I Hope They Never Ask About 2016

Hillary Clinton ended her second debate with Donald Trump with a lie, probably the worst one she’s ever told:

QUESTION: Good evening. My question to both of you is, regardless of the current rhetoric, would either of you name one positive thing that you respect in one another?

CLINTON: Well, I certainly will, because I think that’s a very fair and important question. Look, I respect his children. His children are incredibly able and devoted, and I think that says a lot about Donald. I don’t agree with nearly anything else he says or does, but I do respect that. And I think that is something that as a mother and a grandmother is very important to me.

I watched her say that with my two sons asleep in the next room. The next morning I made them waffles, changed their diapers, and cleaned up the ridiculous messes they made. You know, the sort of stuff Trump routinely brags that he never does, that no man should do.

Hillary is a great politician, one of the greatest of my lifetime. So she didn’t show any of the pain she surely felt to tell that necessary lie. Everyone says family to that question, even when it’s wrong. Especially when it’s wrong. We’ve all tacitly agreed that family are off limits so that’s the perfect way to falsely compliment your opponent.

So she said it. Hillary, whose motherhood was heckled for years, and still is, because she make a joke about baking cookies. Whose only daughter was ridiculed for her looks from the time she was ten years old, because of her parents. Who has been insulted for decisions only she knows about her family, for making them and not making them and all of the rest of a thousand tons of garbage we’ve heaped on her for being a woman while running for office.

And she smiled while saying it, because that’s what we demand from her. And she was called a liar by people on the television, for saying the only thing anyone would even accept.

I used to turn on Morning Joe sometimes when the kids were up early. I’d point out various politicians and reporters to them, whispering “look at that knucklehead. It’s always okay to call politicians knuckleheads. Ask daddy why. He always knows.”

I don’t do that anymore.

I don’t remember what I thought about Ronald Reagan, George H.W. Bush, Michael Dukakis. I’m pretty sure they were okay, though. They didn’t do things like laugh when their children were called a “piece of ass,” or say they don’t care for their children, or say they’d like to date their kids.

I wanted to be a historian once. So when I see the ugliness I’ve encountered for ten years in politics bursting out into the open, “horrifying” people who had previously ignored it, I know it’s good. Better to be seen than hidden. Better that it’s excruciating than tolerated.

But you can’t say that to toddlers. There’s no way to tell them to look at this powerful woman but not that powerful man, to learn from this thing but not that thing. We struggle to accept that evil people exist in adulthood. Kids in diapers don’t have a chance.

One day my sons will ask me what happened this year. I don’t have any idea what I’ll say.

The Time I Almost Read My Parents' Divorce

It was a million degrees hot in Baton Rouge when I looked up my parents' divorce.

It wasn't even the first time bad weather had caused weird shit in my line of work. Once a former coworker looked up some parking tickets because it was a zero degree Minnesota winter and he didn't want to go outside quite yet. That set off a chain of events that led to a sitting attorney general being accused of trolling for anonymous gay sex in a public park.

Anyway. East Baton Rouge Parish had a new courthouse since I'd last been there. It had air conditioning and a lot of places to sit. I was there for a job, but I had wrapped it up pretty quick. I had time, and nothing to do but head back out to that soul burning heat by the convention center.

So I sat down at the terminal and looked up the case docket for Caskey v. Caskey, East Baton Rouge Parish, Family Division.

There are two kinds of divorce files: short and fast, or long and ugly. This one wasn't short.

I remembered as much. I remembered a lot of things in the file. Other things were unfamiliar. Still others I thought I remembered differently.

And there it was, in all its ugly glory. After years of reading divorces till I could speed read the damn things, I could finally see how everything went down, with a researcher's cold eye instead of a confused teenager's.

All I had to do was walk up to the desk and request it.

I looked at the screen for a long time. Then I cleared the search, left the building and got a root beer float at the Frost Top.

I've never looked it up since.

And now one day you, my Nonvoters, are going to be able to look up my own divorce from your mother.

Maybe you'll read this first. Maybe you won't.

Maybe you'll never even think to look it up, or want to.

Maybe you'll ask me about it first, and I have no idea what I'll tell you.

I'm not going to tell you to do what I did. It's your god given right to choose differently from me.

And I'm not going to tell you why I didn't go through with it. Divorce is a lot of things on paper and a hell of a lot more that aren't. If you haven't learned that by the time you read this, now is the time to do it.

I'm not even going to explain anything you might find. If you don't know, not feel but know, that I love you more than I even understand, then words aren't going to change that. And that's all that matters.

All I'm doing is telling you what I did in your position.

And if you want to do differently, I'll drive you to the Daley Center myself.

Dadsplaining: Primaries

Quit fighting with someone you should care about! I'm trying to explain primaries!

