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COMMENTARY
January 25, 2012
Political theatre
Gentle reader will forgive if we persist in our examination of political developments in a neighbouring country. I ran out of space in my Saturday column long before I ran out of things to say.And with people around the world watching the action, in the Republican presidential debates and Democratic preparations for what will surely be a battle royale, we see, vividly, features that are present in the contemporary politics of all western countries. The focus of the Democratic campaign was already clear before Barack Obama's address Tuesday. The Democrats, from president down through Congress, will make "fairness" the issue, and present their opponents as fat, rich, selfish, ignorant, and mean; but most of all, "unfair." I'm sure David Axelrod (Obama's ingenious tactical adviser) is telling him, "We have to get Romney nominated." If he can be badly wounded in the course of the Republican primaries, and leave the Tea Party constituency feeling cheated and abjured, so much the better. But even if he could have been coronated, Romney is the perfect foil for an Obama re-election campaign. Rich, from what can be presented as vulture capitalism, and living off capital gains and dividends, he is tailor-made. The author of "Romneycare," he can be used to cancel popular outrage against the "ObamaCare" legislation that was partly modelled on it. A predictable and wooden campaigner, who depends on planners, he will hold still while Obama turns his rhetorical torch on him. As Mark Steyn has explained, Romney "made" Gingrich's candidacy by stoking the demand for a temperamental opposite. The Republican "base" - that vast range of persons in "flyover country" who feel increasingly disenfranchised not only by progressive Democrats but by the Beltway establishment of the Republican party - don't want smooth. They have been disdained not only for what they think, but for what they are - "clinging to their guns and their Bibles." Gingrich the gladiator was perfectly placed, in the debates last week, to grasp that, "if it's red meat that's wanted, you might as well rip chunks of it from the flesh of the unctuous moderators and throw it right at the ravenous studio audience." (Michael Walsh's superb description.) But as everyone knows, Gingrich is himself deeply flawed. He is a brilliant "ideas" man, who cannot settle on his own best ideas; who sets off march hare with new ones before the old have been fully parsed. (This was cleverly exposed by Romney in the Tampa debate, when he pointed out that under Gingrich's current tax proposal, Romney would have paid no tax at all.) Gingrich is a charismatic force, in a situation where fire is actually needed to fight fire. He is the kind of opponent who could discombobulate Obama, and therefore deliver a Reagan-scale victory. Political pundits seldom consider, that if the Republicans had run a predictable, "moderate" candidate against Jimmy Carter in 1980, Carter might have served two terms. Gingrich is also the kind who could wipe out totally, against a tightly disciplined Democrat machine, commanding huge and growing "entitlement" client constituencies, to say nothing of captive liberal media, the technophile "zeitgeist," and a billion-dollar campaign war chest. Flip a coin. But behind the salesmanship, it is also useful to consider the product. Gingrich and Romney are more alike in actual content, than the Republican "base" yet wants to believe. Both are politicians who can pivot quickly. Rick Santorum, in his quiet, reasonable, even nerdlike way, made a devastating point in Monday's debate: that both had long political histories on the other side of each of the core issues that launched the Tea Party movement. It is by no means clear that Gingrich is more "conservative" than Romney, and when the primaries are done, either one would pivot away from the stance that secured him the nomination, towards what he thinks "loose" Democratic supporters will want to hear. Gingrich's strength is hardly consistency; it is rather his character as an old-fashioned barnstormer, of generous heart and humour, playing the game. He can tear the flesh out of a TV moderator, and then cuddle with the poor wretch after the show. He can put on a tremendous performance, on his good nights; and people do, sincerely, want to be entertained. But that is the very problem at the root of mass democracy. The issues being discussed are serious, and need to be examined on their own merits. Political theatre gets in the way. It is the means by which huge numbers are induced to vote against their own core interests. The winner will be, almost invariably, the candidate who can make them feel good about themselves. And this is why Santorum, the candidate who has been consistently representing Tea Party positions, since decades before there was a Tea Party, is running third in a Tea Party crowd. David Warren
© Ottawa Citizen
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