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:
Jan '11
Re: Mitt Romney's Failure – and Mine
Barbara Kidder, you're spot on. Absolutely, completely spot on.
May '12
Re: Mitt Romney's Failure – and Mine
Being a New Yorker, I could safely just assume that Democrats & Liberals have always ruled the world and always will.
I know, I exaggerate.
I'd need to have Flownover (assuming he wouldn't play tricks on a city-slicker like me and leave on the uppermost reaches of the Platte River with a dead battery in my cell phone and no bars anyway) introduce me to some hoi polloi.
And even then, would I have that different a message than the NYC Liberals were broadcasting on WNYC?
Jun '12
Re: Mitt Romney's Failure – and Mine
Edward Smith: Being a New Yorker, I could safely just assume that Democrats & Liberals have always ruled the world and always will.
I know, I exaggerate.
I'd need to have Flownover (assuming he wouldn't play tricks on a city-slicker like me and leave on the uppermost reaches of the Platte River with a dead battery in my cell phone and no bars anyway) introduce me to some hoi polloi.
And even then, would I have that different a message than the NYC Liberals were broadcasting on WNYC? · 1 minute ago
Edward, my friend, I am in one of the reddest of the red states... come on out here and I'll introduce you to some real salt-of-the-earth types.
Jan '11
Re: Mitt Romney's Failure – and Mine
Edward, we can't forget that New York is a big place -- there's even a huge state attached to that city, with the Leatherstocking Region serving up a delightful contrast to Manhattan. A 3-hour drive north will cure what ails ye. ;)
If Prof. Rahe and the scholar-punditry's elite weren't so goshdarn busy, I'd offer to host them for a few days -- we'd start with a refresher course on the 2nd Amendment (delivered when you roll in the driveway and you're not a UPS truck), then move on to an appreciation for old-time music, a wardrobe remake at Herb Philipson's Army and Navy, a case of Genny Cream Ale, a pouch of Red Man and a few nights mixing with the locals.
We'd talk about life, culture and politics the entire time, and it just might be a different perspective than the last few issues of Imprimis.
May '10
Re: Mitt Romney's Failure – and Mine
Well, repellent is too strong a word, but he was elected in the wave of 2010 and won by just 2 pts on the same ballot that the more moderate (or moderate appearing) Portman won by 18 pts.
Also, to be fair, the reforms were largely pushed on Kasich by our newly elected eager-to-change-the-world-in-one-fell-swoop legislature. He sold it hard and true, but it was a reach beyond what he, deep down, felt was wise. I think.
As for leaving OH, the Buckeyes are 12-0 and coming off probation next year.
Edited on December 3, 2012 at 4:28amMay '10
Re: Mitt Romney's Failure – and Mine
No worries about the Bucks. They will play their way to a bowl game somewhere down South, and you'll have a shorter drive to watch them get carpet-bombed by a southern team that's bigger, faster, stronger and better.
Nov '12
Re: Mitt Romney's Failure – and Mine
Black Prince
Nick Stuart
11/6/12 was our final chance to lean very hard on the tiller and possibly, just maybe, miss the iceberg. ...
Agreed...11/6 was our last, best change and we blew it. The American experiment is officially over and we're witnessing the death of a nation. ... Well, I guess there's no point in crying...time to move on and look elsewhere for that "shining city upon a hill". · December 1, 2012 at 8:16pm
Edited 23 hours ago
When the Titanic hit the iceberg, there were three options: (1) try to save the ship; (2) abandon ship; (3) go down with the ship. After a certain point, (1) was obviously hopeless, leaving only options (2) and (3).
I am not sure that option (1) is hopeless, but Black Prince and Nick Stuart make a different assessment, and apparently opt for (2). So, Black Prince and Nick, my question is, "where will you actually go in your lifeboat or on your bit of flotsam?". Where would you go, in something like the spirit of the pilgrim fathers fleeing England? There is no more Terra Nullius.
Surely, the only realistic options are (1) or (3)?
Edited on December 3, 2012 at 6:01amNov '12
Re: Mitt Romney's Failure – and Mine
I would like to ask Prof. Rahe a counter-factual question: Assuming that you had not been so heavily focused on marking papers and scholarly writing, do you think would you still have predicted a decisive Romney victory?
