All the Small Things

What is happening to our BIG election?  Our moment of truth.  The most important election of our lifetime? I thought this was going to be the knock-down, drag-out, intellectual brawl of the century. The moment Americans finally chose a path with clarity and purpose.

Instead the campaign is full of insipid drivel. Mitt Romney says 47% don't pay taxes and won't vote for him in illegally filmed hidden camera video. This is scandalous and unAmerican and sure proof of his superior skill at analysis and thorough grasp of truth. No one disputes 47% of Americans pay no income taxes and no one disputes 47% of Americans are sure to vote for President Obama. But dare to explain these two facts simultaneously off-camera and they suddenly become sinister.

Not to worry, we can talk about other things. We can talk about whether Mitt Romney paid 14.1% of his substantial income in tax last year and whether that means he voluntarily chose to overpay and what in the world he must be up to to overpay his taxes.

As an aside it is noteworthy that rich liberals who constantly caterwaul for more taxes and sacrifice have never been accused of overpaying their taxes. And so it stands to reason: when a conservative does it he must be up to no good.

We could also talk about the cash positions of the campaign. Whether Romney or Obama and their collective supporters PACs, Super PACs, and SUPER DUPER PACs have raised more money.

We can talk about Anne Romney's jet making an emergency landing in Denver due to a smoke invested cabin. Almost makes one pine for the days of yore when cabins were filled with cigar smoke.

We can talk about Tim Pawlenty resigning from the campaign to lead a lobbying group, as though looking out for his livelihood 40 days from now is a sure sign of the collapse.

Meanwhile, we don't talk about the abominable impacts the Affordable Care Act is already begin to wrought across the land. With insurance companies pulling out of states, merging or employers preparing to drop retirees as soon as they qualify for the public dole.

We don't talk about the looming tax hikes and spending cuts that both parties agreed to and no one claims.

We don't talk about the incineration of 1/3 of the world, the killing of an American ambassador, and the loss of the Afghan war.

We are, by Romney's incompetence, Obama's brazenness and the media's fecklessness sliding toward an election without purpose, poise, or promise.  An election so small we hardly notice it at all.

While that may seem a blessing to those poor television viewers in a handful of swing states, the rest of us were hoping for rather more.

It is time to get big and get loud. Go hard or go home. Find a voice or leave a void. The time for small things is over.

The Saccharine of Sacrifice

Aztec sacrifice in portrait

Nothing warms the blood of a political contrarian quite like convention season, yet this does not necessarily equate to actual bloodlust. With conventions there are all the deliciously choreographed speeches and sloganeer banners and base banality that have come to make up our modern political spectacle, there are also real nuggets of note.

My assumption is that all Democrat conventions are orchestrated by Broadway directors and all Republican conventions are produced by on-loan corporate communications departments. But both end up with roughly the same mix of carefully scripted pablum. When they don't, inquiring minds take notice.

In this case my objection is to Governor Chris Christie's "keynote" address at the Republican convention. I know it is by now conventional wisdom that the address missed the mark, focused too much on Christie and too little on Romney and otherwise failed to find the G-spot of political pundits. Fine.

My objection is with what he actually said and what they predictably ignored. Somewhere near the end and perhaps lost in disappointment was Gov. Christie's admonition that America demanded "shared sacrifice." I may have said before and undoubtedly will say again: I find the entire notion of national shared sacrifice anathema to the entire American project.

Imagine a football team behind at half-time. The score is 35-3. The coach takes them into the locker room and says, "Look, only a few of you are getting hit play after play. We need to go out there and share the hits, distribute the tackles. If only all 11 men on the field could take an equal measure of the punishment, we might pull through this thing."

Imagine a good Samaritan who comes across a grisly car crash. Upon finding a victim with a badly crushed leg which is trapping her in a burning car, he says, "don't worry, I'll cut off my left arm so that our suffering is equal."

The entire letter, spirit and motivation behind shared sacrifice assumes impending doom. Nobody voluntarily shares sacrifice unless the end is near. Up to that point any rational human being shares concern, cooperates on solutions and contributes effort.

