Mitt Romney's Failure – and Mine
In the last few weeks, as some of you may have noticed, I have written very few blog posts. In part, this is due to the rhythm of the semester. Once the grading begins, one's free time shrinks. Part of it is due to the fact that I am maniacally trying to finish a polished draft of a book on ancient Sparta that I had hoped, before my extended sojourn in the hospital at the National Institutes of Health took place, to finish this summer. In part, however, it was because I had some thinking to do.
As some of you are no doubt acutely aware, the election results came to me as a shock. Given the emergence of the Tea Party Movement in 2009, the Republicans' discovery in the last months of that year that there is such a thing as a backbone, and their magnificent victory in the midterms in 2010, I figured that the Republicans had a real shot in 2012 at repeating what they had achieved against Jimmy Carter in 1980. And when Mitt Romney put Paul Ryan on the ticket, it looked to me as if he was going to fully capitalize on the opportunity that Barack Obama's mismanagement of the economy had afforded the Republicans.
But, of course, the Republicans did not achieve again what they had accomplished in 1980. I have no doubt that they could have won handily, and I believe that they would have done so had Mitt Romney not, in the end, opted to run a largely non-ideological, non-partisan, personal campaign against Barack Obama, eschewing appeals to first principles and intimating by his silence in this regard that Barack Obama is a perfectly decent fellow with perfectly respectable ideas and intentions and that there was nothing more at issue in the election than the unfortunate managerial failings of the President.
Instead of seeking a partisan victory by uniting the candidates of his party on a single, clearly spelled-out platform like Newt Gringrich's Contract with America, Romney orphaned the Republican Senatorial candidates in such a manner as to localize the Senatorial campaigns. This enabled the Democratic nominees in states such as Montana, Missouri, and Indiana to distance themselves from the President, to run as independents of a sort highly critical of Barack Obama, to capitalize on errors made by their opponents, and to win. It also meant that there was no real clash of visions in the national race. When Romney put Paul Ryan on the ticket, I persuaded myself that he was an old dog capable of learning new tricks and that he was going to grasp the bull by the horns and run a principled campaign. But in the end he chose not to do so, and he ran for the Presidency in the manner he had run for the Senate and for the Governorship in Massachusetts: as a man almost ashamed of the party that had nominated him and of the ideological principles that it had embraced. You can never win an argument you do not make, and Romney, by his silence regarding the nature and ends of government, conceded the argument.
Even then, of course, Romney himself might have won the personal victory he sought had the women and men he hired run a competent campaign. But this they did not do. To begin with, in the primaries, especially when challenged by Governor Rick Perry of Texas (where the Republicans have done well with the Hispanic vote) Romney acted in such a manner as to alienate Mexican-Americans. Then, in the general election, he simply conceded the Hispanic vote. I have a colleague who is fluent in Spanish and who regularly watches Univision. He tells me that, in the course of the campaign, he saw not a single television advertisement on Univision touting Mitt Romney.
I am not arguing here that Romney could have persuaded a majority of Mexican-American voters to side with him. That would have been beyond the reach of any Republican this year. I am merely suggesting that he could have done much better and that, in the circumstances, had he done so, it might well have made a real difference.
The other area in which the Romney campaign was simply incompetent had to do with getting out the vote. I live in a battleground state. We were inundated with robocalls for weeks prior to the election. The Romney people clearly had money to burn, and this money they wasted in such a manner as to infuriate potential supporters. Never once was I contacted by a real human being. In Michigan -- at least in the corner of Michigan in which I live -- the Romney campaign had no ground game to speak of.
To this, we can add that his campaign spent considerable sums on software designed to support the ground game that he apparently tried to mount elsewhere, and on election day that software crashed. So much for Mitt Romney's competence as a technocrat!
One of the reasons that I did not see this coming was that I did not pay adequate attention to the campaign as it unfolded. Lacking a television, I missed the advertisements aimed at demonizing Romney, and I did not fully appreciate the significance of Romney's abysmal performance at the Republican National Convention -- where it became clear that he intended to eschew principles and run a personal campaign, inviting people to vote for him solely because he is a nice fellow and an experienced manager.
