I’m hoping Republicans will soon wake up, stop fighting among
themselves, and realize that Mitt Romney has the best chance of
becoming the nation’s next Ronald Reagan.
Everybody remembers Reagan for his single-mindedness in
cutting federal spending and taking the government out of the
central position in everyone’s life. What they forget is that it
was Reagan’s temperament that made all
this possible.
Think back to Reagan’s famous rejoinder to Jimmy Carter in
their first and only debate, “There you go again!” What was the
significance of that? Carter had just finish a long, beady-eyed
recitation about national health insurance, which, he said,
promised “not inpatient care but outpatient care” with “an emphasis
on hospital cost containment,” and how Candidate Reagan, of course,
was opposed to all this because he had opposed Medicare in 1964.
Reagan stood shaking his head and laughing the whole time and when
it finally came his turn, he sighed, “There you
go again.”
The audience laughed and why not? Carter’s expressionless,
robot-like recitation typified his whole presidency. He was
obsessed with details. Reagan’s genial response was that when he
opposed Medicare in 1964 it was because he favored another piece of
congressional legislation that relied less on government. But in a
single moment, Reagan had also revealed Carter as a narrow-minded
pedant while he was an affable, good-natured leader capable of
keeping things in perspective. Voters liked what they saw and that
ended Carter’s Presidency.
Mitt Romney has a very similar temperament. In fact he had
a “There-you-go-again” moment in the last debate when Rick Santorum
launched into his inevitable fulmination about how Romney will
never be able to debate President Obama on Obamacare because of
Romneycare. Romney gave his usual rejoinder but then added, “It’s
nothing to get angry about.” That’s the kind of perspective a
President needs.
Santorum, you must admit, is a pretty disagreeable
individual. He spends the opening portion of every debate
congratulating himself on having been at the center of everything
good that’s happened in Washington for the last twenty years. Then
halfway through he will turn on whoever happens to be the
frontrunner and launch an eye-gouging attack, talking out of the
side of his mouth and casting sidelong glances all the while to see
how far he can bait his chosen target. There is an air of
bitterness and grievance about Santorum that is hard to
take.
President Obama has a similar air of grievance and issue
obsession that will make him equally vulnerable in debate. If
there’s one candidate who can throw this into relief over the
course of a campaign the way Reagan did with Carter, it’s Romney.
Let’s face it, he’s an attractive guy. A natural leader, he’s been
very successful and has a lovely and courageous (and only) wife,
plus a big photogenic family. All this is bound to start growing on
people. The New York Times ran some pictures of him with
his wife and young family back at Harvard Business School and there
was a definite Kennedyesque feel about them. People are going to
start responding to him on a personal basis.
Now of course there’s the Mormon thing and you can count
on the Democrats to flail away at that. An early Politico
report said Obama planned to characterize Romney as
“weird,” with Mormonism as the implicit centerpiece. I doubt this
is going to work. Americans are willing to try new things. That’s
how we got Obama in the first place. Romney will be intriguing
precisely because he represents another frontier — the first
non-Protestant the Republicans have ever nominated for
President.
The Mormons were indeed a violent and divisive sect in the
19th century but since giving up polygamy in 1890 they have become
just another fundamentalist group looking for a place in American
history. It’s the Mormon Tabernacle Choir, remember, that gave us
that stirring arrangement of “The Battle Hymn of the Republic” (the
one we sang in high school). Mormons now lead exemplary moral,
often highly prosperous lives. They are very big in the Boy Scouts.
In my old neighborhood in Brooklyn, Mormon missionaries had started
several Boy Scout troops in African-American neighborhoods and even
adopted one young man after his original family fell
apart.
Romney definitely has that straight-arrow feeling about
him, but even that may work as people realize it is still possible
to lead moral lives in America. His most formative experience,
however, has been as a CEO, where he apparently learned his
executive style. Except for a few square-offs with Rick Perry,
Romney’s demeanor during the debates has been collegial and
inclusive. That’s why he shows that deer-in-the-headlights look
when the others first started attacking him. “Why are you going
after me?” he seems to say. “Aren’t we supposed to be going after
President Obama?” He’s learned to fight back, which is good, but
there is still a definite modesty about him. Watch him when he’s
giving a speech and the crowd starts chanting “Mitt! Mitt! Mitt!”
He falls back into an ingenuous smile and seems to say, “Is this
really happening? Do they like me this much? “
All the other Republican candidates are the exact
opposite. Santorum has a very narrow mind. He’d make a terrible
leader, locking into doctrinaire stands and picking fights. He’s a
Senator, not a President.