Apr '11
Re: Mitt Romney's Failure – and Mine
Paul A. Rahe
James Of England:
Paul A. Rahe
He ran a contentless campaign. ·
Do you mean that he didn't mention the issues at all, or that he argued poorly?
What I mean, James, is that putting position papers up on the internet has no impact. When Romney had everyone's attention, especially in his convention speech, he failed to make the argument. He ran a personal campaign. "Pick me," he said. "I am a better manager. This other guy is a nice fellow. But I can make the engine hum." ·
You don't think that the issue based ads, keynote speeches, issue based mailings, debates, events, and such add up to something of significance? By the convention, his personal favorabilities were far lower than his levels of support on issues because he'd been running on issues (to an unprecedented level of detail) against ad hominems (King of Bain, "Flip Romney", Managerial Progressive (admittedly, a statement with a single data point of policy, so not entirely ad hominem)). The non-issue half (roughly half) of his convention speech was the only Romney history major event of the campaign.
That you didn't follow the rest != it not happening.
Edited on December 3, 2012 at 2:34pmApr '11
Re: Mitt Romney's Failure – and Mine
Barbara Kidder
Paul A. Rahe
This part of what you said is true. I was supportive but unenthusiastic during the primary season. ....
The best antidote for 'blindness from wishful thinking' is getting out and about and mixing with the hoi polloi!
If this is not your usual territory, you should have known and allowed for that myopia when you wrote with such assurance in your prediction of the Romney win. ·
The most effective way of understanding voters was to make campaign calls. The people who put in the effort to inform themselves and support the Republic (10k+ calls) were far less confident than people who pontificated in the dark.
I'd note that "[Romney] was born to destroy everything that we have accomplished since the Tea-Party Movement emerged in the Spring of 2009" was written during the "supportive" period of Prof Rahe's punditry. No other member of Ricochet rose to those heights of rhetorical excess. With friends like these....
Apr '11
Re: Mitt Romney's Failure – and Mine
Romney's speech was roughly half about Romney, half issues. Bush's 2000 speech was roughly a third Bush, and two thirds issues. It may be that that 1/6th of the Presidential nominee's convention speech was the missed opportunity that caused Senate candidates to lose their races across the country. Indeed, it may have had a far more critical impact on the Senate nominees than on the person making the speech. It strikes me, though, as the the sort of conclusion that would be likely to arise if someone only watched the convention speech, but knew the results and needed to write up a paper explaining the results.
Much as an academic whose only reading for an upcoming presentation on a social development has been in feminist literature is likely to explain that the development was all about women.
Edited on December 3, 2012 at 2:32pmMar '12
Re: Mitt Romney's Failure – and Mine
Freesmith: Romney ran strongly among conservatives. Whatever he did or didn't do, was or wasn't, he was the conservatives' choice.
Nope. Maybe the second, third or fourth choice, but not the first choice, and - excepting the inclusion of Ryan - only a better manager than the incumbent. I believe the phrase "managed decline" was used about Romney. Since the voters have spoken, I am assuming that an un-managed decline is preferable.
Mar '12
Re: Mitt Romney's Failure – and Mine
James of England: I agree that other Republicans do better with Hispanics. Does Newt?
Where were you when Newt was talking about how to work with the Hispanics? I remember him looking for a means to green card long term residents. The Romney position was self-deportation. I guess that means "Guillermo, beam me home."
Edited on December 3, 2012 at 2:49pmJun '12
Re: Mitt Romney's Failure – and Mine
Robert Lux
~Paules
Dave Carter
The only question remaining is how bad do things have to get before enough people wake up, if ever?
When you tell a spoiled child the cookie jar is empty, he will throw a tantrum. When you say the same thing to welfare dependents, union goons, or students, they will riot. Having missed one opportunity to do the rational thing, don't expect the mob to change its ways. The danger lies in the tendency of demagogues to use the threat of mob violence as a political tool. At which point anything becomes possible including violent revolution anddictatorship.
So well put, Paules....
With 6 and 3 year old children it gives me no pleasure to say this, but I am quite convinced that the path chosen in this election will eventually lead to the streets (at least some of them in the bigger cities) running red with blood when the house of play money cards comes tumbling down. Hope for the best. Plan for the worst.
