Tag Archives: George Will

Beto the Celebrity Man-Child v. The Women

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By my estimation, less than two hours elapsed between the time Beto O’Rourke announced he was running for POTUS and the moment he took  fire for being straight, white and male. Welcome to the big show, Mr. ex-Congressman!

I have no preferred horse in the race at this moment. (There are several Democrats I wish would just shut up and go away.) But the immediate, visceral reaction to O’Rourke — who announced simultaneous with a full-on giga-as-Gaga celebrity Vanity Fair cover — is going to be not just one of but maybe the critical factor in terms of who liberals/progressives choose to run against Trump.

In case you haven’t noticed, the ladies have had enough of the straight white male thing.

For The Cut Kimberly Truong says, “… as charismatic as O’Rourke may be, his candidacy already seems to be drawing anxieties and misgivings from women, for multiple reasons. One of those has to do with the announcement video itself, in which his wife, Amy, sits beside him on a couch, doing not much more than simply gazing at him in a show of support. … That is of course, not to mention the stark contrast between the ways the media has presented O’Rourke’s persona as charming and magnetic and the ways some of those same outlets have covered Elizabeth Warren’s candidacy, which often focus on doubts about her ‘likability’.”

For Vox, Laura McGann wrote, “Beto O’Rourke jumped into the Democratic presidential primary on Thursday sounding like he hasn’t heard much about the big debate in recent years over how we judge male and female leaders. Just before he announced his run, O’Rourke boasted to Vanity Fair that ‘I want to be in it. Man, I’m just born to be in it’. NBC reporter Kasie Hunt spotted the inherent double standard the comment represents: Men are rewarded in politics for showing ambition, while women are punished.”

And here’s Jessica Heslam in the Boston Herald and Pete Kasperowicz from the (conservative) Washington Examiner.

The counter-balance though to millions of activated women disgusted with Trump (and Mitch McConnell and Ted Cruz and Rush Limbaugh and their loudmouth, overbearing brothers-in-law) is everyone else who just wants to win. To sweep Trump and his enablers out of power. The latter crowd — still the majority is my guess — is less concerned with gender and policy than the ability to lead another wave election. A wave large enough to immediately reverse catastrophic neglect and corruption fostered by Republican rule.

Who knows if O’Rourke has the chops to pull that off? Critics point out that he raised $70 million and nearly beat Ted Cruz in [bleeping] Texas because … well, because he was running against Ted Cruz, one of the most loathsome trolls ever dropped into a Senate office, (which is really saying something.) The obvious and immediate counter to that one is … “WTF! Trump is worse!”, something no one can dispute.

Establishment conservatives like George Will (a “never Trumper”) mock O’Rourke, calling him a “skateboarding man-child”. But Republicans are truly afraid of him. Uber-progressives meanwhile are complaining he lacks sufficient policy gravitas, which again is also true. Right now O’Rourke is a lot like Barack Obama in 2007 in that he’s this neon-bordered celebrity idol-like white board on which anyone can imagine anything.

But here’s the bummer for both activated, pissed-off women and uber-progressives … that celebrity-vague [bleep] works. At least if the goal is winning an election in the most sweeping and convincing manner possible.

At this moment my betting money is still on Kamala Harris. She seems, well, wily, without being devious. To mis-paraphrase Lou Grant, “I like wily.” I’ve never thought Bernie Sanders is wily enough. Harris also seems truly comfortable up close in the retail game, and she too has a lot of celebrity vibe going for her. Not as much as straight, white and male O’Rourke, but plenty enough to work with.

O’Rourke ran a remarkably error-free campaign against Cruz. He displayed abundant energy and he speaks effortlessly and naturally in a contemporary, pop culture-laced language familiar and therefore appealing to voters who are not policy wonks, but who know enough by now to understand that Trump is both a fool and a criminal.

So that was Day #1 in Beto 2020.

Let the circus proceed.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Amy Klobuchar for Attorney General 2020

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Take it from George Will, Amy Klobuchar is what Democrats need now. As reverse barometers go, George is at least a couple ticks up from Alex Jones. But still … .

I have no great special insight into the honorable senior senator from Minnesota beyond living in the county for which she was chief prosecutor for a while, the state she represents and spending a couple days a few years back kicking around the Iron Range for a magazine profile on her. And, shocking full disclosure here, I’ve voted for her twice and would again if she gets the Democrats’ nod for President … against any Republican.

That said, I’ve always had my issues with her. Call them quibbles, if you like. Not the least of which is that I am not at all certain her (very) old school Humphrey/Mondale “Let’s All Reach Across the Aisle and Have a Bake Sale Together” approach is exactly the most appropriate or effective message right now. And that comes attached to the other quibble that Ms. Klobuchar has made a reputation for herself of never sticking her head up too high in the crossfire of our culture trench warfare.

Well-cossetted conservative institutionalists like Mr. Will see that behavior as a demonstration of wisdom. But — funny thing — I see the same behavior and think, “Expedient calculation.”

