Vilsack for...Lobbyist

Vilsack
Days Until Bush Leaves Office = 706

I’ll admit that this story caught me off guard: Tom Vilsack, who just left the Iowa governor’s mansion last month and is, of course, running for president, has signed a two-year contract with the corporate parent of Iowa’s largest utility, MidAmerican Energy, as a “consultant on renewable energy and the environment.”

According to reports, Vilsack’s new consulting gig will involve working 40 hours per quarter, and he’ll be paid hourly by the friendly folks at MidAmerican Holdings Co., MidAmerican Energy’s parent company. How much money will that amount to? When asked, Vilsack could not recall.

Huh?

“Essentially, I am going to do research and provide input to policymakers in the holding company on issues involving renewable energy,” Vilsack said. He went on to add, “I'm already doing a lot of this work as part of the campaign.”

Well, that makes sense: if you’re campaigning for President of the United States, you might as well leverage that to make some money in the private sector! Turn your hobby into real cash!

Seeking to allay the concerns he obviously knows this will raise, Vilsack is quoted as saying, “I am expressly not a lobbyist.” Chisel that one next to Al Gore’s “No controlling legal authority” in the Pantheon of Tone-Deaf Political Rationalizations.

This is all stupendously misguided. Tom Vilsack should immediately renounce this indefensible deal with MidAmerican, acknowledge the obvious conflict of interest involved, and apologize for making such an egregious error in judgment. If MidAmerican, or any other corporation, wants to know what Tom Vilsack thinks about renewable energy and the environment, they should do what the average citizen is obliged to do: attend a speech, visit the campaign website, research his record as governor. Instead, they sign up the man who would be our next president to a consulting contract that – Hey! What do you know? – would expire right around the time the next president will be taking the oath of office.

Does anyone else see the Dick Cheney parallel here?

Will every caucus-goer with MidAmerican’s level of insider access to Tom Vilsack please raise your hand?

Can anyone take Vilsack’s talk of being a political outsider untainted by the ways of Washington seriously in light of this?

This is sickening, it is embarrassing, and, if not repudiated directly, immediately and personally by Vilsack himself, is enough in itself to exclude Tom Vilsack from any consideration as a candidate for president.

Obama's Kickoff

Days Until Bush Leaves Office = 707

As promised, I drove up to Ames yesterday for Senator Obama’s campaign event. This turned out to be a speech to about 5,000 people in the basketball arena at Iowa State. The crowd appeared to be mostly students from the university, but a fair number of the post college-age population was there as well.

I got to the venue about two hours before show time (lesson learned from the Hillary Clinton kickoff: if you go to one of these media feeding frenzy events, go early!). I came around to the east entrance of the arena to see exactly two people waiting outside. Couldn’t be right. I walked around to the West side, and found the line-up there. Fortunately, there was a small foyer that I was able to go into and get out of the cold (yep, it’s still freezing here!). The doors opened about 35 minutes later.

The early arrival paid off: I was one of the first few dozen people to get in. I passed up the available seats and made my way to the arena floor, and snagged a place to stand that was pretty much dead center to the rostrum, and about 30 feet from the stage. There was a cordon separating an area just about 10 feet deep in front of me, reserved for people who arranged to get the double top-secret unannounced red tickets (Hey! Who did you have to be to get one of these? Where were they doled out? No answers!). Whoa – just reread that: the Spoiled-Rotten Iowa Voter just came leaping out there, didn’t it! “GRRRRR! I couldn’t get closer than 30 feet from the candidate! I was robbed!” Uh-huh. Anyway, after the red ticket cordon there was another cordon to separate a final five feet of space in front of the stage for press and security people. Red tickets aside, I got a much better slot than for the Hillary event, even though this time the building was enormously larger. I even had the chance, if I had wanted, to be one of the people who were actually on the stage behind the rostrum. I passed this up because, one, I didn’t want to spend the event looking at the back of the candidate, and two, I would’ve felt bad being up there as an uncommitted when I know there would’ve been an actual supporter just dying to stand in my place. Good choice, as it turned out.

