One of my favorite childhood memories growing up in Connecticut was taking the drive up I-91 north to Springfield, Massachusetts, to go to the Basketball Hall of Fame. They had Shaq’s giant shoes, hoops that you could shoot on, and stats galore. Ditto Cooperstown, which I finally made it to when I was in college and my nerd status was in full bloom.
I always wondered why if basketball, baseball, and every other sport could have a shrine to the best that ever was, why couldn’t politics have the same thing? After all, just like in sports, part of the appeal of politics is the ability to compare the successes (or failures) of people who were in office a hundred years ago with the men and women in elected office right now. If baseball could debate whether Ichiro Suzuki could hold a candle as a hitter to Joe DiMaggio (answer: no), then why couldn’t politics have a place where junkies could argue about whether Bill Clinton could have beaten John Kennedy in a campaign?
Since no one was doing it, I made an executive decision to do it myself. Since I spend most of my existence (and do most of my writing) on the Internet—sort of like Max Headroom—I figured we should do a digital hall of fame rather than a brick and mortar one. (Also, there’s no chance anyone would spend money—or at least give me money—for a national Political Hall of Fame. If we did have one, though, I think Massachusetts or Virginia would be good locations; both have produced lots and lots of presidential timber over the past few hundred years.)
Taking my cues from the Baseball Hall of Fame—still the best HOF there is—I decided to start the Political Hall of Fame with a five-member inaugural class. (The first five people into Cooperstown: Ty Cobb, Babe Ruth, Honus Wagner, Christy Mathewson, and Walter Johnson.)
The first five members of The Fix Political Hall of Fame are below. The Fix Political Hall of Fame Veterans Committee, which meets annually at Mount Rushmore, has already voted in Presidents Richard Nixon, Lyndon Johnson, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, and Abraham Lincoln—so they won’t be mentioned here. Future editions of The Gospel—assuming, gulp, that they exist—will add more members.
When Bill Clinton was elected governor of Arkansas for the second time in 1982 (at age thirty-six), Michael Barone wrote the following passage about the boy governor in the Almanac of American Politics: “He presumably will avoid his earlier mistakes and not seek the national spotlight.” Well, that didn’t happen.
Clinton used the next decade to formulate his political philosophy, which would come to be encapsulated in the phrase “New Democrat,” and hone his “aw shucks” charm and skills on the stump. Fast-forward to 1992. Clinton, still relatively unknown on the national stage, was given little chance of getting the party’s presidential nomination in a field that included bigger names like former Massachusetts senator Paul Tsongas and former California governor Jerry Brown. Dogged by allegations of infidelity, Clinton somehow finished second in the New Hampshire primary, declared himself the “Comeback Kid,” and ultimately took the nomination and—with an assist from independent candidate Ross Perot—the presidency.
Recounting the next eight years is worth a book—I’d recommend The Survivor by John F. Harris—but through all the ups and downs, Clinton always managed to persevere, the sign of a consummate politician.
During his wife’s campaign for president in 2008, Clinton showed signs of wear and a lack of familiarity with how quickly an off-color comment could become national news in the Internet age. But in spite of those awkward growing pains, Clinton still showed flashes of brilliance. An example: days before the 2008 Iowa caucuses, Clinton arrived nearly an hour late to a speech in a high school gymnasium (The Fix was there). He took the stage and proceeded to speak for an hour without break to an enraptured audience, a remarkable performance that few politicians could ever hope to duplicate.
In the wake of that campaign, Clinton’s approval ratings tanked—badly—as he lost the postpolitical shine that he had enjoyed since leaving the White House. But, true to form, Clinton quickly found a road back to popularity and now regularly enjoys approval ratings north of 60 percent.
The Clinton appeal as a politician is difficult to narrow down into a single trait, but if pressed I’d say it is centered on his fundamental humanness. Clinton is simultaneously the best that we all aspire to be (charismatic, brilliant, caring) and the worst (petty, prone to anger, philandering) parts that reside in each of us. He is us—with apologies to 2010 Delaware Senate candidate Christine O’Donnell—just more so, and played out on the grandest scale possible, the presidency of the United States. That Clinton prospered so much politically in spite of his considerable personal weaknesses is a testament to his natural gifts. And that’s what makes him a member of our inaugural class.
