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With recent news about Indianapolis Colts quarterback Carson Wentz requiring foot surgery, our natural inclination as fans is to ask, “Who will be our quarterback?”
It’s a fair question. We want immediate answers about the team we support. Fortunately, the NFL basically invented the “depth chart” concept, a ranked list of players at every position who are available to play if/when the player ahead of them becomes unavailable. While it is our hope that this problem of QB succession is temporary for the Colts, in politics (like in business), failure to properly prepare for personnel changes can substantially hinder the ability of an elected official or political party to succeed indefinitely.
Despite the narrative of the most cynical among us, the selection and election of candidates for elected office is not rigged. Just look at Indiana electoral results over the past 15 years. No one is impossible to beat. Just look at former Indianapolis Mayor Bart Peterson and the late U.S. Sen. Richard Lugar, among others. No autopsy is needed on either of these races. The voters spoke.
Additionally, candidates for office can be defeated or fail to catch fire in one election and go viral in another, sometimes for a different office. Look no further than U.S. Secretary of Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg, who lost a race for Indiana state treasurer in 2010 by 25% of the vote before winning the 2016 Iowa caucuses as he sought the Democratic nomination for president of the United States. Anyone who says that is not a substantial “jump” in relevance is playing 51-card solitaire while the rest of us are playing chess.
Even Gov. Eric Holcomb, who went from a candidate for U.S. Senate to being appointed the sitting lieutenant governor to becoming governor-elect all within 10 months, gets the joke. We are fortunate to have him, but he would admit this is hardly how he drew it up, even as smart as he is.
Though there are takeaways from each of these examples, the common thread is that, in electoral politics, surprises happen. Those whose job it is to field quality candidates in either party need to always be recruiting, but another lesson for those who aspire to be those candidates is that showing up early, and often, matters. Forgive me if I also suggest that we seek smart and “good” people with a servant’s heart.
Succession planning extends beyond those wise enough, ambitious enough or intuitive enough to hold elected office. Once these people assume the burden of leadership, especially at the federal or statewide levels, they will run into the additional challenge of recruiting, training, promoting and ultimately replacing talented staff. No elected officials are guaranteed a second (or more) term, and the political appointees on their staff are not guaranteed jobs. Therefore, staff positions turn over.
Fortunately, the responsibility of these elected positions is more awesome than the people who occupy them, and the work is more robust in impact than any individual staff member who works there, though we know the results do not happen by accident. Everyone is replaceable, and I say this as someone who has been replaced.
It is easy to understand the “next person up” mentality of a quarterback on an NFL roster, but I hope we will put similar focus on the “depth chart” of the elected officials (and their staffs) we rely upon. Though the world of professional sports is entertaining, hiccups in succession plans of government could last much longer than five to 12 weeks.•
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Rateike is founder and owner of BAR Communications and served as director of cabinet communications for President Donald Trump. Send comments to ibjedit@ibj.com.
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