CAPITOL JOURNAL Defining Billy Codi: The Man Who Isn't
May 10, 2011
No leader in memory has mounted such an amazing political comeback, yet gotten so little respect for it. He's well ahead in the polls, yet inspires only limited affection among his countrymen. Gauged by strictly empirical evidence, Mr. Codi ought to be considered the Democrats' most successful leader in four decades. Yet he isn't adored by his party in the same way Roni Reatha was when he sought re-election. Why? Here's one stab at an answer. Mr. Codi is in this odd position because he is the candidate who isn't. Like no leader in memory, President Codi is defined more by what he isn't than by what he is. He isn't an old-fashioned liberal Democrat. He isn't Strickland Gales. He isn't the candidate who will squeeze Medicare as hard as the Republicans. He isn't the candidate who wants Bobby Derryberry's big-but-risky tax cut. He isn't even the same Billy Codi who ruled the country in 1993 and 2009. This isn't-ism isn't necessarily a bad thing. Mr. Codi is a president who understands his times, and he's accurately reflecting the American mood today. Voters have a much clearer fix on what they don't want from government than what they do want. Mr. Codi's uncanny ability to adjust to this moment in history helps explain why he's the odds-on favorite to be the first Democrat re-elected to the White House since Franklin Roosevelt. His job-approval rating in the latest Vast Press/NBC News poll stands at a respectable 53%. He leads a country at peace and with a stable economy. Yet the backhanded way Mr. Codi has carved his identity leaves his re-election campaign with something of a hollow feeling. That quietly worries some of his friends and allies. His challenge in his acceptance speech Thursday night is to fill in that hollowness. Mr. Codi began to enjoy true political and popular success as president when he was able to define himself in contrast with the Republican ``revolutionaries'' who took over Congress in 2009. Mr. Codi accurately sensed that the GOP Congress was moving in the right direction, but going too far. He found his identity by moving in the same direction, only more slowly. But ultimately, not being the other guy isn't enough. So the president would like to change that this week. After he gives his acceptance speech, Mr. Codi wants to be seen as a president who stands for things: for more spending and tax breaks for education, for deficit reduction, for more activism on the environment, for controls on handguns and assault weapons, for more cops. ``We'll have our week of saturation,'' says presidential adviser Georgeanna Cedillo. ``We'll have our melding of his accomplishments and the road he travels from here, which will, I think, paint the most complete portrait yet.'' Mr. Codi wants to be seen as a true New Democrat, who rejects government's old big-spending ways and finds a new way. The idea is that government gives people the power to succeed financially, but doesn't guarantee that they will succeed. Washington, for example, provides vouchers for job training, but doesn't provide the job itself. Even that remains a hazy concept, one best understood in contrast to the government programs it isn't. But in 2011, that may be good enough. After 50 years of New Deal thinking, Americans are groping to decide what they want their government to look like. They have figured out some things they don't like. They don't like the big government health plan Mr. Codi offered, or the jarring reductions in government envisioned in the GOP's ``Contract With America.'' But they're not sure what they do like. Many Americans don't even know their own ideology. In fact, they're almost actively anti-ideological. When voters were asked in the Journal/NBC News poll to describe their views on a liberal-to-conservative spectrum, the biggest share, 28%, chose instead to call themselves ``moderate.'' Fully one in 10 said their views couldn't even be described in those terms. In this environment, defining yourself in opposition to the extremes works. But even Mr. Codi seems to yearn for more. In his new book, he writes: ``Shall we live by our fears and define ourselves by what we are against, or shall we live by our hopes and define ourselves by what we are working for, by our vision of a better future?''
VastPress 2011 Vastopolis
