Back in 1980 as Ronald Reagan began racking up victories in Republican primaries and caucuses, establishment Republicans were in a panic, fearing that by nominating such an extreme conservative, the party faithful were jeopardizing their best chance to unseat a Democratic incumbent since the year before the United States entered the First World War. Indeed, Jimmy Carter and Democrats delighted as the Gipper easily secured the GOP nomination, believing him to be easier to beat than some of his more moderate Republican rivals.
We hear similar grumbling today about the weakness of the current GOP field, with pundits and bloggers (including yours truly) pining for a promising legislator or accomplished former (or current) governor.
With his encyclopedic knowledge of American history, Michael Barone reminds us that in 1932, the party out of (presidential) power had a weak “field of presidential candidates in a year when its prospects for victory seemed so great“: Democrats’ “prospects for victory [that year] were excellent by just about any measure.” But, despite this “golden opportunity for the Democratic party . . ., its field of candidates looked weak at the time”. The man who would win the party’s nomination — and the general election was, during the contest that year for the contest for that nomination, considered a
. . . lightweight, profiting on the fact that he was a distant cousin (his wife Eleanor was a closer cousin) of Theodore Roosevelt, a president considered great enough at that time to be worthy of being depicted on Mount Rushmore . . . .
Although underestimated early on in 1932, Franklin Delano Roosevelt all but defined American politics for the next fifty years — and is still today considered one of the greatest American presidents. Perhaps, his New Deal did not rescue the nation from the Great Depression, but he did inspire his fellow Americans at that difficult time. And he did provide sterling leadership as the European crisis deepened in the 1930s and the United States entered World War II in the early 1940s.
The example of 1932 leads Barone to conclude:
The 2012 Republican field does indeed look weak, at a time of great opportunity for the party. But so did the 1932 Democratic field. We can try to learn as much about these candidates as we can, but we cannot foresee the future. We must hope that at least one of these candidates turns out to have greater strengths and virtues than are now apparent. It’s happened before.
It’s Barone. Read the whole thing.
The Alchemists spent centuries attempting to turn base metals and dross into gold to no avail. Hoping that one of the current field of candidates has undiscovered depths also requires such alchemy. As for the “undeclared”, it’s getting too-late for any to throw their hats into the ring with State filing-deadlines already starting to close in the major early states. And the times have passed for a National Convention to turn to a non-candidate to break a non-conclusive deadlock of talent by turning to a silver knight awaiting in the stage-wings.
We as a nation have created a process that attracts the wrong people for the wrong reasons to “public service”, and now we’re to reap the whirlwind…
So, which stage of the grieving process is this, ‘Denial’ or ‘Bargaining?’
We are not going to have a bold warrior who will crush Obamacare and cut the Gordian knot of unfunded and underfunded entitlements while unleashing the economy and helping to stoke the engines of free enterprise.
So, we will have to muddle along with the candidate we believe can make the best inroads into sorting out a catastrophe in the making.
Barone’s comments concerning FDR are strange. I agree with his history, but not his metaphor. We hardly need to pack the government with more agencies, regulations and spending schemes. We need the exact opposite. The fact that FDR has enjoyed waning sainthood since his ascendency to the Oval Office is not proof that where we are today was not in large part due to his policies.
Our candidate is not likely a diamond in the rough. I hardly think that Romney will “go rogue” and and start bitch slapping people around the way Obama did with his “my way or the highway” definition of compromise and bipartisanship. Perry is more likely to “go maverick” and get himself tied up in a McCain type ego rampage. Gingrich never misses an opportunity to puff himself up and blow gas out of both ends and call it a whirlwind of great importance. The rest of the pack couldn’t get decent product placement at a dying K-Mart.
Our version of the Obamessiah didn’t show up. We can still dream about Rubio or Ryan or Christie of Palin or whoever. But the fact is, you don’t have a chance to be a contender if you won’t get into the ring. And once in the ring, you have to take the punches just like all the others.
Reagan’s genius was the wisdom and panache he built and perfected during all those GE years on the rubber chicken a cold peas circuited. He perfected his message and internalized it. It was true Reagan.
Obama succeeded in selling snake oil. That is not an easy task, but the stars were aligned in his favor. We are looking for someone in the Lincoln, Washington, Coolidge mold. But, who can get there by being “assessed” by the likes of Candy Crowley, Chris Matthews, Wolf Blitzer, David Gregory, the NYT, ABC, NBC, the WaPo, etc? The playing field is rigged so that the Democrat gets “challenged” to give his best offensive rhetoric and the Republican gets pelted with stuff calculated to put him on the never ending defensive.
