[I]n the middle of a full campaign day some time ago, a candidate retreated to his office in the middle of the afternoon for a revitalizing cup of coffee, and, it turned out, some self-criticism.
He’d been around politics for years as a campaign adviser and a senior appointed official, but had never run for office himself.
“It’s a lot harder than I thought it would be,” he said.
But at least, he said, he wasn’t nearly as bad as the “inarticulate, mumbling” young candidate he had helped elect to Congress some quarter of a century earlier. “He was really awful,” the more recent candidate recalled over his coffee. “A real incompetent.”
The reminiscing came from Theodore Sorensen, who would lose his race for the Democratic nomination for U.S. senator from New York in 1970.
And the inarticulate incompetent? His name was John F. Kennedy, who got elected to Congress in 1946 despite his mumbling.
But he improved, so much that he beat an incumbent U.S. senator in 1952 and won the presidential election of 1960. Practice may not make perfect. It does tend to make better.
Something Vermonters might bear in mind as they witness Scott Milne stumbling through campaign appearances in his quixotic and apparently doomed effort to defeat Gov. Peter Shumlin.
And perhaps something Milne should have borne in mind before he accepted the entreaties of Vermont Republican leaders to make the race. Running for office is at least as much an acquired skill as a natural talent. Even those blessed with the talent – as Kennedy obviously was – have to learn the craft, just as the most gifted concert pianist or stage performer has to polish his or her skills.
And not at Carnegie Hall or on Broadway. Best to make all those inevitable mistakes – and thereby learn to avoid them – while performing at community theaters or the concert hall in Peoria. Don’t hit the big time until you’ve learned the tools of the trade. It may be art, playing Hamlet or performing Rachmaninoff’s Third Piano Concerto, but those who do it well never forget that it is also a trade and a craft.
So is running for office. That’s why it’s probably not a good idea to start in the spotlight. When you run for governor, you step into the spotlight, where you would be well-advised to know your trade. Shumlin spent years in the Legislature. Jim Douglas was a member of the House, Secretary of State, and State Treasurer. Howard Dean served two terms in the House and was lieutenant governor. They all had to run for office every two years. They learned how to do it.
Milne has not. Both his parents served in the Legislature, so he grew up around politics. But as Ted Sorensen learned in 1970, being around politics is not the same as being the candidate. Even the adviser who tells the candidate what to say and how to say it does not necessarily say it well himself.
From the outset, he has had too little money, too small (and inexperienced) a staff, and too little time.
Milne had run for the state House of Representatives in 2006 and for Pomfret selectman a few years earlier. But he lost both times, and neither one is remotely comparable to making a statewide race. Candidates for local office rarely appear on television or get asked probing (if sometimes inane) questions by reporters.
Candidates for governor do, and it has been clear for weeks that Milne needed seasoning. Like any beginner, he hit the wrong chords; he forgot his lines. And he did it on Vermont’s biggest political stage. His campaign is most likely to be remembered for the sentence that got repeated (and ridiculed) on TV’s “Daily Show,” the one in which Milne answered the question of where he had been born: “Third generation, born in Vermont,” he said. “Ah, take that back, I was born in Brooklyn.”
Milne is not a fool. But he may have been foolish to accept those GOP entreaties so late in the political season. From the outset, he has had too little money, too small (and inexperienced) a staff, and too little time. Had he had the time and the money to recruit capable aides, they would have urged him to get some coaching, which would quite likely have included a warning that at some point he would be asked where he had been born, and should know the answer.
(Although there have been worse blunders. Back in the 1980s, a reporter for the Orlando Sentinel asked a Florida congressman how many times he’d been married. “Three,” he said. Returning to her office, the reporter found an urgent message from the Congressman’s press secretary. The lawmaker had been married four times).
There’s nothing wrong with getting this kind of coaching. It does not make a candidate less “authentic,” merely more capable. But a candidate running in 2014 needs to get that coaching done in early 2013 at the latest. By the time Milne decided to run, it was much too late for him to start learning.
With the little bit of seasoning a few weeks of campaigning will provide, Milne has already improved as a candidate. Not much, and not nearly enough. But – the “born in Vermont” blunder notwithstanding – he’s done a bit better in the last week or two.
Still, when he outlined his plan to cut school spending at a recent press conference, he was unable to answer the most basic questions about how it would work. It was as though he hadn’t expected reporters to ask. If he had run before, or if he had a capable staff, he would have known what was coming.
To his credit, Milne has not tried to deny his shortcomings as a campaigner.
“It’s obvious I’m not knocking it out of the park on my first swing,” he told a reporter for Seven Days earlier this month.
In that same interview Milne said he was not running “to shove new ideas down people’s throats,” and added, “the way political campaigns are run, I don’t think is great for democracy.”
Perhaps, he said, candidates should “stand,” rather than “run” for election, answering voters questions rather than buying television ads and repeating sound bites.
“I’m trying to be a modern version of the throwback candidate,” he said. “I’m not selling it like I’m going to fix all your problems.”
Now there’s a rarely heard and provocative theme that might appeal to voters. In the hands of a seasoned and capable contender, it’s an approach that might one day propel a candidate to victory.
And who knows? One day that seasoned and capable candidate might even be Scott Milne.