I did watch the debates (all of the first, and most of the others). I was overly impressed by Romney's magnificent victory in the first debate. I thought that it put him in the lead, and my suspicions were confirmed by the Gallup poll and, some of the time, by Rasmussen. What I did not adequately appreciate in the following weeks was Romney's folly in trying to sit on that lead and run out the clock. When he should have been audacious, he was almost timid; and, especially on Benghazi, he allowed President Obama to get away with outright lies. Instead of going for a decisive victory, Romney aimed at eking out a win -- which is the way a challenger is very much apt to lose. All that it took to tip the balance against him was a hurricane and a Republican governor, in need of help from FEMA, willing to heap effusive praise on the President.
I have no doubt that Mitt Romney was a better candidate than any of those who ran against him for the Republican nomination. He lost a squeaker. The others, apart from Rick Perry, had no business being in the race. Every one of them would have lost by a landslide.
I also have no doubt that we would be much better off now had Romney won. For the time being, Barack Obama has the whip hand; and, in the next few years, he is going to do the country a great deal of harm -- all for the purpose of expanding further the administrative entitlements state. The consequences in foreign affairs could be exceedingly grim -- especially with regard to Iran and China -- and the damage done the economy will hurt Americans grievously for a long time to come.
But I also suspect that, had he won election, Mitt Romney would soon have left his party and its supporters demoralized.This, as you may remember, I worried about from the start. Back in May, 2011, I post a piece entitled The Last Man Standing. In it, I restated in brief the conclusion reached in my recent book Soft Despotism, Democracy’s Drift that "there is built into liberal democracy a natural tendency to drift in the direction of the administrative state with its concentration of power in the executive branch of the central government and its entitlement programs," and I added the following:
This propensity can only be successfully resisted if we understand its origins and if we take cognizance of the manner in which the American regime, as envisaged by the Founding generation, was designed to stand in its way. This propensity has been systematically and quite effectively exploited by the Progressives and their heirs now for something like a century. What they understand that we need to understand is that a reversal of the trend is well nigh impossible – well nigh, let me add, but not quite. Well nigh because those in possession of entitlements will scream bloody murder if they are threatened. And not quite because, thanks in part to our unwitting benefactor Barack Obama, we no longer have the resources to support the entitlements state. We can certainly raise taxes, as President Obama and the Democrats intend to do, but that does not mean that in the long run we will take in more revenue – and it is massively increased revenue that the entitlement state needs. The Progressives are banking on the unwillingness of a considerable part of the electorate to give up the subsidies on which they live, and on this they have always to date successfully banked. Right now, however, the fiscal crisis of the welfare state offers us an opening, and I am confident that Mitt Romney will miss it. He is the sort of man who never misses an opportunity to miss an opportunity.
Since 1928, when Calvin Coolidge relinquished the Presidency, the office has been held by a number of Republicans – Herbert Hoover, Dwight D. Eisenhower, Richard M. Nixon, Ronald Reagan, George H. W. Bush, and George W. Bush. Only one of these has displayed an understanding of the problem we face, and he was, for understandable reasons, too preoccupied with wining the Cold War, to confront that problem with all of his energy. Hoover, Eisenhower, Nixon, Bush père, and Bush fils were all what I call managerial progressives. Their claim over against the liberals was that they could manage the administrative state more efficiently and effectively than their counterparts. Rarely if ever did any of them mention the Founders. Rarely if ever did they appeal to the first principles of our form of government as they are expressed in the Declaration of Independence. Rarely if ever did they appeal to the Constitution in opposition to the jurisprudential drift of the Supreme Court. Limited government was not part of their vocabulary. They were without clue.
The reasons are simple enough. Not one of these men was properly educated in the principles of American government. They had their virtues. They were practical men, can-do sorts with a pretty good understanding of how to get from here to there. In terms of moral understanding, as it is applied to political matters, however, they were bankrupt or pretty nearly so. The ordinary senior at Hillsdale College these days has a better grasp of the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution, and the conditions of freedom than did any of these men.
