Frank's Rants

And the winner is…

Volume 1, Number 18

With your indulgences, this column is almost completely devoid of politics, and is almost entirely personal. Last night, I was immensely honored to receive the prestigious Lifetime Achievement Award form the Sacramento Chapter of the International Association of Business Communicators. This is quite an honor, and I am humbled to receive it. I told the 150 people assembled in the ornate hall, including my family, business partners and staff that it was very risky of them to give me a microphone and a forum. I used the occasion to convey four principles that I have learned in my 30-year career in politics that, I promised, if they followed would ensure their success own in business, and in life. I hope you enjoy my speech, which you can read at http://www.schubertflintpa.com/pdf/IABCAcceptanceSpeech.pdf. For those of you who’ve been around California politics for a while, you’ll likely appreciate the tribute I pay to one of the great people of all time, my friend and mentor BT Collins, not to mention some heartfelt plaudits to some personal heroes in my life.

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So David Cook wins the 7th season of American Idol! America got it right this time. My wife and I have watched most every episode this season. She’s been rooting for David Cook for weeks, and when Ryan Seacrest announced that he’d won, she started dancing around the living room. I was stunned at the outcome. Just 24 hours beforehand I’d watch judges Randy Jackson and Simon Cowell proclaim the young David Archuleta the “knockout” winner. Simon, in particular, had almost denigrated the performance of rocker Cook. Then I saw a clip early in the “Results” show last night of Simon saying that he’d gone home after the live performance the day before and had watched the performance on television. “I think we may have gotten it wrong,” he said. “This may be going the other way.” Huh? Then towards the end of the show, just before the winner was announced, Simon told the national audience that he’d made a mistake with his comments about David Cook, and apologized that he’d come across as disrespectful. He then announced, as he’d hinted at in the beginning of the show, that Cook may well have won the contest. Sure enough, Cook did win.

Pardon me if I have spent too many years in politics, but I do not believe for one second that Simon Cowell had a sudden revelation and decided to recant his negative comments about David Cook moments before he was named the winner of American Idol. I am willing to bet a lot of money that Simon got a heads up from the producers that Cook and won (apparently by 12 million votes) and used the opportunity to save some face. It’s Hollywood, after all.

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Problems in Obama Country...

Volume 1, Number 17

Hillary Clinton captured 67% of the vote in the West Virginia primary yesterday, trouncing Barack Obama. Predictably, the talking heads say it doesn’t matter much since Democratic super delegates are beginning to move to Obama. Oh contraire, it matters a great deal.

First of all, no Democrat has captured the White House in the past 92 years (that’s 23 straight general elections) without winning West Virginia.

Second, half of West Virginia Democrats who cast ballots yesterday told pollsters they do not consider Obama to be an acceptable alternative. Half!

West Virginia brings front and center the one issue that the media finds most difficult to discuss – race. For the past two months, the Democratic primaries have revealed a clear and undeniable pattern – white voters don’t much care for Barack Obama, while black voters love him. In state after state, Clinton has racked up large majorities among white voters, and Obama has done the same among black voters. The racial divide on the Democratic side is as wide as it could possibly be.

To listen to Democratic Party leaders talk, this is all fine. They say that Democrats will all come home and be loyal supporters to whichever candidate wins the nomination. Apparently these party leaders haven’t spent much time talking to white voters in West Virginia.

The Democratic happy talk goes further in explaining why all will be well and good for their nominee by pointing to the rising strength of Latino voters, most of whom are registered Democrats. These voters, the party loyalists say, will be pivotal supporters for the Democrat nominee in the general election.  But will they, really?

Something I’ve learned from nearly 30 years of running campaigns, a facto that isn’t much talked about but is absolutely the truth is that Latinos and blacks don’t much like each other. If the Democrats think that Latinos are going to blindly support a black candidate for president simply because he’s a Democrat, they are in for a rude awakening.

Here’s a story to illustrate the point: A number of years ago I was working on an issue in Los Angeles County. I wanted to know if I had some messaging opportunities with African American voters. So we held two focus groups in South Central Los Angeles made up solely of black voters. We hired an African American man to moderate the groups. I watched the discussion unfold from behind the one-way glass in the back room of the focus group facility. As is typical in focus groups, the moderator began by asking the participants to tell him what one or two issues were most important to them and their families. It didn’t take two seconds for the latent animosity between blacks and Latinos to surface. “The Mexicans,” said a middle aged woman. “They’ve moved into our neighborhoods and are taking our jobs.” “All those damn Mexicans coming across the border and moving in here,” said a man. A young African American man picked up the theme: “All these illegals. They don’t even speak English but they get the jobs that should go to us.” This theme reared its head over and over again – these black voters blamed Latinos for virtually every ailment that plagued their community.

Some people might see the comments and positions expressed by these black participants in these focus groups as racist. I simply saw them as a reflection of reality. It intrigued me so much that I went back through crosstabs of issues to look at how blacks and Latinos responded to different messaging. I found that far more often than not, Latinos responded to messages much like their white counterparts, and differed significantly with responses from African American voters.

