The election I lost

On the eve of Inauguration Day 2017, I want to tell the story of the election I lost.

 

This is not a story I tell very often.

 

It is long, and it is complicated, and it is fiercely personal in the way that only a campaign can be. An election campaign turns a candidate from a private figure into a public figure. For a first timer, the loss of privacy is jarring. For a first timer who had always chosen to remain on the press side of the press / government divide, the idea that my name, photo, and platform were to appear on the newspaper’s front page seemed like an absurdity.

 

I had always conceptualized the press as a behind-the-scenes role. One of my best friends, a fellow Tar Heel who I met in a seminar course on chaos theory our freshman year, had taken the opposite track. She served on Honor Court for years and then ran for Student Body President as an outsider, staffing her campaign with fellow intellectuals, most of whom had more or less avoided the Student Government scene while at Carolina, preferring to spend their time working for student-run nonprofits or think tanks rather than serving in Student Congress or the Executive Branch. She had to attend endless campaign forums, hosted by any student group with enough clout to demand an appearance from presidential candidates. I had to do one press conference (for the aforementioned front page printing of my platform). I remember it as one of the most awkward experiences of my life.

 

The Daily Tar Heel limited its Editor-in-Chief candidates to an 800-word platform. I remember this word limit because I stuck to it. My opponent did not.

The incumbent Editor-in-Chief could not believe that I had written such a short platform. When I told her that I had taken the word limit seriously, she told me no one ever does that. I decided to make only minor edits to what I had turned in, deciding that demonstrating a respect for the rules and proving that I knew how to prioritize goals would make me appear to be a serious candidate in the eyes of those who mattered.

 

I was more or less wrong about that. I believe that many of my fellow journalists were impressed both by my willingness to stick to the rules on principle and by my ability to be succinct (after all, we’d spend years training ourselves to express complex ideas within a limited amount of column inches). I also know that many members of the selection committee were impressed by the thoroughness of my opponents’ supplemental documents: dozens and dozens of pages expanding on her platform ideas and providing visual evidence of the kinds of stories she intended to run.

 

I decided to arrive at the selection meeting with only six stories: a three-part series on N.C. servicemen and their families that I had edited in my role as State & National Desk Editor, and a three-part series on immigration law enforcement that I had co-wrote while serving as Assistant Desk Editor. I believed those two series demonstrated a commitment to quality, public-service oriented journalism.

I couldn’t sleep the night before the selection meeting. I remember messaging a former State & National Desk Editor, the woman who had run the desk when I joined it as a freshman, for advice. She had run against the Managing Editor. She had lost by a vote, a fact that she gently reminded me of when I asked for tips. I don’t actually remember any tips she gave me. Mainly I remember thinking, “She lost, and no one thinks less of her.” She was so respected that she’d been named Managing Editor by the election winner, who didn’t want to see someone so talented walk away from a role on the newspaper’s management team.

 

I knew that would not be my fate. I had a fraught relationship with the Managing Editor who I was running against. We had served as assistant desk editors together, and she had been promoted to Managing Editor at the end of a spring semester during which I’d chosen to study abroad. She hired another of our fellow assistant desk editors for the desk editor position. Halfway through that next school year, the desk editor stepped down, naming me as her preferred replacement candidate, an appointment that management more or less reluctantly agreed to.

 

We had a rough semester. It’s not worth enumerating the various ups and downs. I will give one example of each:

 

*Each Sunday, we had an enterprise meeting during which we discussing long-term plans for in-depth features, series, or investigative pieces. The one-year anniversary of the Virginia Tech massacre was approaching, and the Managing Editor told us she was planning to do a front-page package of stories. I had nothing planned. I hadn’t conceptualized the story as front page news for us, a state away, although I’d heard the stories of how DTH reporters had rushed to the newsroom in Blacksburg to cover the shooting when it happened. I reacted in an annoyed, defensive manner to her plans, which I felt had been thrust upon me. Then I decided I had only a few days to make the package happen, so I better get to work. I personally reported and wrote the centerpiece story. I went to high school in Northern Virginia, so I had a lot of contacts at Virginia Tech. I remember the Managing Editor, after the story had been fully edited and was on its way to the printer, telling me that I had done a good job – that I’d picked interesting aspects to spotlight. It was one of the few compliments I ever received from her.

