I enjoyed reading Frank Rich’s long rant in New York Magazine, and I agree with about 99% of what he wrote. I do have a couple of disagreements, however. For starters, I don’t share his belief that Rick Perry is a more dangerous opponent than Mitt Romney. I laughed when Rich approvingly quoted Jonah Goldberg, who said, “Romney has an authentic inauthenticity problem. There are some animals that just seem fake when you see them in real life for the first time; sharks and alligators come to mind.” The idea here isn’t that Romney is more dangerous than he appears but that he’s so phony that he doesn’t even look real. I don’t dispute that Romney looks and acts disturbingly like a Ken Doll. But I think his anodyne presence is precisely what makes him a formidable general election candidate. After all, if he doesn’t believe in anything, he doesn’t believe in anything all that threatening. And if he has no passion, he won’t passionately pursue a program to screw you and me and everyone who isn’t an executive officer or hedge-fund manager. If the problem the country faces is that the Republican Party has become so conservative that it no longer wants to be a partner in running the federal government, then why not elect a guy who is only pretending to be that conservative? It’s not like the Republicans will agree to work with Obama, but maybe they’ll respond to a president from their own party.
As Rich correctly notes at the beginning of his piece, Rick Perry “might have been computer-generated to check every box in a shrill liberal fund-raising letter.” Facing Perry, Obama will have no problem shoring up his base. With the exception of some small signs of tolerance for Latinos, Perry is more threatening than Romney on every single issue facing the country. And Perry’s positions may have their passionate supporters but they’re not popular with the electorate as a whole. People don’t want to dismantle Social Security and hand it off to the states. They don’t want to execute the innocent. They’e still pro-choice. They aren’t climate change-deniers. They don’t like talk of secession.
Independent voters may respond to Perry’s self-confidence and swagger. They may reject Romney’s epicene demeanor. But the president needs an opponent who he can fairly brand as totally unacceptable. With unemployment high and Congress unmanageable, the president could lose to a milquetoast candidate. It’s highly unlikely that he would lose to Rick Perry.
And, even though Rich is wise to warn against the kind of complacency Washington felt after Barry Goldwater was crushed, I will take a repeat of 1964 in a heartbeat. Another massive repudiation of conservative overreach won’t make conservatives go away or moderate their positions, but it’s the only thing that can break the deadlock in Washington and allow us to move forward on our nation’s many pressing issues.