Apr '11
Re: Mitt Romney's Failure – and Mine
Donald Todd:Freesmith: Romney ran strongly among conservatives. Whatever he did or didn't do,.... he was the conservatives' choice.
Nope. Maybe the second, third or fourth choice....
His voting demographic was to the right of Bush's in 2000. You may, of course, say that Bush wasn't the conservative choice either, but this clarifies the definitions.
Donald Todd:James of England: I agree that other Republicans do better with Hispanics. Does Newt?
Where were you when Newt was talking about how to work with the Hispanics? [Immigration policies]
Newt was certainly more liberal in his immigration policies. I'm not sure that this means that he was more popular with Latinos. In Florida, he got 32% of the Republican primary vote, but only 29% of Latinos. Mitt got only 46% of the primary vote, but 54% of Latinos. In no state did Newt perform more than three points better amongst Latinos than amongst whites, Arizona being his best. In Puerto Rico, they had no exit polls, but Newt's 2% result (his equal worst in March, tied with Idaho) did not suggest a magic touch with Hispanics. Newt's lessons were either mistaken or hypocritically proclaimed.
Mar '12
Re: Mitt Romney's Failure – and Mine
James of England: Newt's lessons were either mistaken or hypocritically proclaimed.
Hypocritically? I guess I get to learn from your insight, James. Or not...
Apr '11
Re: Mitt Romney's Failure – and Mine
Donald Todd:James of England: Newt's lessons were either mistaken orhypocritically proclaimed.
Hypocritically? I guess I get to learn from your insight, James. Or not... · 26 minutes ago
Perhaps I should be clearer; If Newt's lessons in how to win Latino votes were good, he clearly didn't follow them; they would have been hypocritically proclaimed. If he followed them, they weren't good.
I think it's pretty clear that he did follow his lessons, and they weren't good for many latino votes, no?
Apr '11
Re: Mitt Romney's Failure – and Mine
Stephen Hall
When the Titanic hit the iceberg, there were three options: (1) try to save the ship; (2) abandon ship; (3) go down with the ship...
...Surely, the only realistic options are (1) or (3)?
You're probably not going to like my answer, but here it goes...I'd choose option (2) and the place that I'd go to is China (or possibly Brazil). I'm well aware of China's problems (they have many) and I know that it's a totalitarian regime, but if given a choice between totalitarian regime with a dead economy and a totalitarian regime with a burgeoning economy, I'll choose the latter. If I had children, I'd make sure that they could speak Mandarin, because that's going to be the language of opportunity in the future. Oh, and for those who don't think that English can be replaced, I'd suggest that they think again...if it can happen to Latin then it can happen to English. It's going to be a brave new world and we need to prepare.
Edited on December 4, 2012 at 2:04amApr '11
Re: Mitt Romney's Failure – and Mine
Black Prince
You're probably not going to like my answer, but here it goes...I'd choose option (2) and the place that I'd go to is China (or possibly Brazil). I'm well aware of China's problems (they have many) and I know that it's a dictatorship, but if given a choice between a dictatorship with a dead economy and a dictatorship with a burgeoning economy, I'll choose the latter. If I had children, I'd make sure that they could speak Mandarin, because that's going to be the language of opportunity in the future. Oh, and for those who don't think that English can be replaced, I'd suggest that they think again...if it can happen to Latin then it can happen to English. It's going to be a brave new world and we need to prepare. ·
Aside from the communism, relative poverty, and population, the biggest difference between China and the US is that China's better at lying about its problems. Brazil, I could imagine, but I wouldn't want to bet on being a foreigner in China when they hit their first unavoidable recession.
Mar '12
Re: Mitt Romney's Failure – and Mine
Paul A Rahe: Romney went after him on the manner in which he and his fellow Texans had accommodated the presence of illegal aliens in the state.
The governor of Texas was suffering from the same problems as fellow border governors, that being the unwillingness of the federal government to guard the borders. If you have lemons, make lemonade. Given the fact that the Texas legislature and the Texas governor arrived at a bill that could be signed, I think lemonade was what they were able to do, short of placing the Texas National Guard along the Rio Grande. We all saw how well "usurping" federal prerogatives in regard to border enforcement worked out in Arizona.