America’s Worst Best Presidential Candidate
In September 2003 I volunteered to help a friend who was running for office by reviewing the websites and speeches of all 11 candidates who had announced for President in 2004, looking for the best policy ideas.
Even back then, when there was still a tradition of candidates having actual positions on actual issues, it was a maddening exercise to separate campaign blather from the specific strategies the candidates had for running the country.
Except — there was this one candidate: a guy named Bob Graham from Florida.
Graham, at the time a US Senator, had what I was convinced was the perfect blend of eloquence and earnestness, leadership experience and humility, smarts and humor. Where other candidates spoke in generalities, Graham spoke in specifics, spelling out what he would do and how he would do it. Where other candidates couldn’t tell you how much a gallon of milk cost, Bob Graham had milked cows, driven refrigerated trucks, stocked grocery store shelves and worked the checkout line.
After a few weeks of studying the positions of every 2004 presidential candidate, I sent off my platform review memo to my politician friend, along with a bold prediction: Bob Graham would be the next president of the United States. I woulda put money on it.
Except I didn’t have time to get the bet down. A few days later, in October 2003, Graham became the first of the ten Democratic candidates to drop out. Analysts cited his low poll numbers, his age (he was – gasp! - 67!), his inability to attract big money donations and his “lack of charisma.”
Bob Graham died last week at age 87. And when I got the news, I forced myself to try to reconstruct what it was about his campaign-ette that had gotten me so excited, and whether it tells us anything about the state of our politics today.
If Graham is remembered for nothing else, it will be for a series of “workdays” he spent doing the kinds of jobs that hold America together. It began in 1974 when he was a member of the Florida Senate’s education committee, and a teacher told him: “The main problem with the education committee is that nobody has any experience in education.” “What can I do about that?” Graham asked. The teacher arranged for Graham to spend a semester teaching civics in a public school.
Bob Graham put in a full eight hours during each of his career 400 “workdays.” (Photo Peter Cosgrove, AP)
The experience helped Graham, a Harvard Law grad from a wealthy family, recognize what “real” people’s days were like, and when he ran for Governor in 1978, he spent 100 days doing 100 different jobs, not for ceremonial photo ops, but for a full, sweaty day. During these “workdays,” he scooped poop at a horse arena, changed sheets in a nursing home, gutted mullet, picked tomatoes, worked in a sandwich shop and did 95 other things (including, one day, working as a bellhop – coincidentally carrying the bags of one of his opponents).
Besides being good politics, the workdays helped Graham learn a lot about the little things that make life hard, and understand how bureaucracy and dumb policies can make everyday life even harder. He discovered there were no bathrooms for the public in unemployment offices and no Spanish-speaking employees at food stamp offices. He learned how paperwork barriers were driving law enforcement officers and teachers away from their jobs. And when he came from last place in a field of 7 to win the governorship, he started fixing some of the things he had learned about.
Of course the workdays were a gimmick on some level. But what made them successful was that Graham took them seriously, keeping the media away for the most part, putting in the time, asking questions and learning.
He continued the workdays as a two-term Governor (leaving office with an 83% approval rating – what may be an all-time record) and three-term US Senator, then announced a 2004 presidential bid.
And that’s when he came onto my radar screen. In a field of 11 Democrats and Republicans, I saw one person with exceptional political instincts, a deep interest in learning about people and a series of beautifully-explained, specific ideas about how to move the country forward.
Reflecting on it now 20 years later, here’s what I think I saw that resonated so much, and what I would tell any political candidate considering running for office at any level:
1. Have some big ideas. Your reason for running can’t be that you want to get elected. It has to be – whether you are running for president or the soil conservation board -- that you want to change or protect or improve something, and you have some initial ideas about how to do that. Bob Graham had big ideas about bringing two America’s together (this was before John Edwards and Barack Obama started using that language). He had deep knowledge and specific ideas about economic development and environmental protection from his time leading Florida, and about national security from his time in the Senate. And he laid out all those ideas in clear language, not politispeak, for everyone to see on his campaign website. Regardless of whether you agreed with his big ideas, they were all there for you to consider when you were thinking about who to vote for.