The same is true of nearly all Republicans. They come into Congress, the Senate, and state government from the Chambers of Commerce. Few of them have any sort of political education. Most are businessmen. If they have something more than an undergraduate education, it is reflected by their possessing a law degree or an MBA – which is to say, they have been trained to be managerial progressives. Our law schools and our business schools owe their origins to the Progressives. They were created for the purpose of encouraging what Franklin Delano Roosevelt called “rational administration.”
The reason why I oppose Mitt Romney is simple, He was born to destroy everything that we have accomplished since the Tea-Party Movement emerged in the Spring of 2009. Romney is the very model of a managerial progressive. He has one great virtue. He knows how to run things; he knows how to organize things. He would make a good Secretary of Commerce. He has no understanding of the principles that underpin our government. And, in fact, like most businessmen, he is a man almost devoid of political principles. Give him a problem, and he will make a highly intelligent attempt to solve it. Ask him to identify which problems should be left to ordinary people and what are the proper limits to government’s reach, and he would not understand the question. He is what you might call a social engineer; and, in his estimation, we are little more than the cogs and wheels that need to be engineered. . . .
Romney’s political instincts are disastrous. He will betray the friends of liberty and limited government at the first opportunity. If he is nominated, the people who joined the Tea Party and turned out in 2010 to give the Republicans an historic victory are likely to stay home. If, by some miracle, the progenitor of Romneycare actually defeats the progenitor of Obamacare, he will quickly embrace the entitlement state and present himself as the man who can make it hum, as he did in Massachusetts. He is not better than Hoover, Eisenhower, Nixon, Bush père, and Bush fils. He is cut from the same cloth, and in practice he is apt to be far, far worse. The consequence will be the death in American life or at least the decay of the impulse embodied within the Tea-Party Movement.
What I wrote at that time was harsh, and I came to think -- or, rather, hope -- that I had been unjust. I wanted to believe that time and circumstance had given Romney the education that he did not receive at Stanford, Brigham Young University, Harvard Business School, and Harvard Law School, and I wanted to believe that his choice of Paul Ryan as a running mate was not just a sop thrown to the Tea Party Movement but a sign that Romney himself had outgrown managerial progressivism. Had I spent less time thinking about Sparta this Fall and more time following the Republican campaign, had I read and re-read Romney's acceptance speech at the convention, I would have known better.
I do not now believe that Mitt Romney was ever serious about repealing Obamacare. Had he been serious, he would have run a campaign designed to nationalize the Senatorial elections in every state. What he seemed to want was to be elected President and to have Democratic control in the Senate as an excuse for a failure on his part to keep his campaign promises. It was as if he wanted to win but did not want the ideas he had been forced to espouse in order to get the Republican nomination to be victorious with him. He wanted to win an office, not an argument. In that particular, he was typical of nearly all Republican presidential nominees in the past. He had no desire to change the direction in which we are tending. He merely wanted to manage its progress in that direction more prudently.
That may never have been good enough. It is certainly not good enough now. Let's hope that Mitt Romney turns out to be the last managerial progressive nominated for the Presidency by the Republican Party. What we need is a woman or man intent on radically correcting our course and a party intent on achieving the same end.
The last thing that we need to do is to take the advice proffered to us by Mike Murphy -- tellingly, not in a conservative journal but in the pages of Time Magazine, where such advice is most welcome -- that, to succeed, we must surrender to the Zeitgeist. Why just think how much good Arnold Schwarzenegger did the Republican Party and the people of California! Barry Goldwater was right about one thing long ago. We need to offer Americans a choice, not an echo. We need to do more than re-arrange the deck chairs on our political Titanic.
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Comments:
Jul '11
Re: Mitt Romney's Failure – and Mine
"I do not now believe that Mitt Romney was ever serious about repealing Obamacare. Had he been serious, he would have run a campaign designed to nationalize the Senatorial elections in every state. What he seemed to want was to be elected President and to have Democratic control in the Senate as an excuse for a failure on his part to keep his campaign promises."