To his credit, Mr. Will, (with whom I’ve had lunch a couple times on his book tours) has been virulently anti-Trump from the get-go and is the rare conservative intellectual who can both spell correctly and regularly produce 15 paragraphs of coherent thinking.

The problem is that his thinking is invariably focused on reproducing more of the white, male, bow-tied status quo that has A: Generally ruled the country since Dwight Eisenhower, and B: Allowed his Republican party to devolve into a clown show led by charlatans and fools like Rush Limbaugh (the true intellectual leader of modern conservatism) and Donald Trump. Put another way, Will very much prefers a Democratic opponent the Republican party knows how to define and campaign against. As in: all tradition and nothing revolutionary.

There’s no question that Klobuchar is smart and hard-working. She’s also very good at retail politics, whether chatting up locals at diners in Bemidji or small town bankers and business owners in Grand Rapids. She’s got game. (And unlike, say, Mark Dayton, she seems to genuinely enjoy human interaction.)

But I’d feel (a lot) more enthusiastic about her if only once I’d her express heartfelt indignation over the on-going Trumpist travesty — which began welling up in earnest with the Tea Party revolt back in ’09 and ’10. (There’s also the little nagging question in the back of my head when I read that Klobuchar has the worst rate of staff turnover of any of the 100 US Senators. What is that all about?)

Reading Will’s column — picked up by the Strib — it’s readily apparent who among the possible Democratic field he fears most.

As George begins his column lauding Klobuchar, “Surely the silliest aspirant for the Democrats’ 2020 presidential nomination is already known: ‘Beto’, aka Robert Francis, O’Rourke is a skateboarding man-child whose fascination with himself caused him to livestream a recent dental appointment for — open-wide, please — teeth cleaning.

“O’Rourke’s journal about his post-election recuperation-through-road-trip-to-nowhere-in-particular is so without wit or interesting observations that it merits Truman Capote’s description of “On the Road” author Jack Kerouac’s work: That’s not writing, that’s typing.

“When Democrats are done flirting with such insipidity, their wandering attentions can flit to a contrastingly serious candidacy, coming soon from Minnesota.”

Characters like O’Rourke and the (fresh and invigorating) flavor-of-the-moment, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (i.e. “AOC”) have to deeply unsettle traditional thinkers like George Will. Why? Because they are working off a far different playbook they can’t be quantified as easily as someone like Klobuchar who reliably hopscotches within the chalk lines of the traditional game. Ms. Klobuchar is never a threat to rile — as Ned Beatty said in “Network” — “the primal forces of nature.”

Never mind the polar vortex. Hell itself would have to freeze over before Amy Klobuchar ever got in the face of a Howard Schultz, Michael Bloomberg or Silicon Valley tycoon with calls for a return to a 70% tax rate on billionaires.

The Democrats have an interesting array of talent queuing up for the Big Job. But I look at some of them not as Presidents — someone with populist charisma delivering a persistent, uncluttered message affirming the primacy of empirical reason in science, social services and foreign affairs — but as cabinet officers restoring lawfulness to the various agencies.

In that context: Amy Klobuchar for Attorney General 2020.

 

A Basket of Quotes, Just a Hint of Which I’d Like to Hear from Tina Smith

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From life-long Republican Steve Schmidt, better known as the man who advised John McCain to select Sarah Palin as his running mate:

The two parties for a long time were not homogeneous ideologically. There were plenty of conservatives in the Democratic Party, and there were no small number of liberals in the Republican Party. Now, culturally, we’re in thrall to theocratic crackpots like Mike Huckabee and Franklin Graham and Jerry Falwell, where you’re able to justify the candidacy of a Roy Moore because you want to keep the Senate seat. The theocracy and crackpot sewer conservatism has taken over.

That’s not to mention the baby internment camps, the indecency, the cruelty, the meanness, the lying, the complicit nature of this Republican majority with an attack on the country that’s launched by the Russian Federation. So the Republican party of Teddy Roosevelt and John McCain and Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush is dead. It’s over. It doesn’t exist . It has been taken over, lock, stock, and barrel. For there to be any redemption of a right of center conservative party in the United States of America means the party of Trump must be destroyed politically.

It’s like a fire. Fires are a part of the ecosystem, part of the natural progress. And when the forest burns, it’s purified. There can be new growth. For there to be new growth of a conservative movement, of a right center party, the one that I joined in 1988, it needs to burn to the ground.”

From conservative columnist Michael Gerson in The Washington Post:

“In November, many Republican leaners and independents will face a difficult decision. The national Democratic Party under Nancy Pelosi and Charles E. Schumer doesn’t share their views or values. But President Trump is a rolling disaster of mendacity, corruption and prejudice. What should they do?

They should vote Democratic in their House race, no matter who the Democrats put forward. And they should vote Republican in Senate races with mainstream candidates (unlike, say, Corey Stewart in Virginia).