And then, the down-side of getting there early: the wait. The standing up wait. The watch the arena fill up while listening to the cover band wrestle its repertoire wait. The take pictures of the arena filling up wait. The call everyone in my address book because I really, really have the time to talk wait.

Finally, of course, things begin to happen: staff people start to mill about the rostrum with affected nonchalance (“Oh! There were 5,000 people watching me just then? I never even noticed!”), the press gets in position, the selected audience members are taken to their positions on the dais. More staff buzzing, not a few in what must be the de rigueur uniform of the Obama campaign: jeans, pale blue dress shirt (untucked), and blue blazer. Staff passing out printed placards to the crowd, then (and I thought this was a masterstroke) passing out hand-lettered signs (“Nurses for Obama!” “Barack the Vote!”) to give the cameras the appearance of people who had so much enthusiasm for the event that they took the time to make their own signs…because, of course, what person planning to attend the event would ever have imagined that the campaign would provide its own printed signs?!? Other campaigns, take note: this little bit of stage management goes over like gangbusters: the press absolutely laps it up.

Then the introductions. First, the vice-chair of the local Democratic party committee. Then, the specter at the feast, the candidate who unsuccessfully ran for congress in the district last November. Finally, the president of the campus chapter of Young Democrats, who, bless her undergraduate heart, absolutely froze at the microphone, blinking and stammering in the lights for a painful eternity before finally managing to blurt out, “Please welcome Senator Barack Obama.”

Badlam as Barack hits the stage. The phrase “rock star reception” is overused, and anyway, hardly does justice to the welcome he receives from the crowd. Seriously, what it’s like to get that kind of lift from a crowd of strangers probably only Bono, the Pope and a handful of other mortals know. Add Obama to their number.

As preamble to the main event, two Iowa Democratic elected officials (State Treasurer and Attorney General) announce that they are endorsing Barack Obama for President and signing on to his campaign. This is bigger news than it may sound, as these are the two most prominent Democratic office holders to have yet issued an endorsement of any candidate, and puts the other campaigns on notice that Obama has what it takes to pull the organizational muscle that’s a big part of winning here.

In contrast with the Hillary kickoff, this was a speech, not a town hall meeting. Obama talked about his family, his background, his political career, his newly-launched campaign for the White House. And the war. Eloquence throughout and to spare. But it isn’t all oratory and no substance; Obama talks in some detail about his plan to get U.S. troops out of Iraq by the end of March, 2008, for example. But the crowd is there to hear a broader message: hope for the future, national renewal, a return to respectability for the United States on the world stage, and Barack does not disappoint.

Barack Obama is, at most times, an inspiring speaker. In his best moments, it is possible to take him at his own valuation as a once-in-a-generation leader from the JFK mold. He places his personal story in the continuum of national progress on civil rights and civic enlightenment, and when he concluded by quoting Martin Luther King, Jr. about reaching out to bend the arc of the universe toward justice, he absolutely brought the house down.

Is he the real deal, a reporter from the New York Times asked me afterwards. Only time will tell. Barack Obama is at the beginning of this campaign, not the end. And although he is a formidable candidate, there is no way to know for a long while whether he will live up to the potential shown here. Which plays us right back to the question: is he the real deal…is he the real deal…

