By Steve Brawner
© 2015 by Steve Brawner Communications, Inc.

Veteran newsmen Steve Barnes and Ernie Dumas have forgotten more about politics than I know. Sitting across the table from them after taping the AETN public affairs show “Arkansas Week” last Friday, I asked them this question, or a variation of it: Who are the young Democrats moving into national leadership who soon could run for president?

What followed was several seconds of silence, and then none of us could produce any names.

The topic came up because of the problems facing Hillary Clinton, who I argued recently in this space would probably be the next president of the United States. With her email problems not going away, that’s looking less certain.

The problem for Democrats is, who would be the alternative – not just among younger Democrats, but even young-ish ones? The closest current rival for Clinton, 67, is Sen. Bernie Sanders, a 73-year-old Vermont socialist. Even though it’s very late in the process, some Democrats have been flirting with Vice President Joe Biden, who is 72. There’s even talk of former Vice President Al Gore, 67, entering the race.

So far, the Democrats have four announced candidates, but three of them have no shot at the presidency. Meanwhile, the Republicans have a wide open race with 17 candidates – governors and ex-governors, senators, business leaders, a neurosurgeon – most of whom are plausibly presidential.

It’s not that the president should be a young person. It’s that political parties should develop their talent. Democrats don’t necessarily need a candidate like the Republicans’ Sen. Marco Rubio, who’s 44, or Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker, who’s 47. They need viable candidates in their 50s and early 60s who could have run this year. And they don’t have them.

Why not? The most important reason probably is the hold the Clintons have had on the party since 1992. She has been the heir apparent since Gore lost in 2000, with her seemingly inevitable nomination in 2008 derailed only by then-Sen. Barack Obama’s emergence. The party hasn’t merely been ready for Hillary. It’s been holding the door open for her – and slamming it shut on others.

Other factors? in Congress the party has been led by Sen. Harry Reid and Speaker Nancy Pelosi, both 75, neither of whom ever seemed interested in running for president. Their iron rule has kept other Democrats in Congress from making names for themselves. Also, Democrats don’t have as strong a media apparatus keeping the party’s talent in front of their own voters. MSNBC is no Fox News, and Democrats don’t have a Rush Limbaugh at all.

Democrats also have fewer officeholders in the places where many presidential candidates are produced: governor’s mansions. There are only 18 Democratic governors, compared to 31 Republican ones.

There are many reasons for this disadvantage, including President Obama’s unpopularity. But another reason may be simple population distribution. Remember those electoral maps that show the country painted county by county with a wide swath of Republican red bordered by Democratic blue on the coasts? Democrats are concentrated in urban areas, while Republicans are spread through the middle of the country. If a Democratic governor is going to run for president, he or she probably will come from a blue state like California, which is currently led by Gov. Jerry Brown, 77.

This also gives the Republicans an advantage in controlling the U.S. Senate, by the way.

Americans tend to hand the White House keys from one party to the other every eight years or so, which favors Republicans in 2016. But otherwise, Democrats enter this cycle with many advantages. They have won the popular vote in five of the last six presidential elections and the election itself four of those times. Most of the country’s demographic trends favor them. They lead among women, who vote more frequently than men; among minorities, who become a greater percentage of the population every day; and among young people moving into the voting population.

But to take advantage of this situation, Democrats need young and young-ish candidates who can run for president. In fact, both parties should have numerous candidates ready to run in every election cycle, despite whose “turn” it is. Sure, there are advantages to anointing a candidate two years before the election. But what if that candidate runs into big problems?

So quick – name a young Democrat with a name, money, connections, and national stature.

Chelsea Clinton?

Ted Cruz, in blue shirt, in Little Rock Aug. 12.

By Steve Brawner
© 2015 by Steve Brawner Communications, Inc.

Campaigning for president in Little Rock Wednesday before several hundred onlookers braving the midday heat, Sen. Ted Cruz said Republicans must nominate a “real and genuine conservative. That’s the only way we win. If we nominate Democrat-lite, we will lose once again.”

Many conservatives believe that’s true. Is it?

President Reagan won by campaigning as a conservative, which he undoubtedly was, and then President George H.W. Bush, who really wasn’t a true believer, only served one term. Sen. Bob Dole, more of a pragmatist, lost, and then President George W. Bush won running as a conservative and then expanded government in almost every direction. Republicans then lost with Sen. John McCain, whom conservatives distrust, and lost with Mitt Romney, who had to pretend to be more conservative than he was.

On the other hand, there’s Sen. Barry Goldwater.

Twice in the television age, Republicans have nominated candidates seeking to move the country rightward. One was Reagan, who won 44 states in 1980 and 49 states in 1984. The other was Goldwater, who won only 38.5 percent of the vote in 1964.