Reagan spent his early professional years as an actor—not exactly the most logical training for one of the best politicians in American history. (Or, in retrospect, maybe it was.) Elected head of the Screen Actors Guild in 1947 (he was nominated by Gene Kelly!), Reagan served in that role until 1951—a period dominated by the investigation of the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC) into alleged communism in Hollywood. Reagan became steadily more conservative during that time and increasingly interested in the political game. A decade later, he delivered an impassioned—and televised—speech in October 1964 on behalf of GOP presidential nominee Barry Goldwater that catapulted him into the national political spotlight. Two years after that, Reagan was elected governor of California, beating then governor Pat Brown.
By 1968, Reagan was a big enough player on the national stage to contemplate, but ultimately decide against, a run for the GOP presidential nomination. After winning a second term as governor in 1970, Reagan walked away from the chance to run for a third in 1974 and turned his attention to reshaping the Republican Party with a more conservative bent. He brought that new ideology to a surprisingly strong primary challenge to President Gerald Ford in 1976. Four years later, Reagan was the odds-on favorite for the nomination, and even though George H. W. Bush pushed him harder than expected in the primaries, Reagan won the nomination and then swamped President Jimmy Carter in November 1980 by winning 489 electoral votes. Reagan one-upped himself in his reelection bid, winning forty-nine states in a crushing defeat of Walter Mondale.
Reagan’s second term was far less smooth than his first—due in large part to questions over his involvement in Iran-Contra—but he left office popular enough to see his vice president elected to the top job. Reagan departed from public life in 1994 following an announcement that he was suffering from Alzheimer’s disease, but his legacy continues to exert considerable influence on the Republican Party.
Reagan’s lasting influence in politics was his before-his-time understanding of the power of the bully pulpit and the way in which television could influence the national debate. Reagan understood in a sort of innate way that no matter what the newspapers wrote about him or the television anchors said about him, TV offered him a direct pipeline to the American people, which was the only constituency he—rightly—cared about. Reagan’s ability to rise above—in the eyes of voters—the petty politics of Washington, from budget squabbles all the way to the Iran-Contra investigation, was the key to his success. Reagan used television—not to mention his carefully honed communication skills from his acting days and his years as the lead pitchman for General Electric—to speak directly to the American people in a way no one before him had done. And now, it’s impossible to imagine a president not using television that way. Reagan changed the game. And for that he belongs in the Political Hall of Fame.
The youngest son of one of the most famous American families didn’t really choose politics, he had politics thrust upon him. The baby of a family with nine children—love those Irish Catholics!—Kennedy watched as his older brothers Jack and Robert ascended to the heights of American politics.
Teddy was twenty-eight years old—and had already been kicked out of Harvard, served in the military, and returned to Cambridge to get his degree—when his brother Jack was elected president in 1960. Two years later, Ted Kennedy was elected to the Massachusetts Senate seat from which he would carry on the liberal causes championed by his assassinated brothers and develop into one of the great legislators of his time—or any time.
To gloss over Kennedy’s rough patches would be to deny him the humanity that he clearly relished. Kennedy’s involvement in the drowning death of a young campaign aide named Mary Jo Kopechne in the summer of 1969 effectively short-circuited his burgeoning presidential ambitions—he was married at the time—and left a cloud hanging over his career. His allies insist it was a terrible accident; his critics believe Kopechne’s death was a window into Kennedy’s soul.
Kennedy eventually did run for president, challenging President Jimmy Carter in the Democratic primary in 1979—a race that he was expected to win and didn’t. The lasting memory of that campaign was Kennedy’s inability to answer the simple question of why he was running for president. Asked that question by CBS News’s Roger Mudd, Kennedy hemmed and hawed for critical seconds before delivering a rambling answer that led people to question whether he had put any amount of serious thought behind what he would do if elected.
Following that defeat, Kennedy could well have walked away from politics. But instead, he stayed in the Senate and continued to work—demonstrating the dogged persistence that earns him a place in The Fix Political Hall of Fame. Kennedy eventually won nine elections to the Senate—and during the forty-six years he spent in the world’s greatest deliberative body he helped author a series of major pieces of legislation including the Family and Medical Leave Act and No Child Left Behind, a piece of education reform legislation on which he worked with then president George W. Bush.
Kennedy’s death in 2009 was not a surprise—he had been diagnosed with brain cancer the year before—but the outpouring of emotion for a man who had soldiered on through circumstances (both of his own doing and tragedies that seemed to find him and his family) that would have crushed less persistent souls was remarkable.