All right Nonvoters, listen up. There's another election coming. Nonvoter 1, you know the score. Except now you can run around shouting like a lunatic. Go right ahead; you're no worse than the median volunteer. Nonvoter 2, you're a bit younger but bear with us here. It's a ritual that employs your dad, weird though it is.

Last time I had some thoughts for Nonvoter 1, all full of reflection about civic responsibility. But this time it's different.

This time it's a primary.

Of all the democratic rituals we grownups engage in, primaries are the dumbest. They're also, coincidentally, the most profitable for your dad.

See, the grownups have already organized themselves into animalistic tribes over how to boss each other around. It's a pretty simple question: elephant or donkey, this team or that. Not a lot of heavy thinking required.

But sometimes we fight over who will be the tribe leader. It's really silly; everyone already agrees on what we want to do. There's no real disagreement or difference in the end result.

So of course we fight harder over it. We're not sure what we disagree on, but we're sure going to pound the crap out of each other to sort it out. When you don't have a lot to fight about the fighting gets bad fast.

It's kind of like when you, Nonvoter 1, smack your brother in the head over getting too much attention from Mom (also, I saw that. I always see it. Your Dad sees all). You're stressed out and worried about who you are and whether we love you as much.

And that is silly. Of course we love you. You're the same special little dude you were before Nonvoter 2 came along. You think that he changed who you are, but he didn't.

Neither does voting.

Some people, particularly the sort who keep buzzing our house and calling us, think voting does change who you are. That it's about the heart and soul of the party or whatever. These people are crazy. A party is just a bunch of people who vote the same way. It doesn't say anything about you to vote Democrat. Or Republican (yes, I will love you even if you vote Republican).

Voting doesn't make you a good or bad person. Politics can drive you crazy, but it's not going to make you good or bad either.

That's not how it works.

Voting is just saying what you want. Maybe you want good things or bad things, but voting isn't going to change that. And there are any number of better ways than elections to express your values.

So enjoy the touchscreen, boys. Your dad will probably mutter bad words if crazy people give him cards telling him how to vote. We'll talk about why some other time.

For now, just remember: we're doing this because we want to, not to be good people.

Things Best Left at the Office: Precious

A possibly ongoing feature wherein I catalog the many parts of my job best left unseen by the Nonvoter.

Fact check: Not actually Precious.

It was about a month into my first job as an opposition researcher. I was still learning the ropes, so I got assigned campaign finance. It's a pretty boring job: look at every single entry in a long spreadsheet, assign it an industry, and Google it a bit to see if the person is corrupt. Or an ax murderer.

Or a sodomizer of an 80 pound Rottweiler named Precious.

Yeah, that happened. The name, city and street name matched for an individual who...well I'll let Lexis do the talking:

A 39-year-old city man accused of sexually attacking his neighbor's dog has been ordered to turn over his passport and allow the home where he is living to be inspected for animals before his trial on animal-cruelty charges gets under way.
Jose Rodriguez, dressed in khaki pants, a plaid shirt and tan sweater, stood before Municipal Court Judge Emery Toth yesterday morning as the judge set up a schedule for the case, which has been before the court for several months. Rodriguez failed to attend last week's court session.
Maritza Rosario, owner of Precious, a 5-year-old female Rottweiler allegedly sodomized by Rodriguez, said she was glad some progress was being made in the case. Rosario has been in Municipal Court five times on the matter. [Home News Tribune, 2/4/05]

Obviously I was pretty excited. One month on the job and I had possibly found out that an opponent's contributor (and fundraising host!) sodomized dogs. Yes it was a common name, it was probably a long shot, but who cares! Precious!

So I spent the next eight hours trying to find out the former home address of that guy.

It turned out they were not the same people after all. One Jose Rodriguez, the one who gave money to various politicians, lived four blocks up the road from the Jose Rodriguez who gave illegal carnal attention to Rottweilers. I was so angry at the mismatch that I spent another hour trying to prove that he could have, like, moved up the road to escape notice the first four times he assaulted Precious.

But no. Different people. The campaign won, but in the usual way involving having more money and votes and such. There was no spectacular canine-related meltdown.

It was only when I relayed this tale to a friend later that I realized I was deeply upset that someone had not raped a dog.

Teachable Moment: Don't Play Can You Keep A Secret

There is no shortage of teachable moments for the Nonvoter in professional politics, probably because almost everyone in professional politics acts like screaming toddlers.

For example, let's hear from Frank Luntz, professional crybaby extraordinaire:

Following Mother Jones' publication of remarks GOP message man Frank Luntz made to University of Pennsylvania students about conservative talk radio, Luntz has decided to withdraw funding for a university scholarship named after his father that sends students to Washington, DC, according to the Daily Pennsylvanian, an independent student newspaper at the school.
While Luntz is scheduled to speak on a panel at the University during graduation weekend, he said that he would never return to speak after this incident, and would discourage others from speaking here.
[...]
A student had asked Luntz a question about political polarization, and Luntz had responded by blaming conservative talk radio, saying, "They get great ratings, and they drive the message, and it's really problematic." Luntz had asked for his answer to be off the record, and although the student who asked the question agreed to those terms, Aakash Abbi, the student who made the recording and provided it to Mother Jones, did not.

