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One of the oddest habits of modern American politics is the growing conviction that refusing an invitation constitutes a bold act of leadership.
Someone holds a birthday party. You discover you don’t much care for the host. So you stay home.
The only difficulty with this strategy is that everyone else still has cake.
Pennsylvania came remarkably close to pulling precisely this maneuver at the Great American State Fair on Washington’s National Mall this week. Every state was invited to set up a booth celebrating its history, culture, products, and people. Pennsylvania—the birthplace of the Declaration of Independence and Constitution, home of Gettysburg, Hershey bars, Crayola crayons, and enough steel to build half the twentieth century—was nowhere to be found.
The governor’s office explained that no businesses had agreed to sponsor a display, taxpayers shouldn’t have to foot the bill, and the event carried too much political perfume because it was associated with the current administration.
Fair enough.
Except it wasn’t.
Within forty-eight hours, Senators John Fetterman and Dave McCormick quietly rounded up enough private sponsors to make the problem disappear. No taxpayer money required. Crayola shipped crayons and Pennsylvania history coloring books. U.S. Steel sent a commemorative penny-press machine. The Gettysburg Foundation contributed artifacts, bookmarks and copies of the Gettysburg Address. Farm groups and businesses pitched in. Volunteers spent two frantic days driving back and forth between Pennsylvania and Washington assembling what looked suspiciously like…a Pennsylvania exhibit.
Funny how that happens once someone asks.
The episode says something useful about business that politicians occasionally forget. Companies generally prefer selling products to making political statements. They are perfectly willing to appear at an event if the purpose is introducing people to Pennsylvania rather than introducing Pennsylvania to somebody’s latest political quarrel.
Children visiting the booth will not ask whether the crayons came from Republicans or Democrats. They will simply color.
Visitors feeding pennies into the U.S. Steel press are unlikely to demand the machine’s voting record. They’ll just take home a keepsake.
The Gettysburg bookmarks don’t become less eloquent because someone in Washington scheduled the tent.
Business has always possessed this annoying tendency to remain stubbornly practical.
Here in Beaver County, that practicality feels familiar. Steel is more than a logo around here. It is family history. Grandfathers, fathers and sons spent generations making things that lasted longer than election cycles. A penny stamped from Pennsylvania steel may be a small souvenir, but it quietly reminds visitors that this Commonwealth still knows how to produce something besides political arguments.
There is also a larger lesson.
Pennsylvania has never needed much help telling its story. It helped launch a nation, powered an industrial revolution, fed millions and educated generations. It possesses Amish farms, world-class universities, forests, factories, chocolate, mushrooms, bridges, battlefields and enough historical markers to make GPS unnecessary.
The marketing practically writes itself.
Which makes it all the more curious that we nearly talked ourselves out of attending our own birthday celebration.
There is an old saying about cutting off one’s nose to spite one’s face. It survives because human beings remain astonishingly inventive at hurting themselves in order to make someone else feel uncomfortable.
Usually the someone else doesn’t notice.
Fortunately, enough sensible people intervened before Pennsylvania managed to become the only guest who skipped the party because it disapproved of the caterer.
The volunteers who hauled boxes through the night probably deserve the last word. They weren’t arguing ideology. They were solving a problem. They understood something that often escapes professional politics: if you’re invited to represent Pennsylvania, represent Pennsylvania.
Show up.
Bring the crayons.
Bring the steel.
Bring Gettysburg.
Let the state speak for itself.
That’s usually enough.
