Take it from George Will, Amy Klobuchar is what Democrats need now. As reverse barometers go, George is at least a couple ticks up from Alex Jones. But still … .
I have no great special insight into the honorable senior senator from Minnesota beyond living in the county for which she was chief prosecutor for a while, the state she represents and spending a couple days a few years back kicking around the Iron Range for a magazine profile on her. And, shocking full disclosure here, I’ve voted for her twice and would again if she gets the Democrats’ nod for President … against any Republican.
That said, I’ve always had my issues with her. Call them quibbles, if you like. Not the least of which is that I am not at all certain her (very) old school Humphrey/Mondale “Let’s All Reach Across the Aisle and Have a Bake Sale Together” approach is exactly the most appropriate or effective message right now. And that comes attached to the other quibble that Ms. Klobuchar has made a reputation for herself of never sticking her head up too high in the crossfire of our culture trench warfare.
Well-cossetted conservative institutionalists like Mr. Will see that behavior as a demonstration of wisdom. But — funny thing — I see the same behavior and think, “Expedient calculation.”
To his credit, Mr. Will, (with whom I’ve had lunch a couple times on his book tours) has been virulently anti-Trump from the get-go and is the rare conservative intellectual who can both spell correctly and regularly produce 15 paragraphs of coherent thinking.
The problem is that his thinking is invariably focused on reproducing more of the white, male, bow-tied status quo that has A: Generally ruled the country since Dwight Eisenhower, and B: Allowed his Republican party to devolve into a clown show led by charlatans and fools like Rush Limbaugh (the true intellectual leader of modern conservatism) and Donald Trump. Put another way, Will very much prefers a Democratic opponent the Republican party knows how to define and campaign against. As in: all tradition and nothing revolutionary.
There’s no question that Klobuchar is smart and hard-working. She’s also very good at retail politics, whether chatting up locals at diners in Bemidji or small town bankers and business owners in Grand Rapids. She’s got game. (And unlike, say, Mark Dayton, she seems to genuinely enjoy human interaction.)
But I’d feel (a lot) more enthusiastic about her if only once I’d her express heartfelt indignation over the on-going Trumpist travesty — which began welling up in earnest with the Tea Party revolt back in ’09 and ’10. (There’s also the little nagging question in the back of my head when I read that Klobuchar has the worst rate of staff turnover of any of the 100 US Senators. What is that all about?)
Reading Will’s column — picked up by the Strib — it’s readily apparent who among the possible Democratic field he fears most.
As George begins his column lauding Klobuchar, “Surely the silliest aspirant for the Democrats’ 2020 presidential nomination is already known: ‘Beto’, aka Robert Francis, O’Rourke is a skateboarding man-child whose fascination with himself caused him to livestream a recent dental appointment for — open-wide, please — teeth cleaning.
“O’Rourke’s journal about his post-election recuperation-through-road-trip-to-nowhere-in-particular is so without wit or interesting observations that it merits Truman Capote’s description of “On the Road” author Jack Kerouac’s work: That’s not writing, that’s typing.
“When Democrats are done flirting with such insipidity, their wandering attentions can flit to a contrastingly serious candidacy, coming soon from Minnesota.”
Characters like O’Rourke and the (fresh and invigorating) flavor-of-the-moment, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (i.e. “AOC”) have to deeply unsettle traditional thinkers like George Will. Why? Because they are working off a far different playbook they can’t be quantified as easily as someone like Klobuchar who reliably hopscotches within the chalk lines of the traditional game. Ms. Klobuchar is never a threat to rile — as Ned Beatty said in “Network” — “the primal forces of nature.”
Never mind the polar vortex. Hell itself would have to freeze over before Amy Klobuchar ever got in the face of a Howard Schultz, Michael Bloomberg or Silicon Valley tycoon with calls for a return to a 70% tax rate on billionaires.
The Democrats have an interesting array of talent queuing up for the Big Job. But I look at some of them not as Presidents — someone with populist charisma delivering a persistent, uncluttered message affirming the primacy of empirical reason in science, social services and foreign affairs — but as cabinet officers restoring lawfulness to the various agencies.
In that context: Amy Klobuchar for Attorney General 2020.
I got nothing against Amy–indeed, I like her a lot. I just happen to think that she (like Tim Pawlenty) can’t excite a crowd. She’d probably make a great President, I just don’t think she’ll win the primaries.
If she surprises me, and does, I’ll gladly vote for her!
Yeah, I’d vote for her (again). But while you and me and maybe others reading this don’t vote for politicians on the basis of whether they’d be really fun bowling buddies, an important faction of the public does. Call it lamentable, but Democrats will need a candidate with Obama-like charisma to pull in the crowd that responds only to the celebrity X-factor.