The problem with trying to determine anything about presidential elections is that there are so few of them. Scientific experiments require many subjects. In the last 80 years, we’ve had only 20 elections, and there have been only eight elections since World War II when an incumbent wasn’t running. The taller candidate usually wins, too, but no one is suggesting that Republicans stand back to back at the next debate.

That said, here is another generalization: The optimistic candidate who inspires and unifies the most people usually wins. Reagan wasn’t elected simply because he offered a conservative message. He also offered a hopeful, empowering one. Goldwater, on the other hand, came across as divisive and scary. Scoff if you will at President Obama’s hope and change, but it got him elected. George W. Bush offered a positive message, and he won, too, assuming the numbers were right in Florida in 2000. President Clinton talked about hope, too, while President Carter offered a fresh face in 1976 and President Kennedy spoke of a “New Frontier” in 1960.

Of course, candidates try to slice and dice the electorate in order to cobble together 270 Electoral College votes, but pitting us against each other isn’t a good message. We’ll never know if Romney would have won if he hadn’t been caught saying that 47 percent of Americans are freeloaders, but it certainly didn’t help that he said it, and it was worse that he believed it.

I’ve never seen the country so divided, but then again, I’m “only” 46. So maybe what I’ve just written no longer applies. It’s possible that the next president will have no choice but to be divisive if he or she wants to be elected and wants to get anything done in office. Obama campaigned as a unifier and initially tried to work with Republicans. That didn’t work, and now he’s not even trying to connect with Americans not inclined to agree with him.

Cruz is not concerned with appealing to the other side and doesn’t mind making enemies. Speaking in Little Rock, he said the Obama administration is the world’s leading state sponsor of terrorism because of the Iran deal. On the Senate floor, he said his own majority leader, Sen. Mitch McConnell, had lied. He really hasn’t passed anything of significance in the Senate. Then again, almost no senator has lately.

So maybe it’s the perfect time for an openly divisive candidate like him. Unlike McCain and Romney, he won’t be forced to move to the right during the primaries, say things he doesn’t believe, and then move back to the center for the general election. Cruz can stay where he is for the next year and then move slightly toward the middle to try to pick off states like Ohio and Pennsylvania.

The best possible scenario is for the country to elect a problem-solving leader with a unifying message, regardless of party label. That would be somebody like Reagan, actually, who held sincere beliefs but didn’t hate anybody and often compromised with Democrats while in office. The worst possible scenario – for Republicans and probably for the country – is for the party to nominate a candidate that conservatives don’t like who then loses. If that keeps happening, the GOP eventually will nominate another Goldwater, if it doesn’t happen this year.

By Steve Brawner
© 2015 by Steve Brawner Communications, Inc.

You’re probably familiar with the concept that ours is now an information economy. That concept isn’t entirely correct.

In a 1997 article in Wired magazine, former theoretical physicist Michael Goldhaber argued persuasively that economies traditionally have assigned value to tangible goods based on scarcity, but there’s no scarcity of information in the information age. In fact, consumers are overwhelmed by it. Instead, what’s really valuable these days is attention. There’s always another link on which to click, but people only have one brain.

If we’re living in an attention-based economy, then we’re definitely living in an attention-based presidential campaign, as these past few weeks have demonstrated. With 22 announced major party candidates (at last count), what really matters is who can stand out from the crowd. And who’s standing out right now is Donald Trump, leader (by far) in the Republican Party polls.

In the spirit of Trump, a master of hyperbole, I’ll make a somewhat hyperbolic statement: Donald Trump has the most liberal track record of any candidate to run for the Republican presidential nomination in a long time. He has donated a lot of money to Democrats (including Hillary Clinton, who he’s praised). And while he argues that was just the cost of doing business, he also was a registered Democrat and did not register as a Republican until 2009. Also in the past he has said that the economy does better under Democrats, that he supported nationalized health care, and that he was pro-choice on abortion.

Some of this occurred long ago, and he has changed his positions. That’s fine by me, because I also change my positions sometimes. But usually political candidates pay a price if people think they’re flip-flopping.

Trump is not paying that price, in large part because he’s the master of getting attention, and he’s used that ability to tap into some prevailing political undercurrents like no information-based candidate can hope to do. His statement that Mexico is sending rapists and other criminals across the border cost him a lot of business but gained him a lot of attention. Attention is more valuable, especially since a lot of Republican primary voters agree with what he said and will ignore his past political dealings and statements. Those things are mere information.

Eventually, the 17 Republican candidates will be winnowed to five or six, Trump included. The others are fighting for survival using whatever tools they can to stand out from the crowd. Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, said on the Senate floor that his own majority leader, Sen. Mitch McConnell, R-Kentucky, had lied. The speech did not help Cruz’s standing in the Senate power structure, but it got him some attention. Arkansas’ former governor, Mike Huckabee, said that President Obama’s Iran deal was akin to marching Israel to “the door of the oven.” The Holocaust reference was condemned by many pundits, which was good for Huckabee – who, it should be pointed out, has always been a strong supporter of Israel. But he really struck gold when President Obama criticized him by name, saying his remarks were “part of just a general pattern that we’ve seen that … would be considered ridiculous if it weren’t so sad.” You can bet the staff members in Huckabee’s Little Rock headquarters were exchanging high fives after that.