I find the argument that Romney wanted a Democrat senate to oppose him, had he won, just a little to much to stomach. I mostly agree with your assessment of a poorly run campaign and an overly technocratic Romney, but to go so far as to say he wanted a split government or imply that he wished he wouldn't have to uphold Republican values, seems to me an overly pernicious personal attack on Romney's character. A good man? Yes. A good candidate? No.
Jul '11
Re: Mitt Romney's Failure – and Mine
"Barry Goldwater was right about one thing long ago. We need to offer Americans a choice, not an echo. We need to do more than re-arrange the deck chairs on our political Titanic."
It seems that in the wake of an electoral defeat it is illustrative to look at Goldwater's self described favorite bit of poetry. Written by Rudyard Kipling.
If you can bear to hear the truth you’ve spoken
Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,
Or watch the things you gave your life to, broken,
And stoop and build ’em up with worn-out tools;
Re: Mitt Romney's Failure – and Mine
Vice-Potentate: "I do not now believe that Mitt Romney was ever serious about repealing Obamacare. Had he been serious, he would have run a campaign designed to nationalize the Senatorial elections in every state. What he seemed to want was to be elected President and to have Democratic control in the Senate as an excuse for a failure on his part to keep his campaign promises."
I find the argument that Romney wanted a Democrat senate to oppose him, had he won, just a little to much to stomach. I mostly agree with your assessment of a poorly run campaign and an overly technocratic Romney, but to go so far as to say he wanted a split government or imply that he wished he wouldn't have to uphold Republican values, seems to me an overly pernicious personal attack on Romney's character. A good man? Yes. A good candidate? No. · 5 minutes ago
You may be right, but I doubt it. Romney sees himself as the epitome of bipartisanship. He knew that the repeal of Obamacare would take a Republican Senate -- and he chose to run a personal campaign.
Mar '11
Re: Mitt Romney's Failure – and Mine
The good news about America's recent support of social democracy? It is wide, but it is not terribly deep.
Graecia capta ferum victorem cepit.
Jul '11
Re: Mitt Romney's Failure – and Mine
Paul A. Rahe
You may be right, but I doubt it. Romney sees himself as the epitome of bipartisanship. He knew that the repeal of Obamacare would take a Republican Senate -- and he chose to run a personal campaign. · 2 minutes ago
In my opinion, his choice to run a personal campaign was a reaction to Obama's success in 2008 and Obama's continuing popularity, not a conscious choice to abandon Republican senate candidates.
Re: Mitt Romney's Failure – and Mine
Great post, Paul. I agree, except that I did see a change in Romney's campaign and message after the convention - too little too late. Suddenly, he was talking principles and fundamental domestic and foreign policy issues. Although he left Benghazi and other key points about Obama/Clinton out of the discussion, in both debates and and rallies, I saw more backbone and more references to founding ideals.
This, I think, is one of the problems with assessing why he lost. I believe it had to do partly with Romney being a talking points man - except at the end. But, the fact that he did eventually take a stand allows some such as Murphy to argue that it was the stand itself that lost it. I particularly agree with this :
Rarely if ever did any of them mention the Founders. ... Not one of these men was properly educated in the principles of American government.
The void of education in history and the founding and the pseudo-education via the media and Hollywood that fill the void, are the heart of the matter. Since writing America Needs a Renaissance, and reading the insightful comments in response, I am convinced of this.
Edited on December 1, 2012 at 9:04pmOct '11
Re: Mitt Romney's Failure – and Mine
With all due respect, Dr. Rahe, I agree with Vice-Potentate. You're being too harsh... Romney didn't win, so now you're saying, "well, if he had won, he would have been disappointing anyway." Again with respect, that's childish. To be fair, you did say you thought he would have been better than Obama (obviously). But condemning him for having disappointed conservatives had he won seems a bit much.