DNC Winter Meeting Wrap Up

Days Until Bush Leaves Office = 709

Now for a few belated thoughts in the aftermath of last weekend’s DNC Winter Meeting. Here are my impressions after watching the candidates speak:
Biden – Would anyone be surprised if I said he got off to a slow start? He began his speech with an awkwardly-delivered joke about the Observer debacle, and followed it with yet another apology. Will Biden’s campaign be able to find a way to move on?
Clark – Not much dynamism, but Clark spoke movingly and personally about the war. Polite applause.
Clinton – Hillary continues to refine and polish, but she gave basically the same speech to the DNC that she gave here the previous week. For all that, Senator Clinton got more standing ovations than any other speaker, which I took to be more an indication from the party establishment of her position at the head of the field than genuine admiration for what she said. BTW, no emails came from the Clinton campaign touting her DNC speech, but I did get a note thanking me for attending the January 27 event in Des Moines, and promising lots more meetings on a smaller scale in keeping with the retail tradition of Iowa caucus politics. Emails like that one tell me that Hillary’s campaign gets it.
Dodd – America the tired nation: probably not the note any presidential candidate wants to strike. Dodd’s point was that the country was tired of the Bush administration, and he’s right; but saying “America is tired” over and over again starts to take on its own context after a few repetitions. I’m beginning to suspect this campaign is meant as more of a Last Hurrah for Chris Dodd than a serious run for the White House.
Edwards –According to an email I received from Edwards’ campaign, his speech “blew the roof off” of the DNC Winter Meeting. Hmmm…not as such; more of a sweeping appeal to emotion and union support, I’d say. One can see how it was that Edwards made millions as a trial lawyer, swaying juries on behalf of his clients, but I remain unconvinced (to this point) that he’s got what it takes to sway the electorate. POSTSCRIPT: Edwards followed up his speech by announcing his plan for universal health insurance. The proposals strike me as trying to address the health coverage issue with a series of sideways blows inartfully portrayed as a frontal assault. Any campaign that cannot do better needs to get into another line of work.
Gravel – If you don’t know who Mike Gravel is, let me assure you that there is good reason. I’m pretty sure most Rotary clubs around the country could produce an equally qualified candidate for the White House.
Kucinich – Wow. Dennis Kucinich may well be the most colorless American politician since Calvin Coolidge.
Obama – Extraordinarily impressive, Barack showed up for the serious moment. No campaign placards, no cheesy classic rock anthem. You could’ve heard a pin drop during most of his speech.
Richardson –I received an email from Richardson’s campaign this past week telling me that his speech was “electrifying.” I wouldn’t go anything like that far, but Richardson made a solid address, built around a critique of the Bush administration and his own record as governor of New Mexico. The delivery, unfortunately, was a bit flat and conventional, but Richardson’s speech was well worth listening to.
Vilsack – Played the “I’m an outsider” card. That Vilsack is not part of the Washington establishment is indisputable, but choosing that as his theme is perhaps making too much of a good thing. Whatever anger the electorate may have had pent up about the perennial “mess in Washington” was purged, at least for the time being, in last November’s elections. If matching your message to the mood of the country is part of winning (and, of course, it is), then the Vilsack campaign needs to go back and do some serious homework.

OK, so now I’m off to the Obama rally in Ames. The venue has been moved from a gymnasium to the largest indoor stadium on campus, so I’m not sure how close I’ll be able to get to the stage, let alone to Senator Obama himself. Check back on Monday, though, and I’ll give you all the details.

Here He Comes

Days Until Bush Leaves Office = 710

As we’ve known for about the last month, Barack Obama will officially throw his hat in the ring today with an event at the Old State House in Springfield, Illinois.

Any guesses about where he’s headed after that? Hard to believe, but, yes: Iowa!

Obama will be heading for a 4:00 PM event in Cedar Rapids directly after his announcement, then move on to a 7:30 PM meet-and-greet in Waterloo. The next day, Obama will be holding an event at Iowa State in Ames. I will be there, and I’m (audaciously!) hoping there won’t be hundreds of press people there and I’ll actually get to speak with the candidate. Tune in afterwards and I’ll give you all the details, plus some concluding thoughts on last weekend’s DNC Winter Meeting in Washington.

More to follow!

