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Feb

18

That thing you don’t do – Paul Hackett’s cognitive dissonance


Hattip to Heights Mom for including in pertinent part The Plain Dealer’s piece on the end of Paul Hackett’s campaign. It includes several references to information that support my “thing I can’t define” from the beginning about how I wanted to know that he wanted the job and yet he just didn’t seem, to me, to want it that way.

To me, Paul Hackett just never seemed to want to make the run and win the job the way someone who will have to fight a long, hard, likely ugly battle needs to want it. He repeatedly said that he was asked to get in and so he got in. But couldn’t others see it, sense it – that that’s not enough?

People who wanted him to want it outnumbered the cells in his soul that told him to want it. I don’t think he was insincere in his efforts to win, I simply think the pressures – the cognitive dissonance – of needing to want it enough to win yet not being the one who wanted it in the first place contributed to every single decision he made, consciously or subconsciously.

Frankly, I can’t blame him. But I suspect that he will have a great impact on this and future election cycles just for having gone as far as he has. I wish him and his family a happy, healthy future.

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By Jill Miller Zimon at 2:41 pm February 18th, 2006 in Politics 

Comments

2 Responses to “That thing you don’t do – Paul Hackett’s cognitive dissonance”

  1. 1 Lisa Renee on February 18th, 2006 4:03 pm

    I think he intially wanted it, but he wanted it on his terms. That’s what made him special to me, since I can’t speak for anyone else, it was the independent nature of the man that was obvious if you watched him speak or had a chance to meet him in person.

    I still believe you don’t have to sell your soul to the political big machine to win, and I will always wonder if had some of those that chose to interfere within the Democratic Party had stayed out of this if he would have raised enough money on his own merits.

    We send conflicting messages as voters. Some of us claim we don’t want professional career politictians that we want people like Paul Hackett but then we disparage them for the very quality of not being a professional politician. A smooth experienced career politican will tell you what you want to hear to win. Granted most of it will be bs that he or she will not do if elected or re-elected, but that’s what we seem to buy into. Then enter a man who tells it as he sees it.

    He makes blunders, he is human, yet for me? I knew after meeting him that I knew exactly where he stood and even if I didn’t agree with him on a point? He wasn’t going to play games. I respected that and I felt he was exactly what is needed in Washington. I felt with his level of independence he was not going to succumb into the machine as many Freshman Congresspersons do. He wasn’t going to play the game.

    However in the end? It was the partly the game that defeated him because he wouldn’t play it. Do I think he should have quit? No, I don’t but I also have a feeling that the betrayl from some of those who encouraged him to run in the first place was a big part of his decision. Not to drag up ancient history, but realistically he would have never entered this race if Sherrod would have not said he was not going to run.

    Paul, we want you, Ohio needs you, come on Hackett you can do it! Oh wait..Never mind Paul, Sherrod’s here now, thanks for keeping the seat warm for him. Now be a team player and just step aside…

    I think the main reason he didn’t pull out after Sherrod announced was those of us who wanted change. Especially those who were alot more vocal supporters than I was. That kept him in but it wasn’t enough to make him stay.

    I take responsibility for not supporting him enough to make him stay. I’m not inflating my importance but I am acknowledging that I wanted change but I didn’t do as much as I could have to make that happen. It’s too late at this point, but if another Paul Hackett ever comes along? I will not make the same mistake of thinking that he or she can do it without more help from those like me.

    I’ll be brutally honest….

    He inspired me and he didn’t let me down, I let him down by not doing a better job of showing him what that inspiration did for me.

  2. 2 Jill on February 18th, 2006 4:17 pm

    What an excellent comment. The only point from which we divurge is in the knowing where he stood on issues. I never did quite get what I wanted on some issues, though I agree – and I’ve written – that I think he was evolving in that area, specifically, education.

    As I read your comment, I thought to myself, is she inside my head!? Because yes – I agree 1000% about how voters send mixed messages. That’s part of what sucks about being in politics – for life or for once. Unless of course duplicity comes easy to you.

    Paul Hackett was never duplicitous – I never sensed that or witnessed it. But, as I’ve said before, I think his mind was of at least two minds when it came to whether he wanted to go all the way and actually inhabit the job of Senator and ALL it entails. I just think the brutal facts of the job alone – in all its glory and dirt – are enough reason to make someone with other values let it go.

    I suppose I should be glad that there are people out there who build up enough hard callouses to make runs for and win elected office. Like you – I don’t think it always has to be that way, but look who the “winners” are – people for whom I have NOT ONE IOTA OF RESPECT when it comes to sharing my morals and values. Look at Rove, Cheney. Heck, even Rumsfeld has been quoted more recently of easing up on the arrogance.

    Blech. It’s Shabbat. I must evolve and stop thinking of this stuff on these days! :)

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