The fictional Sen. Jefferson
Smith and McAllister parallel more than in the fact neither visited Washington,
D.C. before assuming their offices. Smith was a complete rube about the ways
Congress worked. He inherited a staff of cynics and manipulators, trying to
keep him from interfering with the agenda they shared with powerful Members. He
let the media use his story in ways to suit their needs to sell papers, even as
this raised ire among his fellow Members of Congress. At one point he let his
affections for a female distract him from doing a good job.
That McAllister shares the
similarity on the last account has become obvious to anyone perusing a politics
headline in the past week, except that in Smith’s case it only caused him to nearly
miss being able to blow the whistle on a crooked scheme, while McAllister’s
game of tongue hockey with a married aide, captured on video released to
the media, makes him appear less than
upstanding and has far greater ramifications. But the other two instances both
expose less obvious yet crucial mistakes as to why he took a job-for-life gig
and put it up for grabs.
McAllister inherited a staff
mainly from his predecessor, now Louisiana Department of Veterans Affairs head
Rodney Alexander. This is not unusual, especially when a mid-term change
occurs, for newcomers have to hit the ground running, and McAllister apparently
had given little thought to the office, or at least had not had time to plan
for it, when the campaign suddenly appeared at the resignation of Alexander. Yet
that means, while he would not absorb a staff that wished to work against him
or control him as in the case of Smith, at the same time there would be little
chance for them to develop special loyalty to him – especially as the operative
he would take on as his chief of staff himself had shown keen interest in
running for the office himself before deferring and eventually assisting
McAllister’s campaign.
In this vein, importantly the
most likely, now departed, suspect in disseminating the recording is one of the senior aides
left over from Alexander, although whoever might have done this McAllister seems
disinterested in pursuing. (It also is possible that the feed exceptionally randomly
and very unfortunately came into the hands of a political opportunist, for it
is an open broadcast that near its point of transmission can be intercepted and
recorded, much like the infamous Democrat
eavesdropping on Republicans cell phone incident in the late 1990s.) And
his partisan colleagues don’t seem that interested in public shows of support, perhaps
because of his uncomplimentary
statements about his workplace, while other party leaders such as state GOP
chairman Roger Villere and Gov. Bobby
Jindal have declared it best for him to hand in a resignation, perhaps because
the only issue he’s tried to be visible on happens to go against the party’s
preference on health insurance.
Of course, McAllister’s optimal
staffing move probably was to hire the remaining crew, and throughout history
there have been some fairly influential Members who gained their stature precisely
because they positioned themselves as mavericks to the perceived established
Washington order. But where McAllister seems to have been incredibly politically
stupid is that, when you haven’t had time to build up a network of friends (beyond
your dog) and staff loyalists in Washington and you’re creating a persona
of going against the grain of Washington, you don’t give anybody the slightest
avenue of attack. You just don’t voluntarily open yourself up to political vulnerability
when you have so few steadfast allies and assets.
While it seems to us incomprehensibly
idiotic to allow it to come to that, neither are we politicians and especially not
in such rarefied air. Most of them never will admit it, but in that position it’s
hard not to think the rules don’t apply to you. After all, you’ve gotten
districts of hundreds of thousands, or even states of tens of millions, to validate
you are the most valuable person in that constituency with the physical
outpouring of tangible things called votes, something you commanded. Your
decisions have a profound impact on what happens at home, and constantly are
reminded of that. People are fawning and groveling around you incessantly. You
have to be pretty grounded not to let your ego run wild as a result.
Which McAllister clearly did not acccomplish. Oh, as has been previously noted, he proved, by his embrace of
being an anti-politician, that when comes to the campaigning and elections side
of things he
has been a masterful politician despite his lack of experience in the
political world, which entirely was unlike Smith. Yet as now has become apparent, his skill on the being a
politician side were shockingly limited, if not indicative on an entire lack of
common sense.
Jefferson Smith won in the end because he didn’t have an ego. McAllister may end up defeated precisely
for the opposite reason married to obtuseness. While his vote-grabbing skills
can stave that off, even they will fail if the staffer’s cuckolded husband
reliably told the truth that part of McAllister’s anti-Washington persona, that
of being a man of faith, was concocted for political show. If that’s true, not
only will he not get reelected, he wouldn’t even be able to win a contest for
dogcatcher. In that instance, as far as reelection goes, despite his previous
disregarding of the sentiment, better late than never discretion would be the
better part of valor.
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