Clowns to the Left of Me, Jokers to the Right

by Michael A Smerconish

  1-800-POLITICAL-VENOM

  Philadelphia Daily News, Thursday, September 3, 2009

  I’M ON VACATION this week. It couldn’t have come soon enough.

  This is the first time-off I’ve had in eight months, and 2009 has been an incredibly exhausting and newsy year.

  I was looking forward to some neglected leisure activities and projects around the house. I promised our sons that we’d go kayaking on the Delaware, and told my wife that I’d finally clean up a makeshift pet memorial in the backyard.

  The to-do list also included trying to get new home-phone service straightened out with Verizon. On Tuesday, I called Verizon and was connected to “Annie” (not her real name).

  She asked what number I was calling about, and I offered one of several that might get her to my account. She told me that line had been disconnected (even though I’d just used it)—and that it had last been called by “Obama for America,” cavalierly sharing her access to far too much information.

  Too bad she didn’t let it go at that. “He’s not for America,” she volunteered. “Excuse me?” I said. She repeated herself, then casually told me the president “is a communist,” a “Marxist-Leninist.”

  Of course, I’m no stranger to discussing politics by phone. I make a living fielding calls and debating the issues with my listeners. But I didn’t field this call; I made it. And having initiated it, I couldn’t exercise the radio host’s prerogative and hang up on myself.

  Even worse, I didn’t make the call to talk politics. I just wanted to get my phone fixed. I’d done nothing to invite Annie’s diatribe, yet she was insistent that I listen to her robotic regurgitation of the talking points she’d likely absorbed hours earlier.

  I told her I found her comments inappropriate (if not outright offensive). But she didn’t let up. She proceeded to tell me that the president’s parents and individuals in his administration were also communists.

  So convinced of the righteousness of her beliefs, Annie was ready to espouse them to anybody who called. It was as if she fancied herself a talk-show host ready to do battle with her callers—even though her audience was simply those people whose phone lines needed Verizon’s attention.

  This is the sorry state of political discourse in America today. Annie was so certain of the opinions that someone else had told her that she was ready to regurgitate them to any hapless caller, the brazen audacity that transformed so many town-hall meetings into shouting matches.

  I told Annie she should save her views for after hours and concentrate on my phone. When she persisted, I told her I wanted her last name, and the names of her supervisors. She initially demurred on supplying her own name, but readily offered two names—one male, one female.

  When I asked to be connected to the woman, she said she was off. When I requested the man, our connection ended.

  By then, the kids were dressed for the kayaks, and the last thing I wanted to do was get into a squabble about politics while on vacation, much less wait on hold to recount what had just happened.

  But there was no way I was letting this pass. So I called the same 800 number, and tracked down her male supervisor. He heard me out but seemed more intent on telling me to calm down than getting my name or phone number. I demanded he take both. He promised to look into the situation.

  That day on the Delaware, I told my sons what had happened. I explained that I complained to Verizon just as I would have if an operator had volunteered that George W. Bush lied about Iraq or offered some equally reprehensible view from another political extreme.

  And I explained that I viewed this as more than just an aberrant woman in a company call center.

  As we paddled, and I recalled our conversation, what stood out was not only the outlandish charges against the president, but the ease with which she recited them. To a stranger. And while on someone else’s dime.

  It was as if the mention of the president’s name—which she herself brought up after accessing my billing records—had pushed a button that caused her to spin out of control.

  And the manner in which she stated her views told me she was someone who viewed her own disparagement of our nation’s leader as some kind of a badge of patriotism.

  Well, Annie, you’re no Tom Paine. Nor is there a war being fought for independence.

  And if the venom being spewed against the president isn’t reined in soon, I fear your mind-set will give aid and encouragement to some sicko who thinks it’s his place to protect the republic through the barrel of a gun.

  Just before the business day ended, my cell phone rang. It was some big mahoff in Verizon’s Pittsburgh call center. He wanted to apologize on behalf of the company.

  I told him I appreciated the call, that I had no ill will toward Verizon, and that I hoped the call had been recorded “for training purposes” and would indeed be used for that.

  I suspect that when Annie is confronted with my complaint, she won’t hedge but will readily admit her behavior because she believes she is fighting for some principle higher than her job.

  I conveyed my suspicions to the mahoff.

  His chuckle told me I was correct.

  We are truly in a sorry state. Can you hear me now, Annie?

  AFTERWORD

  On a subsequent occasion not long after my phone call with Annie, I had a problem with my telephone service. When I called and wasn’t getting satisfactory service, the Verizon representative at the other end of the line said, “What are you going to do? Get me fired, too?” Apparently word had spread within Verizon that I’d written this column. So I’m sure they heard me.

  SORRY, BUT FOR ME,

  THE PARTY IS OVER

  Philadelphia Inquirer, Sunday, February 21, 2010

  IT TOOK ONLY THE SINGLE TAP of a computer key, and just like that I’d exited the Republican Party after 30 years of active membership. The context might sound impulsive, but I’d been thinking of becoming an independent for a long time. I just hadn’t expected that a trip to renew my driver’s license would mark the end.