 

*The night before my platform was due, I went to the DTH office to print it out. I’d spent most of the day writing and editing my platform in my friend’s dorm room (the fact that she was in the middle of running for Student Body President and that this was therefore a clear conflict of interest struck both of us as an inconvenient fact that was easily brushed aside in favor of the fact that we valued each other’s intellectual opinions). When I arrived in the DTH office, sometime in the dark hours of the morning, a mess of papers greeted me. They were drafts of the Managing Editor’s platform, many clearly in unedited, rough form. One said, “a neurotic, independent perfectionist cannot do this job.” I would like to emphasize that enough thought had gone into that statement that I found it in typed, printed form, not scrawled in ink in the margins of some more official document. I remember a scathing wave of anger. Then I remember thinking, “That is a fair personality assessment. Also, those are all the things I like about myself.”

 

I couldn’t get those three words out of my head. I decided that each was a source of strength, albeit a double-edged sword.

 

“Neurotic.” This was no doubt connected to the one time I broke down in tears of frustration the day a reporter lied to me and claimed quotes as his own that were actually written by a friend (who didn’t even work for us) who he had sent to cover his assignment. We had to retract the story last-minute. I had to apologize. I remember her looking surprised that I’d bothered to do so and thanking me for taking responsibility.

 

“Independent.” All quality reporters are independent. We speak truth to power. We convince sources to talk, on-the-record, about topics they’d never normally talk about. We ask pointed questions of authority figures. Is too much independence a liability in a leader? Perhaps. Effective leadership involves a lot of delegation and team-building. However, this quote from a former editor had been adopted by the newspaper as our guiding principle when the DTH broke from the university in a move to achieve editorial independence through financial independence: “But the eternal youth of The Tar Heel nevertheless is considered a blessing because it is youth that keeps it, like a typical adolescent, defiant in the face of authority, eager for growth and protective of its freedom.”

 

“Perfectionist.” The aphorism “don’t let the perfect be the enemy of the good” no doubt applies to newspaper stories. At some point in the daily publication cycle, an editor has to make the call on whether or not a story is solid enough to run. There’s a reason the news is called the “rough draft of history.” There’s an implicit acknowledgment that each report is simply the best information available at the time, not the full truth. However, editors in particular strive to reach perfection on the ethics and fact checking fronts. Each correction is treated as a public shame. The copy editors also appreciate an attention to detail. As State & National Editor, I sat right next to the copy desk. I enjoyed discussing nuanced grammar and stylebook questions with them. There’s a reason I became an English teacher.

 

I remember those labels whenever I try to conceptualize why Hillary Clinton lost and why I identify with her. On the campaign trail, in both 2008 and 2016, she took heat from those who thought she was too robotic, too snarky, or simply of too ill health to be an effective president. It wasn’t just the pneumonia scare that riled up detractors. Remember all the right-wing rumors about her mental health? As for her personality, if you want evidence of how far President Obama evolved on his views of Secretary Clinton, check out the infamous moment from a 2008 debate in which he says, “You’re likeable enough, Hillary.” She was docked again and again for being an uninspiring speaker, by people who felt she tried to fit too much policy into speeches they’d rather see packed with charismatic applause lines.

 

Those who work directly with Secretary Clinton, from staffers to opposition senators, comment on her work ethic, her attention to detail, and her willingness to listen. As Secretary of State, she gained fame for trying to enforce work-life balance guidelines that seemed anathema to many old-school D.C. politicos. Partly due to such efforts, those who have worked for her tend to be fiercely loyal.

 

I spent my time at The Daily Tar Heel listening to fellow staffers complain about the insane hours, the near impossibility of balancing a rigorous course load with the demands of an editor position (I “managed” it by running on four hours of sleep for years – lots of nights where I let the newspaper office between midnight and 2 a.m., only to spend several hours in a dorm study hall reading textbooks or assigned novels), and the concern that we had nurtured a culture in which leadership meant a willingness to enforce high standards though unreasonable demands on staffers’ time, harsh criticism of mistakes, and the expectation that newspaper duties come before all else in an editor’s life. We received stipends, but only enough to cover a few grocery bills and prevent us from needing an outside jobs in order to survive.

 

My platform revolved around issues of work-life balance and job sustainability. I had seen too many talented, dedicated journalists burnout and quit. I loved being on the DTH staff. I lived in the newspaper office because I wanted to be there. I did not want to be there from midnight to 2 a.m. if I could prevent it. I had this idea that maybe we could all sleep sometimes.

 

I lost the election by a vote. The nine member committee features three DTH staff members, a former Editor-in-Chief, and community members (students, faculty, or local leaders who apply to be a part of the hiring process). No one is supposed to know anything except who won, but, of course, word filters out about who voted which way. I know I didn’t get all the staff votes. I know I got the majority.

 

To add insult to injury, UNC’s basketball team suffered a humiliating Final Four loss the same day as my defeat. Walking back to my dorm the next morning, I composed my end-of-year banquet speech in my head. That banquet was still weeks away, but I knew it would be my chance to thank my State & National team, express gratitude to those who had mentored me, and offer some honest thoughts on where the paper needed to go and how we should get there.

