Last week Peggy Noonan’s typically perceptive column in Opinion Journal (referred to by Mickey Kaus here) discussed her troubling but fascinating thoughts about the current mood of the American electorate. Because many of you may not have subscriptions, I’m going to quote the core of her concern at some length. Her column was titled “Warren G. Kerry.”
History has been too dramatic the past 3 1/2 years. It has been too exciting. Economic recession, 9/11, war, Afghanistan, Iraq, fighting with Europe. fighting with the U.N., boys going off to fight, Pat Tillman, beheadings. It has been so exciting. And my general sense of Americans is that we like things to be boring. Or rather we like history to be boring; we like our lives to be exciting. We like history to be like something Calvin Coolidge dreamed: dull, dull. dull. And then we complain about the dullness, and invent excitements that are the kind we really like: moon shots, spaceships, curing diseases. Big tax cuts that encourage big growth that creates lots of jobs for young people just out of school.
No, I am not suggesting all our recent excitement is Mr. Bush’s fault. History handed him what it handed him. And no, I am not saying the decisions he took were wrong or right or some degree of either. I’m saying it’s all for whatever reasons been more dramatic than Americans in general like history to be.
Here is my fear: that the American people, liking and respecting President Bush, and knowing he’s a straight shooter with guts, will still feel a great temptation to turn to the boring and disingenuous John Kerry. He’ll never do anything exciting. He doesn’t have the guts to be exciting. And as he doesn’t stand for anything, he won’t have to take hard stands. He’ll do things like go to France and talk French and they’ll love it. He’ll say he’s the man who accompanied Teresa Heinz to Paris, only this time he’ll say it in French and perfectly accented and they’ll all go “ooh la la!”
The American people may come to feel that George W. Bush did the job history sent him to do. He handled 9/11, turned the economy around, went into Afghanistan, captured and removed Saddam Hussein. And now let’s hire someone who’ll just by his presence function as an emollient. A big greasy one but an emollient nonetheless.
I just have a feeling this sort of thing may have some impact this year. “A return to normalcy,” with Mr. Kerry as the normal guy.
Ms. Noonan asked her readers to “tell me I’m wrong. Or if you think I’m right or part right, tell me what Mr. Bush can do about it.” O.K., here goes.
First, as I’ve stated, I think this is a deeply perceptive insight. Thus I’m not saying she’s wrong about what many voters may feel or how they may vote. I do believe, however, those voters would be wrong to vote for a “return to normalcy” (Harding’s campaign slogan for those of you who don’t recall), and the Bush campaign should be able to make the case that such a vote would be wrong. Here are some reasons.
1. The original “return to normalcy” of the 1920s led, either directly or indirectly, to depression and war.
2. Returning to “normalcy” in 1920 seemed both plausible and possible after the turmoil of World War I. The Germans and their allies were thoroughly defeated. Today, such a return to pre-9/11 “normalcy” is neither plausible nor possible. We have real enemies who are determined to kill as many of us as possible. Turning our back on them and being nice to the French, even in perfectly accented French, will not make them go away.
3. There is every indication that Kerry/Edwards and the Democrats will campaign on the opposite of a “return to normalcy.” As Mickey Kaus observed (linked above),
Doctrinaire Shrumian populism is back. Those powerful interests are standing in your way again in the first Kerry-Edwards ads.
Railing against the “powerful interests” and complaining, even in a lilting Southern accent, about “two Americas” is a call to arms, not to lay them down. Even if the Democrats hope that culturally divisive issues such as gay marriage or racial preferences will be muted in the campaign (and of course they don’t hope that for all such divisive issues, and so they stress abortion rights), no one doubts that judges they would appoint would promote the cultural changes many oppose, continuing the conflict over those issues. No party whose attitudes and sentiments are so well represented by Michael Moore can offer itself as a calming, soothing alternative to George Bush. Finally, too many Democrats vehemently hate Bush and the Republicans for John Kerry to represent a reduction of strife and conflict and domestic turmoil.
4. For better of worse, in short, “normalcy,” in the sense of a reduction of strife, tension, and conflict (both domestic and foreign) is simply not possible now, and to attempt it is to put one’s head in the sand — or throw sand in the eyes of voters.
Those are my four reasons, but I think it worth noting that Noonan’s insight fits someone else far better than John Kerry: none other than William Jefferson Harding. Their hail-fellow[gal]-well-met gladhanding personalities were similar. The presence of scandals (including both pardon-fixing and sexual affairs in the Oval Office) in both their administrations was similar. The original Harding followed the exertions of our victory in World War I; the second Harding (in this telling) came hard on the heels of our victory in the cold war. Clinton, both personally and in his time, was a plausible Harding. Kerry is not, even if he wanted to be.
Try as we might, the clock cannot be turned back.
‘Return to Normalcy’ was more or less Bush’s platform last time around. Unfortunatly this ‘centrism’ has meant an explosion of spending.
On an unrelated note: you are hardly the only blogger to quote extensively from newspapers, but really isn’t taking more than a few sentences a little unfair to writers who like to get paid for their work?
I think you might be taking the idea of a “return to normalcy” a bit too literally. The “normalcy” the Kerry campaing will harken back to will be the pre-9/11 political conflicts: “The people vs. the powerful”, education, healthcare, etc. While these are all important issues, by focusing on them, the Dems will be offering comforting subjects to ponder compared to war & terrorism. The strategy, I think, is to give the electorate a mental escape hatch from the harsh realities that have emerged over the past few years. They want people to trick themselves into thinking that healtchare reform is the biggest challenge facing the U.S., not terrorists who are seeking the means to destroy our country. In this way, Kerry is pursuing the “feel good” vote.
John Doe:
John’s quoting, even at length, of Peggy Noonan’s piece is legal and proper according to the principles of “fair use”, FYI.
Noonan’s insight is probably accurate, but for a different reason - the war on terror, unlike our previous wars (and the standard TV sitcom or drama) doesn’t have an easily identified enemy (or problem) that can be dealt with in relatively short order through significant concentration of attention.
Political will is absolutely necessary to victory - and the administration’s success in preventing (or our enemies inability or failure to launch) another attack on us - has, ironically, made it that much more difficult to maintain social support for the war. The analogy might be, back in March of ’03, allowing another six months for the “inspections” to be completed while our troops waited to be called upon. All intelligent observers knew we couldn’t keep our ground forces in a state of perpetual readiness - that doing so would ultimately break units and soldiers down.
So, the political problem for Bush is, how does he maintain popular support for a war that seems to be receding into the shadows without engaging in fearmongering, yet not discount or understate the real need to maintain an aggressive effort to fight the war? It’s obvious enough to many of us that we cannot turn back the clock, and the notion of taking a “time out” is facile at best and infantile at worst.
Anyway, Kerry’s deplorable record on national security issues probably makes this easier for Bush than if the Dems had nominated Lieberman, but for fence-sitting swing voters uncertain about the war on terror or how it’s to be waged, Kerry might present a plausible alternative.