2010-02-08 07:04:16

THE PURPLE INTERVIEW: Neil Skene Talks Tea Parties, Civility and Florida Politics

Filed under: Featured, Neil Skene, The Purple Interview, politics
Posted by: John

by JOHN MARKS

There was never any chance that 2010 would be a quiet political year. The Mid-Term races see to that. Yet in the wake of the Massachusetts special election that ended the Democrat supermajority in Congress, a new spirit of contention has gripped the land. Republicans feel their oats, driven by Tea Party conservatives, and Democrats are scrambling to find their feet with a disaffected base.

One of the year’s big battlegrounds will be Florida, which had about as bad a 2009 as could be imagined. Last year, the Sunshine State started losing population for the first time in decades. Its southwestern coast became the national poster child for home foreclosure. It was crisis mode from Tallahassee to the Florida Keys.

Things are looking a little better these days. People have started to come back, about 70 new arrivals a day, and that means more tax revenue, which helps the budget, though not enough to offset the huge costs associated with recovery.

The light at the end of the tunnel won’t translate into a new spirit of peace and harmony. As the state heads into election season, things are likely to get ugly, says Neil Skene, currently the Special Counsel at the Florida Department for Children and Families, formerly editor and publisher of Congressional Qauerterly, and a long-time observer of state and national politics.

The fight on the national radar isn’t between a Democrat and a Republican. It’s the primary battle for the Florida Senate seat between moderate, Obama-hugging Governor Charlie Crist and Tea Party star former House Speaker Marco Rubio.

I met Neil at a series of Purple State events last year in Tallahassee, and he’s not just another pundit. In addition to running Congressional Quarterly, he was part of the team that gave us Politifact, the Pulitzer-prize-winning tip sheet created by the Saint Petersburg Times for political junkies everywhere.

He and I talked about hopes for bipartisanship and civility in the state legislature. Back then, Crist’s numbers were high, and Rubio didn’t seem to have a chance. Now the tables are turned. Crist lags behind, and Rubio is resurgent. Neil helps us sort it all out.

Q:Last year, as the economic crisis unfolded, Florida was a poster state for foreclosure. There was a net out-migration of people for the first time in half a century. Obviously, things are still rough out there. What’s the key economic issue for the people state in this election year?

A: The economic issue in politics is ultimately about people’s sense of well-being and personal economic security. Even people who are keeping up house payments are feeling less mobile. Transactions seem to be picking up a little, but at lower prices. And unemployment is high in selected areas, such as the southwestern coast. With property values down, tax collections will be down and impose tightening of government services. But it’s hard to know which party will bear the brunt of people’s concern. It seems perverse to me that Republicans, who controlled the White House until 2009 and controlled all of Florida government since the Jeb Bush election in 1998, would be the beneficiaries of people’s economic frustration. That Democrats are not the party of recovery is a serious political failure.

Q:The tea party movement seems to be a serious factor in Florida. Where is it centered and how much influence does it really have?

A: The tea party movement seems strongest in southern and central Florida, which have a heavy proportion of conservative Republicans. It’s hard to know the influence of that particular movement. Maybe we’ll know more when the Legislature convenes in early March for its annual 60-day session. The thing about the political “base” of both parties is that they are much more in love with rhetoric and litmus tests than results. Ronald Reagan didn’t reduce the federal budget, and Jeb Bush didn’t reduce Florida’s budget, but they talked a great game and remain conservative heroes. Conservatives love to pass “sunset laws” and “balanced budget amendments” and everything else, but they rarely declare their opposition to any consequential program and successfully turn that position into policy. Liberals have their own philosophical litmus tests, around race and social programs, for example, but are often unable to manage what we already have. So the real effect? They’ll change the tone of candidates and the campaign, possibly even create a successful Rubio bandwagon, but they seem not to have the kind of galvanizing political leader who can make things happen in actual governance.

But beyond the Tea Party, conservative Republicans in Florida have been contemptuous toward Gov. Charlie Crist almost since he took office, but they kept pretty quiet about it while his overall poll numbers were high. Now that Crist is no longer considered a slam-dunk winner of the U.S. Senate primary, the Tea Partiers and the longtime conservatives are putting energy behind Marco Rubio, the former speaker of the state House.

Q: A lot of people will be watching the Republican primary as the next big referendum on national politics after the surprising special election in Massachusetts. This time, it’s a contest between two Republicans, Governor Charlie Crist and former house speaker Marco Rubio. Before we get to the specifics of the race, let’s talk for a minute about the Republican party in Florida. There have been calls for unity, but it’s been pretty contentious. How do things stand now?