There's an adage among researchers: "Don't do anything you don't want to read about in the papers." It applies to all consultants; researchers just say it more because we're the ones everyone expects to be revolting for money. It's just good business practice: the best way to avoid trouble for doing bad things is to just not do them. Better for you, better for your clients, better for the voters who have to put up with your clients.

And it's also good personal practice. Sure, everyone has secrets. Some people also keep secrets for other people. The latter group is a lot smaller than the former. So if you must take something off the record, or ask "can you keep a secret," or whatever, it's best to think out beforehand what you get out of it, and what the person listening to you will get out of silence as opposed to snitching.

For example: A reporter calls me for comment on something or other. Being a self-promoting sort I am happy to talk with him. I say something that doesn't make a whole lot of sense without some knowledge that involves an active campaign, which I don't comment on as a rule. So I say this up front and offer to explain it off the record. If the reporter agrees, s/he gets an amusing anecdote and a consultant happy to provide future comments. I get some publicity without throwing the current client off message. We both get something out of it, and we both lose something if we don't respect the convention: I lose publicity by taking everything off-record and I lose clients by saying things that are not just time-sensitive but damaging. The reporter loses a friendly process quote source by burning me. There's still a risk, of course. The reporter might be an asshole, or not think my story is really worth holding convention. I moderate my comments accordingly.

That's how grownups handle sensitive information and conversations in confidence: with caution and thinking about whether it's worth it before talking. Of course a lot of stupid grownups don't do that, usually because they're bragging. And honestly, that's what Luntz was doing. Look at me, I'm a smart consultant. I don't really believe all the crap I say on cable news. Bask in my duplicitous glory. Say that to a room full of college students and that's asking for trouble.

And that's the second lesson: don't play can you keep a secret in the middle of bragging. There's nothing wrong with self-promotion, but it necessarily relies on maximum publicity. When you mix self-promotion with secrecy, bad things happen.

So there you go, Nonvoter. People are neither trustworthy nor snakes. They're just people. They do things they think will be beneficial. Remember that and you'll be a better person than Frank Luntz.

The White House Correspondents' Dinner Versus My Son Going to Bed

I really, really do not get the White House Correspondents' Dinner. All day and night in Washington, DC politicians and reporters snipe at/congratulate/laugh with/laugh at each other. But apparently they also need one night out of the year to explicitly do all that or something. Anyway, I didn't watch it before, and I sure as hell won't watch it now that I have a toddler to coax to sleep. And that brings me to tonight's adventure.

So without further comment, I present to you my son going to bed:

Have Baby, Want Case File

If you research for a living you go into a lot of courthouses. Perhaps one of ten of these courthouses is a positive experience. You walk in and it's clean, well-lit, has computers purchased within the past five years and helpful staff.

The rest of the time it's a nightmare. It's hard to even get in to the courthouse, because the metal detector doesn't work. The computers are ancient abacuses with software that makes no sense. The staff...are there even staff? There are a lot of people just milling around behind the counter, but they're not there to, like, sort case files or get what you want. What should be a thirty minute trip turns into a two-hour trip and even then you probably don't get the material you want.

That is, unless you're a man with a baby.

Now let's get the standard disclaimer out of the way. Yes this is all very sexist and wrong. Moms with babies don't get the time of day from your median public servant/clerk/passerby. People see women with children and shrug, or even grumble about noisy kids. No big deal, joys of motherhood, societal role, etc. But a man with a baby, now that's impressive. I don't even have to do anything with the Nonvoter. Just standing there and not accidentally strangling him makes me a paragon of virtue. It's a terrible behavior pattern and it should change.

In the meantime, the Nonvoter is awesome to take to the courthouse. I zip right through, the Opinion Leader gets some time to herself, everyone wins!*

It's a breeze from start to finish. At the metal detector, people wave me through in line. Some of the lawyers even look vaguely guilty while doing it. That's right ambulance chaser, when was your last father-son work day, hmm?  People get out of the always-jammed elevators. They coo and compliment me on my awesome son and parenting while doing so! Yep, there he is, still not murdered, parent of the year right here.

And once I get to the office? The people there help me. They wave me over and look things up themselves. They double and triple check the files I want. They make faces and wave at the Nonvoter while I sort through the files. Hell, once they even offered to make copies for me!

It's like magic. These very same people go right back to staring dully at people behind me and mumbling that they can't read the file request/aren't supposed to give legal advice/are on break the moment I'm on my way.

