In order to volley some tennis balls on Tuesday night, I missed
the verbal volleys at the GOP presidential debate at Dartmouth. I’m
glad I did. As it turns out, one can learn a lot by being forced to
read a
transcript rather than watching a debate live. The main thing I
learned is that Mitt Romney is significantly less substantive, in
terms of his words, than he appears to be when you watch him
live.
Much of a debate’s effect on a viewer is determined by
body language, facial expressions, and tone of voice. It’s quite
possible, for instance, that the superbly substantive Rick Santorum
hasn’t gained significant polling momentum despite an unbroken
series of generally acclaimed debate performances because his
youthfulness of both visage and body language makes it hard for him
to project the mien of a chief executive. If so, it’s a shame. With
the exception of the equally well-schooled Newt Gingrich, nobody in
these debates knows the substance of more issues more deeply, or
articulates that substance more understandably, than Santorum does.
(Santorum also has a deeper list of actual accomplishment in
government than most of the others, but that’s another subject.) If
the debate moderators would stop giving him short shrift in terms
of the numbers of opportunities to talk (and if he stops
complaining in public about that unfairness, which doesn’t help him
project authority), maybe he’ll still catch on.
Even fifty years after a pale Dick Nixon proved the
importance of visuals and tonality, though, it’s still hard to
understand just how big a difference those intangibles make until
you completely take them away. That’s what reading a transcript,
rather than watching or listening, allowed this observer to
do.
Candidate by candidate alphabetically, then, here’s how I
thought they did just from reading their words on a
page.
Michelle Bachmann: Readers
may have noticed that for months I have been largely indifferent to
Bachmann, neither criticizing nor praising her performances very
much. But, as it turns out, when she knows a
topic, she really knows it. Her answer on the causes of
the financial meltdown was as good, and understandable, an
exposition of an issue as compelling as any we’ve seen during the
series of debates (with the exception of Herman Cain’s explanation
a few weeks back about exactly why Obamacare would have made it
more difficult to recover from cancer): “It was the federal
government that pushed the subprime loans. It was the federal
government that pushed the Community Reinvestment Act. It was
Congressman Barney Frank and also Senator Chris Dodd that continued
to push government-directed housing goals. They pushed the banks to
meet these rules. And if banks failed to meet those rules, then the
federal government said we won’t let you merge, we won’t let you
grow. There’s a real problem, and it began with the federal
government, and it began with Freddie and Fannie. If you look at
these secondary mortgage companies which the federal government is
essentially backing 100 percent, they put American mortgages in a
very difficult place….”
When Bachmann isn’t as well versed on an issue, it
really shows, much to her detriment. But what she does
know, she explains with great skill.
Herman Cain: For the past
two days I’ve read rave reviews about how well he parried most of
the attacks on 9-9-9. In print, he did far less well. He misstated
the “scoring”
for his own plan, wrongly calling it dynamic; he falsely repeated
several times that his advisor Rich Lowrie is an economist; he
repeatedly said he would surround himself with good people but
couldn’t name them; he cited Alan “Bubble” Greenspan as a great
Federal Reserve chief; he misrepresented the vociferousness of his
past statements belittling the idea of auditing the Fed; and of the
three arguments he provided for why 9-9-9 wouldn’t be subject to
creeping higher rates, two of them were seriously
dubious.
In every other debate, watching on TV, I’ve given Cain
among the highest grades. On paper on Tuesday, he merited no better
than a C-minus. But I’d enjoy him, more than anybody else on that
stage, as my dinner guest, and I’d trust him in a heartbeat with
investing my personal finances.
Newt Gingrich: He comes
across as substantive when watching, substantive on paper. The man
knows his stuff, and once upon a time he did a great job leading
congressional Republicans out of the wilderness and, until he
imploded, led them to serious legislative accomplishments. It’s too
bad that his whole career has proved him far less temperamentally
steady in actual conduct than he has been throughout the summer and
fall on stage. Right now he’s play-acting as avuncular; in
practice, for decades, he’s been more like a volatile mob boss
minus the criminality (fortunately) and (unfortunately) minus the
insistence on covering the backs of his own men. (Ask Sen. Tom
Coburn of Oklahoma, among many others.)
Jon Huntsman: On many
things, he really is out of step with the Republican primary
electorate. Viewed on TV, he is (to me at least) extraordinarily
annoying, like a know-it-all with a petty streak. On paper, though,
his advocacy of free markets/free trade comes across very well.
Even if I were a trade warrior (which I’m decidedly not), I would
respect how he explained his positions.
