By: Paul S. Marchand
It’s been nearly 30 years since I watched Linda Hunt, Sigourney Weaver, and Mel Gibson play off each other in Peter Weir’s The Year of Living Dangerously, which takes place against the backdrop of the overthrow of Indonesia’s then-President Sukarno.
A generation and a half later, as America swings into another presidential election year, I can’t help but think of 2011 as the Year of Damn-Fool Notions, or maybe just of damned fools. Unfortunately, it’s pretty clear that 2012 will be the year of Damn-Fool Notions redux, as we listen to the policy proposals of a bench of GOP presidential hopefuls unparalleled in its thinness since the Democratic presidential pool of 1988.
It’s hard to say which Republican candidate is more appalling.
Has it been Newt Gingrich, with his apparent nostalgia for a dispensation that used to send children into factories at six? To say that there is something disturbing about the idea of undoing more than a century of legislation designed to keep children in school and out of unsafe working conditions is to understate the case by order of magnitude.
Has it been Willard M. Romney, who was for what he was against before he was for what he was against, or is it the other way around? The dizzying speed with which Mr. Romney takes up and discards positions has been one of the most extraordinary and unedifying political spectacles of our time.
Has it been Ron Paul, the political munchkin whose antebellum, nay, antediluvian views on race and society seem to be biting him on the posterior of late? It certainly seems under his libertarian façade, Dr. Paul is nothing more than old-fashioned neo-confederate racist with a generous, adulterating dose of bad Ayn Rand thrown in.
Has it been Rick Perry, who cannot seem to open his mouth without committing another faux pas, detracting as he does so from the sum total of human knowledge? Listening to Rick Perry demonstrate the limitations of his understanding leaves one wondering whether he possesses even a basal skull set for public office.
Has it been the other Rick, whose last name, when Googled, defines a postcoital byproduct, and whose apparent obsession with what gay men do in the privacy of our bedrooms has led to more than just the occasional raised eyebrow? To say that he comes across as a political charlatan of the extremest order is also to understate the case.
Has it been the incredible Michelle Bachmann, who would, no doubt, love to come across as an American Margaret Thatcher for our time, but who instead comes across as the crazy pro. per. lady ahead of you on the appearance calendar in court --- the one who insists on explaining in excruciating detail whatever conspiracy theory is uppermost in her mind?
At all events, none of the GOP seekers after the Presidency seem to have recalled Mark Twain’s advice that it is better to remain silent and be a thought a fool than to open one’s mouth and remove all doubt.
Time was that the Republican Party could put up highly competent, highly intelligent, highly articulate candidates for public office. Indeed, by comparison with the current crop, even Richard Nixon would be preferable.
For I was not in jest when I suggested that the current bench of GOP presidential hopefuls shows even less to the American electorate than did the Democratic field of 1988 that ultimately gave us Michael Dukakis -- the best, sadly, of that year’s not very inspiring lot.
In the end, the Republicans will probably do what they have historically done; they will fall in line behind a candidate who has the best campaign machine: Mitt Romney. And they will do so because, as Bill Clinton once famously observed, while Democrats want to fall in love, Republicans want to fall in line.
Given the thinness and the inadequacy of the GOP presidential field, it’s not surprising that comedians of every stripe should have found the endless Republican primary campaign for the presidency to be an endless source of grist for the comic mill. Such a development should have Republican strategists deeply worried.
When a campaign season degenerates this early into farce, it ought to be a warning to candidates and their staffers that they are not being taken nearly as seriously as they need to be in order to win. Back in 2008, a friend of mine with experience in both political campaigns and the entertainment industry, watching Tina Fey’s dead-on impression of Sarah Palin, had no hesitation in calling the race right then and there for Barack Obama.
Worse still for our friends in the party opposite has been the fact that this endless, agonizing primary affairs has also had the effect of giving the President enormous quantities of ammunition to use against whoever crawls out, broken and bleeding, from the GOP scrum to emerge as the nominee. Another friend of mine, a longtime GOP stalwart, expressed it this way: “the Republicans have learned the Democratic trick of forming a circular firing squad aiming inward.”
So, as we enter into the final days before the much-overrated Iowa caucuses, we see a series of presidential wannabes who have not only managed to make us laugh at them but also to give us sticks to beat them with. The President, who at the beginning of the fall had seemed to be a dead man walking, increasingly appears to be not only the only adult in the room, but also the only person with the intellect, the understanding, and the stature for the job.
This is not the narrative any GOP strategist wants to see emerging. It might have been different, had the candidacies of Jon Huntsman, Buddy Roemer, or Gary Johnson ever developed any meaningful throw weight, but all three of them were too smart, too pragmatic, and too potentially appealing to crossover voters, to be able to survive the hard line right wing slugfest the Republican primary processes have become.
For Democrats, the 1988 presidential debacle proved to be a fortuitous turning point. The lessons learned from that election enabled us to select in Bill Clinton a candidate with sufficient appeal to capture the White House in 1992. This current election may very well prove to be a similar turning point for the GOP, though I'm not holding my breath.
For while I am not calling the 2012 election for President Obama just yet, I have no hesitation suggesting that the election is his to lose; the auguries suggest that he will in fact be reelected. If the GOP is serious about fielding a presidential candidate with meaningful hopes of winning in 2016, it’s going to have to tack back toward the center, much as the Democratic Party had to do between 1988 and 1992. For if it does not, 2016 may prove to be a very unpleasant year indeed for the Grand Old Party.
-xxx-
PAUL S. MARCHAND is an attorney who lives and works in Cathedral City. The views expressed herein are his own.
