The Politics of Tragedy

Hillary Clinton keeps stumbling. Bernie Sanders is openly socialist, and unelectable. Martin O’Malley left Baltimore and Maryland in awful shape. What are Democrats to do?

Well, pay attention to this news: According to David Catanese of US News and World Report:

“Vice President Joe Biden has still not ruled out a 2016 presidential run and will make his intentions known by Aug. 1, according to two Democratic sources who have been in contact with his family. While the loss of his son Beau Biden [in May] paused any political planning by the vice president, the sources tell U.S. News that family members have indicated a White House run is still a possibility.”

Indeed, within days of the emotional, nationally televised goodbye to Biden’s beloved older son Beau, LifeZette received a media release from the “Draft Biden 2016” campaign.

The website loudly proclaims “We Need Joe.”

Presidential elections, as with all of life, wait for no one. Now would-be Biden drafters have successfully launched “multiple state chapters across the nation.”

Presidential elections, as with all of life, wait for no one. And now comes word the would-be Biden drafters have successfully launched “multiple state chapters across the nation.” Yet it is one of the sad ironies of politics that personal tragedy makes for popularity. Time after time American politicians of both parties who suddenly find themselves at the center of a personal tragedy they could never imagine — let alone would deliberately seek out — are rewarded with political popularity.

Leading to the obvious, if clearly uncomfortable, question: Could the death of Beau Biden help propel his grieving father into a position to defeat Hillary Clinton, even if that is right now the last thing on the vice president’s mind?

Let’s take a look back at some examples of how tragedy abruptly gifted politicians with a popularity they certainly would never wish to achieve in the fashion in which that popularity has arrived.

Charles Percy in Illinois
As evening arrived in the wealthy Chicago suburb of Kenilworth, Illinois, on Sept. 18, 1966, Republican Charles Percy was in a toss-up race for the U.S. Senate with incumbent Democrat Paul Douglas, one of the lions of American liberalism in the Senate.

That changed at 5:05 that morning. Percy’s wife, Lorraine, woke to the sound of low moans coming from the bedroom of her 21-year-old stepdaughter Valerie. (Percy’s first wife had died almost two decades earlier.) Rousing herself, she walked to Valerie’s bedroom, where she confronted a knife-wielding intruder standing over Valerie’s body. She had been stabbed 14 times, her skull fractured. Lorraine Percy screamed, the intruder fled — but it was too late.

By the time the campaign resumed weeks later, it was effectively over.

The story hit Illinois and the nation like a thunderbolt. Percy abruptly suspended his Senate campaign, and his stunned opponent did the same. For days both the Illinois and national media featured not only the gruesome details of the murder — the killer had not been captured — but endless television and newspaper coverage of the grieving Percy family.

By the time the campaign resumed weeks later, it was effectively over. While there were, to be sure, other issues in the campaign — Vietnam, open housing, the state of the economy — the media of the day acknowledged that the ghastly images of Charles Percy as the bereaved father of the tragically, brutally murdered Valerie had without question helped defeat the once presumably unbeatable Douglas with a shocking 56 percent of the vote.

John Connally in Texas
On the morning of Nov. 22, 1963, Texas Gov. John Connally was still a freshman governor. As a Democrat and onetime aide to Lyndon Johnson during his Senate career, Connally had parlayed his LBJ connection to become secretary of the Navy in the Kennedy-Johnson administration. He won his first race for governor in 1962 and was a reasonably popular politician of the day.

“They’re going to kill us both,” the governor bellowed.

But no more than that. Hours later, seated in front of John F. Kennedy as the presidential motorcade wound through downtown Dallas, Connally suddenly was thrust into history as a Texas legend. As the bullets rained into the open-air limousine, Connally was hit in the back, caught on the famous Zapruder film twisting to see what was happening to Kennedy, then suddenly being hit himself.

“They’re going to kill us both,” the governor bellowed before wife Nellie leaned over him as he lost consciousness.

The tragedy vaulted Connally from a Texas state politician to a major national figure — where he remained for the next 17 years.

President Ronald Reagan
When President Ronald Reagan entered the Washington Hilton Hotel on March 30, 1981, his much touted “Reaganomics” plan of tax and budget cuts was sitting on Capitol Hill in the clutches of the highly partisan liberal Speaker of the House Tip O’Neill of Massachusetts. By day’s end, Reagan was in George Washington University Hospital having narrowly survived an assassination attempt. Stunned Americans learned the wounded president was tossing off one-liners (“Honey, I forgot to duck” to wife Nancy, and “I hope you’re all Republicans” to doctors about to operate) even as his life hung in the balance.

Reagan’s approval rating abruptly ascended into the high 70s.

By the time he recovered and returned to Capitol Hill for a speech to Congress and the nation pushing his economic recovery program, Reagan’s approval rating abruptly ascended into the high 70s. Sitting behind Reagan on the dais as the now-recovered president received one thunderous round of applause after another, including from O’Neill’s fellow Democrats, a chagrined speaker leaned over to Vice President George H.W. Bush and said, “There’s your 40 votes” to pass Reagan’s program. He was right.