And I feel slightly bad about it. There's a lot of people there who do need help, help of the getting screwed and needing legal redress variety. And of course, there are a lot of women with kids who don't get the same treatment, particularly in the domestic division- divorce, deadbeat dads, et cetera. It's unfair bordering on heartbreaking.

On the other hand, a three hour trip with the Nonvoter maybe making things difficult for the Opinion Leader has now turned into a one hour trip that the Nonvoter loves. I just have to keep him from chewing on the case files.

*Well except my targets. But they shouldn't have driven drunk/beaten their wives/not paid their taxes/gotten parking tickets and then run for public office to begin with.

Flashback: The First Few Months

No rest for the wicked. Or the parents.

Every so often another cable news anchor has a baby and throws a huge fit at the state of parental leave in the U.S. And then those of us who don't make enough money to keep half a dozen nannies on retainer point and laugh. A for effort, you have approximated human emotion!

The Nonvoter was born in April of 2012, and that meant no leave. You can't just take off of consulting in April of an on-year. That's game time. That's when everyone buys research. They've had their one decent quarter of fundraising and have a bit of money to spend and oh god the election is in six months we need research! If he had arrived in April of 2011 or 2013 I could have taken as much time as I wanted, because no one hires anyone in April of odd-years. Alas, working like crazy during the on-year is what pays the mortgage in the off-year. So work it was.

It didn't even stop while he was being born. There were calls, there were emails. The only reason I didn't get calls in the middle of making all the family and friends calls was that he was born fairly early in the morning. There was work to do, and I was the only one around to do it. After we visited the Nonvoter in the NICU* for the first time, my wife kissed him and whispered "Daddy has to go hurt bad people now."

It was theoretically going to be okay. We had planned for it. I had moved my schedule and production around, let the appropriate clients know. Because planning is totally a game-changer with babies.

Of course it all went to hell.

2012 was the worst year of my career. It was even worse then 2009, when no Democrat thought they had to spend money on research and no one had money to give them for research anyway. I blew leads. I blew sales. I blew deadlines. I blew one job because I wrote the whole proposal up, carefully proofread it, then forgot to click "send." I found the email three weeks later.

I don't even know how I managed what work I did do. The parent books might be crap but they get one thing right: the first few months sink into a blur pretty quickly. Sometimes I worked during naps. Sometimes it was after bedtime. Sometimes I crawled off to a coffee shop and felt like a total heel. A lot more times than I care to count I wound up throwing myself on the mercy of the client, especially if the client also had kids. I remember exactly one specific thing- the Nonvoter falling asleep in my arm while I read through county board minutes from I forget where with the other. I mostly remember it because I wanted to fall asleep too.

I have no lessons learned here. It sucked, I floundered around a lot and lost potential clients and money. It also worked out okay, which is not nothing. The Nonvoter eventually was okay for minutes and minutes and the Opinion Leader and I learned how set a sort of schedule and otherwise work around him. It wasn't great, but it could have been worse. In the end it was inertia that kept me moving at work. I had been around for two cycles and two cycles is half a career in politics. You can do the job in your sleep after that.

And that's a good thing, because I'm pretty sure that's how I did most of my 2012 work.

*Yeah, there was a trip to the NICU. Thank you American health care system. Seriously.

No You May Not Watch West Wing

Wah waaaaaah

All right let's get this out of the way. Someone asked so I'm just going to clear it up. To hell with the West Wing. I hate it. The West Wing poisoned an entire generation of mostly Democratic television watchers. Campaigns are the worse for that show. So the real answer to this stupid question is "Nonvoter why don't you watch something a little less inappropriate and vulgar, like hardcore pornography?"

But since it was asked, here are my thoughts on characters on the West Wing and the acceptability of the Nonvoter liking/emulating them:

UPDATE: All right folks, I got schooled on this and rightfully so. Almost all of the original characters I wrote up were white men. That's on me. I could put it on Sorkin's writing, but I won't. So I added a few more. However I am not writing about Charlie, because being the explicit token black hire as a personal valet is a depressing career choice.

Bruno: I have no idea what this ULTRA TEEVEE CONSULTANT did to earn his multimillion dollar contracts, so I'm going to just assume it was nothing, and that he got paid eight figures to do crossword puzzles at White House senior staff. Also, he switched parties as a retirement gesture. That's pretty boss if you can pull it off.   ASSESSMENT: Go forth and make me proud, son!

Joey: I would rather the Nonvoter give consulting and politics a pass entirely, but if he must follow in my footsteps, and he must do honest work for market-rate pay, I'd rather he take after Joey. She does a job, she does it well. She has corporate clients as well as political ones. She doesn't get into the ego soothing game. She just shows up and polls and that's that. Job well done. ASSESSMENT: Just so long as you don't do something stupid like vote.