It’s been nearly 30 years since I watched Linda Hunt, Sigourney Weaver, and Mel Gibson play off each other in Peter Weir’s The Year of Living Dangerously, which takes place against the backdrop of the overthrow of Indonesia’s then-President Sukarno.
A generation and a half later, as America swings into another presidential election year, I can’t help but think of 2011 as the Year of Damn-Fool Notions, or maybe just of damned fools. Unfortunately, it’s pretty clear that 2012 will be the year of Damn-Fool Notions redux, as we listen to the policy proposals of a bench of GOP presidential hopefuls unparalleled in its thinness since the Democratic presidential pool of 1988.
It’s hard to say which Republican candidate is more appalling.
Has it been Newt Gingrich, with his apparent nostalgia for a dispensation that used to send children into factories at six? To say that there is something disturbing about the idea of undoing more than a century of legislation designed to keep children in school and out of unsafe working conditions is to understate the case by order of magnitude.
Has it been Willard M. Romney, who was for what he was against before he was for what he was against, or is it the other way around? The dizzying speed with which Mr. Romney takes up and discards positions has been one of the most extraordinary and unedifying political spectacles of our time.
Has it been Ron Paul, the political munchkin whose antebellum, nay, antediluvian views on race and society seem to be biting him on the posterior of late? It certainly seems under his libertarian façade, Dr. Paul is nothing more than old-fashioned neo-confederate racist with a generous, adulterating dose of bad Ayn Rand thrown in.
Has it been Rick Perry, who cannot seem to open his mouth without committing another faux pas, detracting as he does so from the sum total of human knowledge? Listening to Rick Perry demonstrate the limitations of his understanding leaves one wondering whether he possesses even a basal skull set for public office.
Has it been the other Rick, whose last name, when Googled, defines a postcoital byproduct, and whose apparent obsession with what gay men do in the privacy of our bedrooms has led to more than just the occasional raised eyebrow? To say that he comes across as a political charlatan of the extremest order is also to understate the case.
Has it been the incredible Michelle Bachmann, who would, no doubt, love to come across as an American Margaret Thatcher for our time, but who instead comes across as the crazy pro. per. lady ahead of you on the appearance calendar in court --- the one who insists on explaining in excruciating detail whatever conspiracy theory is uppermost in her mind?
At all events, none of the GOP seekers after the Presidency seem to have recalled Mark Twain’s advice that it is better to remain silent and be a thought a fool than to open one’s mouth and remove all doubt.
Time was that the Republican Party could put up highly competent, highly intelligent, highly articulate candidates for public office. Indeed, by comparison with the current crop, even Richard Nixon would be preferable.
For I was not in jest when I suggested that the current bench of GOP presidential hopefuls shows even less to the American electorate than did the Democratic field of 1988 that ultimately gave us Michael Dukakis -- the best, sadly, of that year’s not very inspiring lot.
In the end, the Republicans will probably do what they have historically done; they will fall in line behind a candidate who has the best campaign machine: Mitt Romney. And they will do so because, as Bill Clinton once famously observed, while Democrats want to fall in love, Republicans want to fall in line.
Given the thinness and the inadequacy of the GOP presidential field, it’s not surprising that comedians of every stripe should have found the endless Republican primary campaign for the presidency to be an endless source of grist for the comic mill. Such a development should have Republican strategists deeply worried.
When a campaign season degenerates this early into farce, it ought to be a warning to candidates and their staffers that they are not being taken nearly as seriously as they need to be in order to win. Back in 2008, a friend of mine with experience in both political campaigns and the entertainment industry, watching Tina Fey’s dead-on impression of Sarah Palin, had no hesitation in calling the race right then and there for Barack Obama.
Worse still for our friends in the party opposite has been the fact that this endless, agonizing primary affairs has also had the effect of giving the President enormous quantities of ammunition to use against whoever crawls out, broken and bleeding, from the GOP scrum to emerge as the nominee. Another friend of mine, a longtime GOP stalwart, expressed it this way: “the Republicans have learned the Democratic trick of forming a circular firing squad aiming inward.”
So, as we enter into the final days before the much-overrated Iowa caucuses, we see a series of presidential wannabes who have not only managed to make us laugh at them but also to give us sticks to beat them with. The President, who at the beginning of the fall had seemed to be a dead man walking, increasingly appears to be not only the only adult in the room, but also the only person with the intellect, the understanding, and the stature for the job.
This is not the narrative any GOP strategist wants to see emerging. It might have been different, had the candidacies of Jon Huntsman, Buddy Roemer, or Gary Johnson ever developed any meaningful throw weight, but all three of them were too smart, too pragmatic, and too potentially appealing to crossover voters, to be able to survive the hard line right wing slugfest the Republican primary processes have become.
For Democrats, the 1988 presidential debacle proved to be a fortuitous turning point. The lessons learned from that election enabled us to select in Bill Clinton a candidate with sufficient appeal to capture the White House in 1992. This current election may very well prove to be a similar turning point for the GOP, though I'm not holding my breath.
For while I am not calling the 2012 election for President Obama just yet, I have no hesitation suggesting that the election is his to lose; the auguries suggest that he will in fact be reelected. If the GOP is serious about fielding a presidential candidate with meaningful hopes of winning in 2016, it’s going to have to tack back toward the center, much as the Democratic Party had to do between 1988 and 1992. For if it does not, 2016 may prove to be a very unpleasant year indeed for the Grand Old Party.
-xxx-
PAUL S. MARCHAND is an attorney who lives and works in Cathedral City. The views expressed herein are his own.