Why vote strategically in this case? Because American politics is in the midst of an emergency.

If Democrats gain control of the House but not the Senate, they will be a check on the president without becoming a threat to his best policies (from a Republican perspective) or able to enact their worst policies. The tax cut will stand. The Senate will still approve conservative judges. But the House will conduct real oversight hearings and expose both Russian influence and administration corruption. Under Republican control, important committees — such as Chairman Devin Nunes’s House Intelligence Committee — have become scraping, sniveling, panting and pathetic tools of the executive branch. Only Democratic control can drain this particular swamp.

Alternatively: If Republicans retain control of the House in November, Trump will (correctly) claim victory and vindication. He will have beaten the political performances of Bill Clinton and Barack Obama in their first midterms. He will have proved the electoral value of racial and ethnic stereotyping. He will have demonstrated the effectiveness of circuslike distraction. He will have shown the political power of bold, constant, uncorrected lies. And he will gain many more enablers and imitators.

Perhaps worst of all, a victorious Trump will complete his takeover of the Republican Party (which is already far along). Even murmured dissent will be silenced. The GOP will be fully committed to a 2020 presidential campaign conducted in the spirit of George C. Wallace — a campaign of racial division, of rural/urban division, of religious division, of party division that metastasizes into mutual contempt.

But this does not change the political and ethical reality. The only way to save the GOP is to defeat it in the House. In this case, a Republican vote for a Democratic representative will be an act of conscience.”

From conservative icon George Will, also in The Washington Post:

Donald Trump, with his feral cunning, knew. The oleaginous Mike Pence, with his talent for toadyism and appetite for obsequiousness, could, Trump knew, become America’s most repulsive public figure. And Pence, who has reached this pinnacle by dethroning his benefactor, is augmenting the public stock of useful knowledge. Because his is the authentic voice of today’s lickspittle Republican Party, he clarifies this year’s elections: Vote Republican to ratify groveling as governing.

Noting that [Joe] Arpaio was in his Tempe audience, Pence, oozing unctuousness from every pore, called Arpaio “another favorite,” professed himself “honored” by Arpaio’s presence, and praised him as “a tireless champion of . . . the rule of law.” Arpaio, a grandstanding, camera-chasing bully and darling of the thuggish right, is also a criminal, convicted of contempt of court for ignoring a federal judge’s order to desist from certain illegal law enforcement practices. Pence’s performance occurred eight miles from the home of Sen. John McCain, who could teach Pence — or perhaps not — something about honor. …

It is said that one cannot blame people who applaud Arpaio and support his rehabilitators (Trump, Pence, et al.), because, well, globalization or health-care costs or something. Actually, one must either blame them or condescend to them as lacking moral agency. Republicans silent about Pence have no such excuse.

There will be negligible legislating by the next Congress, so ballots cast this November will be most important as validations or repudiations of the harmonizing voices of Trump, Pence, Arpaio and the like. Trump is what he is, a floundering, inarticulate jumble of gnawing insecurities and not-at-all compensating vanities, which is pathetic. Pence is what he has chosen to be, which is horrifying.”

 

And finally (for now) from liberal blogger Kevin Drum at Mother Jones:

“Today, the Republican Party exists for one and only one purpose: to pass tax cuts for the rich and regulatory rollbacks for corporations. They accomplish this using one and only method: unapologetically racist and bigoted appeals to win the votes of the heartland riff-raff they otherwise treat as mere money machines for their endless mail-order cons. Like it or not, this is the modern Republican Party. It no longer serves any legitimate purpose. It needs to be crushed and the earth salted behind it, while a new conservative party rises to take its place. This new party should be conservative; brash; ruthless when it needs to be; as simpleminded as any major party usually is; and absolutely dedicated to making Democrats look like idiots. There should be no holds barred except for one: no appeals to racism. None. Not loud ones, not subtle ones. Whatever else it is, it should be a conservative party genuinely open to any person of any color.

… I’d like to make clear just how long this has been brewing. I know this is hardly news to anyone who reads this blog, but as I approach my 60th birthday I can say that half my life has now been marked by Rush Limbaugh, the Drudge Report, Newt Gingrich, the Vince Foster suicide, Whitewater, the Rose law firm, Filegate, the Christmas card list scandal, Fox News, Monica Lewinsky, impeachment, the Florida recount, Swift boating, the GOP’s partywide effort to suppress black votes via photo ID laws, birtherism, the unanimous Republican rejection of the 2009 stimulus, Benghazi, Emailgate, Merrick Garland, and now the endless haze of racism, bigotry, and corruption surrounding Donald Trump.

This is very much a non-exhaustive list. But every one of these things is either a baseless ‘scandal’, an example of ethical rot, or part of a deliberate media effort to lie and mislead. These are the highlights of the Republican Party over the past three decades. No political party with a rap sheet like this deserves to be walking around free.”