Sam: We're getting into sketchy territory here. Sam was a regular offender in the soaring bullshit tearjerker speech that inexplicably makes things happen. Also, he went to run for Congress (blech) in Orange County (gag). But on the other hand Sam did make his fortune before he went to go play at politics, and he managed to step right back into making stupid obscene money working for deeply awful people. I can respect that. ASSESSMENT: If you must.

CJ: CJ is not that bad, grading on the terrible curve of show characters. She's good at her job, she has a conscience but isn't too loud about it, and anyone who has to deal with the press all day always has my heartfelt sympathies. On the other hand, she went about it all the wrong way, only making a little money before getting into politics and cashing in after rising to the top. That's respectable, but the safer bet is always money first, freakshow-as-government after. So if the Nonvoter really wants to do it the hard way, sure. ASSESSMENT: I guess it will build character.

Leo: In the same category as Sam, in that he made his money before getting into elections and all that nonsense. But he also had a pretty crummy personal life, got picked for vice president basically to just piss everyone else off, and died an early death from a bum ticker. ASSESSMENT: Quit while you're ahead. Also watch out for fried foods.

Ainsley: I mean...sure. Being the token hire from the other party is an entirely respectable career decision, and there's decent enough money in it. But if that's the way the Nonvoter wants to go, I'd recommend holding out for something higher and better than assistant associate counsel or whatever. After all, she gave up a pretty great gig as a cable news shouter for that. ASSESSMENT: Just stick with the cable news gig! There's no shame in it!

Louise: No! No no, NO! Snapping off internet burns is not good consulting! It isn't even consulting at all! We have Twitter for that! And that meeting where everyone was just blowing smoke up Josh's ass to get a piece of the media buy? WHY DIDN'T YOU WANT A PIECE OF THE MEDIA BUY? ASSESSMENT: Get a real job, son.

Josh: Um. How to say this. He opens by offering his ex-girlfriend a job just so he can boss her around (complete with taunting her about writing an organizational chart that just says he gets to boss her around), he gets another girlfriend fired for the high crime of doing her job and promoting women's health, and the top of his self-actualization pyramid is fucking his assistant. ASSESSMENT: Son we need to talk about women and relationships.

Toby: Everyone, EVERYONE hates Toby. Even people with the bad sense and taste to like the West Wing hate Toby. Because he's an asshole. Not even a funny one or a smart one. He's just mean. And he's not the "idealist." Good grief, the whole cast fits the "misunderstood idealist" billing. He's a self-pitying martyr. And he committed treason! Treason isn't okay! Even if budget cuts mean some astronauts are going to die! And setting all that aside...he's a real jerk to his father, who comes off as a decent sort even though his job was pretty lousy/evil/etc. :( :( :( ASSESSMENT: Don't be like Toby.

Bartlet: Having worked in professional politics for many years now I'm kind of horrified at the thought that a parent would want his child to grow up and be president. You want your offspring to spend at least four years begging rich people for money, promising favors he will never be able to deliver, getting screamed at by everyone from Twitter to [cable news station in opposition to your preference], marked for death by various lunatics and requiring round the clock protection? But even setting aside the, like, actual job...Bartlet? Really? Covering up a severe, erratic mental disability, killing heads of state during diplomatic excursions, chickening out from doing his damn job when his daughter is kidnapped, and responding to members of Congress and your own staff getting blown to bits with a peace summit? Forget bad president, that guy's a self-indulgent psychopath. Don't run for president, but if you do, aim higher than Sorkin Jesus. ASSESSMENT: YOU ARE NO LONGER MY SON!

The Manuals Are Useless

It's time to face facts: dad  books are awful.

I mean, every dad gets roped into reading What to Expect When You're Expecting, and every dad is going to have to weigh in on at least one bizarre scare scenario that book lays out. Then you go out and buy a bunch of dad books and it turns out most of them cram first year parenting in with pregnancy so you get two phases of mansplaining and crappy jokes in one book. You're probably going to buy a couple so feel free to check my math, reading the banal Everything Father-to-Be book or the vaguely amusing but equally unhelpful Pop Culture or the Guy's Guide to Surviving Toddlers, Tantrums and Separation Anxiety (Yours, Not Your Kid's!). I did not make the last title up. And if you think that's bad, check out a representative section:

So I volunteered to be the one to change what was not only my first diaper but also my son's very first poopy diaper. At the time, we had a few people in the room with us, and I asked them all to leave. You'll understand this when your time comes, believe me. I was nervous enough; I didn't need an audience at this very moment to intimidate me further.

