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Eminentoes
Don’t Overthink It
What counts more in politics, brains or hair?
Several of my conservative friends were shocked last year by my assertion that Mitt Romney was the best choice for the Republican presidential nomination. My argument, however, had the virtue of simplicity: Romney is a tall, handsome, multimillionaire with a glorious mane of dark hair.
Considering that his leading rivals for the nomination at that time — John McCain, Rudy Giuliani and Fred Thompson — were all in various stages of advanced baldness, the former Massachusetts governor’s thick hair constituted his chief qualification. Also, his chiseled jaw and his Hollywood-perfect smile. Fred might be a movie star, but Mitt looked like a movie star.
“But … Mitt’s a flip-flopper!” howled my friends.
“Yes, a very telegenic flip-flopper,” I replied. “Give me a good-looking flip-flopper over a bald old maverick any day of the week.”
This is not an endorsement of unprincipled flip-flopping, just an argument for assessing candidates the way independent “swing” voters assess candidates.
Let’s face it: Nominating a superficially attractive, rhetorically vague and ideological nebulous candidate didn’t hurt the Democrats this year, did it?
Swing voters are notoriously superficial. They believe they can judge a man’s fitness for office by watching him talk on TV. This fact frustrates politicians who don’t look good talking on TV, but it’s true.
The president is a television character, and the voters are casting agents. The American people went to the polls on Nov. 4 and cast Will Smith/Lawrence Fishburne in the role. Who can blame them, since the Republican Party sent Don Rickles/Tim Conway to the audition?
Trivia time: What was John McCain’s best demographic? White voters 65 and older, who went 58 percent for their fellow AARP member. Whatever else he did wrong, he didn’t lose the geezer vote. Losing Florida by 200,000 votes was bad, but just imagine how much worse it would have been had it not been for McCain’s advantage among the elderly.
Exit-poll data is insufficiently detailed to allow a completely
superficial analysis of the electorate, but the fact that old
candidates do best with old voters and black candidates do best
with black voters (95 percent went for Obama) suggests that the
GOP scored well this year among the short, the bald and the
grumpy.
EXCUSE MY JOCULARITY about all this, but I’m in a silly mood, having just read David Brooks’s declaration in the New York Times that John McCain’s defeat has inaugurated a “fight over the future of conservatism” between Traditionalists and Reformers.
Our own R. Emmett Tyrrell was quoted as an emblematic Traditionalist, while several fashionable young authors were classified as Reformers by Brooks, who insists this Republican defeat can be blamed on conservatives who “continue to insult the sensibilities of the educated class and the entire East and West Coasts.”
So if I’m in a mood for mockery, don’t blame me, blame Their Mister Brooks. And don’t blame him, really, since he’s merely trying to justify his salary.
The self-interest of intellectuals demands that they portray every election as fraught with existential significance, an honest-to-goodness Hegelian shift in the zeitgeist. Divining the zeitgeist and integrating the latest paradigm shift into our weltanschauung is the stock-in-trade of intellectuals, and if all that elevated cogitation could produce an extra 207,000 Republican votes in Ohio, maybe I would give a damn. But it can’t and I don’t.
The economy sucks, the war in Iraq is costing us about $5 billion
a week, the deficit’s out of control, and every time you turn on
the TV, another giant corporation is either declaring bankruptcy
or getting a bailout from the taxpayers. You don’t need an
intellectual to tell you why this was a tough year to be a
Republican, but that’s not going to stop the pointy-heads from
explaining What It Really Means.
About the Author
Robert Stacy McCain is co-author (with Lynn Vincent) of Donkey Cons: Sex, Crime, and Corruption in the Democratic Party (Nelson Current). He blogs at The Other McCain.
Letter to the Editor View all comments (12) | Leave a comment
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ame| 11.12.08 @ 8:12AM
Well said - and so true - we are a pathetic nation of "image only matters" - and Mitt Romney fit the image, but, more importantly, Romney fit the truth of fine character, selfless commitment to his country, intellectual prowess, command of economics, a moral and ethical center, and a true sense of devotion to his country. Romney was my pick and all the horrific criticism of his Mormon religion was disgusting. Romney would make an outstanding president: he has the experience and the character and the unwavering moral center. The way Romney was treated by the likes of "Mr. Fly-Boy I'm really a clost democrat" McCain and Huckabee was odious, nauseating, obnoxious and spoke to the lack of character of McCain and Huckabee for all his Biblical references. Instead of possibly electing Romney, a man f whom the nation could be supremely proud, Americans elected Obama: a man who has done NOTHING for the USA except take from her - a hard-core socialist, a Chicago thug who will use any means to any ends to get what he wants, a dissembling equivocator who makes Clinton look like BoPeep.
The Republican Party must return to its roots and Romney's ideology contained many of them - The only thing I want Republicans to stop is their hateful denial of the rights of gay people -
I am sick at heart that a megalomaniac left-wing enforcer like Obama was elected - he does not for one minute make me proud. I don't care what color my president is, but I care TOTALLY and IMMENSELY what his or her character is -
Mitt Romney was the president America lost because false egos and insipid, spineless, gutless
Republicans would not stand up - that's why we lost the election and why we failed to govern when we had the opportunity.