  Just before my photo was snapped, I was asked if I wanted to register to vote. For me, the question was borderline offensive. I first registered after turning 18 in the spring of 1980 and haven’t missed an election since. And I’m not just talking presidential races. I mean all elections. Congress, town council, school board, whatever.

  “I’m already registered,” I offered. Next came the unexpected question of whether I wished to change my political affiliation. I’m not sure why that is asked of someone renewing a driver’s license, and I question whether it is even appropriate for most. But in my case, it was the only impetus I needed.

  Years ago, I grew tired of having my television or radio introduction accompanied by a label, with some implied expectation that what would then come from my mouth were the party talking points. That was me 26 years ago, when I was the youngest elected member of the state delegation to the Republican National Convention, but not today. I’m not sure if I left the Republican Party or the party left me. All I know is that I no longer feel comfortable.

  The national GOP is a party of exclusion and litmus tests, dominated on social issues by the religious right, with zero discernible outreach by the national party to anyone who doesn’t fit neatly within its parameters. Instead, the GOP has extended itself to its fringe while throwing under the bus longstanding members like New York assemblywoman Dede Scozzafava, a McCain-Palin supporter in 2008 who told me she voted with her Republican leadership 90 percent of the time before running for Congress last fall.

  Which is not to say I feel comfortable in the Democratic Party, either. Weeks before Indiana Democratic senator Evan Bayh’s announcement that he will not seek reelection, I noted the centrist former governor’s words to the Wall Street Journal’s Gerald Seib. Too many Democrats, Bayh said in that interview, are “tone-deaf” to Americans’ belief that the party has “overreached rather than looking for consensus with moderates and independents.”

  Whe
re political parties once existed to create coalitions and win elections, now they seek to advance strict ideological agendas. In today’s terms, it’s hard to imagine the GOP tent once housing such disparate figures as conservative Barry Goldwater and liberal New Yorker Jacob Javits, while John Stennis of Mississippi and Ted Kennedy of Massachusetts coexisted as Democratic contemporaries.

  Collegiality is nonexistent today, and any outreach across an aisle is castigated as weakness by the talking heads who constantly stir a pot of discontent. So vicious is the political climate that within two years, Senator John McCain has gone from GOP standard-bearer to its endangered-species list. All of which leaves homeless those of us with views that don’t stack up neatly in any ideological box the way we’re told they should.

  Consider that I’ve long insisted on the need to profile in the war against terrorists. I believe that if someone like Khalid Sheikh Mohammed has actionable intelligence on future terrorism, you try the least coercive methods to extract it but ultimately stop at damn near nothing to get what you need to save American lives. I want the U.S. military out of Iraq, but into Pakistan. I’m for capital punishment. I think our porous borders need to be secured before we determine how to deal with the millions of illegal immigrants already within them. Sounds pretty conservative. But wait.

  I think that in 2008, the GOP was wrong to adopt a party platform that maintained a strict opposition to abortion without at least carving out exceptions in the case of rape, incest, or danger to the mother’s life. I was appalled that legislators tried to decide Terri Schiavo’s end-of-life plan. I don’t care if two guys hook up any more than they should care about my heterosexual lifestyle. And I still don’t know what to think about climate change.

  I think President Obama is earnest, smart, and much more centrist than his Tea Party caricature suggests. He has never been given a fair chance to succeed by those who openly crow about their desire to see him fail (while somehow congratulating one another on their relative patriotism). I know he was born in America, isn’t a socialist, and doesn’t worship in a mosque. I get that he inherited a minefield. Still, the level of federal spending concerns me. And he never closed the deal with me that health insurance is a right, not a privilege. But I’m not folding the tent on him. Not now. Not with the nation fighting two wars while its economy still teeters on the brink of collapse.

  All of which leaves me in a partisan no-man’s-land, albeit surrounded by many others, especially my neighbors. By quitting the GOP, I have actually joined the largest group of American voters. According to the latest Washington Post–ABC News poll, 39 percent of Americans identify themselves as independents—compared with 32 percent who say they are Democrats and 26 percent who are self-described members of the GOP. Nowhere is this more pronounced than locally, where a shift away from the Republican Party has taken place in the four bellwether counties surrounding Philadelphia.

  I will miss casting a ballot in the spring, as current state election law prohibits unaffiliated voters from voting in GOP or Democratic primary elections. Instead, I’ll join the others who bide their time until fall, when we can temper the extremes of both parties.

  “My decision should not be interpreted for more than it is: a very difficult, deeply personal one. . . . I value my independence. I am not motivated by strident partisanship or ideology.”

  Those are Bayh’s words, not mine. But he was speaking for both of us.