If Obama does in fact capture the nomination, the Democrats are going to have to figure out a way to address the racial divide that exists – not only with white voters, but with Latinos as well.  Putting someone like New Mexico Governor Bill Richardson on the ticket would help with Latinos, but might exacerbate the problem with white voters.  This is going to be tricky for the Democrats. The media may try to brush it under the rug, or even guilt trip white voters into feeling it is their duty to support Obama to prove they aren’t racists. This is such a difficult issue that it’s hard to even measure it in the polls. Voters often tell pollsters they will vote for a black candidate, and then they don’t. Ask Tom Bradley, who virtually every survey showed leading the election for California Governor in 1982, but lost to Republican George Deukmejian. The polls were simply wrong. They didn’t capture the true intention of voters, because voters simply refused to put themselves in a position of being thought a racist because they didn’t like the black candidate.

Say what you want about the role of race in politics, but look no further than West Virginia yesterday to understand it is a powerful factor in the 2008 presidential election.

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The cyclone that hit Myanmar last week was a natural disaster with catastrophic consequences. At least 68,000 people have lost their lives. Officials say the death toll may rise to over 100,000 once all the bodies are counted. While the world is trying to figure out how to help this devastated region, Al Gore saw the tragedy as an opportunity to score political points in support of his cultist devotion to the issue of global warming. In an interview last week on NPR, Gore said, “…we’re seeing consequences that scientists long predicted might be associated with continued global warming.” He went on to say that global warming is resulting in rising ocean temperatures, which cause storms, including cyclones and hurricanes, to intensify.

There’s only one problem with Nobel Gore’s statements: he’s just pulling it out of thin air (pardon the pun). Scientists at such prestigious research organizations as the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics were quick to call Gore’s claims an “alarmist statement” and went on to say, “Vice President Gore wants to confuse the crowd.”

‘Confuse the crowd’ is a polite way of saying that he is an unscrupulous manipulator and liar who will say whatever he needs to say to make himself relevant. He is so full of hot air he may well have been the cause of the Myanmar cyclone.

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And now, allow me to brag on my wife. Maryann started playing the game of golf just a year ago, primarily as a way for us to spend more time together. Now she is becoming addicted to the game. In preparation for her first-ever match play tournament, she played something like 8 rounds of golf over the past two weeks. Her friends were considering an intervention. But guess what? She won her first match, beating a very experienced player, and then took her second opponent (an accomplished golfer) all the way to the 17th hole before finally losing, 2 and 1. Despite the pressure of match play competition, she shot her best score ever on our home course. I couldn’t be more proud of her for having the courage to play in the tournament, let alone do so well! Good job, sweetie.

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To the Convention, Jeeves…

So North Carolina and Indiana give us a split decision in the race for the Democratic nomination for president. Could John McCain be any happier?

It appears a very good possibility that the Democratic nominee will be selected this summer at the Nominating Convention in Denver. While the Republican hierarchy can be seen high-fiving themselves in the backrooms, Democratic leaders like Chairman Howard Dean are aghast. They are desperate for “peace in the party” and will continue their efforts to have a nominee crowned by acclimation before the convention. They might conced in forcing Hillary Clinton from the race, but my guess is it’s not going to happen.

Dean and his cohorts on the Democratic National Committee have nobody but themselves to blame for their current plight. They are so politically correct that even when a candidate wins a primary, the loser gets almost as much benefit. They are so used to seeing early knock-out blows in primary contests when candidates who lose one or two contests drop out, they don’t know what to do now that two candidates are committed to staying the course and neither can win enough delegates from voters to capture the nomination.  Unless Clinton quits, which I don’t see happening unless she loses West Virginia next week (she’s expected to win there), then the process that the Democratic Party selected will simply play itself out. As WC Fields might have said, “My hat, my cane, Jeeves. We’re going to the convention.”

Consultants to Clinton and Obama would be well advised to track down some old guard Republican operatives to pick their brains about convention strategies in Denver. The last time a nominee was up in the air when the convention was gaveled to order was on the Republican side: 1976, at Kemper Arena in Kansas City. The Democratic candidates should study the lessons from this precedent.

It was August in the year the nation celebrated its bicentennial. The country was torn between a spirit of excitement coming off a glorious tribute a month earlier to America’s 200 years as the beacon of democracy, and the continuing national hangover from the Watergate scandal that forced Richard Nixon from office in disgrace in 1974. Ronald Reagan, fresh off eight years as California’s governor, ran a spirited campaign as an outsider, challenging incumbent President Gerald R. Ford at every opportunity. It was a hard-fought and often bitter campaign. Ford lacked the strong base customarily associated with a sitting president, owing to his ascension to office following Nixon’s forced resignation. Reagan, the conservative, had the money and the organization to campaign throughout the country, and resisted countless efforts by Republican insiders to convince him to step aside in the interest of party unity.

