A household name inside and outside the Beltway, Donna Brazile delivers her Washington insight and political savvy in a weekly column available to newspapers nationwide. Brazile provides a valued and informed opinion on current events, drawing on her vast experience as a political strategist, journalist, and educator.
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Her insights and analysis come from 30 years as both a beltway insider and an advocate for women and minority representation, protecting the middle class, and voting rights. Believing in the need for a more civil and inclusive form of politics, Ms. Brazile frequently speaks about the state of discourse in the age of Obama as well as the barriers to entry that still exist for African-Americans, women, and young people seeking access to the halls of power. She also speaks passionately about DC representation, Gulf Coast recovery and revitalization, and her beloved New Orleans Saints.
A New Orleans native, Ms. Brazile began her political career at the age of nine when she worked to elect a City Council candidate who had promised to build a playground in her neighborhood; the candidate won, the swing sets was installed, and a lifelong passion for political progress was ignited. Four decades and innumerable state and local campaigns later, Ms. Brazile has worked on every presidential campaign from 1976 through 2000, when she served as campaign manager for former Vice President Al Gore, becoming the first African-American woman to manage a presidential campaign.
Author of the best-selling memoir Cooking with Grease: Stirring the Pots in American Politics, Ms. Brazile is an adjunct professor at Georgetown University, a syndicated newspaper columnist for Universal Uclick. She regularly contributes to Ms. Magazine, O Magazine, and Roll Call, and is an on-air contributor to CNN, NPR, and ABC, where she regularly appears on This Week with Christiane Amanpour.
In August 2009, O, The Oprah Magazine chose Ms. Brazile as one of its 20 “remarkable visionaries” for the magazine’s first-ever O Power List. In addition, she was named among the 100 Most Powerful Women by Washingtonian magazine, Top 50 Women in America by Essence magazine, and received the Congressional Black Caucus Foundation’s highest award for political achievement. A former member of the board of directors of the Louisiana Recovery Authority, responsible for leading the state’s rebuilding process in the aftermath of two catastrophic hurricanes, she recently was named a Weiss Award recipient by the New Orleans Council for Community and Justice. Ms. Brazile is the proud recipient of honorary doctorate degrees from Louisiana State University and Xavier University of Louisiana, the only historically Black, Catholic institution of higher education in the United States.
Ms. Brazile is founder and managing director of Brazile & Associates LLC, a general consulting firm based in Washington, DC.
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MORE THAN A PERSONAL LOSS -- A NATION'S LOSS
"He is a conservative of the more classic mode," said former Republican Sen. Robert F. Bennett of Utah. "This is the end of an era."
When I grew up there was no end to the Republican Party's stars. They comprised a bright constellation in the political sky.
I remember these national figures with warmth. There was the lovable Everett Dirksen, Nelson Rockefeller, Jacob Javits, Clifford Case, and Chuck Hagel, among the moderate and liberal Republicans.
American voters knew them all: Styles Bridges, Howard Baker, Bob Dole, Hugh Scott, William Knowland, Olympia Snowe and Richard Lugar. Every one of the above senators was a principled lawmaker who yet reached across the aisle and compromised.
This week, Richard Lugar, the last veteran centrist in this long line of distinguished Republican public servants, was defeated. His rout is not just the end of a personal career; it marks the end of the Republican Party as a broad-based national party.
Lugar is the quintessential Republican. Married, he has four sons and 13 grandchildren. Lugar was an Eagle Scout and graduated first in his class. After high school, he volunteered for the Navy, where he served as an intelligence officer. He returned to Indiana to work the family farm.
He first ran and won a position on the school board, and went on to serve as Indianapolis's mayor. Lugar was elected to the U.S. Senate where he has served for 36 years. No one from Indiana has ever served longer.
He served twice as chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. Lugar was instrumental in the passage of the START treaty that deactivated nuclear weapons in the world by the thousands. He is the last in his party of that rare political animal: a statesman.
In an era where Republican strategy is to not ever say anything good about the opposition, Lugar garnered an astonishing number of comments from Democrats following his primary loss:
Sen. John Kerry, the Democratic nominee for president in 2004, said, "I'd like to think that we'll again see a United States Senate where Dick Lugar's brand of thoughtful, mature and bipartisan work is respected and rewarded."
President Obama issued a statement, saying, "Sen. Lugar comes from a tradition of strong, bipartisan leadership on national security that helped us prevail in the Cold War and sustain American leadership ever since. He has served his constituents and his country well."
Vice President Joe Biden said, "The Senate lost a brilliant strategic mind, a man with absolute integrity. He will be missed."
Senate Minority Leader and fellow Republican Mitch McConnell said, "Future generations of Americans will forever be indebted to Sen. Lugar for the work he has done in helping to rid the world of rogue nuclear, chemical and biological weapons."
The Republican presumptive presidential nominee Mitt Romney and House Speaker John Boehner were silent on Lugar's defeat.
Why did Lugar lose? He was defeated by a conservative minority in his party that has grown intolerant of members who work across the aisle. Lugar's bipartisan cooperation was touted as making him "out of touch" with his constituents. Campaign ads showed a video of a then Sen. Obama and Lugar joking and being friendly at a committee hearing. That made him "out-of-touch."
Democrats intruded into the primary by successfully making it an issue that Lugar no longer owned a home in Indiana. Yet we abandoned owning property as a requirement of elective office in the 19th century. Age discrimination was also a factor. Lugar turned 80 last month.
But the main charge against Lugar? He worked with Democrats. What used to be an asset became Lugar's liability. A recent study by the National Journal found that in 2011, for the second year in a row, there were no Republican senators whose votes put them to the left of any Democratic senator, and no Democratic senator who voted to the right of any Senate Republican.
The increased capturing of both parties by the extremists among their members is changing the political landscape. The trend is most pronounced in the Republican Party. For every step to the left the Democratic Party has taken, the Republican Party has moved five steps to the right.
The voters in Indiana chose Richard Mourdock, a tea party conservative, to face off against Joe Donnelly in November. In his acceptance speech, Murdock said, "I have a mindset that says bipartisanship ought to consist of Democrats coming to the Republican point of view."
This echoes John Boehner's view expressed on the eve of the 2010 elections, "To the extent the president wants to work with us, in terms of our goals, we'd welcome his involvement."
Both these statements were stronger echoes of George Bush's victory news conference in 2004: "I'll reach out to everyone who shares our goals."
Call me crazy, but if we accept this line of "bipartisan" reasoning, we will foster a culture where the only acceptable political views belong to but one party.
In his concession statement, Lugar warned that because of our increasing partisanism, "Our political system is losing its ability to explore alternatives."
This election may be our last chance to turn the tide of partisan gridlock; to elect only senators and members of congress who pledge to work with the other party.
(Donna Brazile is a senior Democratic strategist, a political commentator and contributor to CNN and ABC News, and a contributing columnist to Ms. Magazine and O, the Oprah Magazine.)
COPYRIGHT 2012, DONNA BRAZILEpublished Thursday, May 10, 2012
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