In defense of the establishment elites

One of my favorite people in the world, a local mom and friend, pulled up next to me in her minivan last week outside our neighborhood Target with the warmest, I’m-so-glad-to-see-you-we-have-a-million-things-to-catch-up-on smiles.

I felt the same way. She and I are among a handful of town conservatives who commiserate whenever we can, usually for just a few seconds in a shopping aisle or at the back of an elementary school cello recital.

“Can you believe the Iran deal?” That sort of thing.

There wasn’t a question what we’d be discussing as her van window lowered. Donald Trump. Of course. What else does anyone talk about these days?

I opened: “I’m all in for Ted Cruz;” I said jauntily, “I just can’t do it.”

“Can’t do what?,” she asked.

“I can’t do Donald Trump — no matter what.”

Bad miscalculation: One of the nicest smiles you’ll ever see instantly vanished. In its place came genuine, impassioned anger.

“You know, you people in the media and politics just don’t get it! You don’t get why the rest of us are so mad.” The words came easily and her eyes flashed as she spoke.

To say I was taken aback would be a significant understatement. The term “you people” really cut into me. In an instant, I had become one of “them” to someone I consider a trusted friend and ally.

I immediately backed down. Politics can destroy friendships, and I didn’t want to lose this one.

But the exchange left me shaken and seething, frankly, for the rest of the day — not so much at my neighbor (OK, a little) but at all the people who have suddenly discovered politics and want to hang by the neck those of us who have spent a lifetime in the trenches, knocking on doors, phone banking after work, collecting petition signatures while our friends were at the beach and writing checks we couldn’t afford to candidates who didn’t stand a chance of winning. I wake up these days wanting to vent at them in a flurry of expletives, ending with a harsher version of, “Where the heck have you been all these years?!” Those “new” voters everyone keeps talking about? I want to tell them to stick it from the depths of my soul, I’m ashamed to admit. I want to say, “Where were that election day?”

But that’s only partly the reason my friend’s words stung. They also hurt because they’re partially true, but not necessarily in the way she meant, which I assume was about the years of self-dealing and broken promises in Washington.

That I get. I’ve been angry about it for years.

What I am guilty of — what people in the political industry who develop messaging have been guilty of for going on 20 years — is helping create a political environment that’s rendered rational discourse trite and ineffectual. Ask Ohio Gov. John Kasich about that.

Consultants in both parties have gradually upped their font sizes to attract attention, sharpened their rhetoric and mastered the art of painting opponents as mortal enemies of the state in one way or another.

And we’ve done it because it works.

Not all of us set out to go there; some learned it along the way out of necessity. It’s a bleak reality: Hard-hitting politics gets news coverage. Detailed policy prescriptions, not so much. (Media industry professionals can tell you which stories people want to watch and read most.) This truth has become far more pronounced, in my experience, as more and more jobs have gone overseas and as the U.S. economy continues to feel stagnant.

My colleagues and I also have made political compromise hurt. Part of the reason for that was McCain-Feingold, the well-intentioned Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act of 2002 as it’s formally known.

It backfired.

McCain-Feingold moved billions of dollars that would have gone into candidate campaigns into narrow, issue advocacy PACs that for the first time developed powerful and effective media and marketing operations of their own. Step out of line on a vote today and feel their wrath, be it from the teachers’ unions, the NRA or NARAL. Groups like these, and the newer super PACs, have no incentive, like candidates do, to temper attacks. They’re not trying to get elected; they’re keeping incumbents in line or working to knock them out of office.

But even candidate campaigns have changed dramatically in tone and strategy. Political rhetoric used to escalate predictably over the course of a race. Competitive campaigns would launch with “sunshine and rainbow” bio ads (establish yourself first) before shifting over to the grainy negative stuff, which is the only thing that significantly moves poll numbers. Many campaigns now open with full nuclear salvos (define the other guy before he defines you.)

Thirdly, candidates have learned the hard way never to talk about political realities. It’s electoral death in primaries especially. A candidate may be telling the truth in saying, “Geesh, I don’t know if we can get rid of Obamacare without the 60 votes needed for cloture in the Senate.” But what low-information voters are hearing — and being told to hear — is “this guy’s not committed to the cause.”

Is it any wonder that voters end up disappointed?

But here’s the worrisome question going forward: How do we change course? How do campaigns de-escalate when doing so would in many cases mean losing? To rephrase the walkaway quote from the movie, “The Untouchables,” how do you bring a knife to a gunfight?

A mutually agreed upon detente by the entire political industry is a wonderful thought, but so is peace in the Middle East. Both are worth discussing, but probably unrealistic.

What I fear is more likely to occur is continued escalation of the harsh, us-vs.-them rhetoric and tactics. Young consultants are no doubt watching Trump’s success and taking notes. My biggest fear is that it will take some terrible event or outcome to break this trajectory. That’s historically what needs to happen before humanity is reminded, yet again, that civility isn’t just politeness, it’s the essential ingredient of a democracy.

Getting back to my friend’s question; why are so many people so angry?

They’re angry for 100 reasons. One if them is that we in the political industry were weak and irresponsible. We gave them exactly what they wanted.

William F. B. O’Reilly is a Republican consultant.