A: The Republican primary is Aug. 24, but it will be the elephant in the chamber during the legislative session in March and April. Crist usually manages to avoid taking stands during the session, though he and his office is active behind the scenes. But with the governorship and a Senate seat open, with the governor running for the latter and two elected statewide officeholders running against each other for governor, it’ll probably be like watching cats hissing.

Q:How are the Democrats faring? They have a reputation for being pretty contentious themselves.

A: It’s not that the Democrats are internally contentious that really matters. It’s just that they are outnumbered and scared of their own shadows. Alex Sink, the state’s elected chief financial officer and a Democrat, tends to duck hard questions from the press and is frankly kind of whiney. Fortunately for her, the Republican candidate for governor, Attorney General Bill McCollum, is at least as boring. It’s an innocuous race. The only spark of freshness is from an underdog Republican, State Sen. Paula Dockery, whose speeches are actually somewhat interesting.

Well, you asked about the Democrats, and I talked about the Republicans. Does that tell you how the Democrats are doing?

Q:We read in the St. Petersburg Times that Tampa Bay currently has a controversy about prayers before City Council meetings. An atheist wants to put an end to the practice. There was a time, not so long ago, when religion and politics were at the forefront of people’s minds, but this year it seems to be all about the economics. Is that right?

A: It’s funny that those culture war issues about how the country is going to the dogs seem pretty second-rate when the country actually starts going to the dogs because the financial system fell apart. But when you can’t actually solve anybody’s actual problems, you can sometimes save yourself by calling for more prayer, and you sort of love it when some citizen gets annoyed and makes an issue of it. I’m particularly fond of preachers who tell God that he or she is the only one with any sense around here and really needs to give us a tip sheet on what to do. When it comes to prayers that wisdom be bestowed on our officeholders, they might as well pray for somebody to grow an amputated leg back, for all the good it seems to do. I thought Jesus had pretty good advice when he told the Pharisees, those pretentious promoters of public prayer, to pray in private instead of ostentatiously.

I’d say the prayer issue, abortion, and some of those other things that conservatives used to fire up their political “base,” have moved to one of the back pews as far as most people are concerned. And just to be fair and balanced, some of the lefty culture themes like diversity and education also have receded as topics of conversation. Ten percent unemployment is a serious political distraction.

Q: A year ago, Crist looked like the man to beat. Now Rubio is on top. Is this the effect of the national scene on local politics or is it more about the two candidates?

A: It’s something of a microcosm of the national zeitgeist. First of all, I really have to hand it to Crist for shunning the red-meat partisanship that characterized the Bush eras (W. and Jeb both). The idea of lowering our voices is a remarkable and commendable position. He came in and was sort of Not Jeb in most things. Obama tried to embrace that same tone, and maybe that’s why Crist literally embraced Obama.

I think it basically comes down to this: Crist looked like a shoo-in, and therefore got the support of the Republicans who just want to be with the winner. This would be the lobbyists and fund-raisers, who don’t really care about ideology as long as you vote with THEM. Rubio got the committed conservatives who were not otherwise committed to Crist.

Q:Rubio seems like a real darling for conservatives nationally. Can you talk about him as a politician? What’s his calling card in terms of accomplishment?

A: Rubio would do much more posturing when he was speaker of the House, but he wasn’t terribly effective at getting his way in a two-house Legislature or with the governor.

A couple of years ago I wrote a column in Florida Trend springing from a Rubio speech. He praised the leadership of Franklin Roosevelt against the “isolationists” (that would be Republicans, in part) who wouldn’t even help Great Britain against Hitler. He talked about helping kids in dire poverty overcome dysfunctional families. “This country used to have leadership,” Rubio said. The headline on the piece was “Trojan Donkey,” and wondered if Democrats had taken over the Republican party by stealth. (Florida Trend, April 2007, http://www.floridatrend.com/article_reg.asp?aID=46261.)

I’m not sure that lionizing FDR is any less heretical than embracing Obama in intellectual terms. So who knows who these two candidates really are, other than ambitious politicians? Voters project onto these vaguely defined politicians their own political desires and fears.

Q:Conventional wisdom on Governor Crist is that he politically bought the farm when he backed President Obama on the stimulus. Is that the case? Or is it more complicated?

A: It’s such a stupid issue. I’d like for one person who opposes the stimulus to tell us how we would be paying for a 30% increase in food stamp appIications in Florida, or which of those recipients we should not be giving food stamps too.

