Why did I buy my Buick Park Avenue (may the brand rest in peace) in 2005? Well, I wanted something really hot to impress the girls, while at the same time, I needed something old-fashioned enough to still have a tape deck, because CDs are tools of the devil and I have lots of tapes.
I got exactly what I wanted. You can do that with a car. You can’t do that with a political candidate.
No, political candidates are a mess of options, but you rarely get to pick what you want. Electing a political candidate is a binary decision, a “yes” or “no”. You can usually pick from two or three messy collections of opinions and attitudes and beliefs and tics — but you can’t rearrange your favorite to perfection.
It’s not impossible, of course, at least in terms of manufacturing specifications. When the late John Bailey was the chief Democratic honcho in Connecticut, he sort of created candidates as one might manufacture a car: I want an Italian who speaks Yiddish to his Polish wife, while singing black revival music at the Greek festival.
But when it comes to issues, you can’t always get what you want. The charm of American politics is those slippery politicians, who are sort of pro-choice, in a “personally opposed to abortion” kind of way; or who favor welfare for dairy farmers, but not for single moms; or who are sort of concerned about “working families,” unless the family works at “Big Pharma,” which is trying to steal all of grandma’s money – not that we favor old people more than kids, who need free pre-school classes, especially if the classes are staffed by unemployed moms from the neighborhood, because low-skill jobs have been shipped offshore; not that we oppose free trade, which sort of means ‘fair’ trade, which the labor unions can explain, not that we necessarily tilt toward the unions.
To avoid the messy business of trying to construct the perfect candidates (how much easier it is to construct the perfect columnist), we label them as Democratic or Republican, hoping that the party cookbooks will provide accurate recipes for the candidate and voters to accept and absorb.
Not a perfect solution, of course, as Connecticut knows only too well. When it became inconvenient for U.S. Sen. Lowell Weicker to remain a Republican when he wanted to be governor, the “Connecticut Party” was born. And most recently, of course, after U.S. Sen. Joe Lieberman lost in a Democratic primary, he emerged as the “Connecticut for Lieberman” candidate to win re-election as an “independent” Democrat.
History’s Messes
It’s a messy business, this political branding thing. Massachusetts still remembers the strange saga of the late Gov. Edward J. King, a pro-life, tax-slashing, throw-the-criminals-in-jail kind of guy who defeated the lefty Michael Dukakis in a 1978 primary, and ran to the right of the Republican to win the governor’s race, before losing in 1982 and, succumbing to his instincts, switched his affiliation to Republican.
Well, enough is enough. This messy business has to stop. Lieberman was the last straw. You just can’t go around practicing this hideous “democracy” business, where voter preferences are more important than party labels.
Connecticut Secretary of the State Susan Bysiewicz wants candidates to tell primary voters, in advance, whether they will run as “independents,” if they lose their party primary.
It’s not like Senator Joe would have had to stand up and say something like, “cross my heart and hope to die, I will/will not run on the Vegetarian Party ticket line, if I lose the Democratic primary.” No, according to the Bysiewicz proposal, Lieberman would have to collect a zillion petition signatures prior to the primary, just like a real independent or third-party kind of guy, tipping us off that he might run, even if he “loses” — especially if he knows that most of the state’s voters actually want him to win.
So, the message from our Secretary of the State, the keeper of the election flame, is that this sordid business of allowing the most popular candidate to get on the ballot and win the election must be curtailed, or discouraged, or at least labeled as unclean.
Democracy, thy name is Susan.n
Laurence D. Cohen is a freelance writer.