Greg Walden's One Man Show

Political gatherings are theater acts.

Politicians are showmen. Campaign rallies, candidate debates, and Town Hall events by incumbent politicians are all performance events.

Voters sometimes are so focused on the issues or partisanship involved in an interaction with a politician that they misunderstand what they are witnessing.   They are there to express a point of view on issues or on the direction of the school, city, state, or nation.   They are there as citizens.

The politician is there seeking to gain or hold legitimate power in a democratic system.  It is serious business.

But it is also theater, pure and simple.

Six weeks ago:  Inoffensive, "aw shucks"

Greg Walden--a Republican congressman representing a large, rural, red-state Mountain-west District--came to town and held a Town Hall at a high school gymnasium from 7:30 a.m. to 8:30 a.m.   It started on time and lasted an extra fifteen minutes.  Actually the event started well over a half hour earlier.   The parking lot was full by 7:00 a.m. and big crowds were filing in.

[But first, a moment of context.   It isn't just Greg Walden.  Every experienced politician has developed a performance or set of them.  Senator Ron Wyden tells audience after audience that he welcomes "softball questions."  He jokes that his real goal was to play in the NBA but he compensated for being too small by being really slow, and audiences laugh along with him.   At the presidential level I heard Chris Christie bring audiences to a tearful hush with a story about his mother's death; he used exactly the same words with the same hesitations and apparent groping for words, each of the three times I have heard it.  Trump has his schtick.   It is show business.  Politicians find what works for them and then they practice their performance and keep doing what works.]

Walden event setup: very exposed, open, trusting   

Greg Walden did the "Greg Walden act."  Calling it an "act" does not mean that it is dishonest but it does mean that it is thought through, practiced, and intentional. The performance was not a false version of Walden, but it is an incomplete version.  At its simplest one can liken it to a man waking in the morning and showering and shaving.  The showered and shaved presentation of the man is different from the just-awakened one but it is not false; it is simply cleaned up and ready to go out.  

The fact that a Town Meeting is a performance ends up revealing as much about the politician as if the event were in fact the spontaneous unscripted event that it appears to be.  Because the event is so intentional and carefully crafted viewers can see plainly the message the candidate wants to communicate.  The performance--being a collection of fortifications and messages and impressions he wants sent--reveals what the politician considers the weak spots or potential problems.

Same pants, shoes, and overall look.

Greg Walden is a very powerful US Congressman, for 4 years the Chair of the Committee with responsibility for electing Republicans to Congress.  It is a high level fund raising and recruitment job and the Republican caucus grew under his leadership.  He was rewarded by being appointed chair of the Energy and Commerce Committee of the House: a big job.  It deals with regulations on the internet, with telecommunications generally, and with crafting the health care rules.   Assuming that the USA avoids nuclear war in the next years then Greg Walden's committee deals with the most important issues facing America.  In DC he looks like what he is: a powerful man.

Here in the District he is costumed as a "nobody", an earnest, conscientious, middle manager of a small business in a small town.   Six weeks ago I showed photographs of him: beige jacket, green slacks, checkered shirt.  It was perfect costuming, if one wants to project an image of an open, transparent, but essentially powerless guy.   In Medford yesterday he did it again.  This time he wore a blue blazer--a somewhat stronger look and color than beige--but he dressed it down with another checkered open collar shirt and similar pants.

His manner was open.  He stood out in the middle of the arena, unprotected by a lectern.  Two different women asked questions and said they were so emotional they might start to cry.  "That's OK," he said with a consoling voice.   He stood with hand in pocket most of the time.  He nodded understandingly when hostile questions came.  He did not correct facts or disagree with anyone.   Instead of saying "No, instead. . . ."  he said "Let me add" and then he put things into a context favorable to him.   

Earnest, concerned, exposed.

He was utterly non-confrontational.  He appeared to assume that every questioner was filled with good will and desire to make this country better and that he agreed completely with that goal.   He helped create a Republican majority by criticizing Obamacare relentlessly while in campaign mode, but at the Town Hall he spoke warmly about the key elements of Obamacare.   He said he wanted to protect the Medicaid expansion--for two years--and that he fought to get Oregon $320 million to help pay for it.  He said he wanted the pre-existing condition guarantee and the end of lifetime caps on expenditures and access to healthcare for children under age 26--provisions which are only possible if there is simultaneously the unpopular parts of Obamacare, a mandate or other penalty for waiting until one is actually sick before buying "insurance."

