Tom MaddenTom Madden
Senator Jeff Flake’s grand farewell from the floor of the Senate made me think it would be better if politicians were a tad tone deaf.

Besides concentrating on tone, I’d exhort them to perfect a little more perfect pitch on policy.

“We must never adjust to the present coarseness of our national dialogue—with the tone set at the top,” Flake intoned eloquently in his grandiose exit speech.

Tone?

Jeff Flake
Sen. Jeff Flak

Now it’s the tone, stupid? Really? Or is it more what we do, not what we say or tweet.

But as a PR man, I have to hand it to the handsome gentlemanly senator from Arizona who cleverly boasts of having a . . . Conservative Conscience

His announcing that he’s hanging up his muddied chapeau in such grand style was a perfect pitch for his book titled—in a nod to one-time GOP Presidential candidate Barry Goldwater—“Conscience of a Conservative.”

In his book, the relatively anonymous Republican senator from Arizona attempts to reckon with what conservatism means in the age of tough tweeting President Trump. He deplores his party’s complicity in Trump’s ascendance.

“These are the spasms of a dying party,” Flake writes, surveying the anger that has consumed and embroiled conservatism in recent years.

“There are times when we must risk our career in favor of our principles,” said Senator Flake eloquently in his speech.

“I have children and grandchildren to answer to, and so, Mr. President, I will not be complicit. I have decided that . . . freeing myself from the political considerations that consume far too much bandwidth and would cause me to compromise far too many principles . . . I am announcing today that my service in the Senate will conclude at the end of my term . . . .”

(unsaid) . . . because I’m so miserably low in the polls right now, I’d have a snowball’s chance in Arizona of being reelected.”

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Tom Madden is CEO of TransMedia Group in Boca Raton, FL.