The Republican Primary Clown Car

There is an image I cannot get out of my head whenever I follow campaign coverage about the Republican presidential hopefuls.  For the life of me.  This bunch is so comical, so colorful, and so ridiculous in their collective comportment that I cannot help but think of the lot of them riding around the country in a clown car.  The type where you think there's only room for four people, yet somehow thirteen clowns pile in and out to silly circus music and fall all over one another.

If history and common sense are any guides, Barack Obama should lose the next election.  His base coalition is listless and unsatisfied by the half-measures and feints toward the other side's views.  The right wing hates him with a rabid zeal regardless of what he has and has not accomplished or said or compromised on, and will surely turn out in force to pry him out of the White House next year.  The Occupy Wall Street movement has numbers, attention, and momentum, and yet Obama has been unable to tap into their energy, instead making them a liability to his re-election campaign.

Meanwhile the all-important moderates and independents are still trying to make up their minds about whether they like the president or not.  Centrists are not convinced Obama deserves another term, if polling is to be believed.  The nation's poor economic performance has served to dent his support among all Americans across the board along with shaking the citizenry's confidence in America more generally.  Sometimes it seems as if the only support Obama can really bank on comes from overseas, where his popularity remains high.  That's also irrelevant because those folks have zero say in the American electoral college.

That being said, there is absolutely no question that a healthy President Obama will defeat the odds and survive another term, even without the continuous improvement in the economy that conventional wisdom would indicate he needs to win.  After all, we have largely been in recession with the requisite high unemployment numbers for over three years running.

How can this be?  It's because the challengers from the GOP represent such an embarrassingly weak crop.  There isn't a single viable candidate among them, assuming the group of finalists remains static at Mitt Romney, Newt Gingrich, Ron Paul, Michele Bachmann, Rick Perry, and Jon Huntsman.  The window is fast closing for those waiting in the wings such as Sarah Palin.  You may question my smugness, especially in a year where so much power seems to be on the Republican side.  Allow me to entertain you with the following breakdown of each so that you can decide for yourself.

Jon Huntsman  Here's my favorite guy of the bunch.  If I were voting in the Republican primaries, he would receive my vote.  He is smart, witty, experienced at meaningful managerial and diplomatic levels, and the candidate least given to bizarre and/or hateful rhetoric.  He has been a governor, a businessman, and a diplomat among other things. As a former Ambassador to China fluent in Mandarin, he understands the rising dragon superpower better than his rivals and quite likely Obama and Hillary Clinton as well.

In the end Huntsman is too well-adjusted, pragmatic, and soft-spoken for today's rabid conservative movement.  They crave unhinged vituperation against imaginary enemies to explain away America's decline.  Huntsman's candidacy makes no sense and will go nowhere.  There is no way that an intellectual low on charisma and followers such as Huntsman will have a chance this time around in the Republican primary.

Mitt Romney  Mitt is certainly persistent, running for the second cycle in a row after being both un-competitive and uninspiring in 2008.  Most of the media consider him to be the front-runner of the race, largely by default, despite his inability to garner even 30% of primary voters in any poll over the last year.  The perceived inevitability of his primary victory can be attributed to a general consensus, which I agree with, that he's the most electable in a head to head contest with Obama.  Not that it says much when you ride in a clown car.

Mitt is most persistent when it comes to changing his core political beliefs.  He has been unable to convincingly explain why he pushed for, signed into law, and adored a health care plan in Massachusetts that looks a lot like Obamacare but has since been thrown under the bus. His positions on abortion, gun control, and other issues have morphed with the winds of opportunism. While his business acumen and successful bid to become super-rich can be seen as assets in a time of recession, it calls into question his lack of authenticity as a corporate automaton who happened to pick up politics.  Bain under his watch shut down a lot of business and jobs to boost the bottom line for shareholders.  His vision for the country is muddled.  He has never inspired excitement and I doubt he ever will, even after winning the nomination.  His Mormonism is also a liability, though more so in the primary than in a general election.  He has a mean-spirited streak which may help him in the primaries but hurt him in the general.

My prediction is a narrow Obama victory over Romney/Condi Rice come fall 2012.

Ron Paul  Nobody will accuse Tea Party godfather Ron Paul of being inauthentic; he is the real f***ing deal.  He would dismantle one half of the federal government brick by brick, and he'd use his own hands to do it if he could.  He would take an axe to that most hallowed of government agencies for Republicans, Defense, while pulling back our troops from misadventures around the world and ending any rhetoric about the use of force against Iran or other rogue nations.  His proposals are completely out of the realm of possibility, though he is wildly popular with a small band of enthusiastic followers.  Ergo, the Republican establishment has grown to become deathly afraid of him for his very real potential to play spoiler to more viable candidates, which would simply delight the old man and his college co-ed coterie.  Ron Paul leads in Iowa and has sired Senator Rand Paul, so he is a force to be reckoned with, just as Ralph Nader used to be on the other side.  He is smart enough to know he won't win, but has the ability to shape policy.

