The virtue in losing

TRUE TO her name, so graciously conceded Sen. Grace Poe the presidency to Mayor Rodrigo Duterte.

And instant was change of heart for not a few of those who disparaged her during the campaign, now professing to vote for her in 2022.  

Yes, for Poe and the rest of the losers – from the national to the local levels – the world has not ended. Clichéd in “Hope springs eternal,” or in the philosophy of the kanto: Habang may buhay, asa ka pa.

The also-ran can find solace in the rumination of Pulitzer Prize-winning The New York Times columnist William Safire in his The First Dissident subtitled The Book of Job in Today’s Politics, thus:  

“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’?”

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.”

I do not know if wide-reader Mabalacat City Mayor Marino “Boking” Morales has even heard of Safire, but he makes the poster boy for the language maven’s wisdom.

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 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.

Even in its transformation from mere municipality to component city, Mabalacat has kept its constancy with the Boking mayoralty.

That constancy finding even greater permanency in Monday’s election results, to wit: Boking’s 40,147 votes way over and above the combined votes of all his rivals – Board Member Cris Garbo with 17,710, former VM Noel Castro with 10,788, and fiery Boking-basher Pyra Lucas with 5,807.    

This, notwithstanding Boking’s flip-flop-flip in filing-withdrawing-refiling his certificate of candidacy.

This, despite Boking’s suffering the loss of the sanctioning grace of Pampanga’s powers-that-are.   

Perceivably, what Safire called the “law of political return” applies well to Boking, inhered in, aye, ingrained as he is 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,” Safire holds.

Thus: “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 characteristically Boking. Finding the greater virtue in losing. Then never stop winning.