"New leadership." That's what Martin O'Malley (below) promised in his 2016 presidential campaign. It was his campaign slogan - simple, direct, and to the point. It wasn't mealy-mouthed pablum like Hillary Clinton's "Stronger Together."
Recently, though, it seems as if Democrats can't be bothered with new leadership. Because they did, after all, nominate Bill Clinton's wife for President in hopes that it would stoke nineties nostalgia in the Democratic base. Oh sure, she was a woman, and that was new, but her policies were not only the same policies her husband pursued, a lot of them were like the policies Obama pursued. Well, what was so new about that?
Despite the fact that he'd been in Washington for a quarter century, Bernie Sanders (below) offered new leadership in 2016 in the form of policy proposals that hadn't been pursued since the mid-sixties - universal health care, free college like they used to have in California - but you were still talking about a candidate who was hardly a new face, having toiled in the House and the Senate pushing legislation that had no chance of passage.
For 2020, the Democrats don't seem to be into new leadership so much - new faces, younger faces, a new generation. The obvious exception is Pete Buttigieg, who is a millennial, a gay man and an American of Maltese origin - and his youth and vitality are generating excitement all over Iowa. Too bad his patronizing attitude toward blacks is so old-school.
He tried to identify with black voters by saying he too felt the sting of discrimination as a gay man, but he sort of forgot that white homosexuals, unlike black homosexuals, can avoid discrimination by staying in the closet, whereas blacks, straight or gay, come out as black the day they're born. And then there's that long-ago comment Buttigieg made about black children doing poorly in school because of lack of role models. Actually, black students have several role models. They just don't hear about them much because of a form of structural racism that ignores black accomplishments in America . . . except during February. If this is new leadership, it's no wonder Democratic voters outside Iowa are sticking with the tried and tried again and true.
O'Malley, by the way, found out how little Democrats are interested in new voices and new faces when he backed Beto O'Rourke's presidential campaign - you know the story; I won't repeat it. O'Malley clearly wanted to see another repetition, that of the Kennedy story, and so found in Beto the new generation of leadership America needs. O'Malley is undecided now that Beto's gone, and with Tim Ryan having withdrawn from the presidential campaign, there simply aren't any Irish Catholics under 50 left for him to support. And though O'Malley supported Buttigieg for the Democratic National Committee chairmanship in 2017, I wouldn't expect him to be singing Mayor Pete's praises any time soon.
Especially when they're singing a quite different song about him in South Carolina.
Not too many of the younger Democratic candidates for President have offered much in the way of new ideas, so there's, say, little romance and excitement in Cory Booker possibly becoming our first Generation X President. And then there's Elizabeth Warren, who at 70 may be the closest the Democrats come to new leadership - she's a woman, and she has detailed plans for her ambitious progressive agenda.
But she's a little shy in explaining how much they're going to cost.
But, when you think about it, Donald Trump has been an exemplar of new leadership in the past three years. He's completely new when it comes to presidential governance. He's new in that he'd never held political office or military rank (because of those nasty bone spurs! :-D ) before becoming President, and because he's doing things that quite frankly have never been done before. Like breaking every international agreement the United States has ever committed itself to. Or trying to get the Ukrainians to interfere in the next presidential election. And letting Melania decorate the White House as something you might find in Stephen King novel for Christmas. New leadership cuts both ways.
In the end, Democratic voters might just forget about new leadership entirely and stick with Joe Biden, who feels as reassuring and as warm as a comfortable old shoe. If only he would stop putting that shoe in his mouth. But Biden (below), would bring a sense of newness to the White House in this respect; like Sanders, he'd be the first (and only, at this point) President from the Silent Generation, those Americans too old to have been at Woodstock (unless they were one of the performers) and too young to have been at Omaha Beach. It is that same generation Gary Hart belongs to, and he famously said in his own 1984 presidential campaign that it was time for his generation to govern the country - a new generation of leadership with new ideas. Yes - there it is! Biden would bring the Silent Generation approach to governing (albeit, thanks to his gaffes, without the "Silent" part), something that the White House has never had.
And he'd be bringing it to the White House 35 years and change late.
Heck, if Hart, who turned 83 on Thanksgiving, had run this year, we'd hear about his not-so-new ideas. Whatever they are.
Meanwhile, Steve Bullock the Montana governor who campaigned for President on the promise of new leadership in all but name, withdrew as a presidential candidate, refusing to run for the Senate and possibly hoping he gets to be someone's Interior Secretary. So did Joe Sestak, a forgotten two-term congressman who was neither new nor much of a leader.
Maybe Americans - even Democrats - do want new leadership in the White House, however you define it. But maybe they're wary of anyone who comes out and promises it. From the 1972 failure of George McGovern, whose campaign manager, Gary Hart, was a mentor to Martin O'Malley, who backed Beto O'Rourke - born the same year that McGovern was running for President - to now, this promise of new leadership is getting pretty old.
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