Kennedy’s ability to be knocked down, get up, and move forward is virtually unequaled in modern politics. And that’s why he’s a Hall of Famer.
The Arizona senator’s life—both in and out of politics—has been defined by his ability to survive and, often, thrive.
The wild child of a major military family—he brags that he finished fifth from the bottom of his class at the U.S. Naval Academy—his life changed forever when he was shot down over Vietnam in October 1967. He spent the next five and a half years as a prisoner of war, an experience from which he emerged broken in body but resolute of mind—and as something close to a national hero. (The story of McCain turning down the opportunity for early release—he was regarded as a high-profile prisoner because his father was a navy admiral—quickly became the stuff of legend.)
Less than ten years later, McCain moved to Arizona—where he had never lived before—and, taking advantage of his personal story and the wealth of his father-in-law (McCain and his first wife officially divorced in April 1980 and he married Cindy Helmsley five weeks later), McCain won a House seat in the 1982 election.
He spent just two terms in the House before running for the Senate in 1986 for the seat being vacated by Senator Barry Goldwater, himself a major national figure who had run for and badly lost a presidential campaign in 1964. McCain cruised to a 60 percent to 40 percent victory over Richard Kimball—not the Fugitive—in the fall.
Once he got to the Senate, McCain came into full flower in a career defined by both his willingness to put himself in the middle of virtually every major bipartisan effort and his legendarily volcanic temper.
McCain’s pet issue for years was the reform of the way campaigns are financed, and the passage of a law in the early 2000s that fundamentally altered how money flowed through the political system was a major accomplishment and a testament to McCain’s legislative abilities. His involvement in the so-called Gang of 14—a group of centrist legislators from both parties aimed at avoiding a showdown over judicial confirmations—drew him praise among the media smart set but made him enemies among many conservatives. (More on that shortly.)
While McCain was well regarded in the Senate, when he announced in 1999 that he was planning to run for the Republican presidential nomination, he was not regarded as a top-tier contender. That honor fell to Texas governor George W. Bush, who had all the money, political support, and organization that McCain lacked.
It was in that campaign, however, that McCain turned himself into a major national figure. That ascent focused on a bus—oddly enough. The “Straight Talk Express” became an embodiment of McCain himself—freewheeling, old school, and appealing. McCain and his senior advisers would lounge in the back of the bus as he went from campaign stop to campaign stop—fielding any and every question that the press could throw at him. The contrast between McCain’s ask-me-anything approach and Bush’s buttoned-up campaign was striking. McCain became a cult figure—particularly in New Hampshire, where he crushed Bush by eighteen points.
That victory was relatively short-lived, however, as Bush famously/infamously savaged McCain in South Carolina—personally and politically—winning that state and effectively ending the nomination fight. That loss plunged McCain into a bit of a political wilderness as he clearly struggled with supporting Bush in the general election or staying within a party that had ganged up on him at the moment of his greatest possible triumph.
But McCain dug deep and, deciding he wanted to run for president again, threw his full support behind Bush’s 2004 reelection bid—emerging as one of the campaign’s best surrogates. That effort paid off in 2008 as McCain—despite a series of peaks and valleys that left his campaign nearly broke in the summer of 2007—won the GOP nomination the second time around.
Again, though, McCain was thwarted in his ultimate goal—running into the electoral buzz saw that was then Illinois senator Barack Obama. While the dynamics of the 2008 election—Bush fatigue among other things—made it very unlikely that McCain could have won under any circumstances, his lack of interest in or knowledge about the economy badly hamstrung him. (His pronouncement that the “fundamentals of the economy are strong” in the middle of the 2008 economic crisis effectively doomed any chance he had.)
Rather than retire from the Senate when his term came up again in 2010, McCain soldiered on—remaking himself from a pragmatic moderate into a consistent conservative in order to beat back a challenge from his ideological right. That move won him the election but lost him the respect of many of the same chattering-class types who had fallen in love with him during his 2000 presidential campaign. McCain seemed not to care—content that he had, again, survived.
For having the best survival instincts in modern American politics, McCain is a first-ballot Fix Political Hall of Famer.