The Kennedy Clan
So it goes with the tales of personal tragedy and politics. JFK’s assassination effectively made brother Bobby a senator from New York by November 1964, a state where he didn’t even reside on Nov. 22 a year earlier. It was from that Senate perch that Robert F. Kennedy launched his own presidential campaign four years later.

The impact of Ted’s speech was so powerful there was a sudden move to draft him for either the top or second spot on that year’s Democratic ticket.

In 1962, Ted Kennedy had won JFK’s Senate seat amid much challenge both from Massachusetts Democrats and, in the fall, the state’s energized GOP. The plane crash that almost killed Ted Kennedy in June 1964, coming as it did on top of the assassination of JFK, effectively guaranteed him his lifetime tenure in the Senate.

Indeed, when he was called upon to give the televised eulogy for brother Bobby after RFK’s assassination in June 1968, the impact of Ted’s speech was so powerful there was a sudden move to draft him for either the top or second spot on that year’s Democratic ticket. The Boston Globe’s Peter Cannelos observed the irony, later writing: “The idea that the kid brother whose candidacy for the Senate was widely seen as a joke just six years earlier would now be seen as the best prospect to become leader of the free world was testament to the power of tragedy to transform someone.”

John Warner of Virginia
Ten years after tragedy struck the Kennedy family, former Nixon Secretary of the Navy John Warner ran for a vacant seat for the U.S. Senate from Virginia. The nomination was to be decided by the Virginia Republican Party, in a state convention.

While Warner had personal wealth and even a celebrity of sorts — he was married at the time to Hollywood icon Elizabeth Taylor — he was up against conservative activist Richard Obenshain, a decided force in grassroots Virginia conservative circles. Convention time arrived, and the grassroots carried the day, with Obenshain emerging as the GOP nominee.

Warner won a close election — and remained in the Senate until retiring 30 years later.

Two months later, in mid-fall campaign against a popular Democrat who was the serving state attorney general, Obenshain was killed in a tragic plane crash. The state GOP instantly regrouped by selecting runner-up Warner to replace Obenshain on the ballot. Warner won a close election — and remained in the Senate until retiring 30 years later.

Jean Carnahan in Missouri
In 2000, Missouri Democrat Gov. Mel Carnahan was in a tight Senate race against GOP incumbent John Ashcroft. As with Obenshain, as the election wound to a close, Carnahan, along with his pilot son Randy and a campaign aide, was killed in a plane crash. Missouri law would not allow the removal of his name from the ballot — so Democrats pledged to have Carnahan’s successor as governor appoint the late candidate’s wife Jean to the Senate seat if voters elected the deceased governor.

Ashcroft suspended his campaign, and in a tidal wave of sympathy for the grieving Carnahans, Mel Carnahan became the only dead man in history elected to the U.S. Senate, defeating the very much alive Ashcroft. His wife was appointed to the seat in 2001. She served until Nov. 25, 2002.

Minnesota’s Exception
In 2002, Minnesota Democrat Sen. Paul Wellstone was running for re-election against the GOP’s Norm Coleman, a former St. Paul mayor. Wellstone had become a liberal favorite during his time in the Senate, and when he was killed in a mid-campaign plane crash, the state was shocked.

Personal tragedies have changed not only the lives of political leaders but the trajectory of their political careers.

Former senator and 1984 Democratic presidential nominee Walter Mondale was quickly substituted for Wellstone, but there was a problem. What was billed as a memorial service for Wellstone, taking place on the campus of the University of Minnesota, quickly turned from memorial to political pep rally. The then-governor, independent Jesse Ventura, walked out, calling the event a “partisan foot stomp.”

Visiting GOP mourners who were Wellstone’s Senate colleagues appeared to be deliberately insulted, repeatedly, and the offer of then-Vice President Dick Cheney to attend was brusquely rejected by the Wellstone family. None of this went over well with voters, who promptly elected Coleman over Mondale. Lesson? When tragedy is openly exploited at a memorial service, it can and will backfire.

*****

Back to Biden. Americans have watched, horrified, as the vice president had to bury his second child, his adored son Beau.

Not unlike the tragedy of the 1972 car accident that began Biden’s Senate career even before it officially started — a tragedy that in killing Biden’s wife and young daughter as well as injuring Beau and brother Hunter effectively made Biden a Senate lifer until he became vice president — the tragedy of Beau’s death could have the potential to suddenly propel Biden to the White House.

Can something like this happen? A recent New York Times story reports that “wherever he goes” a saddened Biden is greeted with condolences. But understandably, it is said that he is unable to focus more than a couple of weeks ahead and that any decision on a race — a race Beau is said to have urged him to make — is “weeks if not months away.”

But it is a plain though highly uncomfortable fact that personal tragedies have changed not only the lives of political leaders but the trajectory of their political careers as well. And those tragedies can, and have, ultimately changed America.

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