People like Brooks and Noonan continue to be shoved in our faces, but people of character such as Mitt Romney are pushed aside. That is America's great loss. Now we have to suffer through the Democrat goons in D.C. at every level when we could have been celebrating the return of decency and truth under Romney.
My heart is so torn by what I believe will be Obama and Democrat policies that are anathema for everything the USA stand for.
John| 11.12.08 @ 10:29AM
"Don't Overthink It": The title for this article says it all, I think. I assume this is written with tongue-in-cheek humor, although parts might have some truth. I do not think that the election (primary or general) was lost on the basis of hair. The true reason was the inability of the McCain campaign (and of McCain himself) to articulate a conservative message. Historically, well-articulated conservatism always trumps celebrity, "hope and change" and press-in-the-box. I sincerely "hope" for a "change" in 2012. If the conservative package has a nice bow on it (ie good hair), then so be it (Palin/Jindal???). I do have to say that I share in your jocularity. After all, if you can't laugh at tragedy.....
Red Neck| 11.12.08 @ 10:39AM
If someone wants flaming "gay" marriage to be boosted by a Republican, I suppose they could go to Arnold Schwarzenegger. True, he wasn't born in the USA, but as Obama has shown that little bit of Constitutional trivia doesn't matter.
mnotaro| 11.12.08 @ 11:46AM
Ame--don't forget Gay couples already have all the same rights as straight couples. We are not anti-gay rights. We would like the word marriage to be saved for a man and woman, just as God designed and intended. Prop 8 had NOTHING to do with gay couple rights or taking those rights away. And I'm not sure you are going to find too many Republicans Pro Gay marriage. That's not really a belief that comes from conservatives, usually those new age beliefs come from left wing liberal illuminati.
Josh F| 11.12.08 @ 1:18PM
Mitt Romney may be more telegenic than John McCain, but he also has the tendency to come across like a scripted android. That said, I don't see how someone with a bona fide track record of executive experience and a proven resume of actually turning businesses around would've hurt the GOPs chances in this most handicapped of elections. I couldn't help but think John McCain -- notwithstanding his apparent disdain for Mitt Romney -- had at least a mild case of buyer's remorse in picking Palin over Romney when the economy came crashing down mid-campaign.
J David| 11.12.08 @ 3:00PM
Beautiful parody of what the so-called "intellectuals" deep thinking really amounts to, Mr McCain, which is ultimately stupider than what the ignorant "independents' and moderates'" votes are based on, like looks and hair. Very tasty writing!
Villa | 11.12.08 @ 6:47PM
Don't overthink Brooks:
He is only an opportunist..........
Alan Brooks| 11.12.08 @ 11:56PM
of COURSE the piece was tongue in cheek; no one with more than a couple inches of pate would think hair makes a difference. But an overall physical appearance matters and in 1980 we elected a good looking man over the sad sack from Plains Georgia.
We can discount David Brooks as he doesn't know rednecks he speaks of very well-- when do you think he spoke in-depth to one last?
iamse7en| 11.13.08 @ 4:42AM
It's quite simple, actually:
ROMNEY/JINDAL '12
megapotamus| 11.13.08 @ 1:43PM
Any Republican candidate at whatever straits in his campaign if he had a) refused to endorse the bailout and b) laid it at Barry's feet would have won easily. There is no way McCain would do that, this bailout crap is just the sort of thing he is famous for. Sadly Romney, while an accomplished business man is also the sort of institutional character that would never consider bucking the collective will of Bush/Paulson and nearly every other high level political figure. It seems only Ron Paul has such a track record. The Mad Doctor is not so mad. This should not have been a close call. Everything that has happened in the markets and government since the bailout is fully predicted by theories of moral hazard and incentivization. Yet even now it seems NO ONE has learned these simple lessons. So the lessons will continue.
Michael L. Hauschild| 11.16.08 @ 8:46AM
The Noble Experiment II (prohibition by platform) has just ended with the most liberal politician possible in the WH backed by a Congress of similar leaning. Sadly, this new majority actually thinks they have some sort of “liberal” mandate. Not so, this election was a fluke for two reasons.
First, the positive, a black turnout propelled Obama into the presidency. However, what that constituency will soon come to realize is that he is primarily a democrat and the Oval Office will pledge its allegiance to the Unions and big government. By the time the next election cycle rolls around brother Obama will be back with his hand out to those still riding in the back of the bus, however, his continence will be that of a half white cousin to Jimmy Carter.
On the negative side, the Republican downturn was created on two levels, those who were so disgusted with their candidates that they stayed home and enhanced by many who actually voted. Shift voters made the emphatic statement that they did not want any meddling in their lives. Women told the Republicans to stay out of their womb; gays and libertarian straights told the Republicans to stay out of citizen’s bedrooms; and most importantly the scant electorate remaining punished the Republican elite for removing the term “illegal” from their vocabulary.
It seems that prohibition is a two way street. What the Republican platform needs is not Nobility, but repeal