2. DO sweat the small stuff. One of the greatest gifts politicians can give their constituents is help with their everyday lives: filling the pothole on their road; making it faster to renew your driver’s license or get a benefit; helping folks get through the bureaucracy of setting up a business. Because of the time Graham was spending on the ground during his “workdays,” he was able to fix a lot of the small things that tick people off – he noticed there was no bathroom for the public in unemployment offices and no Spanish-speaking employees -- and changed that; he noticed that paperwork was driving young teachers and law enforcement officers out of the profession -- and reduced it. One of the reasons North Carolina’s long-serving controversial US Senator Jesse Helms kept getting elected was that he created a constituent relations office second to none, responding to mail quickly, helping people get passports, navigating them through bureaucracy. Even people who disagreed with a lot of his politics appreciated his “customer” service. Bob Graham got that too.
3. Take actual stands on issues. In the early 2000’s, Graham was the earliest and most vocal challenger of the case being made for the Iraq war, taking what was at the time a deeply unpopular stand in the post-9/11 US. For him the issue was simple: as chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee, he had carefully reviewed the evidence for invading Iraq and found it was insufficient and believed he couldn’t justify the invasion, even if his stand hurt his polling numbers (as Alexander Hamilton says to Burr in the play Hamilton, “If you stand for nothing, Burr, what’ll you fall for?”).
4. Be willing to learn. In the 2000 presidential debates, there was a telling moment when the moderator asked the candidates to discuss a mistake they had made and what they had learned from it. It was a tricky question of course, but one of the candidates answers was to flat-out assert he couldn’t recall ANY mistakes he had made. Really? But it almost makes sense: in modern political life we have told candidates essentially that it is more important to be “consistent” than to learn. Through his workdays and by doing the reading, Bob Graham spent his political life intentionally learning, tweaking, recalibrating policies and ideas based on the evidence. Give me openness to change based on new evidence over consistency based on a ten-year-old opinion any day.
5. Be willing to make hard decisions. Graham spent decades in political office and years preparing the positions and strategies he would outline as his presidential platform for 2004. In many ways, his entire life had been pointing to that moment. But by October of 2003 he looked at the data he had – from polling, from fundraising, from appearances he had been making – and saw no pathway to the nomination. So he shut down the campaign. No lingering death. Just made the call.
Sen. Bob Graham (right) had the shortest political campaign of any of the 2004 Democratic candidates. But that doesn’t mean it was the worst. (Photo Lynn Spillers, Getty Images)
And he lived with that decision. After serving out his final term in the Senate, Graham went on to write nonfiction books on global security, citizenship and his 400 “workdays,” (what one pundit called “the greatest book a politician ever wrote”), an illustrated children’s book and a fiction thriller. The University of Florida named the “Bob Graham Center for Public Service in his honor. He did well.
That Graham failed so quickly as a presidential candidate probably tells you a lot about my political savvy (do NOT hire me), and may tell you something about the value of good policy ideas in political life, but that doesn’t mean I can’t feel wistful for what could have been. I’ll close with an excerpt from his presidential campaign announcement speech, one which could still be given today:
“As president, I will bring America back -- back to the values of our past and the promise of our future. And most of all, back together -- as one America. In our America, people at the top don't play by different rules. In our America, people work together. In our America, leaders listen. I've spent my life listening to the voices of America. I've spent it working with America's people. I've worked construction, and taught in our schools. I've worked as a short-order cook and a security guard. I've worked on the docks and on assembly lines. I'm proud that many of the people I've worked with side-by-side over the years are here with us today. And just as they are standing with me, throughout my career I have stood with them.” Bob Graham, May 6, 2003
RIP, Bob Graham. You inspired me.
References:
Bob Graham career overview: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bob_Graham
Gubernatorial approval ratings: Vermont Gov. Phil Scott has the highest current rating at 81%: https://www.tampabay.com/news/florida-politics/2024/04/22/desantis-has-one-highest-governor-disapproval-ratings-poll-finds/
Book review of Workdays, the story of the 400 days Graham spent at work in other people’s jobs: https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2024/04/20/bob-graham-political-book-00153402
Presidential campaign announcement speech: https://p2004.org/graham/grah050603sp.html