Edited on December 1, 2012 at 9:21pmJan '11
Re: Mitt Romney's Failure – and Mine
My failure to see the coming presidential election loss can be expressed in the simplest terms: I just couldn't understand why anyone would vote for the same results for the next four years.
This ... is what you want? This ... is what you vote for?
Like the Professor, I didn't expect much from Romney. But I already knew what to expect from Obama. And I just couldn't bring myself to believe that the American public would reward the last four years.
In the most recent GLoP podcast, the trio claimed that as a rule, you should always presume that the public acted rationally. Should we presume the public calculated that a Romney presidency would be worse than four more years of this? Perhaps, especially since Obama so effectively demonized Romney, that this might have been borderline "rational" calculation. But I can't agree it was a wise calculation.
The most nauseating thing is that Obama and the Democrats will fail miserably ... but based on this election, I'll unhappily predict that their only success will be in blaming Republicans for the failure.
Oct '11
Re: Mitt Romney's Failure – and Mine
Anne R. Pierce: Great post, Paul. I agree, except that I did see a change in Romney's campaign and message after the convention - too little too late. Suddenly, he was talking principles and fundamental domestic and foreign policy issues. Although he left Benghazi and other key points about Obama/Clinton out of the discussion, in both debates and and rallies, I saw more backbone and more references to founding ideals.
· 4 minutes ago
Edited 3 minutes ago
I thought Romney talked about principles from the very beginning. I always scratched my head at those who claimed he wasn't--were we following the same campaign?
In terms of Benghazi, Romney took up the issue twice, in his press conference the day after and at the town hall debate, and both times he was ravaged by the media. One can't criticize him for dropping it after that without acknowledging the real damage that Candy Crowley did to Romney in the that second debate by inserting herself inappropriately into the conversation to backup Obama's outright lie in front of more than 50 million viewers.
Oct '11
Re: Mitt Romney's Failure – and Mine
KC Mulville:
The most nauseating thing is that Obama and the Democrats will fail miserably ... but based on this election, I'll unhappily predict that their only success will be in blaming Republicans for the failure. · 5 minutes ago
They'll do an excellent job at that.
May '10
Re: Mitt Romney's Failure – and Mine
KC, I'm with you. (Also with Prof. Rahe.) I couldn't believe that a majority of Americans would vote in favor of mendacity, economic malaise, abuses of power, etc.
It was a terrible shock to be confronted with how very far gone we are. The cultural aggressions of the left have taken a terrible toll. It's hard to see recovering without a dramatic, and hard to envision, religious revival.
May '10
Re: Mitt Romney's Failure – and Mine
11/6/12 was our final chance to lean very hard on the tiller and possibly, just maybe, miss the iceberg.
The majority of voters voted "full steam ahead."
It is now a bit after midnight on the Titanic [recall the ship hit the iceberg at 11:44 p.m. and was on its way to the bottom from that moment].
"Nearer My God to Thee" being so 19th century, the band has struck up "Don't Worry, Be Happy" Free choom and condoms are available in the dispensary. The captain has set out for Hawaii in his private launch.
Re: Mitt Romney's Failure – and Mine
Albert Arthur
Anne R. Pierce: Great post, Paul. I agree, except that I did see a change in Romney's campaign and message after the convention - too little too late. Suddenly, he was talking principles and fundamental domestic and foreign policy issues. Although he left Benghazi and other key points about Obama/Clinton out of the discussion, in both debates and and rallies, I saw more backbone and more references to founding ideals.
· 4 minutes ago
Edited 3 minutes ago
I thought Romney talked about principles from the very beginning. --were we following the same campaign? .....
I mostly agree with you regarding the criticism he's received re. the Benghazi issue. Also agree that media's part in framing the debate was huge. I actually began to think he was just what the country needed at the end of the campaign. -- But, his convention speech was uninspired, and before the convention, I longed for him to get off the talking points: I heard "jobs, jobs, jobs" - not serious policy and fundamental principles.
Oct '12
Re: Mitt Romney's Failure – and Mine
Romney is one of many Republicans who are ruthless in attacking conservatives and other Republicans but unwilling to be equally aggressive with their Democrat opponents. Great way to win a nomination, no way to win a general election.