In response to your “high staff turnover” numbers, I have never forgotten a statement by a friend of mine who worked at Gray Plant Mooty during Klobuchar’s early days as an attorney there. My friend said she would NEVER vote for Klobuchar based on the fact that she treated her support staff like shit.
Sadly, I’ve heard that way too often. Staff work is a mill for “disgruntled employees”, but her numbers/reputation in that regard is not good.
Thank you for this. Power is there to USE, to make a difference, to fight for the right. Amy has been clipping coupons her entire run, waiting to be nominated for vice president. Compare her to Al Franken, or Paul Wellstone, she is invisible. She may be a good person, but what a waste of talent and opportunity.
She gets enough national exposure to be more explicit (do we dare call it “provocative”?) than she is. I’ve seen her on dozens of shows and have a hard time recalling anything she said that was compelling. Smart, tough and even ruthless = attorney general.
Funny you should hit on the high staff turnover, it’s always given me pause too. I have the same reservations you mention and if push comes to shove, you are right I’ll vote for her. Susan Gartner had the same reputation with her staff. Hope it’s not a trend.
I speak from experience that political staff work is a pretty miserable experience. But even with that standard, Klobuchar seems to stand out. Not good. More to the point, under the bright lights of a campaign her folksy demeanor would take a hit from a run of unflattering stories. As we all know, women candidates, unlike men, are supposed to be “likable”.
You put into words my thoughts and feelings about Amy Klobuchar. My belief is that is that if the Democrats nominate for president, another middle of the road, moderate, lets all get along candidate, they will lose again.
My belief is that — because of the 40 years of ginned-up anti-government hysteria (from Reagan to Limbaugh) that eventually vomited up Donald Trump, we are in a revolutionary moment. Lots of smart people are more activated now than ever before and want both a profound correction to Trumpism as well as 21st century upgrades to all levels of the national bureaucracy.
but beyond such electability trivials as staff rapport, I am more concerned about Amy’s ‘flirting’ with the sulfide corporations who are threatening Minnesota’s waters, as well as her stance on Minnesota’s wolf protections.
She’s coy with that stuff. Also, not to pick at another scab, given the stampede to run Al Franken out of the Senate, I never saw any great downside to Klobuchar saying, “Al deserves a full investigation before any decision is made.” Schumer and Gillibrand would have been able to allow her to stand as an exception to the rush.
How you treat your staff is not trivial. It’s reveals the immorality of mistreating the very people that make your daily success possible.
I don’t know anything for sure about Klobuchar’s treatment of her staff. But that one survey echoes too directly stories around town here in Minnesota. That said, as the Twins found with Jack Morris in ’91 … “He may be an asshole but sometimes an asshole can help you win.”
Agree, Brian. Reserving the right to change the opinion after I see candidates in action and learn more about agendas, Kamala Harris is much more interesting to me and Obama-esque than the ever-cautious Klobachar. Democrats desperately need someone exciting and unusual who will expand the electorate by energizing non-traditional nonvoters. I just don’t think that would ever be Klobachar.
In the broad scheme of things, is a cautious liberal where the energy of the party (i.e. the revulsion with Trumpism) is right now? I’m thinking not. Populism has been given a bad name by the rancid racism of the MAGA crowd, but ideas like Medicare for all and and a much higher tax rate on billionaires (not that any of them would ever pay anything close to the rate) are easily converted to liberal populism, which — call me naive — the vital 2%-5% of low information swing voters would find very appealing. Amiwrong?
From the time she was elected to the Senate, Amy has been running for either president, vice-president or a seat on the Supreme Court. So every issue seems to go through the political calculation of how the focus groups or polling showed the issue would further or harm her future ambitions.
In short, from day one, she’s been cautious, canned and cowardly. She’s one of the those safe politicians who Tip O’Neill once described as “the kind who always show up when you don’t need their vote.”
Her stand on the Iraq war and the alleged “weapons of mass destruction” was that she “supported the troops.” Her big signature issue from her first term was…wait for it…. supporting safer drains in swimming pools.
Is this unusual for a politician? No. Is it inspiring? No. Do I want to elect more Democrats like her. No. Did I vote for her over Republicans? You bet, but what a low bar.
And THEN you add in her decades-long reputation for being really abusive to her staff–going back to her Hennepin County Attorney days.
In 2020, we have so many better Democratic options—Kamala Harris, Elizabeth Warren, Corey Booker and others. I cannot imagine why anyone who has paid attention to Amy’s career would want to elevate her to higher office.
Well said. Beyond the employee stuff, plain vanilla Amy is much less likely to expand the electorate by inspiring lightly voting parts of the Democratic coalition. That’s what we need to do overcome the Trump slime machine, Russian bots and hackers, and the Electoral College. Democrats have other options — Harris, Castro, Booker, Brown, others– who are far more likely to be able to do that.
Yep. Totally agree