As a pure civil libertarian and strict Constitutionalist, Paul makes common cause with Americans of all stripes, including those who would legalize marijuana or seek to end military intervention or foreign aid.  I agree with some of his views, while others are clearly untenable.  Nonetheless, he is the most entertaining to watch, because he says what he wants and doesn't give a damn what anyone thinks.  This is completely refreshing in this political world of endless focus groups and poll-testing.

Michele Bachmann.  I've written extensively about Bachmann here before.  The men of the party can't live with her, and can't live without her.  Everyone knows she is un-electable.  She is considered just a notch more sane than Ron Paul, and has admittedly worked very hard to burnish her image from a bible-thumping wing-nut twinkie to one of a serious candidate.  Her campaign has already been through a dramatic rise and fall and yet she plows on with great determination in an effort to win Iowa, where she has some roots.  However, Bachmann's grasp of what the country looks like and is going through, let alone the world outside, is limited by a lack of curiosity and experience.  She does not have executive ability or a leadership record to point to.  Her socially conservative agenda is not what the nation is fixated on during this moment of financial discontent.  That being said, the Republican party recognizes her ability to harness an energy in the base that the front-runners are incapable of, and the establishment will therefore have to keep her around- and probably need to offer her an attractive cabinet post or enticing leadership role in Congress in the near future.

I have enjoyed the silliness, miscues and foibles surrounding Bachmann's campaign, especially her husband's attempts to cure gays of their "affliction," but her work ethic and dogged determination- attributes that separate her from Palin- have earned my grudging respect.

Rick Perry.  Rick Perry was late to the party, and as such I did not get to know him that well until recently.  On paper when he joined, my assumption was that he'd be formidable and a probable front-runner.  It's still true that Perry best bridges the business wing of the GOP with the middle-America evangelical wing.  He's got rugged good looks, charisma, and that Texas swagger that an ailing and confidence-sapped America yearns to reclaim once again.  He is someone voters could see themselves getting behind to give Obama a good ole fashioned ass-whoopin'.

Unfortunately for Perry, he turned out to be more style than substance.  He has the charm but is completely out of his league when it comes to performing at speeches and debates or handling the media.  Almost certainly on medication, drugs or booze on multiple loopy occasions at public events, Perry is stumbling his way through a campaign which is clearly above his head.  He discusses issues such as the death penalty in Texas with great confidence in his Christian beliefs, but I wonder if the evangelicals will see that he cares more about corporate welfare than theirs when it comes time to act.  And this brings me to my least favorite candidate.

Rick Santorum.  He is too irrelevant and upsetting to write about.

Newt Gingrich.  I've followed the Gingrich career since the mid-90's when I was in high school, and he was Speaker of the House.  Back then I thought he was an unattractive, pompous, lying, pseudo-intellectual shape-shifter (I was ignorant enough at the time to believe that most politicians were not the same).  Observing him during this campaign has been a pleasure- because he has stayed completely and predictably true to form.  Some say people don't really change.  I believe Newt's limited success thus far in 2011 is directly attributable to older conservatives remembering him in the exact opposite fashion as myself- with fondness.  Newt certainly had his moments in the sun - such as the time he led the crucifixion of Bill Clinton to great right wing fanfare (even as he was philandering about town) - to working with that same administration to achieve meaningful and sweeping welfare reform.  He can be a bulldog for conservative causes at times, but I often question his true beliefs.  Like Romney he seems inclined to change his mind when it suits him.  Prime examples of this are his flip-flopping on healthcare reform and the Libya intervention.  He is also given to spreading bizarre theories about things such as President Obama's deep, dark rebellious psyche developed from having an absentee father from Kenya.

Those of us wishing for a better candidate to come around might be disappointed.  The thin bench at this time probably includes Jeb Bush, Sarah Palin, and Donald Trump: all completely uninspiring and as delusional as any of the others if they threw their hat in the ring.

It's in fact a historically fascinating phenomenon that a political opposition party is unable to put forth a single decent candidate when the president himself is limping along and most Americans feel that the country is on the wrong track.  It says a lot of things about our country, none of them good:

1) The party's purity tests are too draconian and probably drive competent people out of the process.
2) The expenses involved are phenomenal and require endless fundraising, which is another turnoff.
3) The process for a candidate of either party is too long and taxing- running constantly for two long years, jumping through endless hoops for the media and voters, entertaining nonstop attacks from the media and other candidates, dragging family and friends through the mud.  All of this is prohibitive for normal humans.
4) The electorate is largely ignorant and therefore this encourages the self-aggrandizing reality-TV caricatures to become our politicians.
5) We simply aren't producing great leaders in America at this time, and the travails of Obama have deflated our hopes of finding the next one who inspired us like he did.
6) We've become cynical.
7) In this era of decline, the new reality is that there is no leader who has the vision, the answers, the solutions we are yearning for, as the problems are simply too overwhelming.

Great way to end 2011, America.  Good luck to all the candidates in the coming primaries.  Above all, let's enjoy the entertainment.  It promises to keep getting better as the stakes are raised.