THE ONE INESCAPABLE CONCLUSION FROM THE SEPTEMBER GOP DEBATE

9/18/15

One can make plenty of observations regarding Wednesday night’s GOP debates:

• Donald Trump has some chinks in his electoral armor and his opponents are starting to find them.
• Jeb Bush has a pulse.   That his supporters are touting as a huge positive for his campaign the evidence the debate provided of that pulse’s existence shows how much trouble the fair haired boy of the GOP establishment is in.
•  Marco Rubio did a pretty good job but, for some reason, the punditocracy didn’t notice.  He might be the establishment’s alternative if Mr. Bush should continue to fail to live up to what look like cut from whole cloth expectations.
• Mr. Rubio, if he is to inherit Mr. Bush’s well moneyed support, will have to somehow transcend Chris Christie, who performed quite the Lazarus act on his presidential hopes Wednesday night.   Christie was terrific, especially when lambasting the front runners for their obsessions with themselves and positioning himself as an establishment Republican who can still speak for the middle class.
• Rand Paul’s sensible, sober approach to foreign policy clearly disqualifies him for the nomination of a Party that equates to treason the exercise of caution, prudence, and Constitutionality when putting the lives of young Americans on the line.
• You can stick the proverbial fork in Scott Walker. 
• If the American people were yearning for the Fred MacMurray (the good, My Three Sons Fred MacMurray, not the double dealing, caddish, scheming, Double Indemnity and The Apartment Fred MacMurray) approach to life and politics, John Kasich would be a shoo-in.   But that approach became passé when yours truly was a small child.   Too bad.
• Ben Carson is probably too smart, and too much of a gentleman, to be president.  Also too bad.
• The debate was too long.   Even those of us who have yet to overcome our silly addiction to politics were getting bored as the debate moved into the third hour.

While those are all, at the risk of sounding a touch braggadocious, searingly insightful observations, we can only draw one inescapable conclusion from Wednesday night’s debate:  Carly Fiorina is going to be on the GOP ticket.  If she is not at the top of the ticket, still something of a long shot, she will be in the vice-presidential spot.

Mrs. Fiorina is clearly bright, articulate, forceful, and, despite Mr. Trump’s apparent opinion, attractive.  And she is a woman, which certainly has its attractions whether or not Hillary Clinton heads the Democratic ticket.  (See “Something(s)about Hillary,” 9/8/15.)  Mrs. Fiorina is also a cancer survivor, which not only shows courage and grit but is, ironically, a big plus in the increasingly emotional electoral climate we face.  The establishment is more than comfortable with this former corporate chieftain and the social conservatives also like her for her strong pro-life positions.  

Mrs. Fiorina only has two obvious drawbacks.   The first is that her record in corporate America is, to put it charitably, worse than mediocre.   However, the American people seem to be coming to the (correct) conclusion that even someone who did far less than stellar work in a real job is a better choice than someone who has spent his or her life in and around electoral politics, i.e., who has made his or her living having his or her hindquarters smooched and who consequently is terrified at the thought of having to work in the private sector, or even in a public sector job with responsibilities that transcend preening for the cameras, for a living.

The second drawback is that Mrs. Fiorina, unlike Messrs. Kasich, Rubio, Walker, or Bush, has no chance of bringing a swing state, or any state, into the GOP Electoral College fold.   California isn’t going to go GOP regardless of who is on the Republican ticket.   But enhancement of the electoral map by selection of one’s running mate is an overrated strategy, as evidenced by Bill Clinton’s selection of Al Gore, Barack Obama’s selection of Joe Biden, and Ronald Reagan’s selection of George Bush as their running mates.   Each of these veeps either didn’t bring his state into the fold or was from a state that was already solidly in the fold.   Running mates have an appeal that transcends their home states.   This is especially true in the case of Mrs. Fiorina.

SOMETHING(S) ABOUT HILLARY

9/8/15

The pundits and the pols have been scratching their heads for weeks, or months, over the popularity of Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders, populists from opposite ends of the political spectrum.   Why, the pundits ask, would a public that is fed up with the establishment pols be so attracted to two non-establishment pols?   The bar over which one must jump to become an officially recognized pundit must be awfully low, but I digress.

This navel-gazing on the part of the punditocracy came to a heretofore head this weekend on the talk shows that the pundits follow in order to know which mewings to echo or reflexively denigrate, depending on their nominal world view.   One such notable, utterly dumbfounded that the benighted electorate is not flocking to the preferred candidate of the media establishment, Hillary Clinton, offered the sage insight that Mrs. Clinton’s problems with such things as her private e-mail account and the Clinton Foundation “obscure her message.”

Hmm…the allegations directed against her, and, more saliently, her horrific mishandling of those allegations, don’t merely “obscure” Hillary Clinton’s message; they expose her message for the precariously wispy reed that it is.

What is, after all, Hillary Clinton’s message?   It is certainly not an ideological message, or at least not an ideological message that can be easily or publicly distinguished from those of her Democratic challengers.  No, Mrs. Clinton’s message is that she is supremely, indeed uniquely, qualified to be president of the United States.   She is hyper-competent and therefore entitled to the office.   Her country’s needing her would be more obvious if the benighted masses were not so utterly incapable of knowing what’s good for them, which provides further evidence of how badly her country needs her.  

