your viewers? If so, then you’ve failed us (including Republicans like myself who want to respect you). You’re choosing ratings over intelligence, dehumanization over acceptance, logic over rhetoric.  If these are is the decisions you’ve made, then I hope you find it was worth it as you sit there with your triumphant ratings while watching the continually worsening polarization of true dialogue.