Ron Paul is the same only at a different order of
magnitude. Paul enjoys being outside the tent pissing in, if you
don’t mind the expression. I doubt he could find twelve people in
the whole country with whom he could agree enough to form a
cabinet. Like so many libertarians, he takes pride in how much he
can offend people. As President, he’s sit in the Oval Office
disagreeing with everyone in Washington, as he’s done for the past
30 years.
Newt is the same thing over again — the perpetual insider
posing as a victim of the Washington elites. He would launch his
administration with all the grandeur of Napoleon invading Russia
but overlook some critical detail that would leave him in full
retreat by the following winter. Probably he would decide that
history dictates we put a colony on the moon and then spend the
rest of his administration arguing about it with
Congress.
Now I know what people are going to say: “But that’s
exactly what we want. Romney would just go down and get along with
everyone in Washington and nothing would change. We need someone
who’s going to shake things up from top to bottom.” But that’s not
how Reagan did it. He didn’t pick fights. He did a few photo-ops
with Tip O’Neill, the only Democrat with any authority. Reagan won
with an agenda and a first-class temperament. I have no doubt
Romney can do the same.Critics will argue Romney
doesn’t have
Reagan’s ideological commitment, but
experience in the private sector brings you to the same place.
Anyone who can do simple math knows this country is headed off a
cliff and anyone who’s tried to operate a
business knows government regulation is strangling free enterprise.
Mitt has the same Reaganesque ambitions as the other candidates.
What he doesn’t share is their sense of
bitterness and exclusion.
Much of this comes, no doubt, from his fortunate
background. He did go to Cranbrook, the premier prep school of the
Detroit area and started at Stanford. But there’s a great deal of
Midwestern modesty in him as well, reminiscent of Dwight
Eisenhower. Historians have pointed out that all the generals under
Eisenhower in the European theater harbored huge egos. There was
the imperial Lord Mountbatten, the flamboyant General Patton and
the GI’s favorite, Omar Bradley. Had Eisenhower been another
swashbuckler, the whole staff might have disintegrated into a
boiling cauldron of competition. But as a modest Midwestern farm
boy, he was able to hold the whole thing together. He didn’t make a
bad President, either.
Romney has the same qualities. Whereas Newt would make a
great General Douglas MacArthur, ready to challenge everyone else’s
authority, Romney obviously prefers to organize without putting
himself out front. He lets others have their say. His one great
weakness is that he doesn’t yet seem to have the common touch. He
still looks uncomfortable in crowds and can’t seem to relate to
people who don’t share his background. Maybe the trip from
Cranbrook to Cranford NJ isn’t that easy. But I’d be surprised if
he doesn’t get better during the campaign.
As Jimmy Carter would ultimately discover, this election
will not be decided by who can memorize the longest list of talking
points. It’s going to be won by the candidate who voters feel most
comfortable having in their living rooms. Obama passed the test in
2008. He was young and fresh and seemed to have a level head while
McCain appeared old and tired. It was a fairly easy choice. But the
President won’t have those advantages this time around. After four
years of mismanaging the economy, he won’t be able to talk hope and
change. His only option will be to go negative, portraying Romney
as a rich boy who doesn’t care about anyone who doesn’t have money.
That may work for a while but at some point people are going to
want to hear something positive. At that point they will
start listening to Romney. If he sounds like Reagan, they will find
him an attractive and plausible alternative.
Romney is something we haven’t seen for a while in America
— a benevolent family man. He’s the well-meaning father who knows
how to do the right thing even if he can’t always express himself.
Liberals are beginning to notice this and feel uneasy. Last week
the New Republic ran a cover photo of him taken within
three inches of his face that made him look like King Kong. Frank
Rich has started harping
on Mormonism, showing that religious bigotry is not dead in
America. New York Times columnist Gail
Collins is morally
certain the public will turn on Romney once they perceive the
true significance of the dog-tied-on-top-the-car. To her, Romney is
capable of tying pregnant women to railroad tracks. But the public
may see it as just another amusing episode of Father Knows
Best.
And just listen to this indictment from Times
contributor Lee Siegel, who
calls Romney “the
whitest white man to
run for president in years.”
He is nearly always in immaculate white shirt sleeves. He is
implacably polite, tossing off phrases like “oh gosh” with Stepford
bonhomie. He has mastered Benjamin Franklin’s honesty as the “best
policy”… He speaks of the founding fathers and the Declaration of
Independence as phases of national creativity that we are destined
to live through again. He frequently accompanies his recitative
with verses from “America the Beautiful.”
Who would ever want to vote for a candidate like
that?