Quiet Weekend

Days Until Bush Leaves Office = 717

This is shaping up to be a pretty quiet weekend on the Iowa campaign trail, in marked contrast to last weekend. The Democratic National Committee is holding its winter meeting in D.C. this weekend, so the center of gravity has momentarily shifted in that direction. Among the candidates and potential candidates, Chris Dodd is the leadoff speaker this morning, followed by Barack Obama, Wesley Clark, John Edwards, Dennis Kucinich and Hillary Clinton. Tomorrow will be Joe Biden, Bill Richardson, Mike Gravel, and last, though he hopes not least, Tom Vilsack. Vilsack’s speech, along with the others on Saturday, will be broadcast on C-SPAN, which amounts to major national exposure for the former Iowa governor. Still, the 2003 winter meeting was where Howard Dean made his mark before screaming his way out of contention after the 2004 Iowa Caucus, so anything can happen!

And while it’s quiet here in Iowa simply due to a lull in the campaign schedule, think of poor New Hampshire: the Granite State has been hit with news of campaign trip cancellations from not one, but two candidates. Hillary Clinton is canceling a weekend campaign swing there in order to travel to Arkansas for the funeral of Bill’s stepfather, and Joe Biden is canceling his trip on Monday in order to be present for a Senate vote on Iraq.

And, regarding Biden: I’m thinking there are serious questions about how his campaign is being run. First, the whole NY Observer debacle eclipses his campaign launch and puts him off message from day one, and then later the same week someone looks at the calendar and says, “Oops! Better cancel our first campaign trip to New Hampshire!” Don’t get me wrong: I think it’s laudable that Biden is focusing on his day job, especially when it comes to Iraq, which he is also working to make the signature issue of his presidential campaign. But can you imagine a more bungled first week of a campaign than this?

*glancing at Wesley Clark*

Well, okay. Maybe.

The Mailbag

Days Until Bush Leaves Office = 719

One of the things I’ve done as part of this caucusing experience is sign up at each campaign’s web site (except for Kucinich and Gravel, I mean. Gotta draw the line of plausibility somewhere!). This isn’t out of any sense of commitment to any of them at this point, but rather to let them know that there’s an email address in Des Moines that they should be targeting, and to keep tabs on what everyone’s campaign is broadcasting to their base of supporters.

It’s been an education so far. The “vote for me” content is no surprise, but the numbers, as is so often the case, are telling. Since signing up on the various campaign sites, here are some stats that I find interesting:
Total campaign emails received this month = 24
Source of greatest number of emails = Clinton (7), trailed by Biden (5)
Source of least number of emails = 3-way tie: Dodd, Richardson, Vilsack, all with just 1 each
Longest lapse between emails = Vilsack (7 days)

What is all this supposed to mean? For starters, it tells me a lot about the level of net-roots focus in the campaigns. Who is keeping their supporters and prospective supports in touch with their candidate? Who is reaching out, and who is laying back? Who understands that on-line activists are a crucial early contest constituency, and is working to get their message out to them?

I’ll let you draw your own conclusions from the numbers so far.

Also fascinating to me is the question of why every campaign - especially those of the lesser-known and less well-funded candidates - isn’t really, really, REALLY working their mailing lists. The people on these lists are universally volunteering to receive campaign email, which costs nothing to create, nothing to distribute, and is virtually guaranteed to reach its intended audience. Campaigns who treat this channel of communication as an afterthought do so at their peril.

My advice to the campaigns: keep those cards and letters coming!

Another Hat in the Ring

Days Until Bush Leaves Office = (still) 720 *fingers drumming*

Senator Joseph Biden of Delaware will file papers with the Federal Election Commission tomorrow, declaring himself a full-blown candidate for president. Apparently, he’s decided to skip the explorer’s club and jumping right into the fray - bold move, Joe!

This will be Biden’s second attempt to grab the brass ring; he previously ran in 1988. Time will tell how he does this time around.