To be overtly gruesome, when plane crash victims chronicled in the movie "Alive" were facing the end, no one said "I'll eat your arm if you eat mine." Instead they found the strongest among themselves and sent them out on a treacherous, last ditch mission to find help.

America doesn't need shared sacrifice. Sacrifice is for pawns. America needs champions. It needs those who succeed in spite of the system, the circumstances or the season. Those who bring others along through their sheer grit and determination. Americans know how to work, want to succeed and impulsively take risks. When the tax code, the regulators and the do-gooders stand aside, it is amazing what accidentally gets done.

I will not share sacrifice. I will share work. I will not ask someone else to sacrifice for me. I will ask for a chance.  No man should be asked to give more than the full devotion of his abilities. To take and not earn is a tempting sin. To willingly earn so that others may take is equally so.

Virtue is found in striving for the substantive, not sacrificing for the saccharine.

Ryan Over Spilt Milk

We've gone from a sad complain to a real campaign in the space of a name. Paul Ryan. He is we hear a wiz kid, a tone-deaf fool and the gift that keeps on giving. He has forced priorities on a Congress of such low regard and little principle that coherent sentences are considered controversial. Yet he is so tone-deaf that he will single-handedly scuttle every close race this cycle.

The internal division over the selection of Paul Ryan as the assumed Republican nominee for vice president has gripped both parties with equal vigor. Democrats are giddy about the possibility of running against his willingness to save their favorite entitlement. But they quietly worry that he might have out progressed them. Republicans are giddy about an energetic idea man giving direction to their ticket. But they quietly worry he might have out thought them.

I think the selection is brilliant and risky and no where in politics is that a good combination. Politics is supposed to be about caution and reaction even when it seems to be about leadership. "Hope and change" should have convinced us about that. President Obama's 2008 campaign was designed in reaction to the Bush presidency, not in anticipation of the future. All of the president's myriad gifts were lost on governance because his candidacy was built on opposition and vagaries. 

Mitt is the embodiment of caution and bad at reaction. Now he is the champion of calculation. The math was simple. A Republican will be saddled with the record of Congress and the bogeyman of MediScare, better to add an articulate and capable champion and multiply by enthusiasm.

People are excited by Ryan. Or they will be. He is young. Athletic. Smart. Articulate. And above all he is so bold he has forced his entire caucus to back his youth, intelligence and boldness.  Excitement leads to votes and votes lead to victory. 

Romney could have lost over Ryan, but Ryan was going to be a reality in the race regardless. 

Choosing intelligence and boldness is exactly the right choice. If the darker instincts of our national nature lead to defeat for the ticket, it will certainly lead to a new paradigm over time. It is always better to make the best of spilt milk. 

Wont to Want

I've experienced something of an out of body politic experience in the wake of Rick Santorum's recent announcement of his candidacy for President of the United States in 2016.  That is to say, his withdrawal from the 2012 primary race.  I was sort of disappointed to see him go.

The state of the race has been so frustratingly directionless that I've avoided commenting for a good long time.  So take that Process!  Yet now that it has ended with a whimper, I'm struck by a new perspective.

Why did I so loathe Mr. Santorum's positions and yet quietly champion his candidacy?  Why do I find the very idea of Mitt Romney so              ?  Mr. Santorum has been nothing if not an improbable candidate.  His tireless and Quixotic efforts in Iowa will be taught in political science departments across the country.  Unfortunately since they will all be taught by socialists the lessons will be pathetically wrong.  Regardless, it is impossible to overlook Mr. Santorum's passion and conviction.  He may be six kinds of crazy, but he fervently believes in seven of them.  

In contrast Mr. Romney has perfected the awkwardness of indecision.  It isn't that he doesn't make arguments while pointing his finger with vigor.  It is that this delivery seems like a badly learned lesson in a poorly taught acting class.  When it comes to Mr. Romney, few believe that conviction is distinguishable from convenience.  He will now almost certainly be the Republican nominee for president, and yet he can't even convince people he's certain.

So why the different effect?  Each of these men has realized meaningful electoral success. Yet their approaches are diametrically opposed.  The right question is, what do they want?  

