Had Enough?: A Handbook for Fighting Back

PART ONE

THE COMMON DEFENSE

A couple of months ago, I went to speak to the Panetta Institute. It’s a public policy study center run by Leon Panetta and his wife, Sylvia. Leon Panetta is one of my favorite people in public service. Leon was an eight-term member of Congress from California, head of the Office of Management and Budget, and, later, President Clinton’s chief of staff. I have nothing but respect for the guy. In fact, I was the unwanted, unpaid, unappreciated campaign manager trying to get Al Gore to pick Leon to be his running mate in 2000.

Now he runs this public policy center, and as part of my visit, he brought in a bunch of policy students to ask me questions. The first question I was asked out of the box was: If the 2004 election comes down to the Bush folks saying it’s about defense and the Democrats saying it’s about the economy, who do you think will win?

I get asked questions like this a lot, so I’ve thought about it a bit. My response was that the Democrat would have to be awfully stupid to let that happen, and here’s why: The president has hundreds of thousands of people who work for him. He’s got the Treasury Department, the State Department, the Defense Department, the Justice Department, the Agriculture Department, the Labor Department, and all the other departments and agencies. He can call on any cabinet secretary at any time, and they can call on the thousands of people who work for them. He has a big airplane. The airplane has an office in it. He has a big house, and the National Park Service takes care of it for him. He gets wake-up calls in the morning. People do his schedule for him. They write his speeches for him. He has someone drive him around, and when he’s on the road, he doesn’t encounter other traffic or have to stop for red lights.

Will the election be about foreign policy or the economy? You know what—he’s the president; he’s supposed to be able to do both.

Oh, and by the way, he should be able to handle health care, and education, and the environment, and crime and all that other stuff, too. If he can’t or won’t, he should be out on his ass.

Nobody ever got drafted into the job of being president of the United States. Every SOB who occupied that office got there by fighting for it, clawing for it, working through eighteen-hour campaign days, having reporters pick apart their résumés, disrupting their family, raising money, kissing ass, begging for