David McElroy

There’s a new Cadillac ad that has some conservatives and progressives sniping at each other. That’s right. Cadillac is back in the national discussion — sort of — just by virtue of making a television commercial that some people hate and some people love.

Watch the one-minute spot for yourself below and see what you think. The character in the commercial — who drives a fancy new Cadillac electric car — talks about how Americans work harder than the rest of the developed world because it helps us get all the “stuff” we have. He obviously thinks this is a great thing. He struts through his expensive house and ends up in his Cadillac at the end, touting the value of working hard the entire way.

Oddly, this has become a political debate, which seems odd to me. The progressives of ABC’s Good Morning America didn’t seem to care for it. You can see their brief discussion of it in the other video below (in a clip provided by a conservative organization called the Media Research Center). The organization’s NewsBusters site takes aim at the progressives’ distaste for the ad, and I’ve seen outraged people on both sides talk about it on Facebook.

Conservatives see the ad as promoting American values of hard work in exchange for material goods, and progressives see it as promoting American exceptionalism and working too hard. They’re probably both right, but which sides you see depends on which values happen to matter most to you.

I see it as a simple personal choice.

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Giving up when you’re rejected is easy. I’ve done it before. You probably have, too. The four members of U2 didn’t give up when they rejected, though. They’re wealthy, famous and successful today. But they wouldn’t be if they had given up in 1979 when a major record label rejected them.

U2 formed in Dublin, Ireland, in 1976 as a band called Feedback. After a couple of name changes, they ended up as a four-man band called U2 by 1978. They were able to release some music just for the Irish market, but nobody seemed interested in taking them seriously.

One of the best-known music labels of the era was RSO Records. We found out this week that U2 submitted a tape to RSO — and on May 10, 1979, the label gave the band a polite brush-off.

“Thank you for submitting your tape of ‘U2’ to RSO, we have listened with careful consideration, but feel it is not suitable for us at present,” said the letter that was addressed to Paul Hewson, who you might know better as Bono. “We wish you luck with your future career.”

I can imagine Bono finding the envelope from RSO in the mail. I can imagine him opening the envelope and pulling the letter out. I can imagine his disappointment at being rejected.

So what do you do when you’re rejected? Do you talk yourself into being “realistic” and accepting that it’s time to move on? Or do you have a kind of hope and faith that’s willing to ignore the empirical evidence of rejection?

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You might remember a few of the names associated with the “New Right,” even if you don’t know much about them. Jerry Falwell. Ralph Reed. Richard Viguerie. Phyllis Schlafly. Pat Robertson.

These were names who were a big deal in the late ’70s and early ’80s as a new political movement rose up to challenge the Establishment in Washington and in the Republican Party across the country. They were socially conservative Christians and they were determined to change politics forever.

I still have a copy of Richard Viguerie’s 1981 book, “The New Right: We’re Ready to Lead.” (He was a brilliant pioneer of conservative direct mail fundraising.) I was a conservative Republican at the time and I was also a theologically conservative Christian, so it seemed natural to me that the two would come together in a powerful way and change politics.

I guess you could say that I was young and idealistic enough to be a True Believer.

I was only on the periphery of this movement, but I remember others who were convinced we were going to change the country in a positive way. We were passionately organizing and we were driven from the grass roots. We were disgusted with the cynical “politics as usual” that we got from government and even from our own Republican Party. There were so many of us involved that we were sure we were going to end the ability of the Establishment to continue running things as its members always had.

So what happened?

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