Therefore, the conservative candidate is constantly monitored and called out for inconsistencies, flip-flops, misstatements, etc. The liberal candidate is always so very, very brilliant that his oversized brain just has a hic-cup every now and then in a some marvelously charming way. Like Obama’s visit to 57 states.
The MSM is what it is and the candidates who have made it this far are who they are. I would be delighted beyond any heights of hope and wishes if Romney were to turn out to be a Mt. Rushmore sized president. I would also be dismayed.
The one main hope I have if any of the current GOP candidates actually get into the West Wing in 2012 they’ll go back to the Mid-20th Century practice of a strong, competent Cabinet. When I was in High School during the Ford and Carter administrations everyone know who the important cabinet-members where. We had a pop-quiz one day when I was a Junior in Social Studies of the Cabinet-level Departments and their Secretaries. Most of the class correctly knew at-least 9, and a number knew all or just missed just one.
How many can you correctly name and place?
Now all pronouncements and questions are answered by the White House Press Office. Recent administration have shifted the center-of-executive government from the Cabinet Officers to inside the West Wing and the Executive Office Building through a gaggle of “Czars” and “Special Advisers” who “Interpret” the Talking Points. Every issue and crisis now has a manager within the White House sidestepping the Cabinet…typically a green, unvetted naif who’s being rewarded for his/her campaign work or lobbying connections with little regard for their competency or working knowledge of their topic.
“We as a nation have created a process that attracts the wrong people for the wrong reasons to “public service”, and now we’re to reap the whirlwind…”
I wholeheartedly agree. These people all seem, to me, like empty suits willing to say anything “their base” will like so they can get elected. At worst, a couple of them give indications of bordline sociopathy.
This is NOT because they’re Republicans, or because they’re conservatives. The Dems are as bad, or worse. This is because we’ve turned our electoral process into a year-long episode of “American Idol” — and because our government is now far larger and more powerful than our Founders ever intended it to get.
On the other hand, maybe Willard Mittens Romney doesn’t totally suck balls.
So, at least there’s that.
Well, while there are some of us who do, not enough people pay any attention. This is why we have the president we have and why we have the field of challengers we do. It’s a lazy, uneducated public. A couple of weeks ago, someone asked me, on the subway, when is the next presidential election. When I told him it was Nov 2012, he said Bush would not get his vote. Last night, while discussing NDAA with two of my lib friends, they were both shocked at the fact that Obama signed it. Another said that it wasn’t Obama, that the senate is to blame, and that the president seems powerless these days.
Obama is so damaged by his own toxic policies that the GOP field isn’t weak at all.
Wow, I’d like to meet this Obama you speak of. He’s clearly very different from the other Obama who managed to become POTUS.
How, dear Pomposity, do you think Obama earned the sobriquet “The Won”?
How did Obama get Obamacare to his desk?
Why has Obama discarded the Cabinet in deference to in-house, unaccountable “czars”?
Why is there such Democrat politi-crat despondency with the direction and temperament of the Democrat Party?
Why is Obama falling so short of the billion dollar campaign that he and his minions are back-paddling like they see the edge of the falls?
Why has Obama assiduously refused to set goals, take a stand, lead his party?
Why do the Democrat Party stalwarts feel bitch-slapped?
How would you, Pomposity, compare Obama’s leadership ties with his political party, Congress, the movers and shakers with the leadership history with those entities of Clinton, Johnson, Kennedy, Truman, FDR? (I left Carter out because Obama has succeeded in surpassing Carter as the worst president ever.)
The fact that there is residual fawning for Obama and grudging support for The Won proves nothing. Where are Democrats going to go? Obama has the power of the presidency and no party actually prefers the other party to keeping their own party in power.
Obama will leave the presidency and manipulate his personal fortune, but he will be a Democrat pariah in the mold of LBJ and Carter. Like Mondale and Gore he will drift off and exit stage left to plot and scheme with his socialist cabal and have little, it nothing, to do with the Democrat party establishment.
Suppose Obama were to embark this week on the European adulation tour he undertook in 2009. What do you think his reception would be? Are they crying for him to return to England and bring the Queen an iPad with videos of him playing golf?
How would he play in Egypt this month or any month this year or last year?
Who is the Obama that confused you about the Obama of whom I wrote?
Through an extremely long struggle against multiple sides in which the possibility of a single-payer or mixed public/private option proposals got watered down to an individual mandate along the lines of a 1990s Republicans proposal.
Because that’s what every other President since Reagan has done.
Because Obama and the Democratic congress of 2009-2011 was (inevitably) not as strong or liberal as many had hoped in 2008. The Patriot Act remains, Guantanamo Bay is still open, the National Defense Autorization Act has just been signed, healthcare reform was weaker not just than hoped but expected with the huge Democratic majority.
