Mr. Hackett Doesn't Go to Washington

I think one of the reasons I finally got up enough gumption to begin writing this blog was in reading the endless amount of anguish from keyboard jockeys around the country over Paul Hackett being "forced" from the US Senate race to give Sherrod Brown a clean run at the nomination. I hadn't spent a lot of thought on Hackett. I live in Northeast Ohio and am well familiar with Sherrod Brown and his work in the House. I will be extremely proud to call him my Senator come November 2006. Hackett seemed like a stand-up guy and when he spoke about the Iraq War, he could wipe the floor with any candidate who could take him on. Unfortunately for him, a US Senator is going to have to deal with a spectrum of issues, and as Bush's speech on HSAs illustrates, the decisions the next Ohio Senator will make are going to have a profound impact on our everyday lives. When he veered off his Iraq message, Hackett seemed to mostly have his heart in the right place; but his positions lacked substance, especially when stacked up against Rep. Brown, who has been fighting these battles his whole life.

Still, I couldn't help feel some sympathy for Hackett's web supporters. It caught me off guard how large and how loyal his blog following was, but I'd been in their place 2 years ago when political pressures forced Howard Dean from the presidential primary. When people new to the political process see the sausage getting made (to use a tired metaphor), its tough to swallow. The key difference for me was in the reaction. Governor Dean's campaign put us on a path to reform. He gave us the tools we needed to get involved and stay involved in Democratic party politics, at a time when many of us had given up the party as hopeless. Hackett's followers on the other hand spoke not of staying involved in the process, but of seeking revenge. They pledged not only to withhold support for a committed progressive like Sherrod Brown, but to withdraw interest in races in Pennsylvania, Illinois and elsewhere. Some even were threatening to leave the party altogether.

I watched Frank Capra's film last night and I suppose the Hackett people see themselves as a bunch of online Jefferson Smiths, shocked and betrayed by a political force they once saw as their ally. It's a compelling story, but one I think misses the big picture. If the Hackett supporters are so insistent on "letting the people of Ohio decide", can they tell me how they thought Paul Hackett was going to get through a Dem primary heavily reliant on urban votes with his libertarian stance on guns? Or how about what voters in a state where public school funding may be the #1 issue would view his candidacy once they learn that his children are home schooled?

These Hackett supporters may resent how this whole thing played out, but Paul Hackett made the choice to drop out of the Senate race himself. What I resent is out of state bloggers for whom the war is the Only Issue That Matters, trying to tell us in Ohio that only Paul Hackett is an acceptable candidate. The truth is, we will never really know what went on behind the scenes, who said what to whom, etc. Hackett may be hurt that things didn't go his way, but there's no reason to believe that this was as diabolical as he made it seem. And who is the real Jefferson Smith in this story? The war veteran who saw DC politics up close and personal and decided to take his toys and go home, or the congressman who has spent his whole life fighting an uphill battle for progressive issues (what Smith might call "lost causes")? When I see Jimmy Stewart on that screen, I think of someone like Sherrod Brown who put his whole career on hold in order to try and derail an awful piece of legislation like CAFTA (and almost succeeding).