It will continue to be one of the universe’s great mysteries why people can look at sports teams and have opinions about what they should be doing, but they can’t apply those same methods to their lives. This is a prominent issue every year in pre-season football with the mini camps as teams figure out which players they will cut and which will make their final roster. Good teams figure out the right players and get them all pointed in the right direction for the success or failure of a season. If the players are allowed to pick their fellow players, teams tend not to do so well. It takes good leadership to figure it out and put people together who likely wouldn’t figure it out for themselves. Good teams tend to have players playing together who wouldn’t otherwise be friends. One of the mysterious qualities of leadership is to see things of value beyond the choice of friendships, and when it comes to sports, most people get it. They understand what makes success and have many opinions about it. But they can’t do it when it comes time to utilize those same skills in their lives. That is certainly the situation in business. And it is undoubtedly the case in politics. The goal of all these endeavors is to figure out what success looks like, whether it be winning a Super Bowl, having a great business quarter, or providing a great political party to the voting public; once success is understood, then leadership needs to do what it must to give that result. It’s not complicated. Yet, it remains one of the least utilized factors in human interaction.
There is only one correct measure to winning in politics; it is in a political party providing the voting public with good people they can vote for. Any other action is missing the point. If a political party is not focused on those attributes, then they aren’t trying to be a good political party. I would say this is a problem all over America, in every aspect of county politics, no matter where we talk about it. And that is certainly the case with the Butler County Republican Party in Ohio, where I live. I can say that I know many people at that party, and I personally liked them all in some way or another. If you sit down and talk to people, I can usually find something I like about just about anybody. But the problem is, do they make an excellent political party just because you want them? And in most cases, that is not the reality. Politics should only aim to provide voters and taxpayers with good people to represent them best. When political parties lose sight of that strategy, things go wrong. And that is how RINOs in the Republican Party come to be. Most people get into politics for ideological reasons. However, the concessions they make to get along with other people become detrimental to their representation of the voter base, which is the value of the party brand. If people have good representation in politics, then the brand of the party could be said to be good. If voters don’t, they start to lose faith in the system, voter engagement lowers, and the direction of victory in politics changes dramatically. When voters feel that the people they elect don’t represent them, we could say that politics has failed.
It’s just like the comparison with the sports team that desires to put a winning team on the field so people come to the games and feel good about the chances for a victory, so they buy beer and overpriced hot dogs at the concessions, which is really how the team makes their money, how they measure their value to the customer base. If the team isn’t winning, there are fewer fans to buy hot dogs, to put it simply. The same holds in politics. I know many people who want to run for office within the Butler County Republican Party. But, they do not feel they can remain people of integrity because of the restrictions of party politics. So, we end up with the wrong people running for office while much better candidates that the public would love to have representing them are sitting on the sidelines. This is a case where the players on the field pick people they like and are comfortable with, not the leadership of the voting public deciding how that team would shape out. Too often, and this year of 2023 is undoubtedly a good example, many good people are not participating in the political process because they have learned that they aren’t in the cool kids club and will never be invited. Because the party is picking the members, not the voters. And instead of letting the voters shape the party, the players are forming the team; then they wonder why many fans are not supporting their losing effort.
Not everyone gets into politics for the same reasons. I understand that some feel that getting into politics protects their business interests from a corrosive government and provides a barrier to their efforts to keep their businesses healthy. These are not ideological people but practical ones who see government as dangerous to their interests in business, so they get involved in politics to protect their efforts. And those people are trying to play nice in the sandbox with ideologically based people who enter politics for reasons of genuine philosophy. And those kinds of people are scary to those looking for political stability. I get it. Just like a wide receiver on a football team being upset that a new tight end is playing the slot receiver role, the wide receiver might feel like the coaching staff is trampling on their turf. But so what? Maybe that is the best way to become a winning team. That doesn’t mean that the tight end should be run off the team to make the wide receiver feel like they have job security and aren’t threatened by challengers. Challenges make the team better. But then better for whom? For the players or the fans? That is what must be decided, and what I have seen from the GOP in general, especially since Trump has been out of office, is a party for the players, not for the voters. It’s the players making the teams they want to play with. They are not trying to give the voting public the best representatives they can get. And if a political party isn’t doing that, they aren’t trying to be the best they can be for their communities. While such a concept may not be complicated, it remains the biggest stumbling block to any successful venture within human endeavor. And that is certainly the case in politics. Some great people want to participate, but they have been told in so many words or less that politics is about maintaining friendships and that everyone needs to stay in their lane and behave. But that is not what voters want, and until political parties listen, the public will continue to be let down by the result.
Rich Hoffman
The Overmanwarrior 