Hillary’s having dropped the ball on the e-mails and joked about serious investigations thereof does not “obscure” this message.   No, these missteps and pratfalls directly contradict this message.   If Hillary Clinton cannot properly manage her own feckless finagling, her image of competence, the very reason for her being, in her mind and those of her fervent followers, the obvious choice for president, falls apart.

On related notes….

Perhaps yours truly is being too glib when he states that Hillary’s only message is that she alone is qualified to be president and that anyone who cannot see that is somehow mentally or morally impaired.   There are two other unspoken aspects of Mrs. Clinton’s message, the “wink and nod” facet of Hillary’s continuing lifelong campaign for the presidency.

The first is that, if Mrs. Clinton has any ideology at all, she is to the right of Bernie Sanders and Martin O’Malley and thus is an electable Democrat because she is capable of winning the middle.   This message, of course, is never to be spoken of in the heat of a Democratic primary season, any more than the message that a Republican is to the left of his opponents and therefore can win “the middle” is to be uttered in the context of a GOP primary season.

The second unspoken component of Hillary Clinton’s message is that putting her in office would return us to the halcyon days of her husband’s presidency.   As much as many people with whom I agree on most things don’t want to admit it, Mr. Clinton, despite his many, er, peccadilloes, was one of our great post-war presidents, certainly if his presidency is considered from the perspective of peace and prosperity, which is, understandably and justifiably, the whole ball game for most people and certainly for that vast “middle” everyone seems to be courting.   That Hillary would be a Bill redux is a powerful message and, if it were true, would be a very good reason for plenty of people to vote for Mrs. Clinton.  But this message, too, cannot be spoken out loud; the “watch me roar” crowd, supposedly a big part of Hillary Rodham’s constituency, would never brook such a sexist message.

And one more thing…

Hillary Rodham Clinton is often compared to Richard Nixon, usually in the context of disregard for the law and propriety when such piffles get in the way of the all consuming goal of getting the anointed one elected.   There is doubtless something to this analogy.  Both Mrs. Clinton and Mr. Nixon have (had) credentials that would seemingly make her (him) an obvious choice for president.   She (he) failed the first time around, but only because the American public was temporarily anesthetized by the siren song of a young, dynamic, “different” kind of candidate who ultimately turned out to be far less compelling, “different,” or competent than the electorate’s naïve hopes had led them to believe.   Once the voters sober up, the thinking of both Hillary Clinton and Dick Nixon goes (went), they will return to the obvious choice.

But there is one more point of similarity between Mrs. Clinton and Mr. Nixon:  both are about as likeable as cornered rattle snakes.   Likeability may not make one a good president, but likeability certainly helps one become president.   Mr. Nixon overcame his omnipresent similarities to the bad guys on The Three Stooges to become president.   Can Hillary do the same?    

Further, the same “qualities”…the paranoia, the shiftiness, the amorality….from which he had to divert the public’s attention in order to become president ultimately became Mr. Nixon’s undoing.   Will those same shared qualities contain the seeds of the demise of a second President Clinton?

PULLING THE TRUMP CARD…AND COMING UP DEUCES

8/15/15

So what is there to say about the “Donald Trump Phenomenon” that seems to be gripping the not only the Republican Party but also the time and imaginations of political junkies of all stripes?   Maybe nothing original, but, from the perspective of a self-described genuine conservative (a moniker that conveniently allows one plenty of leeway), I think Mr. Trump’s still quixotic quest for the White House can be summarized as follows:

Mr. Trump reflects and largely embodies some very legitimate views and some very understandable concerns about issues of vital importance to a large portion, perhaps the predominant portion, of the electorate.   His stances (or, more properly, attitudes regarding; Mr. Trump has no policy stances as far as one can tell) on, among other things, illegal immigration, economic nationalism, and the incompetence and pusillanimity of our preening politicasters are shared by legions of people who work, pay taxes, and vote, and who have a large measure of responsibility, and should take a large measure of the credit, for keeping this economy and country running.

Mr. Trump’s problem, however, is at least two-fold.   First, he is a decidedly imperfect vessel for addressing the problems he highlights.  He is neither trustworthy nor as competent as he seems to think.   He has a history of stiffing creditors and taking a scattershot approach to his business endeavors along with showing incredibly poor judgment in those with whom he does business and in those frivolous activities with which he chooses to fritter away his time.   Note his being a paid cheerleader for dubious multi-level marketer ACN and his beyond fatuous “The Apprentice” show.  Those with solid judgment and a sense of integrity don’t associate with the likes of ACN and those who place any value on their time don’t squander it on trendy piffles like “The Apprentice.”

Second, Mr. Trump has a habit of saying stupid, ill-informed, and gratuitously insulting and demeaning things about people he doesn’t like or merely disagrees with.   Everyone likes spirited debate and, truth be told, we all like to aim a zinger at our opponents and feel a usually short lived shot of satisfaction when such barbs find their marks.   But one should at least be clever and pointed in one’s insults.   Comments about the manifestations and origins of the anger of previously largely unknown anchor people and the desirability of seeing certain women on their knees are not only demeaning and gratuitously insulting; they are also pathetic, uncouth, puerile, and reflective of an inability to control one’s urges or to effectively express one’s opinions.  

By making such inane pronouncements and graceless, thoughtless, misogynistic attacks, Mr. Trump delegitimizes the legitimate views and concerns for which he is acting as a herald.  He defeats his own purposes…assuming that Mr. Trump has purposes that transcend gratifying his own ego.