Watching Ashley Judd at a women’s reproductive health conference at George Washington University, I am very impressed with her as a person and a spokesperson for very important global issues. She really has a depth of knowledge about a wide variety of subjects. She’s also very personable, intelligent, articulate, funny, and basically likable. At the same time, I think she has a lot of work to do to be a successful politician.
Her biggest problem is that she talks about herself too much, although that is partly a byproduct of the forum. She’s talking about herself to inspire students and convince them that they can have exciting and fulfilling lives serving the disadvantaged or working for worthy causes. Still, as a Senate candidate from Kentucky, she will need to tone down the name-dropping, the humble-bragging, and the emphasis on issues that will probably seem pretty remote to the average Kentuckian.
I’m a firm believer that the first duty of a politician is to serve their constituents. Their interests come first. I don’t say this as an abstraction or some kind of ideal. I’m talking about a prerequisite for success in politics. I met Alan Grayson at a reception in Austin, Texas in July 2008. I tried to talk to him about his district and the issues that were particularly important to his would-be constituents. But he only wanted to convince me that he thought the Bush administration was filled with criminals and that he had a record of fighting criminals. I met a lot of other politicians that night. All of them impressed me more than Alan Grayson.
It wasn’t that I disagreed with what he was saying to me. I had probably written three posts that day saying essentially the same thing. The problem was that I could tell that he wasn’t getting into politics to serve his constituents, but to have a platform to wage his own personal battle. In his first term in Congress, he fulfilled all my expectations. He made some great stands. He pulled some wonderful stunts. But he didn’t pay attention to his district, and he was crushed by an astonishing 18 points. I’ll be honest. He totally deserved to lose.
So, when I look at Ashley Judd, it’s obvious that she has a pre-existing set of issues that she’s totally dedicated to and that have relevance to all human beings, but they aren’t issues that are specific to Kentucky. If she is going to run a successful campaign, she needs to filter everything she’s been working on into language that speaks specifically to the people of Kentucky.
She’s very liberal and not a natural match for the Bluegrass State electorate. But I think she can overcome that. She can really be a game changer because of her skills, ability, glamor, and personality. But she has habits that she needs to break. If she starts a sentence with ‘I,’ the next word should be ‘think,’ and not ‘went,’ ‘met,’ or ‘did.’ All Hollywood-speak needs to be drummed out of her. Stop mentioning Bono.
To win, she will need to go into the small towns of Kentucky and immerse herself in the culture and figure out how to talk directly to those people’s concerns. Mitch McConnell is the least popular senator in the country. The people of Kentucky want an alternative. Ashley Judd isn’t ready to beat him yet, but she has promise.
