So much for being the golden boy. Once a hot commodity, Beto O’Rourke held a Tuesday night town hall on CNN that drove down ratings 30 percent. If we’ve learned anything about what matters in modern politics, it’s that ratings death is an unpardonable sin.
Sad!
Count me among the people who found Beto utterly compelling during his Texas race against Ted Cruz for U.S. Senate, only to see our budding bromance fizzle once the ballots were counted and he came up short.
Based on the ratings, I’m not alone in feeling jilted. So, what happened?
The problem is that running for president in a field of Democrats is vastly different from running for Senate against Ted Cruz. Consider it from the perspective of progressives. It felt interesting, new, and brave when Beto was telling liberal truths in Texas. But when he’s doing it in a national Democratic primary, it seems uninventive and standard.
It’s worth asking why he once seemed so compelling. It was never about O’Rourke having some brilliant idea or being an accomplished communicator. But he did choose to run an audacious campaign, which included defending kneeling NFL players and marijuana legalization. Within the context of a Texas run, this seemed bold and exciting. Now, it feels like he’s just parroting Bernie Sanders. Context is everything.
But that’s not the only way that this once-rising star was ill-served by the Lone Star State. There was an assumption early on that Beto—and only Beto—could put Texas in play as a blue state. But polling shows several Democrats running head-to-head with Trump in Texas, with Biden performing better than O’Rourke.
Still, having lost some of his appeal to progressives, O’Rourke might have pivoted to being electable and likeable candidate—a temperamentally moderate alternative for 2020. Here, too, he failed to capitalize on his strengths. He could have run as the next Barack Obama; a likeable young candidate who is clean-cut and fresh-faced who can talk about hope and change and be inspirational and aspirational. The only problem? Pete Buttigieg out-Obama’d him—and O’Rourke let it happen.
By playing to a “woke Twitter” base of support that, in contrast to Bernie Sanders, no longer sees him as the flavor of the day, O’Rourke missed his chance to pivot and dominate the temperamentally moderate niche that—according to The New York Times—constitutes a pretty sizable majority of the Democratic electorate.
But really, that was just one of the biggest blunders committed by a candidate who seems to have done everything wrong from the moment he quit running in Texas.
After losing to Cruz (albeit by performing much better than a Democrat would be expected to), O’Rourke undertook a weird road trip, apparently aimed at “finding himself,” got his teeth cleaned and broadcast it to the world on Instagram (proving that nobody over 30 should try to be AOC), and stumbled out of the gate by telling the truth about his wife doing the heavy lifting at home.
He didn’t look ready for prime time or like he really even knew who he was. The thing about talented young political candidates is that, like drafting for an NFL quarterback, you never really know which ones will rise to the occasion.
Some candidates, for whatever reason, are able to swim when thrown into the deep end. Obama certainly did in 2008. And though it’s still early, Pete Buttigieg seems to have (so far) been able to ride the wave pretty adeptly. Still, the streets are littered with the corpses of promising young candidates who just weren’t ready for prime time.
O’Rourke, I’m starting to think, made a mistake by running for president.
Now, on one hand, a presidential run was a perfectly logical thing to attempt. Beto had developed a nationwide fundraising network. Even more importantly, he seemed to have momentum. Politicians—if they are lucky—have windows of opportunity, and they don’t last forever. Obama, barely in his U.S. Senate seat for a cup of coffee, chose to strike while the iron was hot, and in so doing, he struck gold. Chris Christie chose to sit out 2012 and missed his chance. So it’s understandable why Beto would roll the dice and try to keep the magic alive.
There’s a big difference between being a Congressman from Texas (or the governor of Alaska or a Senator from Illinois or a mayor in Indiana) and being a presidential candidate. We may mock the fact that running for president doesn’t perfectly translate into governing from the White House, but something about the process does seem to be revelatory.
In O’Rourke’s case, it reveals a man who has a steep learning curve. The good news is that it’s still early. The bad news is that he still has a long way to go if he wants to recapture the glory of 2016.
