Losing to win

“IS SUFFERING a defeat good for a political person? The run for office is a short run, and the loser is not likely to find comfort in talk about the long run. But can rejection at the polls be fairly presented as what condolence-bearers sardonically call ‘a character-building experience’?”

William Safire’s rumination in his The First Dissident subtitled The Book of Job in Today’s Politics led me to my very own with the political persons we’ve come to observe, if not to know, real up close and personal.

Much as I authored his proto-bio, I had no information if Oca Rodriguez ever thumbed through the Book of Job after his failed re-election bid in the 3^rd district congressional derby in 1992. Much of what I heard was that he retired to his farm in Maliwalu with his favourite books – Machiavelli’s and Sun Tzu’s tomes I would so presume to include – for consolation and comfort to take him through his Joban experience.

Renewed, reinvigorated from that humiliating loss, his character re-forged in the crucible of the Mount Pinatubo devastations, Oca retook his congressional post in 1995 and has not looked back at defeat since: re-electing in 1998 and 2001, winning the mayorship of the City of San Fernando in 2004, 2007 and 2010. And now poised to return to the House, but not if incumbent Dong Gonzales could help it.

Tarzan Lazatin lost in his very try for an elective post – mayor of Angeles City in 1980. Though not exactly a long shot in the 1^st district congressional contest in 1987 – he was the beatific Cory’s choice, after all – Tarzan managed to squeak through victory – by a plurality of less than a hundred votes against his closest rival, if now-selective memory still serves right.

Like Oca – it could very well be lord of the jungle in Telabastagan that served as template – Tarzan has tasted only triumph since: three-term congressman, three-term city mayor, back to Congress in 2010, seeking the city mayorship anew this 2013.

In contrast to the two, Rimpy Bondoc breezed through his very first election as 4^th district representative, in 1998. Veritably no sweat was his re-election in 2001 – unopposed.    

The ease with which Rimpy achieved his victories and the consequential arrogance of success, could have confluenced to his undoing. Thus, his sorry defeat in the gubernatorial race of 2004.

Losing an election early in political career is deemed constructive. As Safire says, “a therapeutic trouncing introduces a little real humility into candidates who must at least profess humility.”

That could well serve Rimpy the lesson he – it is generally thought – most needed to learn, moreso to earn, in his comeback bid in 2013.

And then, there’s Boking Morales.

Deemed the “sure winner” in the Mabalacat mayoralty contest of 1992 – what with a formidable war chest, the support of the contending Lakas-NUCD and LDP parties – he had Fidel Ramos on stage at his opening salvo and rival Ramon Mitra in his miting de avance, the INC bloc vote, not to mention his youthful appeal and on-stage bombast – Boking lost to the very unassuming, even self-effacing, Dr. Catalino Domingo.

Humbled at the polls, bourgeois Boking attuned, if not immersed, himself in the ethos of the rural poor who comprised a clear majority of the Mabalacat constituency. Handily winning in 1995, he has not vacated the mayor’s seat since. Notwithstanding his Comelec-decisioned defeat in 1998. Notwithstanding the mandated three-term limitation. And with a patsy for a rival, Boking is cocksure of getting re-elected anew this May.

What Safire called the “law of political return” applied well to Oca, Tarzan and Boking, all of them ingrained with the “comeback quality.”

“Defeat, if it does not destroy them, tempers leaders. After reaching deep within for internal resources, they can rightly claim to have grown as a result of what the voters have taught them. In the art of comeback, one lesson is not to insist that voters admit they were wrong last time, even if their choice of candidates turned out to be inept or corrupt in office. On the contrary, the putative comebacker should compliment the electorate on having been right in spotting his own shortcomings in policy or personality or presentation, which have been corrected – with no compromise of principle, of course. Last time losers should assert with pride that they have learned enough to become next time’s winners.” So Safire says.

Else, they stop running altogether. And stop losing forever.