Posted on 02/18/2019 10:21:04 AM PST by jazusamo
Michael Walsh has this excellent piece on the passing of Pat Caddell. I cannot add much more to Walsh’s spot-on comparison of Pat to an Old Testament Jeremiah, but I’ll try. Pat deserves as much applause as he can get.
Pat and I spoke at many of the same events. I had the pleasure of dining with his daughter’s family at one back in 2011, and from there, Pat and I struck up an intermittent conversation over the years about election issues and projects. When I was in Charleston, we found a steakhouse somewhere to conspire.
The last time I saw Pat was last November, beside the ocean, outside of the Florida hotel where the event was occurring. Both of us wanted to stare at the ocean away from the event, and we literally ran into each other.
“I’m not coming back,” he roared. This was how he greeted me. “I need more time to talk than that,” referring to his allocation on the event’s program. Pat was always urgent -- more on that shortly. So his gravelly gripe about time was, well, just Pat.
The passage of time can grant insight from the sublime, or the coincidental, depending on your point of view.
I quoted a portion of a Pat Caddell in my book Injustice (Regnery, 2011). Pat found in one of his polls that only fifteen percent of Americans believe that the government in the United States has the consent of the governed. Fifteen percent. Pat characterized this as “pre-revolutionary.” I don’t think the political class, the elites, or the federal bureaucrats appreciate this. It’s easy for them to tut-tut at terms like “pre-revolutionary,” but Pat put real data behind American moods.
In fact, he lived in a world of data and moods. And that is what fueled his urgency. He saw something coming. What it was I don’t know, but it wasn’t good.
I dined with Pat, spoke with him on the phone, and spent time huddled with him talking elections, election process, and various other trends afflicting our electoral system. He had no off switch.
He was Andrew Breitbart without the overarching sense of irony, sense of humor, and the backing track of Echo and the Bunnymen . Pat was intense and always urgent, and most of all, aware.
I never knew precisely what made Pat so urgent, and maybe he didn’t either. But I think it could all be put into the broad file of Signs We Are Losing America. Pat saw the Democratic Party of his youth become lost, then corrosive. He was watching the erosion of the American architecture accelerate in real time, and the options for the country seemed to be narrowing.
At its core, to Pat, the erosion was the alienation between elite institutions that had been taken over by political elites, and the mass of regular hardworking Americans who were schooled in American values and felt their country was being lost. The divide was growing, and years ago -- years before Trump was even threatening a run -- Pat described to me how a wave was coming that reflected this divide.
Pat saw 2016 in 2012.
Pat was still gazing over the horizon when I last saw him, and there was something out there that scared him. America is worse off that Pat won’t be around to help us navigate as we approach it.
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Wonderfully written piece. Speaks so incisively to Pat’s personality as well.
I agree, Adams is right on the mark about Pat Caddell.
No doubt in my mind that he did see it coming.
We are not the ones who need to be afraid of the coming wave.
Let’s wrap this Freepathon up, Folks!
Agree completely. He loved the country, and passionately, yet he was intellectually honest enough to be objective about the truth in the data he was harvesting, if that makes sense.
There are a ton of D pollsters who spin the numbers so hard they don’t reflect anything except the outcome desired by the people who paid for the survey.
The good, the smart, the more conservative, the more to the right and middle on the polictal scale seem to keep dying younger while the evil and Satanist minded, narcissistic and selfish,at least the ones I know in my personal life (and the ones I read about in politics and media online), always seem to outlive their opposites, living longer if not seemingly forever and ever!
Maybe it just seems that way....nope I can cite facts!
If Caddell was paying attention to the shenanigans of the last two years, I think what scared him was what you touched on.
I read Selena Zitos piece, and it was incisive, because she didn't take a Jane Goodall type of approach to understanding the dynamic that elected Trump.
I dont think the political elite ignored Zito, I think they figure they're either untouchable or that they can scam their way to keeping the status quo that has been going on since Bush 41 imho.
I've thought along the same lines as you with respect to a revolt. Not sure that's how I think it would pan out. I'm thinking more like the Balkans in the 1990s.
I will miss Pat. He was one of the last voices of reason and sanity in this country.
In that sense I think AOC is a mirror-image symptom of Trump’s symptom. People are fed-up on both sides, and the only question remaining is which one will be first to the post in taking down the establishment.
I agree. The latter ones you mention have made their pact with the devil long ago. Satan is anxious to claim them at their demise. Hillary, Bill? That is why they cling to life. They know what Hell has in store for them.
I loved Pat’s anger. He truly saw what was happening in the country and where the blame was.
Very well said!
The last honest, decent Democrat.
The Dem establishment think they can control their AOC rebels, but at the end of the day Peloshumer will have about as much of a base as Jeb Bush.
Totally agree. AOC and the young radicals are running the show in that party now. The old guard just doesn’t realize it yet.
Anybody know if Jimmy Carter had any comments on the passing his former political colleague ?
Over the years, Caddell swung decisively away from Carterism. Wouldn’t be surprised if Carter badmouthed him.
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