Monday morning, two months after finishing two terms as Colorado’s governor, John Hickenlooper threw his hat in the ring for the 2020 Democratic primaries for president with the release of a two-and-a-half-minute video entitled “Stand Tall.” The Herald editorial board has lauded Hickenlooper before and is just as impressed by him now.
The video is a solid start. It begins with Hickenlooper looking resolute, walking into driving snow, wearing a light red jacket with an American flag shoulder patch – the commander is on the job.
“No one can predict what happens after you become governor,” he says in voice-over. “Historic drought, thousands of acres in flames, and then came the worst floods in a hundred years. And a mass shooting in a movie theater once again tore the heart out of our community.”
Unlike some of the senators who have already declared for president, Hickenlooper is touting his executive experience, the steady hand on the captain’s wheel as the ship of state has somehow found itself in spring weather in the Rockies.
Executive experience matters. Coming to the White House from the governor’s mansion in Albany, New York, two of our greatest presidents – the two with the surname Roosevelt – already knew how they wanted to administer and lead. They knew how to get things done.
On the other hand, Jimmy Carter, coming from the governor’s house in Atlanta, arrived at the White House believing that one of the higher uses of the time of the president of the United States was to personally assign the use of the tennis court, while five-star Gen. Dwight Eisenhower only entered politics with the presidency but brought a wealth of executive experience that ensured perhaps the best process of decision-making the office has known. His successor, coming from the Senate, the charismatic John Kennedy, tried to preside over comparative chaos and that quickly showed, too, with the Bay of Pigs debacle in Cuba.
“We’re facing a crisis that threatens everything we stand for,” HIckenlooper says in his new campaign video, as, inevitably, President Trump is flashed on the screen.
If Hickenlooper, a moderate conciliator by temperament, is running against Trump, every Democrat is. That is the price of admission when you are running against an incumbent, especially one who seems to have brought the country to peak polarization, and for as long as he is in the running, it is one he will have to repeat at every opportunity, although we would be surprised if he intends to spend any more time or thought on it. He has another case to make.
Next in the video, we see the brewpub and mayor years, and the Denver boom. Hickenlooper is right to take some credit here. Successfully running a big city also sets him apart from candidates such as Elizabeth Warren, Bernie Sanders, Kamala Harris and Amy Klobuchar. Running a Senate office does not come close. For Hickenlooper, this is a natural transition.
He speaks of bringing “environmentalists and oil and gas companies to the table to create the toughest methane emissions laws in the country,” saying, “I’ve proven again and again I can bring people together to produce the progressive change Washington has failed to deliver.”
He is right about his environmental record. He is also right that his success derived from his ability to work with industry, including the fossil fuel industries, to make extraction safer and keep it lucrative for Colorado. This puts him squarely to the right of the Green New Deal crowd who think it is worth considering whether the federal government could and should immediately halt all fossil fuel production and consumption. What Hickenlooper has and they do not is, as he says, experience and a record of accomplishment, a sense of what can be done and how.
Can the can-do governor shine in an already crowded field? We hope so. He has earned this shot.