  AFTERWORD

  As I wrote in the column, my exit from the GOP was a long time coming and I’m now much more comfortable being registered in Pennsylvania as “non-affiliated,” the Commonwealth lingo for Independent. I did rejoin the GOP briefly in 2016 because I couldn’t stand the thought of sitting out the presidential primary. I cast a ballot for John Kasich and then promptly left the party again. Of course, my transition begs the question: Did I leave the GOP or did the GOP leave me? Well, probably a little of each.

  There’s no doubt that as I have gotten older, my views have moderated on several important issues, including abortion, climate change, same-sex marriage, and gun control. But both parties have become increasingly inhospitable to ideological nonpurists, which is an enormous change since I came of age politically. Don’t take my word for it. Consider that for nearly three decades, the National Journal took the ideological pulse of the Congress, and in 2014–2015, for the fourth straight year, the Journal found that every Republican in the Senate was more conservative than every Democrat and every Democrat was more liberal than every Republican. The House was similarly divided. But that isn’t the way it’s always been. As recently as the 1980s, on Ronald Reagan’s watch, 60 percent of the Senate was made up of moderates. There were so many moderates on the Republican side of the aisle that they had their own weekly gathering, called the “Wednesday Lunch Club.” Members included Bob Dole, Alan Simpson, Bob Packwood, Ted Stevens, Nancy Kassebaum, John Heinz, and my friend Arlen Specter. Today, there are no moderates left in the Senate. For this, I primarily blame the polarization of the media. There is no coincidence in the fact that since the early 1990s the media have become more polarized, and so has Washington, and it is clearly a matter of causation. Too many elected officials take their cues from men and women with microphones who wield outsized influence in the primary process.

  There are other drivers of the polarized divide—money, social media, geography/gerrymandering, and self-sorting, each of which has contributed to the skewing of our debate. But more than any other cause, I fault the desire of those who stir the pot for ratings and mouse clicks without regard for governance, which requires cooperation and compromise.

  And here’s confirmation of what I see: the National Journal, which used to publish that annual assessment of Congress, stopped publishing its weekly magazine in 2015 after 46 years in print, which the editor Ronald Brownstein, under the headline “Facts, RIP,” attributed partly to the partisan climate.

  “But mostly,” Brownstein writes:

  I think the magazine’s position deteriorated because the market for its core product eroded as our political system has grown more rigidly partisan. Fewer elected officials now follow the sequence of gathering objective information and then reaching a decision; usually they follow ideological or partisan signals to reach decisions and then seek talking points to support them. With that change, Washington reporting has evolved further toward sports reporting that partisans consult mainly to see whether their side is “winning” each day’s competition. The National Journal could never entirely compete in that world.

  YARD SALE 101

  Philadelphia Daily News, Thursday, May 13, 2010

  WHILE FEDERAL REGULATORS spent last weekend unsuccessfully hunting for the cause of last Thursday’s momentary financial meltdown, I was monitoring a classic American enterprise.

  It featured a partnership agreement, product development, and market research, not to mention an advertising plan, pricing strategy, concessions, negotiations, and money handling.

  Unlike the current financial markets and their fluctuations, this one didn’t require a Ph.D. in economics to follow. It was a yard sale run largely by our three sons, ages 9, 12, and 14.

  Weeks ago, I’d proposed that they manage the sale with a twofold purpose: first, to relieve our garage and attic of all the stuff we’d accumulated but didn’t need or want. And, second, to use it as a device to teach them some of the rudiments of economics.

  Now that it’s over, I think Wall Street can learn more from the boys than they can learn from Wall Street. The lesson would be about returning to basics.

  First, the boys had to work out their partnership. Would they split the profits equally? Or was the eldest entitled to a larger share of the take? Would Dad get reimbursed for using his truck to haul the goods?

  Second, they needed product. Good thing their “Uncle Pat,” better known as “Cap’n Pat,” was willing to rid his own garage of some items, including a vintage Coca-Cola sign. They had flowerpots, books, CDs, toys, a go-kart,
two bikes, and an old-fashioned radio.

  Their market research consisted of visiting a few sales on the weekends before their own. At one, the homemade brownies seemed to do a brisk business. Suddenly, food became a consideration.

  Marketing consisted of two newspaper ads and some road signage for the morning of the event.

  As for the negotiating strategy, I recommended they cut whatever deals were necessary in order to spare us a trip to Goodwill. My wife and I promised to stay off the floor as best we could, leaving the boys to run their own show. That meant they’d handle all the money.

  Immediately, the ethics of business confronted them.

  While they were setting up the night before, a man arrived, newspaper ad in hand, saying his son was graduating from high school the next day. He was hoping to get a look at the Coca-Cola sign.

  Was it proper to sell before the sale started?

  The boys didn’t hesitate. The sign went for full price. The buyer offered a $5 tip for allowing him to make the purchase, which only reinforced the boys’ belief they’d sold it too cheap. “I wonder if he uses the line about the son’s graduation the night before all sales,” our eldest said.