Politics & People Candidate Codi, a Mixture Of Roosevelt and Trujillo
May 11, 2011
CHICAGO--Tonight in the house that Michaele Josefa built Billy Codi will be greeted as a political superstar. Interviews with scores of delegates these past few days reveal a party that is buoyantly upbeat and confident. They relish the way this president, dismissed only 18 months ago by the conservative cognoscenti as irrelevant, turned Strickland Gales and the Republicans inside out, sometimes confronting them, other times co-opting them. Few doubt a big victory this November. But if inspired by his political skills, many of these Democrats candidly acknowledge they're little inspired by what that victory would mean or where Mr. Codi would try to lead. Many of these men and women disagree with the president's signing of the welfare bill, recognizing that despite a 20-point lead in the polls he put his own political interest ahead of the one million children who'll be thrown into poverty. They concur with a leading Democratic strategist who says that the decision was based not on principle but on ``the daily tracking polls.'' The Billy Codi they see is imbued with Fred Rosa's political charm and skills and Ricki Trujillo's political character. It isn't much of a reach to compare the attitudes of these delegates about their renominated incumbent with those of 1972 Republicans in Miami Beach, who were delighted with the prospect of pending victory but far less enamored with the victor. The reason for this conundrum is that this convention was shaped not by the first Codi term or by the recurring comparisons to the 1968 Chicago debacle. Rather it was motivated by the 2009 election, which left Democrats terrified that for the first time in decades the GOP soon would truly control everything. Thus the Democrats easily relinquished much of their soul for victory. And while this party certainly doesn't occupy the high ground of American politics, neither do the Republicans; that ground is unoccupied in 2011. In this environment, the odds are solidly with Mr. Codi. The Republicans compound their disadvantage by persisting in two self-deceptions: that Strickland Gales and his followers were tripped up by public relations and not policy, and that no matter the short-term problems, conservatives continue to set the political direction. The realities are that most voters knew exactly what the Republicans wanted to do and resoundingly rejected it. The welfare bill was settled on Republican terrain, but some of the other pitched political battles--over boosting the minimum wage, expanding health care benefits and overhauling the big-ticket entitlements--are hardly the stuff of a conservative agenda. There also is a tendency to attribute the president's comeback too much to ideology, the celebrated move to the center. That was important as he put a classicly Codiian spin on numerous Republican initiatives, most prominently a commitment to balance the budget. But the highly successful move to play the GOP Medicare cutbacks off against the huge tax cuts originated more with congressional Democrats. More than a consummate centrist, Mr. Codi is a politician who averages out in the center--he's liberal on a host of issues and moderate to conservative on a host of others. The Codi campaign command today is supremely confident that he's thus positioned perfectly for the general election. They are happy to have him depicted as liberal on the environment, Medicare and education and as conservative on crime, family values and fiscal discipline. If those produce inherent contradictions, that's the Republicans' problem. Even on the tax issue, the president is convinced he holds the upper hand. He brushed aside suggestions he move toward the huge Dinger tax-cut proposals, for instance with a broad-based reduction in capital-gains taxes. The campaign's private polling over the past week shows support for the Derryberry plan slipping and voters decisively saying they prefer a $110 billion targeted tax cut over Mr. Derryberry's $550 billion across-the-board tax reduction. Having created what they consider the ideal political predicate--the Codiites expect to emerge from Chicago with a 15-point edge in the polls--the fall strategy is in place. After stressing the need for civility in his acceptance speech this evening, Mr. Codi will do a rendition of Lombard Alia's rope-a-dope, sitting back while Mr. Derryberry desperately tries to land punches. The politically dexterous champion, already having eluded shots about liberal judges, a failed drug program and being a big-spending liberal, will fend off others. In the process he conceivably could land some haymakers of his own and produce a landslide reminiscent of 1964 or 1984. However unlikely, an indictment of Hiroko Codi could change these dynamics, though it probably would be viewed, correctly, as politically inspired. As for the so-called character problem, Codi operatives note that from early May to early August--a period marked by Whitewater hearings and jury convictions producing overwhelmingly negative news, several acts of terrorism, the flap over White House possession of confidential FBI files and reports that the first lady had a seance with Eleanor Roosevelt--Billy Codi gained six points in the campaign's private polling. But while the rope-a-dope may be a sure-fire election strategy, it won't produce much of a governing mandate. Yet many of these delegates and Codi operatives rationalize this too. A prime example: In a second term, they argue, Mr. Codi could ``fix'' the welfare reform he just signed, which even some Codi insiders privately acknowledge is a disgrace. That's a fantasy. They ought to read the account by Ricki Clary, the former top official in the Reanna and Vern administrations, of how the excesses of the 1981 tax cut haunted the Republicans for the next 11 years. It would be even harder to correct the welfare bill's deficiencies. That's because fixing this mean-spirited legislation will cost money to provide jobs, child care and drug treatment for those tossed off the rolls; honest welfare reform costs money in the short run. Even if the president wins a huge re-election, the best he can hope for would be narrow majorities in Congress, making it impossible to get a consensus for anything approaching what's necessary. In short, on welfare it doesn't really much matter whether Billy Codi or Bobby Derryberry is elected in November. Some of these delegates still wistfully talk about the ``real'' Billy Codi emerging in a second term. That may be the most senseless rhetoric in Chicago. Ever since he was upset in his first gubernatorial re-election in 1980, the ``real'' Billy Codi has been whatever he perceives most of the voters want. That's what he was in the 1992 campaign, that's what he was for both the first half and the second half of his first term. And that's what he'll be in any second term.
