I avoid writing about politics since there’s too many political blogs and I don’t feel the need to needlessly antagonize people. I’m suspending my rule for today. Today Washington state held its presidential primary caucuses. In the spirit of the good politician, no matter what your political stripes I’m hoping not to offend you. I’ll do this by saying nice things about Republican philosophy and not nice things about Republican practice.

 

I’m also writing this with the hopes that someone running big meetings like this - caucus or not - can learn from some of the bonehead things I saw today. So even non-politicos can get something from this I hope.

–

 

I’ve always said I’m a conservative but not a Republican, though after today I guess I’m a Republican, too. I greatly admire John McCain and am very excited that he’s close to wrapping things up. And I’m angry at the far right for trying to make him kiss their rear ends. So I decided to go to the Republican Caucus to vote for my man.

 

The voting place - a local elementary school - is half a mile from my house. Running late (and being the good Republican wanting to help oil companies), I drove instead of walking, which was a mistake. The school was so crowded I parked halfway between my house and it anyway. When I got there the line I saw struck me as too young and too long given the demographics to be for my party. I quickly learned that it was indeed Democrats. I asked no one to throw anything at me as I asked where the Republicans were.

 

I arrived a few minutes late because I hadn’t allowed for the horrible parking or the generally confusion of the event. Clearly a Spaith Bonehead Thing. But from here on it’s pure Republican Mistakes.

 

Republican Mistake 1 - Bad Signs - Had it not been for kind Democrats, I never would’ve found the Republican Caucus. The only sign for the Republicans was on a sign that wasn’t all that clear. It said “Republican Meeting in Library,” only it didn’t say where the library was. And the sign was positioned so it was in the middle of the line of Democrats.

 

Republican Mistake 2 - Not Handling Late Comers Outside The Door - I was a few minutes late and they’d already started the meeting. Fair enough, clearly my fault. When I walked in the library I was almost on top of the woman giving the instructions to the seventy or so in attendance. She gave me a nasty look and said, “What precinct?” I had it written down and she pointed me at the right table.

 

They should have had someone outside the door to the library acting as a mini registration desk. That way they could make sure I had my precinct stuff and point me at my table instead of forcing the speaker to do it. This bit them later when more latecomers arrived not knowing their precinct. The speaker had to interrupt herself again and point at a map outside of the door for them to look it up.

 

Related to this, no one ever asked if I was a Republican or not. In fact, no one asked for my driver’s license.

 

Republican Mistake 3 - Poor Speaker Positioning - As I said, when I walked into the library I was almost on top of the speaker. Not only did she have to “What precinct” me, but even if I knew where I was going it would’ve been distracting to take the stage with her. They should’ve positioned things so that the speaker was at the far end of the room, away from the door. This isn’t just for late comers. If someone has to go to the bathroom or whatever, they would’ve had to take the stage with her, too. Fortunately she only spoke a few minutes so this wasn’t an issue, but for a longer speech it would have been.

 

Republican Mistake 4- Ineffective Begging - During her opening speech, the coordinator asked us to donate five dollars to cover the event (food, renting room, janitor, etc). A man with a church-style collection basket waved to us. That was all the begging that I saw. They never mentioned the donation again in my room and I ended up forgetting to contribute. Since I was late they may have got more money before I arrived, but I didn’t get that impression at all.

 

Had I been running this, I would’ve had the collection basket man swing by each precinct individually once we broke up into our action groups. The peer pressure to chip in with your neighbors watching would have been irresistible. Or I would have had the guy standing outside the door and asking for donations as people entered. I would have left him outside to shake down latecomers, too.

 

As for the need for donations in the first place — I guess the oil company executives were too busy buying ivory backscratchers to foot the bill for us.