Reagan knew that he had to gamble to win at the convention. Ford already held the office. The challenger doesn’t dethrone the champion with a split decision. Reagan needed a knock out punch in Kansas City.  As the August 16th opening day of the convention approached, his advisors feverishly plotted strategy. What they came up with was the idea of forcing a floor vote at the convention on an issue they hoped would force some Ford delegates to vote with the Reaganistas, even while pledging their loyalty to Ford. I have always felt this was a brilliant strategy – if Reagan could win this “test vote,” the media would trumpet it as a major victory for the challenger and a stunning defeat for the incumbent. It would create incredible momentum for Reagan on the eve of the nomination vote, resulting in a convention climate that made it easier for him to convince delegates to go with him.  Unfortunately for Reagan, the brilliance of the strategy was foiled in its tactical implementation.

One of the major issues in the 1976 Republican race was the Panama Canal. This canal was built with American taxpayer money for the purpose of ensuring safe and speedy passage for American ships to expand the import and export of goods. Under long established foreign policy agreements, control of the canal was set to revert to Panama. Reagan was opposed to this, and most Republicans agreed with him. Ford, ever the Washington insider, was firmly committed to turning the canal over to Panama as scheduled. I can almost hear the line from the stump speech Reagan gave countless times each day: “We built it. We paid for it. It’s ours, and we’re going to keep it.” [Pause for thunderous applause.]

This is the issue the Reagan campaign should have picked as their test vote. They could have forced a floor fight to amend the party platform to put Republicans on record as opposing the give away of the Panama canal. Sadly, they instead decided to attempt to force both candidates to name their Vice Presidential selection prior to the nominating vote. They figured that Ford would pick someone who would either alienate the moderate or conservative wings of the party, both of which were heavily represented at the convention. (Liberal Vice President Nelson Rockefeller, at Ford’s private urgings, had already made it clear that he would not seek to be on the ticket. Though he was a political liability, Ford selected Rockefeller as Vice President because he believed him qualified to assume the presidency should Ford die in office – something that twice very nearly happened. See Lynette “Squeaky” Fromme and Sarah Jane Moore.)

To press their case, Reagan announced that moderate U.S. Senator Richard Schweiker from Pennsylvania would be his running mate. Who, Reagan demanded, would run with Ford? Shouldn’t delegates know in advance who else would be on the ticket when casting their deciding vote for president?  Unfortunately for Reagan, the Schweiker gambit backfired. Conservatives who strongly backed Reagan were sharply critical of the selection, and the air was out of the strategic balloon.  Ford was able to defeat the proposed rules change on a vote of 1180 to 1069, closely shadowing his nomination on a first ballot vote of 1187 to 1070.

But that wasn’t the end of the convention intrigue. Sensing the damage that might come from a fiercely divided convention, party elders convinced President Ford that he needed to make Reagan his Vice Presidential running mate. Ford hated Reagan and felt him to be a disloyal, opportunistic cowboy. But Ford wanted to win more than he hated Reagan, and offered the VP spot to the former California governor.  Reagan turned him down.  But before he left Kansas City, Reagan gave a stirring speech that vastly overshadowed President Ford’s own remarks, leaving many delegates to wonder if they’d made the correct choice. Ford ended up running with Kansas Senator Bob Dole and went on to lose the presidency to Jimmy Carter.

The parallels between 1976 and 2008 are striking. If Hillary Clinton stays in the race, will she seek a test vote in Denver like Reagan did in Kansas City? If so, a vote to seat the Michigan and Florida delegations would seem to be tailor made for her. The Democratic nominee can’t capture the White House without those states, so how can they refuse to count the votes of these delegates at the convention?

Will Obama, like Ford, be able to convince delegates that because he has a lead in elected delegates, states won and popular vote cast, that he has effectively won the nomination?

Will the eventual Democratic nominee be forced to name his/her rival as the running mate even though the two hate each other? And if the offer is made, would it be accepted?

And will the losing candidate use the convention to give a speech that so outshines the victor as to leave the delegates wondering about their choice?

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My ex-wife, Barbara, was Ronald Reagan’s secretary during his 1976 run for the White House. She worked directly with Mr. Reagan and his senior staff, putting in 20+ hour days on the campaign trail to keep the machinery humming. How campaigning has changed since back in the day. In ’76, there was no 24 hour news cycle and no Google news alerts. To get the news from across the country, the Reagan team had trusted volunteers camp out at newspaper printing offices in several key cities to grab the first edition of the paper as it came hot off the press, usually around midnight. They’d look for coverage of the presidential race, and then call Barbara to read it to her. She’d sit in her tiny hotel room in whatever city Regan was stumping in, pen and steno notebook in hand, phone cradled against her neck, cigarette dangling from her lips, transcribing every word in shorthand. Then she grabbed the greatest piece of office equipment ever invented to that point in time – the self-correcting IBM Selectric typewriter – and typed out the news stories. Next she fired up the mimeograph machine (that’s right - they didn’t have a photo copier) and ran off the stack of typed stories. Assuming the thing didn’t break down (which it frequently did), she finally slipped the collection of news articles under the doors of Reagan’s senior advisers (Deaver, Hanaford, Meese, Nofziger, etc.) and the great man himself. When they awoke to read the morning news, she was going to bed to catch a couple of hours sleep before heading to the campaign plane and off to another city.  Barbara certainly had her share of problems and our marriage didn’t last, but once upon a time, back in the day, the woman definitely had game. She passed away from lung cancer last year. RIP.