I’m for Beto. Despite the plaints from those in the dead center of the current gun debate, I think he’s on the verge of becoming the next great American communicator.
Though he was on anything but a roll in the months after he declared his candidacy. Those early days of vagueness remind me of what happened when Roger Mudd asked Edward Kennedy (in a notorious 1980 interview): “Why do you want to be president?” Teddy’s incoherent answer suggested he was running only because a Kennedy (always) can. Beto never had a moment where he came off as unintentional as Teddy, but he seemed stuck on his own Kennedyesque charisma. First’s Iowa correspondent was less than thrilled by Beto’s expectation that everyone would share the thrall. But Beto no longer seems self-enrapt. He may be the One because he knows it’s not about him.
Consider his answer to last week’s debate question focusing on “resilience.” Instead of talking about himself (as every other candidate did), he invoked victims recuperating from mass shootings in Texas. His exemplars of endurance were Mexican Americans in a border town. Fate has placed Beto—El Paso’s favorite son—on America’s edge, where the hottest battles for and against Trumpism are being fought. Time is Dios. Since the Texas massacres, Beto has emerged as the most trenchant critic of Trump’s base politics. His talkback has been enriched by a wised up patriotism that’s the best antithesis to America First. Beto is alive to peaks in this country’s past—recall how he made the Civil Rights Movement go viral here. He uses that history to combat Trump et al.’s trashing of the American creed.
Beto’s own personal history seems to have prepped him for his current trip. He’s loved to go on the road ever since he toured the country as a member of a punk rock band in the 90s. His campaign in Texas, where he made a point of visiting every county in the state, was founded on crossover dreams that would’ve juiced the great historian of American populism, Lawrence Goodwyn (who first learned about organizing when he helped run campaigns by liberal Democrats in Texas back in the late 50s and 60s). Beto intuited the life lesson Goodwyn once laid on would-be radical democrats at an academic conference:
…to build a movement one has to create social relations among people that would cause them to be in a room where politics is the center of discussion. I’d been taught that what mattered politically was what people said in the room. But the key question is how to get people into the room to hear—and respond—to whatever is being said there.
Somewhere along the line, Beto got that in his soul. He understands democracy shouldn’t come down to picking the smartest person in the room. His faith in America is based more on culture than politics. If you’re not listening to Billie Joe Shaver or wondering what would Willie do, Beto’s Lone Star State charm may be lost on you. And if raptures of Beats or Whitman drive you around the bend, you may not hear his song. But if you still can be moved by arts of democracy, by the prospect of what Dewey called “conjoint communication,” I bet you’ll soon be riding with Beto.
“Honk if you believe in big structural change.” That’s Elizabeth Warren’s bumper sticker. Her compactions of her policy proposals deserve two cheers. But I don’t believe she’s fully alive to the threat of big (bad) structural change implicit in Trumpism. Beto feels deeper on this front. Not that he’s afraid to go big: “Hell, yes!” we should ban assault weapons. His utterance—“swift, zealous, radical, and determined” (to lift terms from Frederick Douglass’s tribute to Lincoln)—has put him out in front of other candidates. Yet it’s also more likely to galvanize an actual constituency than, say, a call for a wealth tax or Medicare for all. (It’s also not an iffy proposition like decriminalizing illegal border crossings, which Beto steered clear of after Julian Castro went there.) I’m sure Beto would walk the line with Walmart workers if they went on strike for higher wages or better healthcare. But in this moment, the most progressive move—and most punk one too!—is to amp up DIY politics of Walmart employees who forced their workplace to change its policy on guns. (A change that was, per Adam Gopnik, “propelled, as social action most often is, from below—from the pleadings and the polemics of Walmart employees, who, deciding that they no longer wanted to be ‘complicit’ in profiting from the sale of firearms, put their livelihoods on the line in order to push their bosses to take a further stand on the gun issue.”)
Beto seems to have grasped that a pol who wants to make big structural change in America shouldn’t claim to have all the answers from the start. Instead of being the Decider, job one is to become a vector for solutions to problems that matter intensely to a passionate set of his/her fellow citizens. Nothing’s too good for the people, but an American pol shouldn’t get too far ahead of them. (Nota bene: the people should not be confused with DC consensus.) Democrats who keep that axiom in mind are likely to resist candidates who insist his or her way is the only way to achieve universal healthcare. Better to take direction, as Beto has, from Walmart workers, Parkland Survivors, Mothers Against Guns and those protesting against Trump’s murderous immigration policies. Beto will keep the party of hope grounded—speaking to what The Democracy cares most about now, which may not conform precisely to priorities of wonks on the left.
Democrats need a leader attuned to the grassroots and respectful of those who don’t identify with their party. Beto has an earned rep for responsiveness that goes beyond a typical candidate’s instinct to please. His most eloquent moments have come when he’s talked straight—without talking down—to respondents who disagreed with him.
Beto is a post-snark candidate. His attempt to talk up a 21th C. Americanism puts him in Barack Obama’s tradition, but, on occasion, Obama gave into the country’s dissy ways. (We all laughed when he mocked Trump at that Correspondents’ Dinner but maybe he should’ve let that lying dog lie.)
Beto doesn’t need to have the last word. And he hasn’t brought a hammer to any debate. When it comes to campaigning he can be sincere and subtle. On this score my favorite moment may have come in the final exchanges of his debate with Ted Cruz. Each candidates was asked to say what he admired about his opponent. Beto went first and said he appreciated how Cruz has sacrificed private life and family time to pursue public policy goals. Cruz then echoed Beto’s line, praising him for being a devoted father and crediting him with authentic political convictions. But Cruz wasn’t going to let anyone leave on a high note. Out to land a last low blow, he spun kind comity into an alienating equation. He linked Beto’s sincerity to Bernie Sanders’s, implying they were both ideologues out of step with Texans. Beto’s low-key comeback—“True to form.”—was something less than a counterpunch to the heart. And something more. Up there on that platform at the end of the debate, Beto took down a politics of one-upmanship. His somewhat cryptic reply stood as a public judgment of Cruz’s soullessness for anyone who was paying close attention. But it was also a quiet refusal of aggro and defensiveness that fuel our politics. Beto wasn’t going out like that.
“We go high”? Yup. Though a well-off white guy like Beto has to be a little more careful than Obamas about coming on from above. Still, he too is asking a certain height of his audience. And he senses that if you want to improve the vote you must trust the people, not infantilize them. Beto may be a born punk, with adrenaline to spare, but his readiness to leave certain things unsaid suggests he’s more Henry James than Henry Rollins. Of course Henry the 1rst wasn’t at ease in most American scenes. Unlike Beto who’s at home all over this nation—from Southern border to Brooklyn. This land is made for you and him.