 

Republican Mistake 5 - No Sheets for Issues Voting - After writing McCain as my preference (all of 2 seconds), I stuck around for an hour and a half for voting on various issues for the platform. These had questions like “Of these 13 issues, chose the three most important at the Federal Level - Balance Budget/War on Terror/Cut Taxes/Less Spending/…” Or, “If you could only push one initiative for rural property rights, which of the four would it be?”

 

Each of us was supposed to get a sheet to fill out on our own. Instead of this, each precinct had one sheet total. I’ve been nitpicky on the people running the caucus, maybe unfairly since they were doing their best. But this screw up made me and my fellow voters pretty unhappy. Someone at Republican HQ goofed. What made it worse was that they have no process to review these precinct packets or else it would have never made it out broken like this.

 

We did our best to solve this by having our precinct officer read each question twice and then take our votes. Ideally we could’ve made emergency photocopies, but that wasn’t possible. Or if they only wanted one sheet per precinct, then the sheet should’ve been a projector friendly transparency or a PPT slide so we could read the options. Had we not had to spend so much time reading and rereading each of these points and refreshing memories, we could have had a good discussion. I would’ve enjoyed that since there were some very smart people at the table with me.

 

Republican Mistake 6- Laughing at the Democratic Turnout - Again, my nitpicking aside the lady running the whole show was on the ball mostly. She checked up on us a lot and towards the end she came to our table and said, “You should be happy we get to sit. The Democrats have overflowed and a bunch of them are standing outside.”

 

A few people at my table laughed at this, one of them really hard. I was about to give the obvious retort but the head honcho lady beat me to it. “You know,” she said, “that all those Democrats will be voting in the general election.”

 

Thoughts on the Mistakes

None of these goofs (except #5) was that bad. But frankly Toastmasters runs circles around the Republican Party when it comes to running things like this. I would’ve expected the exact opposite. Even at the Area Contest level, where you’ll often have Area Governors who have never put on a “big” event before, they usually work out OK. And we can turn a profit. I know in my Spring Area Contest when I was Area Governor I brought in $185 out of an initial capital outlay of $80. (And you wonder why I vote Republican?)

 

I think the difference is that Toastmasters make a much deeper study about organizational activities like this - be it a District Officer Meeting or Speech Convention or Speech Contest or whatever. We do them more often and people in TM are more likely to want to learn how to run a show like this for its own sake. The Republican precinct and county coordinators are drawn for love of Republican ideals, not running events like this.

 

Thoughts on the Caucus in General

To me the highlight was the people I got to meet. We don’t know our neighbors as well as we should and there were some real characters I met today. RE demographics - my precinct had eleven people show up, all white. At 31 I was far and away the youngest person there. Next there was a woman I’d guess in her mid forties, then it was all 55+. A feisty 87 year old woman was our elder. Only surprise was that women out numbered men, 6-5. There were 4 McCain votes, 3 Romney (!!), 1 Huckabee, others not voting for President.

 

The next highlight was the content of the questionnaire for issues described in #5 above. Some of the scenarios made us consider really painful tradeoffs. There was no, “We cut taxes and increase spending and don’t have a deficit” option. It reminded me of the Neighborhood Enhancement Program meeting in that it was a no nonsense, here’s the benefit but here too is the cost. This is why I like McCain. I wish the general campaigns on both sides were marketed like this.

 

It was humbling, too. I follow the news reasonably closely but had never really examined my beliefs on a lot of these specifics. Some of the areas, like “Rural Property Rights,” I had to abstain from voting on since I didn’t know enough to make a good choice. I kept thinking of wise old Socrates. When an oracle said he was the wisest Athenian, he disbelieved it at first. He came around only when he realized that he was ignorant and knew he was ignorant, whereas most Athenians were ignorant but didn’t realize it. Being woken up from my role as blissfully ignorant Athenian was worth an hour and a half of my time.

 

I know this post is ungodly long. Normally I would’ve broken it up, but I just wanted to let myself “go partisan” for today. And I also know that in my opening joke about me being the good politician and not offending anyone, the joke is on me. By now I’ve offended everyone.