Fucking seriously? You got performance anxiety over changing your first diaper? Jesus Christ. It's a diaper. Put it on backwards, put it on forwards. Put it on halfassed. You're going to be changing a million of them so you're going to get plenty of practice. And if you're afraid of looking like a stupid asshole in the course of being a parent I got some really bad news for you too. Go ahead and call the audience back in. They probably have good advice. Ignore or yell at them at your leisure, it's one of the perks of the job.

So you run up against two issues in these dad books. The first is that there's no real consensus on what dads are even supposed to be doing. There's just agreement that the job requires more than OUR dads (and thanks for that, our dads?). Most of them have this bizarre fifth wheel quality too, like you're never going to be as queen awesome as Mom because diapers are such a puzzle. Or something. But I can deal with the role fuzziness: no one has any idea what consultants are supposed to do either, least of all the actual consultants. We don't get licensed, and our only professional association is a self congratulation club that charges too much for conferences. If whatever you're doing is working then, well, it's working. If not you figure it out.

The other issue is that manuals are great for low variance situations. For example, when assembling furniture. Prong A, Slot B, Bolt C, apply screwdriver, admire work. There isn't any scenario where the leaning desk vomits right in your face or inexplicably won't eat despite being clearly hungry and furious about it. It's just a desk. Follow instructions and it will work. On the other hand, there's high-variance situations. Then you can learn as much as you want but it's not going to help that much. Take research consulting. There's a lot of stuff you do need to know, like which taxes are public record or what a lien is and when it is bad. Unfortunately consulting means applying this knowledge to campaigns, where the candidates are crazy and the managers are driven crazy. The manuals don't cover what to say when the candidate chickens out of using the three best attacks then yells at you because your last ditch attack is lame and thinly sourced. Or when the candidate "forgot" about a previous divorce.* Beyond staying calm and talking it out with the other grownup in the room, there's not a whole lot to say in advance.

So, uh. Stay calm and talk it out with the other grownup in the room. And stop buying the dad books, it will only encourage them to write more of them.

*The number of candidate v. baby/toddler comparisons is probably infinite.

Obama Staff and Parents With Easy Kids

So the Nonvoter just had his first birthday, and we survived his first birthday party. There was a lot of domestic panic that everyone would see the house as it normally is and then the little jerk cut off his nap prior to the event, turning into an overtired wreck. But we made it work, and I even got to talk to some parent friends while the Opinion Leader* took a turn dealing with our son. One of them had a baby who was, relatively speaking, angelic. Quiet, content to just check out the place and chew on her own fingers, put up with being held without any struggling/punching/choke holds at ALL. And the mom gave me a look that was oddly familiar. Sympathetic, mildly guilty, relieved.

"I can't even imagine what it's like," she said. "It's stressful enough when she fusses, which isn't often."

The funny thing is, I've seen that look and received that sympathy before. It's just come from Obama staff, specifically their 2008 variety.

We all saw/cursed/applauded Barack Obama's re-election in 2012, and we're all in basic agreement that he had a pretty hard time of it, what with the unemployment and the Tea Party and whatnot. But of course this was not always the case. There was also the Obama of 2008. He didn't just raise money, he DROWNED in it. He had so much cash he did gaudy, ridiculous things like buy an hour-long infomercial, ads in people's Xbox games, and even ads in his opponent's home state just to be an asshole. He won Indiana, for God's sake. For being the first black president he made it look pretty easy.

And of course since he raised infinity money, he hired a bunch of staff, kids and idealists who had no appreciable skills or reason to be on a serious, functional campaign. They hit the political job market in 2009 with their one shiny resume line and were very pleased with themselves. Meanwhile, the rest of us had been working on actual competitive campaigns. The kind where the candidate is kind of a shit and never raises enough money and a zillion dollars in third party** ads drops on your head and god am I even going to get paid? I'm not going to get paid am I. God damn it.

So in the same way my home life has parents of kids who don't attempt ritual murder-suicide at every nap time, my work life has those people who don't get that politics is, in the median, a discouraging, unpleasant occupation. We don't get the choice of working for the inspiring guy, just like we don't get the choice of putting the Nonvoter back to sleep for the third time that hour, at 3 am. It's nice when it's rewarding, but a lot of the time it's not.

Of course, there's no point begrudging people good luck. And the fact is it doesn't matter in the long term. The 2010 elections made all of us Democrats assholes anyway. And any given parent might have a sleep-through-the-night wonder baby today, but sooner or later he's going to have a nightmare toddler, or teenager, or whatever. We all got it coming; some of us just get it a lot earlier and harder.

*Ie, my wife

**527s, super pacs, you get the idea

Conference Calls

Tough crowd!

Everybody's a critic, et cetera, but this is a very good question! Much like conference calls in any other profession, campaign calls are 1) a show of commitment and 2) a colossal waste of time. They exist to force consultants to regularly confirm that we are still around and care very deeply about winning the election, even if we don't care that deeply at all or if our caring has dropped off a bit because our invoices haven't been paid. On the other hand, diapers. Or nap time, or snack time, or Nonvoter just plain bored time. So you have to employ a few tricks to change that diaper during the call.

