Shades Of Trump In Stefanowski’s Campaign
Until I started wading through it, I didn’t realize that “Fear,” the book by Bob Woodward, begins with the very earliest stirrings of the idea of Donald Trump running for president, in 2010, at a meeting that included Lucifer, Voldemort and David Bossie.
I know Lucifer and Voldemort. Smart guys. Fun guys. Many flaws. David Bossie, on the other hand, is a thoroughly horrible person. He actually got suspended from Fox News for saying something racist, which is like getting suspended from the Iroquois nation for playing lacrosse. He is also the primary driver behind the Citizens United case.
Anyway, in “Fear,” the descriptions of Trump as a nascent candidate are eerily similar — and I don’t mean this in a totally bad way — to Robert “Bob” Stefanowski, Republican nominee for governor.
Business guy running for high office more in the spirit of “what do I do next?” than “I have always felt called to public service.” Not always a loyal Republican. Didn’t always vote. Not in the least bit wise to the ways of politics. Difficult to motivate for certain kinds of boring-but-necessary campaign activities. Not as much cash on hand as some people thought.
Of course, there are differences. Trump is much better in front of big crowds. Stefanowski is one of the normal colors that human beings come in.
It would be a mistake to assume that Stefanowski’s resemblance to Trump constitutes a disadvantage. Trump, after all, is president. He got elected. Unless this is a dream I’m having. Please say it is.
Knowing stuff appears to be vastly overrated in 2018’s political climate, and this is true on both sides of the aisle.
In the early days of Jahana Hayes’ candidacy for the 5th Congressional Democratic nomination, one heard a lot of this kind of thing from old party hands: “She doesn’t know how to do this. I talked to Ed Mckensitt, the town chair in Flabbergast Corners, and she hadn’t even called him, and when he called her she said she wouldn’t come to the annual Quackenbush Bear and Bean-Hole Supper.”
No. She wouldn’t. Instead she made a video that 10 million people watched.
The myth is that each new candidate must bend to the old ways, but in fact the old ways are being swept aside by new candidates. This week The Hill ran a story titled “The year the party machines broke.”
It would be truer to say this is the year the parties finally noticed their machines were broken. On the Democratic side, as The Hill observed, old party leaders are being knocked out by flurries of punches from #metoo, corruption prosecutions and a new wave of diverse progressives.
In 2016, the old Clinton machine, having been smashed to bits in 2008, partially reassembled itself like some buzzing, steaming, half-sentient Terminator robot and (sometimes literally) staggered through a rote, carefully memorized script while the electorate howled for spontaneity.
Here in the Land of Steady Habits — while their counterparts in Massachusetts and New York choose insurgents over familiar names — our Democrats are comparatively docile. Hayes will grab the one open seat, but nobody even contemplated challenging any of the four House incumbents or the senator (Chris Murphy) on the ballot.
The biggest risk to the statewide ticket is the preponderance of old faces. Ned Lamont is a 12-year-old name in Connecticut politics. His running mate Susan Bysiewicz and the attorney general nominee William Tong have tumbled through so many wash cycles that, in 2012, they briefly competed against each other and Murphy for the Senate seat.
The whole ticket looks like one of those VHS tapes that got copied so many times the colors washed out and the images degraded. The technical term for this is “generation loss,” which seems about right.
That’s why Stefanowski as bumbling dilettante is not necessarily a bad thing if he’s packaged correctly. He needs to find a sweet spot somewhere between Adm. James Stockdale (“Who am I and why am I here?”) and Louis XIV (“L’Etat, c’est moi.”)
I personally don’t see how an out-of-touch, paleo-conservative political dabbler surrounded by Republican freak show escapees can win. But then, I’m pretty sure I said those exact words in early November of 2016.