Overpromise, underdeliver. Same as just about any government.
See above.
Because he’s a politician. He’s weak, and mostly interested in getting a second term since that’s the biggest factor in the ‘legacy’ of a President. Winning re-election is the only battle he’s interested in, the other political battles are ones he’s more than willing to lose.
See above. All of the above. Read it twice.
Worse than Johnson, Truman, and FDR. Probably about equal with Clinton (don’t kid yourself, liberals weren’t happy with Clinton either come 1996) and the consistently overrated Kennedy. Better than Carter though.
100% correct. Which is why the Democrats will drag themselves to voting for Obama, and you’ll drag yourself to voting for Romney. It’ll not be a particularly enthusiastic election for either party.
Probably, though his long-term reputation is impossible to know right now (back in 1952, who knew Truman would be held in such high regard today?). But for the rest, what else did you ever expect him to do? I don’t see how any other scenario was ever plausible.
Like it or not, believe it or not, we still like him more than George W. Bush and more than any of the current crop of Republicans candidates. Your opinions about the man will not change that fact.
No idea, I haven’t looked that up. Are you implying the Egyptians would have preferred keeping Hosni Mubarak though?
The man who enacted an old Republican proposal as his great healthcare reform act, who went back on his promise to close Guantanmo Bay and re-establish habeas corpus in the United States, who decided the under-regulated banking sector didn’t need tough reform after all, who failed on cap and trade thanks to Republican opposition, and who keeps negotiating with a Republican caucus who have now managed the pretzel logic of considering a payroll tax cut a unacceptably progressive proposal.
This is “my way or the highway”? Managing to scrape half-victories about 20% of the time is not the mark of a dictator. It’s not even the mark of a leader. But it is Barack Obama.
Pomposity:
Your block answer #1 about the Obamacare process is pure BS. The process was pure slime and there is no parallel for it in terms of major societal effect and cost in the history of the nation.
Your block answer #2 is clear fantasy. Name the czars that replaced the Cabinet in the Bush the elder, Clinton and Bush the younger administrations. Just making crap up does not make it so.
Your block answer #3 is pure dishwater. Obama just signed legislation that allows him to arrest citizens as terrorists with no recourse of habeas corpus protections. Take your Gitmo and Patriot Act and stuff it.
Your block answer #4 is full retreat. Obama could easily have stolen a huge part of the billion dollars from the stimulus kick backs if his party had not decided to shut down on him.
Your block answer #5 says that politicians are weak and can not lead and set goals. Like Clinton? Like Bush? Like Reagan? Like Nixon? Like Eisenhower? Like FDR? Who the heck is your model? Carter. I agree.
Your block answer #6 admits that Obama is a bitch slapper. Congrats. You finally have the the class to concede when you are caught being duplicitous.
It is not necessary to continue since you have readily admitted that my description of Obama matches your assessment.
Yes, it was slime. There were kickbacks and corruption all over the place, no one except the politicians involved and a few healthcare companies got what they wanted. Also, there being no parallel doesn’t make it wrong, new things are not wrong by default, come up with a reason.
I’m not really that familiar with American political administrations, but what exactly is the difference in accountability between cabinet positions and czars? Aren’t both appointed by the President, and what does congress do if they don’t like a cabinet member? Finally, what do you mean by ‘replacing’ the cabinet? Obama has no cabinet at all? What powers have been moved and what effect is that having?
Yes, and it’s the lowest point of the administration. Finally a complete 180 from the campaign. But tell me, with the exception of Ron Paul, which Republican is going to reverse it?
No, you take your Gitmo and Patriot Act and take some fucking responsibility. Indefinite detention and the suspension of habeas corpus started under a Republican President and Republican Congress under the bullshit pretences of being necessary under the made-up ‘War on Terrorism’. Obama has continued a terrible policy, but don’t you dare try and whitewash the origins of those policies. Republicans were instrumental in getting them started and I don’t believe for one second that they’re going to stop them now.
Agreement is not retreat, get your head out of your arse.
My point is that no politician has ever lived up to their pre-election hype, and if they ever look good it’s in retrospect. Hell, the editors of this site have proudly talked about how they opposed Bush on numerous occasions. So he wasn’t the perfect Republican who gave his base everything they could ask for? Colour me unsurprised.
Really? We started with ‘bitch slapping’ as a description of Obama’s “definition of compromise and bipartisanship”. What, exactly, does Obama bitch slapping his own party have to do with bipartisanship? Wouldn’t giving a bitch slap to your base help with compromise and bipartisanship? Isn’t that what Clinton did when he worked with the Republican congress in the 90s?
