It ordinarily would be way too early to be obsessing as much
about the presidential field as many of us have been doing, but the
urgency is based on reasonable concerns.
If Barack Obama gets four more years to spend us into
oblivion, issue authoritarian executive orders, seed the
bureaucracy with radical leftists who make administrative rulings
inimical to the American tradition, use the Justice Department to
abuse the law and bully his opponents, populate the federal courts
with anti-constitutional power-trippers and trans-nationalists,
undermine the military, and betray American alliances and
interests, it is a serious question whether this nation as we know
it can survive. Conservatives and Republicans therefore must,
absolutely must, get their selection right. They must find
a candidate of decent enough principles and leadership ability to
govern in daunting times, and of sufficient — meaning superb —
political skills to beat Obama, with his billion-dollar campaign
and his worshippers in the establishment media, in the general
election. This is a tall order, and it is one there is good reason
to doubt will be filled by those currently expected to enter the
race.
Hence the obsession.
It must be said upfront that I have become rather partial
to Sen. Rick Santorum, whose record in 16 years in office was among
the best in all of Congress, and whose tremendous political skills,
especially as an underdog, are remarkably under-rated by too many
political pros. Plus, he is personable, approachable, and seemingly
without pretense, a man of sincerity and palpable
decency.
Still, one worries, in a year where finding a winner is of
especially paramount importance, if Santorum can convince
Republican voters that he really is a winner despite his landslide
loss for re-election in Pennsylvania in 2006. No matter how
convincingly and reasonably he
answers these concerns for those who will listen, there is some
doubt whether he can convince enough people to listen in the first
place. If he can, he could be the sleeper candidate to watch — but
if not, many conservatives still are without a clear
choice.
Thus the disappointment that so many other people who
ought to be running are staying out of the race, or at least making
no moves at all to get in it. Among that number of apparent
non-entrants who could, in their own unique ways, fill the last
void in the race are Mike Pence of Indiana, Frank Keating of
Oklahoma, Jon Kyl of Arizona, and Bob Riley of Alabama. (Of those
four, only Riley has even left the door slightly ajar.) Another
large number of rising stars could really make a good case in 2016,
but it’s too early for them in 2012. They include Pence (again),
Bobby Jindal of Louisiana, Chris Christie of New Jersey, Marco
Rubio of Florida, both John Kasich and Rob Portman of Ohio, both
Scott Walker and Paul Ryan (and maybe even Ron Johnson) of
Wisconsin, both Bob McDonnell and Ken Cuccinelli of Virginia, Jim
DeMint of South Carolina, and of course a number of others who
could emerge in the next five years.
Barring a surprise, then, what conservatives see, for both
bad and
good, is what we will need to work with. The task will be for
one of the candidates to develop a compelling, positive narrative,
with compelling, positive issue proposals, that can cut through the
media fog and Obama’s money, and overcome the Justice
Department-encouraged election shenanigans, so that he (or she) can
galvanize a winning electoral surge.
The narrative is important. It shouldn’t be the
candidate’s own narrative, but the candidate’s vision for (and
version of) the nation’s narrative. We don’t need to hear how Tim
Pawlenty was the first one in his family to go to college and
therefore understands people who shop at Sam’s Club, and we don’t
need to hear what Newt Gingrich learned from working on Nelson
Rockefeller’s behalf in New Orleans in 1968. (Then again, he
probably doesn’t want us to know he worked for Rockefeller.) What
we need to know is how we as the American people are going to
overcome daunting indebtedness and a hostile world to achieve the
bright tomorrows Ronald Reagan said he always saw for us. We need
the story to be both practical and romantic at the same time — to
make sense and also to make magic. The elder Bush belittled it as
“the vision thing,” but that’s exactly what is needed: a sense that
a candidate sees both where he wants us to go and how (with a
certain specificity) we will get there.
As for the issue proposals, I’ve got ‘em right here if any
campaign wants to call me for them. Seriously. There are proposals
available to solve not all but maybe half of the problems of the
American political world, in a way a majority of the public will
buy into. Good policy and good messaging can meet, creating really
good politics and eventually good governance. The trick is to fit
the proposals into the narrative, as part and parcel of the story;
without the narrative, which must spring from a candidate’s
individual worldview, the proposals may not catch fire. (Hence my
reticence to outline the proposals here and now, although past
writings give a hint of earlier versions of them.)
Storytelling is an essential part of good politics —
non-fiction storytelling, that is. Yet after Reagan, it has become
a lost art at the presidential campaign level. Bill Clinton had a
smallish sense of it on his better days, but his real genius lay in
faking empathy. Nobody else on the national scene has had even a
smidgen of a bard’s gift, and fewer still have the sincerity,
knowledge and experience to weave real substance into their
songs.
Most great leaders develop this ability. Lincoln had it.
Churchill had it. Reagan had it. Jack Kemp had some of it, although
he tended to overdo it like an over-eager thespian. Gingrich can do
it well when he maintains enough discipline to keep the story from
being all about himself. Pence has that ability in spades, but he’s
not running. The need is desperate for somebody else to develop
it.
If nobody does, then Barack Obama, with all the advantages
of incumbency, money and media, will indeed be re-elected. That
occurrence would turn the American story into a tragedy — a
tragedy worth obsessing about how to stop.