It is often asked, "Who would want to be president?"  Yet in selecting a president we rarely apply that logic.  And in this is my revelation: Take away all the form and substance and spin and simply ask, why do these men want to be president?

This, I think, is getting to the paradox.  Mr. Romney seems to want to be president because being president is prestigious and was denied his dad.  It is the highest achievement of someone of his breeding, education, and aspiration.  The presidency is itself a good worth attaining.  

Mr. Santorum wants--I intend the present tense-- to be president to champion underdog causes and press issues.  He fervently believes that the convictions of his heart are prescriptions for the nation.  It is the highest calling for someone of his feeling, faith, and inspiration.  The cause is itself worth championing. 

The tendency toward causes versus the tendency toward accomplishments.  This is the difference.  I have no doubt that Mitt Romney's leadership is better for the country than Mr. Santorum's allegiances.  Yet, it is hard to escape an uncomfortable truth: Santorum wants it for all the right reasons, even if he is wrong.  Mitt wants it for all the wrong reasons, even if he is right.  

This, I think, is why I say good riddance to Mr. Santorum while a bit verklempt.   

Retreat, Elite

You can't spend five minutes listening to conservatives talk without hearing someone invoke the word elite.  Rush Limbaugh rails against the Washington elite while Newt Gingrich has received remarkable electoral traction with his attacks on the elite media.  Meanwhile Mitt Romney has used his status as a Washington, DC outsider as a selling point against Messrs Santorum and Gingrich who are of course Washington insiders, and by extension elite.

Digging deeper it is difficult not to notice a chasm of discourse between bombastic populists like Mr. Limbaugh and the conservative punditry who write columns and appear on news shows.  I have been particularly struck at the reaction received by attention to social issues.  Not even a decade ago it was the top Republican operatives in Washington who used gay marriage as a rallying cry to turn out voters for George Bush's reelection.  Today none of the Washington crowd--including former Bush aides--want anything to do with Rick Santorum's firebrand stances on social conservatism.  Running against sex and college--as Mr. Santorum has--is not a message most Republican commentators and Washington insiders want anything to do with. Naturally this makes them elitists.

I have written before about the problems with the permanent political establishment.  This entire discussion about the elite is part of the same argument, and it is clearly a timely one.  Congress is wildly unpopular, economic times are tough, voters are frustrated if not outright angry.  It should be a good time to be anti-elite.  Which is why I think it is time for the entire Republican apparatus to disestablish itself.  I don't mean dissolving the party, I mean disassociating itself from anything elite.

Here are a few modest proposals:

Oh For Crayon Out Loud

You occasionally hear about art critics who laud works of art by unknown artists for their depth, emotion, nuance, and whatever else art critics look for in a work, only to find out that the artist was a juvenile elephant or a geriatric chimpanzee.  These reports are meant to be provocative inquiries into the objective value of art and the subjective tastes of critics.  Is art less appreciable when it is created by random acts of pachyderm than by tortured emotions of humans?  Another way of saying this might be, does the quality of the message depend on the quality of the messenger?

What if we found a story written in poorly formed letters of crayon:  Page after page of juvenile chicken scratch across countless pieces of construction paper that happened to be a work of Shakespearean quality?  Would the value of the work depend upon the value of the medium in which it was delivered?

I ask that in order to ponder this:  Do we emphasize the quality of the messenger and the clarity of the delivery too much in politics?

Mama He's Lazy

It isn't hard to read the headline: "Santorum Defends Satan Comments" and think, "oh boy, here we go again."  I've been pondering for weeks what exactly to say about Rick Santorum.  I even thought for awhile that I might avoid saying anything at all in the mistaken hope that he would fade away as a candidate--or maybe be forced out by a tragic sweater vest accident.  Alas it wasn't to be.

Therefore, my basic conclusion is that Rick Santorum isn't crazy, he's lazy. 

I admit that crazy is the more popular moniker, and it doesn't require an opposition research team to build the case.  I also allow that accusing a law school educated, eight time father, former congressman, former senator, and leading presidential candidate of being lazy is to risk appearing mentally unstable myself.  Nevertheless, that is what I'm going to try and do.