First of all, the phone has voices and a glowing screen and its buttons go beep. That's baby crack. You're going to need at least an awesome a toy to distract the Nonvoter for the duration of the call. And holding it against your head is a bad idea: kisses and raspberries are a premium tool to keep the kid quiet and you don't want him to grab the phone while deploying them. Keep it in your back pocket, or some place similarly out of sight and reach.

The best way to do it is to get your part out of the way up front. If your turn to talk is later it could actually come up at any time because of other consultants flaking or going faster than you expect. And you don't want to race the clock or have to lurch for the mute button with your hands covered in shit. So ask if you can go first because something is pressing, you have to jump off later, whatever. This usually works because no one, NO ONE, wants to go first on the call. Then when you're done be sure to ask "any questions?" twice. You ask twice because no one is paying attention, but we all kind of tune into long pauses so everyone will hear you the second time (and also not pay attention). Will they have questions later? Sure, but fuck it, you already asked and you have pressing consultant shit to do. Like changing diapers.

If you missed that or someone else thought of that first there's still a backup plan. Most campaigns inevitably talk about fundraising on their calls, because the candidate isn't doing call time. So the manager will inevitably beg the consultants for advice on how to raise money. This is a a pointless waste of time so any questions thrown your way will be dumb and you can feel free to just ignore them. If you're lucky the candidate himself will be on and it will drag on even longer:

(Someone): So how's the money doing?

Candidate: I'm doing everything I can and I'm always on the phone, ALWAYS!

(Pause as everyone tastefully does not admit they do not believe this in the slightest)

(Someone): Well you could try calling...

Then hopefully everything wraps up with the team none the wiser that you've been focused more on applying coconut oil to your offsping's genitals than on the getting the endorsement of the committeeman of stumblebum nowhere, or whatever.

Diaper CHANGED, commitment to the cause AFFIRMED, value ADDED.

You're welcome.

Sleep Versus Call Time: A Comparison

It's been hours. You don't even know what time it is. Your eyes are stinging and your vision is blurred. Your partner is rocking to herself in the corner with an alarming, vacant expression. There's been a lot of crying, some of it from yourself. And all you can think of is why the little brat won't just DO IT already.

I am talking, of course, about getting candidates to do call time.

For the (mercifully) uninitiated, call time is the foundation of all political campaigns. For various reasons we require campaigns to be funded by charitable contributions, and the only reliable way to get enough of those is for the candidate to sit in a room and call a bunch of people until they send money. It's really simple and almost effortless. So of course candidates won't do it. Ever. Every manager has had to yell at her candidate to get back to fucking call time. Even Barack Obama's manger did it. I guarantee you.

So as you might imagine, this has a lot of parallels with that time-honored, torturous ritual of getting your infant to go to goddamned sleep. I'd say they're identical, except that it's actually easier to get a recalcitrant, angry, shrieking baby to sleep than it is to get your average candidate into call time. After all, the baby is EVENTUALLY going to pass out in total exhaustion. He may not do it right now. He may not do it before YOU pass out in total exhaustion. But it's going to happen. Not so much for call time, even though the candidates will absolutely, 100% lose, do not pass Go, do not start "grassroots campaign" lose, unless they pick up the stupid phone and make the stupid calls.

With that in mind here is a comparison of the many ways candidates avoid call time and young children avoid sleep. All of the tactics in either column have been reliably confirmed to me or experienced by myself:

Candidate Dodging Call Time	Baby Dodging Sleep
Scream like an angry baby	Scream like an angry candidate
Hide under the table	Hide under the table
Take interns out for coffee	Giggle and play quietly showing no outward signs of fatigue
Fake phone calls	Fake being asleep
Flee the country	Flee the room
Start fights	Punch parent in windpipe/claw at eyes
Stick hands in pants to avoid touching phone	Take giant shit
Demand to look at questionnaire drafts/ads/press release copy over and over	Demand same book be read over and over
Wear manager down into insane nervous wreck	Wear parent down into insane nervous wreck

Parenthood Is A Leading Cause of Hypocrisy

Today I finally knuckled down and got my business a PO Box. Part of the reason was practical: a really silly dollar amount of my clients' checks has been lost in the mail and removing one of the transfer points makes a lost check slightly less likely. But mostly it was because parenthood has turned me into a privacy hypocrite, right on cue. 

It's my business to learn the personal details of total strangers. Home addresses, dates of birth, property tax payments...this stuff is effortlessly easy for me to find. Force of practice. Social security numbers are a bit harder but public records aren't nearly as scrubbed as we like to imagine. I find this stuff, I use it for legal and (to me) legitimate purposes and I don't think twice about it.

