During the election season of 2010, there was a schism in the
Republican Party between populist Tea Partiers and more
politically-sensitive establishmentarians. Today those two factions
have been reshuffled into the Romney voters and the
Anyone-But-Romney voters.
The media is still gawking at the volatile Iowa caucuses
where the two camps did battle for the first time, resulting in a
hair-breadth victory for Romney over the insurgent Rick Santorum.
But in New Hampshire, it’s a much steadier affair. Polls have
consistently crowned Romney the frontrunner, up to and including a
recent 7 News/Suffolk University survey that found 41 percent
support for the former Massachusetts governor. Ron Paul, in second
place, is barely visible in the rear view mirror with 18
percent.
New Hampshire is the Mitt Romney Show. This doesn’t mean
that Romney will win the nomination. The quirky, occasionally
eccentric alloy of libertarian and moderate politics that is the
Granite State Republican primary has produced presidential
candidates and has-runs. But it will give him significant velocity
going into other states.
But what happens if Romney gets the nomination? That
question has been stubbornly elusive in media coverage, which has
instead focused on the lothario innuendoes surrounding Herman Cain
and Newt Gingrich’s grandiosity. Meanwhile Romney slips by
relatively unscathed, the beneficiary of the perfunctory
conventional wisdom of political strategists. Well, he looks
good on television and doesn’t say outlandish things, so he must be
the best candidate. He’s the flag-carrier for hardheaded
realists who will compromise generously for a win over President
Obama.
But he’s also a patrician flip-flopper from Massachusetts.
Sound familiar?
This is the problem with Romney: a strong comparison can
be made between him and 2004 historical footnote John Kerry, and
the similarities aren’t just superficial. Romney seems to be
haunted by Kerry’s ghost, perhaps as it sips a fine Sauvignon
Blanc.
When Kerry won the Democratic nomination in 2004, the
historical moment was rooted in the tumult of the Middle East and
in smoldering memories of 9/11. But Kerry’s political genealogy
traced back to the 1960s counterculture, found in war medals
chucked over the White House fence and accusations of monstrous
crimes against his fellow soldiers in faux committee rooms. The
American people wanted a rock-ribbed leader who would prosecute the
war and keep them safe while they slept. Kerry didn’t fit the
part.
Kerry’s political life wasn’t any more helpful. He’d
somehow made the transition from counterculturalist to Beacon Hill
bon vivant, sipping French wines and parking his yacht at
the Rhode Island marina, an almost-cartoonish portrait of a New
England senator. But deep in his past, Democratic strategists spied
a glimmer of hope. Kerry had spent three months serving in Vietnam
and was decorated afterwards. It wasn’t much, but in the greasy
hands of the right political strategist, it could work.
Thus Kerry was transformed into a barrel-chested war hero;
a steadied military hand in a time of uncertain war. This charade
was at its manufactured best when he stepped out at the Democratic
convention and declared, “I’m John Kerry, and I’m reporting for
duty.” It hit an absurd nadir when the old war horse took up arms
again and decided to go goose hunting, mugging for the camera in a
camo hat. Inconvenient details, like the accusations of war crimes
he leveled at his fellow soldiers or his fastidious record of
military pruning in Congress, were papered over.
Today’s historical moment is one shaped by recession and
belt-tightening. It’s also shot through with outrage. The American
people are animatedly angry at their political and corporate
elites. Romney is both a political and corporate elite, and it’s
difficult to imagine him animated about anything, much less angry.
All the open shirt collars and appearances on Letterman can’t erase
those facts. They also can’t blot that damning picture from Bain
Capital, where Romney grins as dollar bills flutter
downwards.
But erase he must try. If Romney wants to win the general
election, he’ll have to don the coat of a populist fighter ready to
raise hell for the coupon clippers struggling to pay the mortgage.
It is, to say the least, difficult to imagine — perhaps even more
difficult than picturing Kerry as a GI Joe.
No demographic of Americans is reserved greater rage these
days than the political class, a fact borne out by Congress’s 11
percent approval rating, according to Gallup. This may present the
most daunting challenge of all for Romney: he’s a firmly entrenched
politico. Romney’s been dipping his toe in the pool of presidential
politics since at least 2005. He spent much of the Romney
Administration — governor of Massachusetts, in this case —
running for president. The Boston Globe calculated that
Romney spent 212 days absent from Massachusetts in 2006, visiting
35 states to dig the foundation for a presidential bid. As one Bay
State Republican operative told me in 2008, “It seemed he had
Potomac fever from the time he got in, and everything was done to
position himself to run for president.”
Republicans rose to national power last year on the wings
of the Tea Party, which put its trust in citizen-politicians and
rallied voters with cries of “Throw them all out!” It’s difficult
to imagine an electorate of this composition rallying behind a man
who’s spent the last six years running for president.
This is just one of the many contradictions and
unfortunate facts that Romney’s political handlers will have to
blur. Right now the polls pick Romney as being the most electable
Republican candidate. This alone may ultimately score him the
nomination, as Republicans fall into ranks and decide he’s their
worst candidate except for all the rest. But will he still be able
to win if the Obama campaign opens the historical vault and starts
screaming about his Bain capitalist and Massachusetts runaway
roots? If they do, his campaign handlers may find themselves in the
awkward position of having to craft an alternative personality for
their man, à la John Kerry in 2004. And as Kerry’s flameout that
year would prove, such masquerades can be tough to
stage.