Think Piece, Vol. I

Days Until Bush Leaves Office = 720

Psychologist Neal Miller formulated a theory of conflict that sought to explain the relationship between motivation and choice. What it boils down to is that you want to attain certain ends and avoid others, and your decisions are calibrated by the nature and degree of conflict between what you want and what you do not want. Since most decisions are not between pure benefit and pure detriment, but a mixture of the two, and influenced by a galaxy of factors, decisions are usually trade-offs in which you accept the likelihood of both beneficial and detrimental consequences arising from whatever choice you make.

In other words, conflicts in decision-making rarely achieve final resolution, and we live on the fulcrum of the see-saw, trying to ride both sides at once. Welcome, readers, to the much-coveted sweet spot of the campaign strategist: the world of the Uncommitted Voter.

Don’t get me wrong: this is not necessarily a bad place to be, particularly a year before the caucus. In some ways, it’s refreshing, in that many nominating cycles present either a choice between candidates all of whom you despise to varying degrees (“the lesser of two evils”), or about whom you are indifferent (“the evil of two lessers”). It’s not all that common to go into a campaign with more than one candidate who is relatively attractive (i.e., positives outweigh negatives), but I think that’s what we’ve got, at least up to this point.

It’s worth noting that this is the first presidential election cycle since 1952 in which there is no clear successor vying to follow the retiring incumbent into the Oval Office. With the field as wide open as it can be for both major parties, huge advantages are likely for whichever one presents the most robust group of candidates, first to its own ranks, and then to the electorate at large. I like the fact that on the Democratic side there are a number of candidates who would seem to merit some serious thought: Hillary Clinton (who, interestingly, is the national frontrunner but does not lead polling in Iowa) is as formidable as expected, but there’s also the phenomenon of Barack Obama, the personality of John Edwards, the résumé of Bill Richardson, the gravitas of Joe Biden. And who’s to say there aren’t surprises lurking in Tom Vilsack, Chris Dodd and some others?

Jumping back to Neal Miller, all this tosses a pretty attractive set of approach-approach conflicts into the decision mix. The not-so-good stuff, what Miller termed the “avoidance gradients,” hasn’t emerged yet; but I’m sure all the campaigns are hard at work on moving that process along. For the time being, though, this is the Happy Hour of the campaign, time for introductions and bar snacks, and trading the occasional phone number. There’s a long way to go before Last Call.

Hillary's Kickoff

Days Until Bush Leaves Office = 722

As promised, yesterday I attended Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign kickoff event, held at East High School here in Des Moines.

WHAT A ZOO! One would have thought by the collective buzz that the event was taking place in January of 2008, rather than a year before the caucuses. Here’s a snapshot by the numbers:
Number of cars in the campaign motorcade = 10
Number of satellite uplink news trucks in the parking lot = 6
Number of media present = 150...or 200...or 300
Number of foreign media outlets in the room = at least 4, including units from Japan, England and Switzerland (the latter, like myself, entirely neutral so far!)
Number of people in the room with Hillary (and me) = at least 1,000
Number of people who couldn’t get in the room with Hillary and were banished to the gym to watch on television = at least 1,000 more
Temperature when I was walking back to my car after the event: -5 F (with blowing snow)

Seats being scarce, and largely reserved for supporters, I stood through the event, choosing a place just on the other side of the press cordon from the section assigned to the national print media. This was actually one of the most informative and amusing aspects of the whole day for me, as I got to overhear their comments about Senator Clinton and her chances for the White House. The reporters traded their thoughts about whether Hillary seemed comfortable in her own skin (universally, they thought not), and the amazing discipline of her campaigns for the Senate, and so far, the Presidency (but, quoth one scribe, “discipline itself can be a problem for her, if it makes her look like the Ice Queen.” Okey-dokey.). Another reporter held forth at some length about Hillary’s choice of wardrobe, accessories and hairstyle on various days. Obviously, some members of the press pool need tighter deadlines (Reporter: “Oh! Does that mean deadlines will be worn tighter this year?” Me: “Never mind.”).

