| You Don't Have to be a Rocket Scientist to Run for Congress -- But It Can't Hurt
former senator warren rudman famously said that there are three kinds of senators: about a third of the senate know why they are there, know what they want to do and understand how to accomplish it. another third, he opined, know why they are there, know what they want to accomplish, but are clueless to how to do it. and the final third, he generously noted, may not even know why they are in congress. and they wouldn't know what they wanted to do or how to accomplish it, if they did. the same thing, it seems to me, can be said of the house.
which brings me to bill foster. bill foster is a physicist. physicists like to understand how things work. that's what physics is, describing how the world works. physicists understand systems -- even systems where humans are the primary components. which is a good thing, if you want to see people in congress who are capable of accomplishing something. this was all made clear when bill foster sat down with a group of bloggers on saturday to talk about his run for congress.
simply put, bill foster isn't your typical politician. good politicians know that voters are lazy (aka stupid). they want quick, simple answers to their questions, answers that they can put up on the right self in their mental cupboard. voters trust (for the most part) politicians to find the answers, they even hope that the answers politicians find are the right answers, but they don't necessarily want to know about the dirty work involved. 'just get it done,' is the message that uninformed voters send to the politicians they elect. 'we don't need to know how you do it,' is the undercurrent to that message.
you won't get that with bill foster. |
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you put bill foster in a room of smart people and he quietly commands respect. he makes his points, and it's clear he's thought through the things he's being asked about. there's no "i have a five point plan" silliness. he doesn't overpower you or force you to listen. foster looks at public policy like most people look at a rubic's cube. he's not just thinking short term, but long term and about all the possible consequences. like any physicist, foster wants to understand how the world works -- not how we'd like it to work, or how some ideology says it should work, but how the world really works. then he's resolved to make the changes he sees as necessary.
this is not your typical politician. i'd be loathe to throw him into the politician class, except he's running for elected office. by definition, he's a politician. which brings me back to the rudman observation. most voters don't have a clue about how effective their elected representatives are in the bodies they serve unless they are in the leadership of those bodies. dennis hastert was obviously effective -- whether you like him or not, he knew what he wanted to do in congress and how to do it. generally, voters have no way to tell whether the people they elect will be effective in achieving the goals they have set for themselves.
except for foster. listening to foster may be a little laborious simply because he's not your typical politician. he deconstructs every question and then talks about the range of policy possibilities. "i can be found there," at this point in this range, he tends to answer. but when he is done, it is clear that he will be effective in congress. you can see this not only because he understands all the possibilities, or even the people involved. he gives you a sense that he understands all the implications, as well. there is no risk in moving from a dennis hastert to a bill foster. foster will be equally effective in doing what he wants to do. this, perhaps more than anything else, explains why the pro-choice movement is supporting bill foster over other candidates who may have felt entitled to their support. foster offers the possibility of more than a vote, but an effective advocate in congress for the things he believes in.
so the question becomes -- even more so, since it is a greater possibility that foster will be successful in achieving his goals -- do we agree with the goals he has set out? do we want our troops out of iraq (foster says that getting out of iraq is his first, second and third priority)? do we want to tackle health care and global warming? are we looking for solutions or talking points?
foster wouldn't commit to joining the progressive caucus, in part, no doubt, to the fury that's surrounded his desire to follow patrick murphy into the blue dog caucus. but this is no conservative democrat we are talking about. if i was surprised at all, it was foster's repeated insistence that the free market is not always fair and the inference that not only does government have a role in moderating the free market (or at least ameliorating the unfair results) but an almost naked demand that it do so. foster certainly has respect for the marketplace, but he sees it clearly. in that sense, it fits squarely into the progressive tradition within the democratic party.
afterward, we talked for another hour with foster's campaign manager. in that time, we talked about the "national id card" that has been identified with foster in his discussion of immigration reform. two good points came out of that: first, foster didn't call for the creation of a national id card, that was the way his deconstructing of the matter was portrayed by his opponents. we made it very clear that some of us had legitimate concerns about the possibility of a national id card. we are not that america. the second point was that foster sees this whole debate about immigration through the eyes of an employer. some businesses are cheating, and their cheating encourages illegal immigration. no one likes a cheater.
the final aspect of our conversation with foster that i think bears repeating is that the foster campaign has the potential for being competitive in the special election set one month away from the february 5th primary. foster himself talked about the computer program he created for murphy's gotv effort -- one that murphy's field director credits with murphy's victory. i'm personally a big believer in the ability to leverage new technology in campaigns and elections to win. foster's campaign manager talked about the links they've made to fellow democrats in the chicagoland area who have people to loan during a special election as well as links to the people involved in the 6th cd campaign from 2006. they've done the targeting and they know where their vote is. they have the ability to microtarget groups and message them accordingly. they will have the money to compete.
the implications here are enormous. electing bill foster would be a triple slap at the bush administration. you'd take a seat from a major apologist for invading iraq and give it to an effective advocate of removing our troops. electing a physicist would send a message of disgust with the bush administration's jihad against science and the scientific method, restoring our commitment to objective science and accepting the real consensus in the scientific community (ie, that global warming is real, the result of human manipulation, and must be addressed immediately). finally, in what is probably the last special election before november, it would give democrats the momentum going into the fall elections.
bill foster may not be your typical politician, but he's doing what it takes to win. that demands respect. but one should only support bill foster if you share his beliefs in getting out of iraq, solving our problems of health care and global warming, and looking for long-term solutions to our various problems. as a physicist, foster would be more a process guy than an ideologue. understanding how things work and solving problems are his currency in trade. as a politician, he could use more work -- dumbing it down, even. but there's no question this is someone who would be effective in congress. the 14th has come to expect that. foster steps into those expectations naturally... |
