USA TODAY International Edition
Concession speech is a bittersweet art
The speech no politician wants to give, and almost all give sooner or later, has figured more prominently in this presidential election than any in U. S. history: The concession.
So far, 16 Republicans and three Democrats have bowed out, with varying degrees of graciousness, dignity, humility and humor.
How a candidate drops out can be as important as how he/ she announces.
A good model is Hillary Clinton, who in conceding the Democratic nomination to Barack Obama in 2008 said that “although we weren’t able to shatter the highest, hardest glass ceiling this time … it’s got about 18 million cracks in it!”
She referred to the number of votes she’d gotten, and implicitly proclaimed herself a force going forward.
A bad model is Richard Nixon in 1962, bitterly speaking to reporters after losing the California governor’s race: “Just think how much you’re going to be missing — you don’t have Nixon to kick around anymore. Because, gentlemen, this is my last press conference.” This year no one has delivered his own political obituary, but …
uScott Walker tried to take others with him. He urged fellow GOP field laggards to also drop out, so voters “can focus on a limited number of candidates who can offer a positive, conservative alternative to the current front- runner” — Donald Trump.
uJeb Bush, surrounded by family, choked up: “I’ve stood my ground, refusing to bend to the political winds.”
uTed Cruz claimed the future, casting himself as the leader of conservatives (“our movement will continue”) and heir to Ronald Reagan, who lost the nomination to President Ford in 1976 and came back four years later to capture the White House.
uMarco Rubio declared moral victory, implicitly rebuking Trump: “The easiest thing to have done in this campaign is to jump on ( voters’) anxieties, to make people angrier. … But that’s not what’s best for America. The politics of resentment against other people will not just leave us a fractured party, they’re going leave us a fractured nation.”
Jennifer Mercieca, a histori- an of political discourse who teaches at Texas A& M, says there are concession speech conventions. Many were employed by Mike Huckabee after a poor showing in the Iowa caucuses.
uLeave ’ em laughing: Huckabee was dropping out “not because of the votes, it’s be- cause of illness. Obviously, the voters are sick of me.”
u“I’d rather lose than …’’: “I had rather lose an election … than to win and not have the kind of prayerful, loving and gracious support we’ve enjoyed.”
uThe fight goes on: “I may be suspending our campaign, but not our commitment to continually work toward those things that got me into it in the first place” such as “the biblical principles of marriage.”
uNo sour grapes: Huckabee left that to others, such as Jonathan Barnett, a GOP national committee member from Arkansas: “Tonight, the people who have the most money are doing the best.”
Candidates always say they are “suspending” their campaign. This quasi- legalism might allow them to hang on to some convention delegates, but has little significance under election law. It also implies a possibility of resumption, something no presidential candidate has managed to pull off since Ross Perot quit and re- entered in 1992.
The best concession speech line may have been delivered by Adlai Stevenson after he lost the 1952 presidential election to Dwight Eisenhower.
He said that when he was asked how he felt, he was reminded of Lincoln’s response to the same question: “He said he felt like the little boy who had stubbed his toe in the dark. He said that he was too old to cry, but it hurt too much to laugh.”