It was also interesting to evesdrop on people in the crowd. One woman near me said she had driven from Indiana to be there.

Overall, I thought Senator Clinton did well. She was introduced by local Congressman Leonard Boswell, who was himself introduced by the school principal. Hillary spoke without notes for about 20 minutes, then opened the floor to questions from the audience. The audience was not handpicked, nor, as far as I could tell, were any of the questions pre-screened. But they might as well have been. The crowd was as polite as could be, and all the questions were softballs, even the one (that’s ONE. Un. Uno. Ein.) question about Iraq, which, slow pitch that it was, Hillary nevertheless fouled off into the stands by talking about the care Iraq veterans receive through the V.A. system.

Women in the audience were especially enthusiastic, and went wild over Hillary’s comments about the possibility of a woman president. One audience member couldn’t contain herself, shouting out, “You go, girl!,” to which Hillary replied, “You go with me!” Nice moment.

I was interested to see the evolution of Hillary’s speaking style throughout the event. She got off to slow start, I thought, even though that was during her remarks about a woman being President. Where she picked up steam, and points, was when she began to talk about issues confronting the nation and her ideas for how they should be addressed.
She’s a heavyweight, no question. But I think sometimes she tries to run from that in order to burnish her “plain folks” credentials. That aspect of her campaign will be very interesting to watch as it plays out.

But, sadly, while I got close enough for a handshake (without actually shaking hands), I did not get to actually meet the candidate - there were just too many people in the room. Hillary did remark at the outset that this gathering was quite different from the usual early campaign fare in Iowa, and, to her credit, promised more traditional retail politicking to come in keeping with the tradition of spoiling Iowa caucus participants rotten. I should note that later in the day she held an event in Cedar Rapids with only about 150 people, so there is hope once the initial media frenzy subsides a bit.

So I didn’t get to ask the question I had planned to ask. I’ll have to save that for the next local Hillary event, which will hopefully come soon. In the meantime, I thought you might be interested in looking over some of the mainstream press coverage of the event:

Des Moines Register
New York Times
Washington Post (and another piece here)
Los Angeles Times
Seattle Times

Scorecard Update

Days Until Bush Leaves Office = 724

As expected, Joe Biden is throwing his hat into the ring; reports say he’ll officially announce next Wednesday, January 31.



So now seems an opportune moment to update the campaign scorecard:
Out:
Senator John Kerry - MA (1/24/07)
Senator Evan Baye - Indiana (12/16/06)
Former Senator Tom Daschle - SD (12/2/06)
Sen. Russ Feingold - Wisconsin (11/12/06)
Former Governor Mark Warner - Virginia (10/12/06)

In for Sure:
Senator Joseph Biden - DE (1/31/07)
Senator Christopher Dodd - CT (1/11/07)
Former Senator John Edwards – NC (12/28/06)
Rep. Dennis Kucinich - OH (12/11/06)
Former Governor Tom Vilsack - IA (11/30/06)
Former Senator Mike Gravel - AR (4/17/06)

The Explorer’s Club:
Governor Bill Richardson - NM (1/21/07)
Senator Hillary Clinton – NY (1/20/07)
Senator Barak Obama - IL (1/16/07)

Still On the Sidelines:
Former Vice President Al Gore - hunch: he could be waiting to see how “An Inconvenient Truth” does on Oscar Night next month before making up his mind!
Former General Wesley Clark
Al Sharpton
Governor Brian Schweitzer - Montana
Sen. Blanche Lincoln - AR
Sen. Barbara Boxer - CA

Have you noticed how many senators have joined the race? There haven’t been this many senators making a White House bid since 1976. As you may recall, all of them were beaten by a former governor, which is one of the few things that keeps Tom Vilsak smiling these days.

And don’t forget: tomorrow is the Hillary event! She hasn’t set foot in the state since chairing the Jefferson-Jackson Day dinner in 2003, so this really is the kickoff for her. I’ll let you know all about it in the next post, so stay tuned!