He asked the crowd how many wanted "Medicare for All or single payer" and the audience erupted with applause and stomping.  He nodded approvingly, accepting this verdict rather than explaining that he and his political allies will fight this with every tool at their disposal.

Do you want single payer?    Out came the "Agree" signs.

He never said one critical word about any Democrat.  He never said one critical word about the ACA.  He spoke warmly of bipartisan work with Oregon Democrats, including that he spent three days backpacking around Mount Hood with Portland liberal congressman Earl Blumenhauer.  He doesn't present as a partisan warrior, but rather as a bipartisan cooperative bridge builder. 

What is the Walden message revealed in his costume, posture, and behavior?  

I am a nice guy, not a mean guy.

I am a regular comfortable modest guy, not a Washington big shot.

I am a moderate, compassionate guy, who wants good things for everyone.

I am an agreeable guy, not a guy who makes sharp distinctions and criticisms.

Most of the signs were hostile to Walden

This presentation is an excellent defense against a populist opponent.   A populist wants to position him or her self as a spokesman for the regular guy against a selfish or corrupt powerful elite.  The populist is David, fighting Goliath.   Bernie Sanders framed things that way: the people versus the billionaires.   Trump framed it that way: Trump, the voice of the people, against the Washington elite establishment swamp.   Walden has inoculated himself.

But one's strength is one's weakness.  Walden's successful portrayal of himself as a nice, powerless guy, creates an opening in the opposite direction.   Walden's foolish Republican friends sabotaged him by running ads praising Walden, assuring Oregonians that Walden could be counted on to create something wonderful in health care, patient centered health care that was inexpensive, universal, and wonderful.  They set him up for failure.  Inexpensive, universal, and wonderful is impossible.  

Now it gets worse, with criticism from the opposite direction.  Currently the conservative Club for Growth is running ads criticizing Walden for failing to push through the Trump plan, a wildly unpopular plan, made worse for Walden because it is a plan that would push tens of thousands of Oregonians out of the Medicaid expansion.  It would be inexpensive, but neither universal nor wonderful.  There would be horror stories by appealing citizens and by hospitals.  

He meant well

The strongest case against Walden would be the narrative that Walden is a screw-up and a fraud, a weak ineffective guy leading a dysfunctional party that celebrates the opposite of what Walden communicates in his Town Meetings.  He presents himself as a nice guy who can work well with others and instead, the message would go, he let himself get pushed around to the benefit of GOP crazy people and Big Pharma and the Koch Brothers.  The case would be that Walden isn't bad but he is in fact a failure.  That meme has power and credibility: Trump demonstrated that a great many voters want a bully, a bully who wins for our side.   Walden would be the nice guy who loses big for our side.   

Nice-guy bumblers can be made to look ridiculous. 

It would likely be easier to run an angry campaign against a bad guy than it would be to run an angry campaign against a weak guy who could not keep his promises, but Walden presents as nice-but-weak, not a big bad DC politician with power.   The best chance for a Democrat is that the House actually does pass something satisfactory to the Club for Growth.   If it does then there would be tens of thousands of victims in his district, people kicked off the Medicaid expansion.  Hospitals in his district will join the chorus of opposition and dismay. The story in the media in Oregon will be GOP malpractice.  Walden will be caught up in that and he will have a hard time looking bi-partisan or agreeable or compassionate because there would be countless victims of Walden's fellow Republicans finally getting their way.

Walden sucked into the mess again. 

Greg Walden's nice guy image would be hurt.  A new one would emerge: the phony, the fraud, the guy who promises the moon and then gets rolled by the big boys.   Can this approach work to change the Walden image?  Yes, especially if two things happen:  One is that Healthcare re-emerges as an issue and either the GOP does something, or does not do something.  Either way Greg Walden will lose.  He will look ineffective or he will look like the author of a law that hurts tens of thousands in his district.  And, to Walden's detriment, this in fact is happening to him.

The other risk to Walden

The second condition is that Trump and Republicans generally look chaotic and disorganized and the reputation of the GOP is diminished generally due to the weight of governance, the divisions in the party, and Trump's high drama chaotic manner.  Trump, the Freedom Caucus, and events abroad could easily shape the narrative that the GOP is a party that destroys, that screws things up in the Middle East and in North Korea and with health care, and that giving power to Republicans was a terrible, terrible, dangerous mistake.  

Trump's brand is high drama; Walden's is calm common sense. The GOP is Trump's party now, not Walden's, and Walden is in a poor position openly to condemn Trump and the GOP.  By 2018 it will be Trump and the GOP generally which creates the environment by which voters will evaluate Walden.