I think everybody knows that Crist is a chameleon, and he’s been brilliant at it. He can spot a political opportunity and run to it sooner and faster than anyone else. And when Obama, still in his rock-star period, came down bearing a gazillion dollars in free money that would keep Crist from making politically unpopular budget cuts, Crist was delighted. He was still seeing the Kum-Bah-Yah spirit abroad in the land.

But it looks like he underestimated the conservative backlash against Obama. It’s a rare misreading of the way the wind is blowing.

Really, though, the conservatives who had been stewing quietly were just waiting for something to hang around his neck, and Obama was it. Whether it proves fatal will depend a little on whether Obama can get his own act together, but it will depend a lot on whether Crist can find some way to capture the Republican imagination or at least recover the aura of inevitability that got him the governorship.

Don’t forget that Charlie has about three times the fund-raising of Marco Rubio. And that ain’t chopped liver. Even if Rubio does have Jeb Bush on his side.

Q:Looking toward the November race, the latest Rasmussen poll has any Republican challenger beating the Democrat by double digits. Is there any chance this could turn into a horse race or is that Senate seat basically a lock for the Republicans?

A: The old line from longtime Louisiana Gov. Edwin Edwards comes to mind: The only way the Republican nominee won’t win is to be caught in bed with a dead woman or a live boy.

Q:At Purple State, we talk a lot about civility. How civil has the primary race been?

A: It’s early yet. The ads haven’t started. So if you dare come to humid Florida while June is bustin’ out all over up there, come down and ask me then. One of the truly disgusting bits of daily entertainment for me is reading the so-called “news” releases from the Democratic and Republican parties. They delight in name-calling and taunts. It’s like watching “The Texas Chain-Saw Massacre.” Such pointless gore. The candidates, fortunately, are leaving the dirty work to the party press offices.

Again, the conservative anger is so great, and the race is looking so close, that I can’t help but think that a vast wave of rhetoric will wash over any vestige of civility.

Q:Some effort has been made to clean up the political discourse in Florida. has it worked? Are politicians in different camps treating each other with respect or is it as bad as ever?

A: I look at this partly from the long view of history. Jeffersonians were brutal toward John Adams, and Adams (perhaps at the instigation of the protective Abigail) signed the sedition acts to imprison them. Sally Hemmings was a big story, a sort of Appalachian Trail problem for Jefferson. Andrew Johnson was impeached for firing a Cabinet member that the radical Republicans wanted to keep in office. Richard Nixon had an enemies list.

But the fact that we’ve always done it doesn’t make it right, or healthy for our country.

In 1964 my parents were Barry Goldwater enthusiasts. They even had those outrages of the day, the books like “None Dare Call It Treason.” One day President Johnson came to our Georgia town, and as he rode down the street, people booed. My mother was appalled. “You don’t boo the President of the United States,” she said. If she were alive, I doubt she would have voted for Obama. But she would have been appalled at Rep. Joe Wilson’s “you lie!” outburst.

Former Congressman Jim Leach, now head of the National Endowment for the Humanities, was in Tallahassee in January to talk about civility. “Nothing could be duller,” he said. “But little is more important for this country at this time than establishing what might be described as an ethos of thoughtfulness in the public square.” Words, he said, “clarify or cloud thought.”

If I could prescribe one thing to quit doing, it would be fighting over the alleged motivation of our adversaries. We ought to quit calling each other racists, fascists, socialists and all the rest. We ought to focus a lot more on identifying the actual problem and determining the degree of agreement on that. Then we can at least start fixing the part of the problem we agree exists.

I think reporters do an awful job of asking those kinds of questions. We have way too many people, in public office and in the public at large, who think in slogans instead of thinking critically. We need to focus on defining the problem, understanding the facts and forces at work, and figuring it out. The Madisonian model for this Republic was that we would elect educated, thoughtful leaders who would do the work on our behalf.

It would be nice if we uniformly expected them to elevate the discussion instead of engaging in name-calling like first-graders on the playground.

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1. [...] While we take a much needed break for Memorial Day weekend, have a look at six months of Purple Interviews. It’s a chat bonanza! If you’re fascinated by the conflict between religion and science, don’t miss this chat with astronomer Salman Hameed about Islam, creationism and the television show Caprica. Or if you want the down and dirty on Florida politics in one of the most contentious mid-term elections years in memory, check out our talk with political insider and former Congressional Quarterly editor Neil Skene. [...]

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