Oct '11
Re: Mitt Romney's Failure – and Mine
I certainly can't disagree with your analysis, Dr. Rahe. I think most conservatives saw the result coming once Romney became the presumptive nominee. The most amazing thing about this whole sorry affair is that anyone could expect anything different from a self-professed progressive and former governor of Massachusetts. How did his apologists think he was elected there?
Actually, though, I suspect few of Romney's supporters were ever actually fooled - the statist strain is as strong in the Republican party as it is in the Democratic.
One quibble, Dr. Rahe: would it really have been worse for us to nominate Gingrich? How? At least we'd have had a debate on principle.
Jan '12
Re: Mitt Romney's Failure – and Mine
Vice-Potentate: "Barry Goldwater was right about one thing long ago. We need to offer Americans a choice, not an echo. We need to do more than re-arrange the deck chairs on our political Titanic."
It seems that in the wake of an electoral defeat it is illustrative to look at Goldwater's self described favorite bit of poetry. Written by Rudyard Kipling.
If you can bear to hear the truth you’ve spoken
Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,
Or watch the things you gave your life to, broken,
And stoop and build ’em up with worn-out tools; · 21 minutes ago
Perhaps Mitt Romney is salving his wounds with Mr. Kipling's opening lines :
"If you can keep your head, when all about you are losing theirs and blaming it on you..."
I have great respect for Mr. Rahe's intellect and scholarship, but I must say that the piece of poetry that this essay reminds me of is Percy B. Shelley's, Ozymandias.
Jun '12
Re: Mitt Romney's Failure – and Mine
I've already explained why I think Romney lost, and it can be summarized in three words: "People are stupid."
See the post I linked above to find out where the quote came from... it might surprise you. :)
Re: Mitt Romney's Failure – and Mine
Albert Arthur: With all due respect, Dr. Rahe, I agree with Vice-Potentate. You're being too harsh... Romney didn't win, so now you're saying, "well, if he had won, he would have been disappointing anyway." Again with respect, that's childish. To be fair, you did say you thought he would have been better than Obama (obviously). But condemning him for having disappointed conservatives had he won seems a bit much. · 39 minutes ago
Edited 25 minutes ago
I beg to differ. When a man runs a virtually contentless campaign, it is because he is planning a contentless Presidency.
Re: Mitt Romney's Failure – and Mine
Barfly: I certainly can't disagree with your analysis, Dr. Rahe. I think most conservatives saw the result coming once Romney became the presumptive nominee. The most amazing thing about this whole sorry affair is that anyone could expect anything different from a self-professed progressive and former governor of Massachusetts. How did his apologists think he was elected there?
Actually, though, I suspect few of Romney's supporters were ever actually fooled - the statist strain is as strong in the Republican party as it is in the Democratic.
One quibble, Dr. Rahe: would it really have been worse for us to nominate Gingrich? How? At least we'd have had a debate on principle. · 14 minutes ago
I am guilty of coming to think that he might do something different. Mea culpa. As for Gingrich, he might have lost us the House as well. He is a loose cannon.
Jan '11
Re: Mitt Romney's Failure – and Mine
katievs:
It was a terrible shock to be confronted with how very far gone we are. The cultural aggressions of the left have taken a terrible toll.
Katie, suffer a fellow Catholic to lament for a moment ... it really stopped me to see that Obama carried the Catholic vote.
I've spent some time doing some Ignatian prayer of the senses lately, visualizing the scene from John, where "As a result of this, many [of] his disciples returned to their former way of life and no longer accompanied him."
As a conservative Catholic, I know that the Obama contraception mandate will either force the church to close its ministries, or worse, prompt weak-minded idiots to follow the mandate and look the other way. In either case, it sickens me that the majority of my fellow Catholics voted for it.
I embed myself in that scene of John's gospel, watching them all walk away. That sense of abandonment, rejection ... when the going got tough, they walked away ...
Then again, out of my disappointment, I say with Peter: to where else will I go?