Townhall...
The
Presidential Race Made Easy
By Emmett Tyrrell
6/23/2011
WASHINGTON
-- In the weeks ahead, I
shall be in Europe to speak on American politics. What will I say to
old
Europe? Well, I shall give them my broad view of American politics and
end with
the present election cycle, in which I believe Barack Obama will be
retired to
private life, though he cannot really conceive of private life. He will
continue his public life as he has for all his adult life. That is how
Democrats live. He will be a community organizer to the world, as Bill
Clinton
has become, in the words of MSNBC, “president of the world.”
Both
sound ridiculous, but do any
Democrats ever retire to private life today? They always are taking on
noble
causes, which is to say illusory causes. Harry Truman retired to
private life
and Lyndon Johnson, but not Bill Clinton or Al Gore or, for that
matter, Jimmy
Carter. The other day, Jimmy wrote an op-ed piece in The New York
Times, saying
we have lost the drug war and he is now smoking while listening to the
Grateful
Dead onto death. Perhaps he is not listening to the Grateful Dead and
possibly
he is not smoking marijuana, but I lost interest at about the third
sentence.
He might well have said almost anything. He has been latching onto fads
for 30
years, anything that will keep him in the ink. The reflective life is
not for
him. It might cause him to become aware of what a miserable president
he was.
His
miserable presidency is key to any
summation I make of current American politics. The standards of
leadership have
declined abysmally, especially in the Democratic Party. In its upper
tiers,
there is not a person who could match Truman, Adlai Stevenson, John
Kennedy or
Hubert Humphrey, to say nothing of Roosevelt II. The 1960s generation
-- the
Clintons, Gore, John Kerry, et al. -- was a bust. Its members quite
possibly
set the stage for an even more inferior generation, the one led by
Obama. Think
of it! From Carter to Obama, the Democrats have led a motley string of
trivial
figures onto the national stage.
The
Republicans have done markedly
better. Richard Nixon, though flawed, led the opening to China, a
tremendous
achievement worth revisiting for those who have forgotten, and they can
do it
by reading Henry Kissinger’s new book, “On China.” What is more, Nixon
and
Kissinger managed affairs with the prickly Soviet Union remarkably
well, until
along came Ronald Reagan to finish the job without firing a shot.
Reagan was a
giant (known to liberals as a bumbling clown), and the two Bushes who
followed
him did not do badly, either. They were in the tradition of Truman and
Dwight
Eisenhower, prudent stewards of American interests.
That
brings us up to this election
cycle. At any other time, Obama would be challenged from within his
party. Teddy
Kennedy challenged Carter, and I anticipated that Hillary Clinton would
do so
this time, but now she cannot. Obama will run and lose to the
Republican
nominee, but who will the Republican be?
Before
the summer is out, Mitt Romney
will pull ahead of Obama by 10 points. But that will not give him the
Republican nomination. He will have to fight for it. Rep. Michele
Bachmann will
make a terrific race of it, pulling most of the tea party vote. If the
tea
partyers are as energetic as they were in 2010, she has a very good
chance.
Then there is Tim Pawlenty. His policies are sound and even exciting in
this
time of near bankruptcy, but he has no natural constituency. People
forget that
Reagan did not search out his constituency. It had been building for
years. He
was strong in 1976 and overwhelming in 1980 based on his support from
the tea
party movement of his day, the conservative movement. Pawlenty, Rick
Santorum
and Rep. Ron Paul all are looking for a movement, but I do not think
they will
find one.
Then
there is Texas Gov. Rick Perry.
By the end of July, we shall know whether he is running. I think he
will. Can
he line himself up with the core of the Republican Party, which is
still the
conservative movement? It is made up of the religious right, the
limited-government
types, the strong foreign policy advocates and, for want of a better
term, the
Reagan Democrats. Well, he was a Democrat, as was Reagan. He has
governed a
state, and it possesses the most vibrant economy in the union. It also
has
enormous talent. It is the new California. This will be an exciting
nominating
process and a very dirty presidential race. A community organizer with
union
support vs. a statesman (or stateswoman), but we all know who is going
to win.
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