Even before Pelosi was elected as the first female Speaker of the House in early 2007, she warranted consideration as a first-ballot Hall of Famer. Her political career, which began in the late 1970s, in many ways follows the arc of the Democratic Party over the past three decades.
Elected in a 1987 special election to a San Francisco–area House district, Pelosi joined a Democratic Party at the height of its power in the House. Democrats had held the House since the mid-1950s, and no one—including most Republicans—could imagine that changing, well, ever. Pelosi quickly was tagged for stardom by the likes of California representative George Miller and then New York representative Chuck Schumer. (She had politics in her blood; her father, Tommy D’Alessandro, was the mayor of Baltimore and a U.S. House member.)
Pelosi’s fund-raising prowess and telegenic good looks gave her a seat at the table as Democrats governed with near-unchecked authority during the late 1980s and early 1990s. But, while Pelosi was close to the powerful, she didn’t serve in an official leadership capacity, which preserved her political future when Democrats lost their House majority in the 1994 election. Cast into the minority, Pelosi was one of the key figures in leading her party back. That march began in earnest when she served on the House Ethics panel that investigated Speaker Newt Gingrich regarding his dealings with nonprofit groups that he used to advance his political agenda.
Pelosi’s perch on Ethics raised her profile and gave her a foothold to make an official bid for leadership, which she did in 2001 when she was elected as House minority whip—the first woman to hold that position. Pelosi promptly bucked leadership—and established herself as the leading voice of liberal Democrats in the House—when she voted against the 2002 use-of-force resolution against Iraq. By 2003, she was elected minority leader.
Over the next three years, Pelosi built a political and fund-raising operation aimed at a single thing: winning back control of the House. She traveled the country in a relentless pursuit of campaign cash and installed Rahm Emanuel, the Democratic Party’s best strategist, at the head of its campaign committee. The 2006 election turned out to be a perfect storm for Pelosi’s ambitions; fatigue with President Bush coupled with a series of Republican scandals that culminated in Representative Mark Foley’s inappropriate texting with House pages led to a national wave that crashed down on the GOP, gave Democrats the House majority, and made Pelosi a major historical figure as the first woman to serve in the top job in the U.S. House.
Surrounded by her children and grandchildren, Pelosi was sworn in as Speaker on January 6, 2007. “For our daughters and granddaughters, today we have broken the marble ceiling,” she said. “For our daughters and our granddaughters, the sky is the limit, anything is possible for them.”
The 2008 election gave Pelosi not only more Democrats in the House but a Democrat in the White House—developments that seemed to lay the groundwork for long-term Democratic dominance but were, ultimately, the first signs of major problems brewing for the party. Pelosi went to work instituting President Obama’s agenda—most notably health care and the economic stimulus package. Meanwhile, Republicans were hard at work turning Pelosi into a Democratic demon—taking advantage of her heightened profile to cast her as a San Francisco liberal fundamentally out of step with the average voter in the country.
By the time the 2010 election rolled around, Republicans had succeeded in the demonization of Pelosi. She was featured in hundreds of ads run by Republican candidates and conservative groups—all of which sought to use her negative image as an anchor around the legs of aspiring Democratic candidates, many of whom did everything they could to distance themselves from Pelosi.
When Democrats lost sixty-three seats and their House majority in November 2010, everyone—including me—expected Pelosi to step aside. After all, who would want to serve as the House minority leader after spending four years as the chamber’s Speaker? (There is nothing—I repeat, nothing—worse than being in the House minority. You are constantly being rolled by the majority. To the extent you score victories, they are on rinky-dink procedural things that the general public doesn’t know or care about.)
Pelosi, as it turned out, had other plans. Resisting calls from some within the Democratic House caucus for her to step aside so that the party could move on, Pelosi announced her candidacy for minority leader and easily won the post thanks to her continued support from the liberal end of the party. Her reasons are her own, but, as best as I could report out, she desperately wanted to win the House back and didn’t see anyone waiting in the wings who could raise the money to make it happen.
Pelosi will be seventy-two years old when voters vote this November. Her party needs twenty-five seats to win back the majority, and most independent analysts think it’s a long shot. If Democrats make gains but don’t win back the majority, does Pelosi spend another two years traveling the country in search of ever more campaign cash and candidates who can win? Or does she walk away?
Regardless of what happens in November, Pelosi is, without question, the most influential House member in the past twenty-five years. And for that, she gets a spot in our Political Hall of Fame.