Pella, Iowa
Rep. Thaddeus McCotter’s whimsical presidential campaign is anchored by one key constituency: insomniacs. The Michigan Republican, who launched an improbable White House bid in July, can credit his (scant) national profile to the viewers of Red Eye, Greg Gutfeld’s snarky 3 a.m. talk show on the Fox News Channel.
Red Eye may be an obscure fiefdom in Rupert Murdoch’s empire, but the 60-minute broadcast has a cult following among night owls. These past few years, McCotter has become a frequent guest, charming the hipster panelists with his droll observations. At first, he was a curiosity — a balding, unsmiling Ichabod Crane. Eventually, as Gutfeld concluded that McCotter’s mumbling, sweater-clad persona was authentic, the congressman became a regular.
A presidential campaign, if only for the giggles, was bound to follow. This spring, Gutfeld began to beg McCotter to run. “In my mind, he is one of the few pols who seem less interested in impressing celebrities, or making cheap points of sentimentality, than preserving the freedoms unique to our delightful island nation,” Gutfeld said during one monologue. “Please,” he pleaded with McCotter, “make this interesting, if anything, so I can get a free campaign button.”
By now, Gutfeld must be swimming in McCotter paraphernalia. The congressman is making frequent trips to Iowa and New Hampshire as a full-fledged, no-joke contender. At least that was my impression when we recently spoke in a coffee shop about 50 miles east of Des Moines.
McCotter, slightly perspiring in his dark suit, did not order an espresso, nor did he need one. His wiry fingers moved nonstop, tapping the linoleum table. For an hour, he fidgeted and made his case. It’s easy to see why Gutfeld is intrigued. McCotter is weird, but pleasantly so.
The Michigander’s offbeat style extends to his politics, which are generally of the tea-party school, but notably pro-labor. McCotter hails from Livonia, a suburb northwest of Detroit, where many of his constituents are Big Three employees. He made his presidential announcement there over the Fourth of July weekend, not far from his childhood home, surrounded by his family and a smattering of blue-collar workers, many of whom appreciate McCotter’s vocal support for the 2009 auto bailouts.
Onstage, McCotter railed against various Obama-administration misdeeds, but his venom was saved for the Wall Street bailouts. McCotter may have supported ladling loans to the automakers, but when it comes to bankers, he may be the most populist member of the 2012 field. Other candidates, such as Michele Bachmann, also opposed the Troubled Asset Relief Program, but McCotter takes the suffering of the post-industrial heartland personally. He speaks about hardship the way Bruce Springsteen sings about it.
The United States, McCotter said at his announcement, needs a president “who will truly feel and understand the pain, the anguish of 14 million unemployed Americans, the feeling of being trapped.” He pledged to be that man. “Through your hard work, and through your principled devotion, bequeathing to your children a better nation than the one we inherited, have no doubt that we will restructure the government,” he vowed. “While it is a hard road ahead, we will have better days.” On that note, he abruptly picked up his red-white-and-blue Fender Telecaster and began to jam Chuck Berry’s “Let It Rock.”
Born in 1965 on the west side of the Motor City, the son of two strict Roman Catholic special-education teachers, McCotter spent much of his impressionable years debating music with his brother, Dennis, who remains the congressman’s preferred bassist. “When you are growing up in the Seventies, you had glam rock or disco, or you could go back,” he says. “We went back.” His epiphany came one evening when a pair of films — the Beatles’ A Hard Day’s Night and Help! — popped on Channel 7. “It clicked,” he says. “I liked the sound — they didn’t sound like my father’s Irish Rover tapes or his eight tracks.”
The McCotter brothers never looked back. The Beatles, the Who, the Rolling Stones, you name it — if it’s classic rock, they likely own the original vinyl records — and McCotter can play Lynyrd Skynyrd’s “Free Bird” solo with his guitar behind his neck. Growing up, the boys’ bands echoed their heroes. First, the Flying Squirrels, a name they picked after the keyboard player accidentally sent one unfortunate rodent airborne while he was driving to band practice. Next was Sir Funk-a-Lot and the Knights of the Terrestrial Jam. “My brother was heavy into Bootsy Collins at the time,” McCotter explains.
McCotter went on to graduate summa cum laude from the University of Detroit Mercy, a Jesuit institution, then attended its law school, graduating in 1990. From his early years till today, whether as a Wayne County commissioner or a small-time attorney, he has used rock-and-roll to smooth out his awkward-schoolboy edge.
“I have always been a guitar guy,” McCotter says. “My brother is a bass guy. It’s like some people are born wrestlers. Like my son, Timothy, we don’t know how it happened, but he’s a wrestler. Bassists are born, they just like it.” He pauses. “It worked for Mike Huckabee,” he says, noting that the bass-playing former Arkansas governor won the Iowa caucuses last cycle.
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