 

There are certain silences that are very loud. In them, both scowls and smiles become audible. I remember the look of both respect and awe on a sports writer’s face when I said I was OK with the way the election had come out because I believed so strongly in the potential and the capabilities of the incoming editor – and that I held an equally strong belief that it was our responsibility as a staff to push her “to treat each other as legitimate journalists and to respect each other’s opinions.”

 

I meant every word of that banquet speech, including the section where I apologized for any part I’d played in the pettiness and cattiness that surrounded the campaign. I feel as if I understand a little of what President Obama must be feeling when he says that he ran to try and unite the country and that one of his greatest regrets is that the partisan rift has only deepened during his eight years in office.

 

It’s been eight years since I had to give that banquet speech. The following year, I watched a lot of my friends walk away from the paper. So many staffers quit that our General Manager went from telling me I should be careful not to be a sore loser when I expressed concerns about a potential exodus to referring to that school year as a “lost year” for the DTH. The editor herself walked away from journalism shortly after graduating. She’s now in law.

 

I feel guilty typing that paragraph, because I know the Editor-in-Chief job is all-consuming. It’s a crazy assignment, to think that as a student you can manage a daily newspaper staffed by opinionated, impetuous college students. It’s not a job I truly wanted. I ran because I thought my leadership style and ideas would be best for the staff. I am thankful that as a senior I had the chance to step back, learn some multimedia skills, and complete my own Creative Writing thesis. I watched with mixed emotions as the next editor, the year after I graduated, implemented several of the ideas that I had proposed in my platform, in an attempt to stop the churn and burn.

 

I am currently working as a public school teacher. I’ve worked at both traditional district schools and charters that push innovation. This morning I sat in a meeting with the Head of Schools, trying to balance my reporter’s need to ask pointed questions with my desire to encourage my fellow teachers to insert their voices into the discussion. Every school I’ve ever worked at, including my current charter, suffers from churn and burn. American teachers are overworked and underpaid, and there’s only so much that any school organization can do to mitigate the systemic issues that make this profession, in its current form, practically unsustainable for pretty much anyone who for real believes in work-life balance.

 

I am particularly bad at work-life balance. I throw myself into my work, and I always have, and when I throw myself into my teaching work I justify the effort by telling myself that my work matters. That students, especially underserved students, deserve the best I have to give. That it makes a difference whether or not I show up to work on my “A” game.

 

I know it’s not possible to always be on your “A” game. Teachers are human, just like students. It took a long time for me to accept that when my work-life balance was off, it affected my ability to be effective in the classroom. I started believing that Teach for America wasn’t just spewing jargon when they talked to us about our locus of control.

 

All of that is a very long-winded way of saying – on the eve of this particular Inauguration Day, I am feeling the need to remind myself about my locus of control.

 

I cannot change who is about to be inaugurated as President of the United States.

 

I can control how I react to that inauguration.

I teach brilliant, creative, empathetic students. They value diversity, not as a buzzword, but as a lived reality. They already have too much first-hand experience with bullying. When bullying jumps from a campus issue to a campaign issue, they don’t know how to react. As an educator who constantly sermonizes against bullying, I don’t always know how to react to Donald Trump either.

 

I know this: I have already had to chastise students for slut shaming Melania Trump. I told students that it’s actually brilliant that she has named combatting cyberbullying as her cause. I could do little more than nod in agreement when a student said Melania’s first job should be to call out her husband when he bullies people.

 

I have tried and tried to figure out what it must feel like to be Hillary Clinton, waiting for the dawn of this Inauguration Day. I will never fully be able to understand what it feels like to come that close to our highest, hardest glass ceiling and be viscerally reminded that our nation is not ready.

 

I am trying to remind myself that our kids are ready. They do not understand why their leaders do not see that the world has already changed. America’s youth, as always, is light years ahead of their political leaders when it comes to cultural change.

 

I don’t always feel powerful standing in front of a classroom. However, when I say to my students, “How many of you will be able to vote in 2020? Raise your hand” and almost every hand in the room goes up, then I feel as if I can breathe again.

 

The road to equality is a path walked two steps forward, one step back. It has always been so.  Abigail Adams wrote to her husband, asserting that he should not forget the women, and it was over a century later that women finally gained the right to vote.

 

100 years is a long time. Four years? I think in some ways the next four years is going to feel like a very long time. However, on some days, eight years ago feels like yesterday. Eight years ago I lost an election. Tonight I remind myself that one battle is not a war. I’m still on the front lines. The fight continues.