If you don’t have the stamina to respond to all of my points, then don’t. I won’t crucify you for it. But at least be honest about why you’re looking for an early out.
No, you take your Gitmo and Patriot Act and take some fucking responsibility. Indefinite detention and the suspension of habeas corpus started under a Republican President and Republican Congress under the bullshit pretences of being necessary under the made-up ‘War on Terrorism’. Obama has continued a terrible policy, but don’t you dare try and whitewash the origins of those policies.
What’s the matter, Stupidity? You your fellow “progressives”, and your screaming child Obama insisted it was illegal, unconstitutional, a war crime, and justification for impeachment, arrest, trial before an international tribunal, imprisonment, and even execution.
Now call for Obama’s impeachment, arrest, trial before an international tribunal, imprisonment, and even execution, and you might get some credibility, you disgusting little liar.
Heliotrope has you nailed dead to rights. You’re a lying, filthy little hypocrite who is desperately spinning and trying to blame the Republicans for everything because you’re too stinking pathetic to hold your messiah responsible for his actions.
NDT,
You are s-o-o-o right! Why are the Bushitlermonkey people not outraged at Obama and calling for his scalp and dragging him before the international court of justice, blah, blah, blah?
You are s-o-o-o wrong! It is not garden variety hypocrisy. It is pure, unadulterated ideologically driven bigotry.
Pomposity allows any means in the way to the end goal of state socialism and wealth redistribution. That means protecting your guys against all attack and attacking your opposition for everything and anything, including hang nails.
Obama has compromised the Department of Justice and turned it into a tool of Chicago style politics. The liberals refuse to notice. But let John Ashcroft take the post of AG and suddenly plans for gay concentration camps are being drawn up.
This is not hypocrisy. It is fifth columnist guerrilla war. They use the courts to bypass the Constitution and they ignore the Constitutional structure for the legislature and the executive and tromp on the checks and balances by ceding legislative prerogatives to the executive. After all, short of impeachment, what forces are there to reign in the rogue party bent on fundamentally transforming America into a socialist state where executive regulation trumps the legislative branch and judges regularly “amend” the Constitution by discovery of hidden niches of moral relativity in the penumbra emanating from a few selected words, but not others?
Radical Islam is not hypocrisy. Hypocrisy is/was not the problem with Hitler, Stalin, Mao, Pol Pot, Mussolini, Salazar, Castro, Chavez, Franco, the Nobel Prize committee, or the Democrat Party. The problem is bigotry infused with ideological fervor.
The state and statism must rule over every aspect of the lives of the people in the name of social justice, equality, fairness, organized and controlled liberty, blah, blah, blah. All hail the guardian social welfare state. Man must be organized, systematized, regulated, and led by the state for the benefit of each and the good of all. Amen.
The state and statism must rule over every aspect of the lives of the people in the name of social justice, equality, fairness, organized and controlled liberty, blah, blah, blah. All hail the guardian social welfare state. Man must be organized, systematized, regulated, and led by the state for the benefit of each and the good of all. Amen.
Comment by Heliotrope — January 4, 2012 @ 9:00 am – January 4, 2012
Actually, HT, they don’t even believe that.
Pomposity does not WANT the state to rule over any aspect of its life. It wants the state to finance every aspect of its life and let it do whatever it wants.
That requires the state ruling over every aspect of everyone ELSE’s life.
Pomposity’s actions here are an excellent example. It screams and demands “regulation”, and then commits blatant copyright fraud. It insists on tolerance of others’ beliefs, but then demands that religious beliefs be banned.
It is an adult baby in every respect of the word, demanding every privilege of an adult and insisting that any responsibility is completely beyond it.
People are starting to see this. They notice that lying bigots like Pomposity screamed for Bush to be executed for doing what they babble and praise Obama doing.
The only way to deal with Pomposity and its ilk like Obama is to recognize the fact that these people are beyond the rule of law, the standard of principle, and the restraint of morality. Therefore, none of these things need to be considered in dealing with them.
Alas, NDT, I fear you are correct.
Amorality used to be rare and beyond the realm of psychosis; rarely was it found outside of confirmed psychotics.
But the occupy crowd showed us just how far we have descended into the craw of victim narcissism. I guess it is time to start servicing the wants and needs of every unique individual whose “potential” is being stifled by being expected to achieve.
When society houses, warms, clothes, feeds and medically cares for a person, but does not esteem him and provide a substantial credit card for accoutrements, how is that person supposed to feel? Wanted? Admired? Valued? Listened to? Sought out? Worshipped? Oh, the poor, poor victim! I weep.