Lincoln Chafee: Horseshoer, Lone GOP No on Iraq, and Four Party Labels

SPEAKER_1 (0:00)

Imagine stepping into the voting booth, right? And you look at the ballot, and you see the exact same candidate over the course of three decades.

SPEAKER_2 (0:08)

Okay.

SPEAKER_1 (0:09)

But every few election cycles, there's a completely different party affiliation sitting right next to their name.

SPEAKER_2 (0:15)

Oh, wow. Yeah.

SPEAKER_1 (0:16)

So, like, you start your career as an elected Republican. Then a few years later, you run as an independent.

SPEAKER_2 (0:23)

Right.

SPEAKER_1 (0:24)

A few years after that, you run for president as a Democrat. And then finally, you switch gears again, and you're running for president as a Libertarian.

SPEAKER_2 (0:32)

That is, I mean, four totally distinct political parties for one single politician. Exactly. And honestly, it immediately makes you think of an opportunist, right?

SPEAKER_1 (0:42)

Yeah, someone just chasing the polls.

SPEAKER_2 (0:44)

Exactly. Someone who's just reading the data, shifting their ideology with the wind to figure out, you know, whatever gets them elected. But the factual biography of Lincoln Chafee actually presents the exact opposite scenario. You're right. He underwent all of these massive partisan shifts while holding on to this incredibly rigid, like unchanging set of core policy beliefs.

SPEAKER_1 (1:05)

Which is exactly what we were unpacking in today's Deep Dive. We're taking the biographical facts of Lincoln Chafee's life to understand, well, how a person navigates a deeply entrenched binary political system when their personal convictions just refuse to fit into those modern prepackaged party platforms.

SPEAKER_2 (1:23)

Because to understand this massive political whiplash, you actually have to go all the way back to an origin story that is steeped in one of the most elite traditional families in New England.

SPEAKER_1 (1:33)

Right. His lineage is practically the definition of the American patrician class.

SPEAKER_2 (1:37)

Oh, absolutely. I mean, the Chafee family arrived in Massachusetts in the 1630s.

SPEAKER_1 (1:41)

Wow. The 1630s.

SPEAKER_2 (1:43)

Yeah. Deep roots. His great-great-grandfather served as the governor of Rhode Island, and his father, John Chafee, was a Rhode Island governor, the secretary of the Navy under Richard Nixon, and a long-serving US. Senator.

SPEAKER_1 (1:55)

So, you know, the expectation is you're getting on this classic political conveyor belt.

SPEAKER_2 (1:59)

Right. Exactly.

SPEAKER_1 (2:00)

You go to an elite prep school, you get an Ivy League degree in law or political science, you join a prominent firm, and boom, you run for office.

SPEAKER_2 (2:07)

And he did check those first few boxes. He attended Phillips Academy, followed by Brown University.

SPEAKER_1 (2:13)

Okay.

SPEAKER_2 (2:14)

Yeah.

SPEAKER_1 (2:14)

Classic.

SPEAKER_2 (2:15)

Yeah. He earned a degree in classics and actually captained the wrestling team.

SPEAKER_1 (2:18)

Nice.

SPEAKER_2 (2:19)

So up until his graduation in 1975, the trajectory was perfectly in place. But then, rather than heading to a law firm or some political campaign, he moves to Bozeman, Montana.

SPEAKER_1 (2:30)

Wait, Montana?

SPEAKER_2 (2:31)

Yeah, Montana. He goes there to attend a 16-week farrier school.

SPEAKER_1 (2:35)

A farrier school?

SPEAKER_2 (2:36)

Yeah.

SPEAKER_1 (2:37)

Like, to learn how to put shoes on horses.

SPEAKER_2 (2:39)

Exactly. And he spends the next seven years working the harness racetracks across the US and Canada, literally making his living by shoeing horses.

SPEAKER_1 (2:48)

Let's, I mean, let's just stop and think about the physical reality of that job for a second.

SPEAKER_2 (2:51)

Oh, it's intense.

SPEAKER_1 (2:52)

Right. You were dealing with a thousand-pound flight animal.

A horse is inherently skittish, and you can't just bully or muscle it into lifting its legs so you can hammer metal nails into its hoof.

SPEAKER_2 (3:03)

No, absolutely not.

SPEAKER_1 (3:04)

To be a successful farrier, you have to possess this profound sense of calm. You have to lower the temperature in the stable. You're relying entirely on patience, consistency, and de-escalation.

SPEAKER_2 (3:16)

Yeah, that's a really great analogy.

The historical records even note he shooed this one horse named Overburden that set a track record up in Edmonton. Oh, wow. He took this work incredibly seriously. And later in his life, Chafee himself noted that being around horses for that long, it forces you to become a quieter, more grounded person.

SPEAKER_1 (3:34)

I can totally see that.

SPEAKER_2 (3:35)

And that specific temperament, that de-escalation over confrontation, well, that became the exact mechanic he used to govern when he finally returned to Rhode Island and entered local politics.

SPEAKER_1 (3:46)

Because he does eventually return. And by 1985, he's elected to the Warwick City Council. Right. Then in 1992, he becomes the mayor of Warwick.

And he's the first Republican to hold that office in 32 years.

SPEAKER_2 (3:59)

Yeah, which is huge. But he inherits just a completely dysfunctional situation. Oh, really? Yeah, there was a brutal, prolonged labor dispute with the Municipal Teachers Union that was just left over from the previous administration.