Dealing with Disappointment

It was election day and the voters were finally making their decision.

We’d spent a lot of long hours working on the campaign and really thought we were in a position to win. We’d done solid work over the last year, put forward good policy ideas, ran the best campaign, and my boss was the best candidate for the job.

If we won, it was going to be a big moment for my professional career and would mean a great new job. If we lost, it was going to be a big disappointment and I’d be looking for a job somewhere new.

As I paced nervously and waited for the results, I could only focus on how awesome my life was going to be if we won and how hopelessly desperate it would be if we lost.

We lost. But looking back, I’m glad we did.

I’m talking about the race for House Republican Policy Committee chairman in 2008–9 years ago this month.

Doctor Michael Burgess, whose 2002 campaign was the first election I ever volunteered on, and who brought me to Capitol Hill as an over-eager intern, was running for policy committee chairman. We really did run the better campaign and I really thought he was the best man for the job, but the voters — his colleagues in the House of Representatives — had other plans.

Without that loss, I might never have had to learn about using new media like Twitter and blogs and online video to communicate with voters. And I can only imagine where I would be professionally and personally today. And without that loss, Dr. Burgess may never have gone on to serve as chairman of the Health Subcommittee — his goal from the moment he was elected to congress.

Disappointment and defeat are inseparable from politics and they’ve taught me a lot about myself. Here are my lessons on dealing with disappointment.

It all works out

If Team Gillespie has a motto, it’s Romans 8:28: “We know that all things work for good for those who love God, who are called according to his purpose.” Right after a loss, you won’t believe it, but everything is going to work out. And while a win wasn’t the outcome you had in mind, God had other plans. You should stick to His plan.

With time, it will be clear why you had to experience the disappointment because it makes you open, available, humble, and prepared for what’s next. And, amazingly, it will be better than what you could have imagined, because the Creator has a far better imagination than you do.

Everything a winning campaign does isn’t right, and everything a losing campaign did wasn’t wrong

It’s tough to admit, but rarely — if ever — are the outcome of elections reflections of the quality of a campaign. Voters don’t judge a candidate based on those press releases you wrote, or the viral video you produced, or how well you ran your field office.

But, as Morton Blackwell wrote in his Laws of the Public Policy Process: “Pray as if it all depended on God; work as if it all depended on you.”

Sometimes (often), elections are about things beyond your control, but as a political professional, you still have to execute to the best of your ability to get your campaign into the right place at the right time to seize the victory.

Not trying is not an option

The only way to avoid disappointment is to avoid risking defeat. That’s also the surest way to ensure you’ll never win.

I couldn’t possibly say it any better than Teddy Roosevelt did in his famous “Man in the Arena” speech, so I won’t try:

“It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat.”

In politics, as in life, you won’t be able to avoid disappointment. It’s beyond your control. But you can control how you transform that disappointment into preparation for the next step in your career.

None of this changes the fact that disappointment isn’t fun to go through and I doubt it ever gets any easier, but every time you get knocked down, you’ve got to get back up again.

Whatever you do, don’t give up the fight.