If you watched Meet the Press on Sunday, you saw former McCain strategist and Republican media guru Mark McKinnon along side MSNBC commentator and former Congressman Joe Scarborough. Both are self professed members of the “No Labels” movement, a movement that claims that “[w]e must put our labels aside, and put the issues and what’s best for the nation first.” Upset by the hyperpartisanship of modern politics, the group wants to return civility to the public discourse. From their snazzy website and long list of pundits, the organization looks like it’s gaining a lot of momentum, right? What can be wrong with a group whose professed goal is returning civility to politics?
So what’s the problem? The biggest problem is that it’s just a gimmick. This isn’t a grassroots organization. This is astroturf. Take a look at the list of founders. David Frum – public relations specialist and former Bush speeechwriter. Holly Page – public relations specialist. Kiki McLean – public relations specialist at Porter Novelli, one of the big five DC PR firms. Mark McKinnon – public relations specialist at Public Strategies, another big DC PR Firm. Nancy Jacobson – Democratic fundraiser, and wife of Mark Penn former Hillary Clinton campaign manager and CEO of Burson-Marsteller, yet another big DC PR firm. Throw in a couple of reporters, a few wonks, and a handful of former government officials and you’ve got yourself a cause.
Forgive me for being cynical, but this is the kind of group that any of these big PR firms can set up in about a week. These groups come and go and they never make an impact because that’s not what they’re designed to do. If anything, this whole “movement” is just one big marketing ploy for the folks involved, designed to get McKinnon booked on shows like Meet the Press and Morning Joe, and let guys like Scarborough and Bloomberg have one more excuse to bash the party they used to belong to. Bloomberg is now an independent, and Joe belongs to the media, so he has to bash both sides in order to get his ratings up.
Here’s how you can tell it’s a gimmick, besides the names. Look at the statements on the website and their founding vision. None of it is grounded in reality or any kind of history. Look at how many times they frame things in “crisis” or “emergency” language. These folks have bought the tired old canard that there was a time in American politics where we weren’t hyperpartisan, where labels didn’t matter, where politics wasn’t as no-holds-barred as it is today. That’s a completely ignorant view of history – that world never existed. America is a country that has fought at least two major wars over politics – the Revolution and the Civil War. The bad old days of lynching of political opponents, tar and feathering those you disagree with, and other kinds of physical violence over politics are generally over, but that doesn’t mean they never existed. This is the same kind of talk that we heard from President Obama when he was out on the campaign trail – and then when he got to Washington, it was politics as usual, bashing Republicans for not rolling over and letting him do whatever he wanted and not sitting down with members of the opposition until he couldn’t put it off any longer.
Some have argued that a group like this is only helping because they want to see some civility in politics. I have no problems with that – I do my best to be civil and try and argue from a non-emotional point of view with my liberal counterparts (some would say liberal colleagues). But not everyone has that kind of self-control, and I don’t get upset when I see emotion and tempers coming through – I actually like that sometimes. It’s good to see people getting fired up about politics and what they believe in, even if I disagree with them. What I think is funny is that you have Joe Scarborough up there lauding these guys, when he can’t write an article about Sarah Palin without pulling out his thesaurus to come up with new and inventive words for “moron,” and when the folks on his show routinely laugh – straight up laugh – at her when she makes political statements. I guess one of the labels these guys don’t want us using is “hypocrite.”
I’m all for being civil in politics, but I don’t need a glorified PR exercise to tell me that. And I don’t need a bunch of talking heads to parrot a few more random talking points that aren’t grounded in any kind of accurate reading of American political history. This kind of group is worthless because, in the end, it’s only designed to feed its own media story and the total impact it has will be negligible.
Here’s another point – labels are good. Imagine walking into the grocery store, and wandering down the canned food aisle. Imagine if none of the cans had a label on them. Good luck figuring out what’s for dinner. That’s what labels do – they give you a good idea of what’s in the can so you don’t need to spend a bunch of time figuring it our for yourself. And nothing is worse than when you get a mislabeled can – you think you’re getting chicken noodle soup and you open the can and there’s a pile of lima beans instead. Yuck. Is it any reason why people get so upset when a candidate or elected official refers to themselves as a “conservative” or a “progressive” and then votes the other way? It’s the equivalent of opening a mislabeled can. This group seems to think that the label gets in the way of solving problems. I disagree. The label gives voters an understanding of what that elected official is likely to do when he gets in office. The idea that people refuse to agree with something because it’s a “Republican” idea or a “Democratic” idea is just ridiculous and has no basis in reality. People will disagree with an idea if they think it’s a bad one and they already ignore labels. As was noted so often during the health care debate, the unconstitutional mandates were originally part of a Republican alternative to Hillarycare in the mid 90s. Democrats can’t believe that we don’t like them, because they believe they were our idea. A bad idea, though, is a bad idea.
That’s where the No Labels crowd doesn’t get it. For the few who have signed up who are true believers and don’t realize this is just a PR ploy to make some folks more money, the problem they’re trying to address isn’t a problem. Bad ideas generally will go down, regardless of who came up with them. People aren’t always going to be civil, but they don’t have to be. And America has had a long tradition of hyperpartisanship – the current state of our politics doesn’t come close to being a “crisis.”
Hopefully this group will flame out as fast as the ridiculous “coffee party” nonsense that tried to counteract the Tea Party movement and was yet another attempt by PR professionals to replicate the momentum of a legitimate grassroots movement. No labels? Not interested.
