POLITICAL IDEOLOGY AND POLITICAL PRAGMATISM: SO A DRUNK WALKS INTO A BAR AND STARTS CRITICIZING THE CROWD FOR DRINKING…

5/19/17

When Del Marie Cobb, a Chicago Democratic political consultant, castigated Governor Rauner for being “politically expedient,” yours truly didn’t know whether to laugh or to congratulate Ms. Cobb on being so craftily disingenuous.   I did, however, know I had to send the following letter to the Chicago Sun-Times.   Surely Ms. Cobb knows that successful politicians are not ideologues; ideology, ironically, is a formidable impediment to political success.   For a brilliant elucidation of what successful politicians think about ideology, by the way, read my two books:

The Chairman, A Novel of Big City Politics and The Chairman’s Challenge, A Continuing Novel of Big City Politics

Here is the letter I sent to the Sun-Times nearly a month ago.  It was not published, but I thought you might enjoy it:

4/24/17

In the Sun-Times 4/24/17 story about Governor Rauner’s planned veto of an abortion trigger provision, DelMarie Cobb, a political consultant and former Hillary Clinton spokeswoman, criticizes Mr. Rauner for doing what is “politically expedient, not what he believes ideologically.”

It is ironic that Ms. Cobb, who worked for Hillary Clinton, should criticize Mr. Rauner for doing what is politically expedient rather than being guided by his ideology.   Mrs. Clinton has rarely, if ever, been guided by ideology; nor has her husband or her opponent in the 2016 election.   Successful politicians are not ideologues; they are driven by power, by what works, by what will get them elected and allow them to continue to accumulate power.  Consider the most successful politicians of relatively recent history…FDR, Eisenhower, Kennedy, Johnson, Nixon, Richard J. Daley, Bill Clinton.   Can anyone put an ideological label on any of these political titans?  Each was attacked, from the left and right, by ideologues in his own party and in the opposing party.  But these men were guided not by some theory about the way things ought to be but, rather, by what would work at the moment in furthering their goal of gaining, accumulating, and securing power.   Ideology, to a successful politician, is just an egg-headed stumbling block to the real business of politics:  amassing power. 

Further, in an era when people decry gridlock in Washington due to politicians’ having to pander to their ideological bases, perhaps we shouldn’t be criticizing pols for ignoring ideology in the interest of pure power politics.   Maybe we need a few more politicians who defy ideological labels and simply want to get things done, regardless of whether we consider their motivation noble.