Revolving Door: Lobbyist Greg Walden

     "He could have really made a difference. Instead, he will make a fortune."

           This blog: yesterday

     "Greg Walden will resign from Congress to become a lobbyist. He would be great at it."

          This blog: November 8, 2018

Greg Walden is a sad case. His energy and talents brought him to leadership of a GOP he helped build. The team had a mind of its own. 

  

Readers complained I was being condescending to Greg Walden by saying I felt sorry for him. "He has got to feel miserable about this, but he is stuck. He has a job to do," I wrote. Walden's job was leading a team trying to reverse programs he realized were helping his District. That had to hurt, I wrote back in May, 2017. Click

It would be a year before I would predict he would hate his job so much he would resign it.

Walden was well respected in Congress. He had extraordinary success raising money to elect Republicans as Chair of the National Republican Congressional Committee. His skills and ambition led him to power and prestige--head of the powerful Energy & Commerce Committee dealing with telecommunication and health care at a time when those were at the center of American politics.

Does it get any better than that?  Yes. Better is getting to own your own soul. Walden had to choose between it and leadership.

Walden is a Reagan-Romney type Republican. A nice-guy Republican, not an angry in-your-face one. One could see and hear in Walden's voice at Town Halls that he didn't want to destroy the Affordable Care Act. He understood full well that the expansion of Medicaid brought huge benefit to the people in his District, the nation's largest single user of Medicaid expansion. Rural hospitals in his District depended on it to stay afloat. But ending the ACA was the stated goal of the GOP. The GOP had turned angry and populist. Leadership in a party meant being part of that team. If the team wouldn't follow Walden, then he needed to follow them. So he did.

Success led to misery.

I wrote on May 5, 2018 Walden might resign mid-term. Click  I was early. He stayed in office one term as the "ranking member," having to address someone else as "Mr. Chairman." I knew he would hate that:

{T}here is something new that may take Walden out of the Congress, perhaps by him joining the other GOP legislators who retire to join a lobbying firm. Being in leadership exposes Walden. His duties to the GOP caucus demand he play two contradictory roles simultaneously, selling one thing in the District and another back in D.C. That has to be uncomfortable.

And there is so much money to be made as a lobbyist, while back in the District people like Tim White are calling him a fraud and pointing to his campaign contributors. Yuck.

In November, 2018, I said Walden should give it up and be a lobbyist. Click  A month later I observed he now had to hide from constituents. His party had policies on health care that were drawing thousands of opponents to his Town Halls, made worse by the fact that he needed to explain and defend policies he didn't agree with. His heart couldn't possibly be in this.

Dec 16, 2018
A month ago I predicted that Greg Walden will leave Congress soon. He will resign, possibly mid-term, but in any case not run for re-election, so he can fulfill his true calling, an industry lobbyist. His position on health care is un-tenable, he now has to hold invitation-only events to avoid protests, and staying in office requires endless tiresome cross-country travel.

He has got to be sick of trying to explain that he actually loves the health care provisions he tried to kill, especially if he has to live with the consequences of its demise, and that is a real possibility.

Walden is going to skedaddle.

 

Free at last. In January, 2019, with Democrats in a majority, and Walden a "Ranking Member" and not "Mr. Chairman," Walden was one of only seven Republicans to vote to end the government shutdown. He was free once again to be Greg Walden. He showed his stripes.

A party caucus does not take instructions from its leaders. It has its own mind. He was a skilled general forced to fight the wrong war against the wrong enemy, led by an unruly army. The GOP radicals had confounded and frustrated House Speakers John Boehner, Dennis Hastert, and Paul Ryan. They confounded Greg Walden, too.  I urged Walden to use his political capital to try to change the direction of the GOP caucus. Click

He could speak out against tribalism. Walden would get a tongue lashing and nasty tweets from Trump. He could embrace them. After all, the work he has done for his adult lifetime was in devotion to a better America, as Walden saw it, not devotion to personality cult. Walden could signal he represented the Constitutional conscience of the Republican Party, the Party that will outlast Trump. 

It is a good option. Walden has seen how conscience transforms a person's reputation. Chris Wallace of Fox has been repositioned from just another Fox sycophant into something greater, now representing the integrity of journalism.

Walden is going the money route instead. Conscience and speaking out for Constitutional order would have cost him contracts and credibility as a lobbyist, someone welcome in the office of any GOP Senator or Member of Congress. A teammate.

It is a disappointment. He could have been better than this.

Apparently, I was asking too much of Greg Walden. The Trump tide is strong as ever. Trump is announcing vengeance will be struck against disloyal Republicans. Heretics beware. It is Trump's party now: Populist, angry, outraged, immoderate. Not Walden's. So Walden is going along, by leaving.

Walden probably would have been ignored. Congressmen and Senators who resist Trump get censured by their parties back home. In Oregon, the GOP leadership had written a resolution saying the January 6 insurrection was a false flag operated by Democrats to embarrass Trump. It was just replaced by a leadership team even more supportive of Trump. It is a period when anti-democratic enthusiasm on the populist right dominates the GOP.  Republicans with ambition who had happily voted for Reagan, Romney, and the Bushes are mostly staying quiet or are leaving the arena. Right now the country needs courageous; we are getting caution.

The Republican Party doesn't have room for Greg Walden anymore, not as a leader. If the Republican Party is going to become a conservative party once again, someone other than Walden will need to carry the ball.

Too bad. The country needed him to step up. Instead, he is cashing in.