That's my job. I like it just fine. And until recently I lived the part too. When I had an office that address was on all my promotional materials, but when I started working from home my home address went on the masthead too. Because why not? It's the work of a minute for me to find this out anyway so I assume that's the median ease of discovery. We live in an age of Google and Lexis-Nexis and Facebook and a good portion of everyone's life laid out for the mildly curious to discover. The possibility of some weirdo having the ability to find us and the disposable time and resources to bother us is just another part of the price tag for smartphones and the other modern marvels. Besides, I work for politicians, and despite what you might have heard from House of Cards or the next dramatization, politicians are mostly just dorks and lobbyists in training.

Or so I thought, till the arrival of the Nonvoter. Parenthood is a negotiation of worry, and none of us are immune to that. When I first went into business I was serenely confident that I could handle the worst personal annoyance the job presented. In the other hand, any parent claiming to be serenely confident of anything is crazy or lying. Or both.  So now I do think about those clients whose money I am happy to take but to whom I would never introduce my son for eighteen years or more. I think of the criminal records, the domestic disturbances, the obviously crazy candidates. I think about the campaign staff and "consultants" who think street money is a good idea and aren't too picky about who gets that money.  I work with all of these people, happily. I even drink with them. They are just people doing their thing, and I can handle whatever comes with the working with them.

But the Nonvoter can't. He can't even handle sleeping through the night or using a toilet.

So the PO Box it is. Is it hypocritical? Certainly. But parenting isn't about internal consistency. It's about diapers and doctor visits and do as I say, not as I've done. I won't even pretend to justify it by saying I'm not running for office so I don't deserve the same scrutiny. There's no moral charge to my job, and there's no value difference between writing a book on myself or some other random taxpayer for fun and writing a book on some random obnoxious Congressman for money.

It's just parenthood: enabling hypocrisy since the dawn of time.

"Daddy Works For Bad People"

It wasn’t till I found myself explaining how to publicize a rumored gay affair while playing with my six month old son in my backyard that I began to question my parenting style. 

I’m a political consultant. Specifically, an opposition researcher. I dig up dirt. Those ads you see screaming about some politician’s taxes or affairs or dog on the roof of his car, those are (somewhat) my fault. I’m also a dad. In April 2012 my son, hereafter known as the Nonvoter, was born. Being a relatively fortunate twenty first century man I decided to be a work from home dad. My wife decided to be a stay at home mom.

No one would call parenting a glamorous job. Rewarding, worthwhile, sure, but not glamorous. And neither is consulting. Forget the dumb TV shows and the stylized books and whatever the hell you read on your partisan blog of choice. Consulting is pretty similar to parenting. Alarming sums of money change hands, almost never to YOUR benefit, everyone fucking screams all the time and you’re up all night cleaning up someone else’s shit. That’s political consulting. I like my job well enough, but I love my son, and that is why I hope to god he doesn’t ever get into politics. 

Anyway. My son had just figured out how to sit up by himself and he was using the occasion to check out the edibility of the grass in the backyard.  My wife had been concerned about the propriety of watching a potentially screaming infant while talking to theoretically important (or at least paying) clients, but the fact of the matter is a baby is a great prop. A call that is really important you can just cut off and call back from a quiet room. And if it isn’t that important, a baby is a great way to guilt the other party into hanging up. So I smiled and made faces at the Nonvoter while I went through one of the most irritating canards in opposition research, the Gay Sex Rumor. 

I get this at least once every election cycle. It’s so routine I can recite it in my sleep. The candidate is the most liberal tolerant abiding person ON EARTH and would never impugn someone’s sexual orientation, but the opponent is [a Republican/a gay basher/some vague manner of hypocrite/just a general asshole] and there have been...rumors. He was caught by his girlfriend going down on another man. He was seen in a gay bar two counties over. He lives with his mother. This is going to blow the lid off of this race and can you, opposition researcher, get it in the press without it being attached to us? 

It doesn’t work, and it’s also disgusting. Alas, the range of client values keeping this little guy in diapers is an order of magnitude wider than the range that makes me happy. So I pried grass clumps out of the Nonvoter's hand and explained that the client could, I guess, pitch the story to the Windy City Times, a gay interest paper in Chicago. By the end of the conversation the Nonvoter was getting bored, and when he gets bored he gets angry, so I started speaking in my enthusiastic distract the baby voice. “YEAH that’s the editor’s email! SURE, send the memo I wrote over to them!” The manager probably thought I was crazy. Suits me. 

So I hung up, and I sat the Nonvoter on my lap on the back stairs. He looked at me quizzically. 

“It is never, ever okay to be mean to people because of who they like. Not even if they’re Republicans. Remember that, little guy. Sometimes Daddy works for very bad people. Don’t be like them!”