The glass-half-full perspective is that, in the end, hyperbole only gets a candidate so far. Once the field has shrunk, then this will become more of an information-based campaign, and if Trump, Huckabee or Cruz wins the nomination, it will be because Republican primary voters have focused on their beliefs, their histories, and which one of them can best beat Clinton.

The glass-half-empty perspective – and I’m trying not to engage in my own hyperbole, because the media works the same way as politics these days – is how vulnerable modern campaigns are to demagoguery. It’s not healthy when political viability comes from mere attention-getting, especially when that’s accomplished by riling people up. That’s probably always been the case to a degree, but the dangers are magnified when the country is so culturally divided and when candidates can use unlimited campaign funds to divide us even further.

In other words, these conditions may make it more possible for a candidate to be elected who’s really bad at governing but really good at standing out from the crowd. How can voters combat that? By gathering information, and paying attention.

By Steve Brwner
© 2015 by Steve Brawner Communications, Inc.

The newest candidate to announce for president is among those I’d most want to see win. Which means he probably won’t.

The reason for both is that Gov. John Kasich, R-Ohio, has a record of doing what I want the next president to do, but which the political system doesn’t reward a candidate for doing: work with others to balance the budget.

Kasich has done it twice, actually. In the late 1990s, he was the chairman of the House Budget Committee when, for all of the other nonsense that was occurring at the time, Congress and President Clinton actually sort of balanced the budget. For a brief time, the national debt wasn’t growing much, and Kasich is a big reason why. Kasich flirted with running for president in 1999 but dropped out and endorsed George W. Bush, who as president failed to keep the nation on a fiscally responsible path.

Kasich was out of office for a while but then returned to public life to run for governor of Ohio in 2010. At the time, Ohio was $8 billion in debt. Today, it has a $2 billion surplus and lower state taxes, though some say this was accomplished at the expense of local governments. In a purple state that can go either Republican or Democrat, Kasich was re-elected with 64 percent of the vote.

Kasich is hard to define and doesn’t always toe the party line, which means he’ll have a tough time winning the Republican nomination. He’s the only candidate who can say he had anything to do with balancing the federal budget, and he did it at the state level as well. But, to many Republicans’ chagrin, he accepted Medicaid money for Ohio – the same money Arkansas turned into the private option – and he talks openly about helping the poor being not just a national moral responsibility, but a personal, spiritual one. He’s changed his position on immigration – but unlike other Republican candidates who’ve also changed their positions, he’s moved toward endorsing a pathway to citizenship for illegal immigrants. In interviews and public appearances, he openly calls himself a flawed human being. In other words, he’s the anti-Donald Trump. Who’s currently leading the Republican polls.

Kasich can be personally combative but also politically cooperative. In his 45-minute announcement speech this week, he never once mentioned Hillary Clinton or President Obama. Instead, he talked about his own biography, the family members who inspired him, and what he would do if he’s elected. So if you want a candidate who at least wants to debate the issues rather than sling mud, here’s your guy.

He’s starting near the bottom of the polls, from which it will be difficult to emerge. The Republicans’ first debate is in Ohio Aug. 6, and because so many (16) have announced, only the top 10 candidates in the national polls will be on stage. It’s probable that Kasich will not reach that plateau in time to qualify for that first debate in his home state.

But if Republicans want to win this next election, they’ll give him a look. Perhaps the most oft-quoted political fact each election cycle is this: No Republican has ever been elected president without winning Ohio. Kasich has won it statewide twice, the second overwhelmingly.

Why is Ohio so important to Republicans? First, it’s a big state with 18 electorate votes, each of which will be precious in an election when so many states are so reliably red or blue.

Second, Republicans who appeal to Ohioans also appeal to other Americans in the middle, like Pennsylvanians, Iowans and Wisconsinites. The state is a microcosm of America – red and blue, Midwestern and urban, home to the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame and also the only state north of the Mason-Dixon Line with a college football national champion since 1997.

So far, the presidential campaign has offered a lot of what’s not so good about modern American politics – an avalanche of money, political family dynasties, candidates pandering to the base, and Trump’s celebrity-based candidacy. Kasich, as he himself admits, is a flawed man, but he offers three important and sometimes overlooked qualities – competence, sincerity and empathy – along with the chance for Republicans to win the states they must have.

That doesn’t necessarily mean he should be the next president. But surely, in this Republican field, he belongs in the top 10.

Steve Brawner is an independent journalist in Arkansas. Email him at brawnersteve@mac.com. Follow him on Twitter at @stevebrawner.