My involvement in politics started many years ago in the street. I returned to those memories this past weekend, stimulated by a seminar I took on memoir writing. I was asked to remember the first time I had done something, anything, and the last time I had done it. I remembered the first time I had done street politics – the retail end of the political process. The simple writing exercise took me on a journey
back in time…
It is a hot summer day in Chico, California in 1952. Not the kind of humid heat you get in places like New Orleans where it slaps you in the face when you open the door and the sweat starts to run. It was the summer day you get in the Sacramento Valley, a penetrating heat that puckers your skin. It’s an oven, over 110 degrees, and dry as a bone. There is no relief in the shade of the oak trees that line Broadway and Main Streets.
I am eleven years old, and I am doing retail politics for the first time in my life. Ike and Dick, my candidates, are running against Adlai Stevenson. I have to be on the street because my grandmother, Grandma Nelle, is the storefront captain for the Republican Women’s Auxiliary. She’s in charge of leafleting and I am one of her foot soldiers. I feel excited; this is my first time and I really like Ike. I am a bit scared, too, because my grandmother is a fearsome person, a field marshal matriarch who brooks no nonsense. Most of all, I am anxious. I am just a kid confronting strangers on the sidewalk; they might disagree and get mad at me and then, what do I do?
I am out on the hot cement sidewalk, the heat crawling up my short-clad legs, pushing “I like Ike” as hard as I can, jamming leaflets into strangers’ hands.
Four blocks later I am overheated, tired, and need relief. I go through the revolving door of the Park Hotel into the lobby. It is cooler; the fans are spinning the hot air around the high ceiling. Men sit in upholstered and leather chairs; the smell of cheap cigars is everywhere. I start handing out my leaflets.
The desk clerk is on high alert about what I am up to. A short, balding man of about 40 (really old to me), he rushes from the desk, grabs me by the seat of my pants and my collar, and throws me out the door to the curb. “Not in my hotel,” he yells,” adding, for good measure, that he is a Stevenson supporter.
I sit on the burning cement for a while in shock. It all happened so fast. I want comfort; tears run down my face. I gather up my dirty and crumpled leaflets, and stumble back to the storefront at First and Main, where my grandmother waits. I blubber out my tale of disaster. She responds by slapping a new pile of leaflets into my hand, with a commanding “here’s some more; now get back out there.” My first lesson in politics: it is an unforgiving and unsentimental business.
Forty-four years later I had changed parties and political creed. I had created a defense policy think tank in Washington DC, working in what I call “wholesale” politics. I had spent five years on the White House staff doing defense policy and budget work; about as wholesale as it gets.
And yet, here I was, in 2006, back in the street, just like nine-year old me. Another hot summer day, this time mid-Atlantic muggy, in Montgomery County, Pennsylvania, where a White House colleague and friend, Joe Sestak, was running for Congress.
I was excited again. For decades I had dealt with important (and self-important) people in Washington DC. Being in the street reminded me of the real goal of politics – dealing with people who want or need things, or just want to sound off; making changes that changed lives.
I relished the excitement of standing in a hyped-up headquarters in a temporary storefront, kids much younger than I shouting orders, distributing literature to volunteers while they strategized at high speed on the phone.
Walking up the path to a screen door in a suburban Pennsylvania neighborhood, I relived the fear and uncertainty I felt in 1952. Anyone might be behind that door; I might meet an angry dog or an angry voter, get the door slammed in my face, or worse.
I loved standing in a median between two streams of traffic, my shirt sticking to my back, holding a sign with Joe’s name on it. Waving it at drivers, shouting his name, and getting a honk and either a raised thumb or middle finger back in response. I was no longer scared of the rejection; it’s just part of the sport.
What I was doing was real, connected, part of the idea that elections are decided one voter at a time. That individual contact mattered. Retail politics may be unsentimental, but I felt engaged.
These memories are almost in sepia tones for me, now. The more innocent days – the dry sun of Chico and the muggy sun of Pennsylvania – are a memory. Political confrontations in America have become ugly, hateful. Street politics is now an almost lethal sport in an era of open carry. Voter suppression is spreading; “GOTV” – Get Out the Vote – is an uphill battle. Angry red faces and spittle-flecked lips confront each other at picket lines and demonstrations.
The whole country seems to have lost its innocence about elections, maybe about democracy itself. But I’ll probably be out there in November in this rough and tumble world, pressing leaflets in somebody’s hand, hoping things well get better.
Great piece -- both stories compelling. In the latter story did you get anyone who was confronting? And in 2006 you were campaigning for Joe?! Joe Biden for Senate? I was confused. And this is really a great piece. I am trying to get out the vote. Been out twice with PPH. I will go out again. I was active in 2020 and I have to believe it made a difference. But Biden is not doing well. His numbers are way down and I am not sure he can survive another election. It is likely Trump won't get the nomination -- DeSantis would be the next in line. He's not crazy but his policies are really extreme and I fear what would happen if he were president. Oh well. One step at a time. Stay well.
Jo
Ok, I stand corrected. Do you remember the things that, slowly or spontaneously, led you join the Democratic Party? Johnson, of course, aggressively pursued the war, more or less initiated by Kennedy