Ron Paul: In the words of an
old traditional jazz tune, “Oh, Didn’t He
Ramble?” When one watches Dr. Paul, there’s an oddly compelling
nature about his high-pitched, semi-staccato delivery. On paper,
there are times you want to tell him to just stop talking, because
he digresses and meanders. To be fair, he’s very good at defending
the concept of freedom. But when he said that the way to accomplish
things is “by building coalitions,” one wonders if he’s living in
an alternate universe, considering that he’s known in Congress as
one of the two or three members out of all 435 who is least likely
to work with others on anything, anywhere, anytime.
Rick Perry: Poor guy, now
it’s actually becoming hard to remember that he has been a mostly
good governor of Texas. On paper his answers on Tuesday night were
just as excruciatingly inept as the reviews have all said they
looked live. When he tries to turn almost every single answer,
regardless of the original topic, into a disquisition on oil, he
gives the impression of a candidate running on fumes.
Mitt Romney: Does anybody
remember the comic strip called “Bob
Forehead”? He lives in the form of Mitt Romney. (Quoting the
NYT: As Forehead finds out from his personal
charismatician, ‘“When the going gets tough, the tough learn to
fake it.”) When Dustin Hoffman’s character in The Graduate
was given career advice to go into “plastics,” Hoffman (if he had
taken the advice) would have been creating a Romney. How much
poll-tested blather can one man get away with saying, yet still
sound like he’s a man of substance? Elect him because he’s a
“leader”! (And then repeat “leader” several more times.) Elect him
because he’s for the “middle class”! (And then repeat “middle
class” umpteen more times.) “Bring people together.” “Both sides of
the aisle.” Again, “Listen to a leader who has the experience of
leading.”
Say that “if you think the entire financial system is
going to collapse, you take action to keep that from happening” —
but, Lord forbid, don’t let them catch you actually saying
what action(s) you would take. But assure people that
whatever you do, you would do so “very carefully.” “Go after”
China, but don’t have a trade war. Pander to the “middle class” by
setting a tax-cut threshold that excludes people making over
$200,000 (credit to Gingrich for nailing Romney on that). Adopt the
language of the Left, to the effect that money belongs to the
government first: “If I’m going to use precious dollars to reduce
taxes…”
Uh, Governor, those dollars aren’t yours or the
government’s to “use,” but rather only either to confiscate or not
confiscate.
Okay, let me interrupt this criticism with a note that
Romney gave good answers on how regulations harm community banks
and on why “permanent changes to the tax code” are preferable to
temporary and targeted tax breaks. But aside from those, he was
nothing but platitudes — wrapped, I’m sure, in his trademark
coiffed hair, relaxed posture, and pleasant tones, and topped off
at the end of each answer with an oh-so-earnest smile.
Lord, please save us from candidates who want to be
president to either equal or out-do their presidential or
near-presidential or considered-for presidential or
national-military-leader fathers. Romney the father complained
about being brainwashed; now Republicans are on the verge of being
brainwashed by the son.
Rick Santorum: First, the
criticism: No matter how justified it is for a candidate to resent,
in debate after debate, being given only about one-third or
one-fourth as many opportunities to speak as the front-running
Forehead gets, don’t, repeat don’t, complain
about the unfairness of it all. Whines don’t age well.
Other than that, Santorum again was first-rate. He’s right
that his proposal for zero corporate income taxes on manufacturers
would be an economic winner and, unlike 9-9-9, be likely
to be passed by Congress. He’s right that states without any sales
taxes would howl at a national sales tax (and, he might add, states
already with a sales tax over, say, 5 percent, would balk at being
the collection agents for double-digit levies). He’s right to go
after specifically those regulations that “cost” more than $100
million. He’s right to say that Romney’s “waiver” approach to
Obamacare would end up with red states subsidizing California and
New York. He was right, unlike four of the others, to have opposed
TARP. And he was both right, and eloquent, in insisting that “the
breakdown of the American family” is not just a moral issue but an
economic one, and that poverty is exacerbated by, and ever
concurrent with, broken families. As the lead Senate sponsor of
welfare reform in 1996, Santorum (along with Gingrich and several
other House leaders) is as responsible as anybody for helping
lessen the incidence of poverty, in part specifically through
policies aimed at keeping families together.
*****
Of course, in a competitive election, “presentation” does
matter very significantly, and if Republicans want to rid the
country of this disastrous president Obama, they have every right
to want a candidate who “projects” himself well enough to win. The
question is, why can’t they get somebody who also has good
substance to project?
