02/08/08
Let me give you young people a lesson in recent history.
More than 28 years ago, a kindly old man named Ronald Reagan charmed America with business-friendly economic tax cuts, aggressive anti-Soviet foreign policy and Jesus mumbo-jumbo.
In doing so, he led the Republican Party out of the backwoods and into power. More or less, the GOP has been using the same playbook the Gipper put together ever since.
Fast forward to 1992: a brilliant man named Bill Clinton charmed the pants off America with centrist domestic policies and political savvy that is unrivaled in the recent history of the White House. From Little Rock, Ark., came a standard-bearer to take the Democrats into the 21st century.
What totally amazes me is that these two past presidents-one dead and one a surrogate in his wife’s campaign (basically the same thing)-have, through their party legacies, shaped much of the presidential campaigning one can watch on TV today.
Which by the way, might be the only good thing to watch on TV since the writers’ strike continues to deny us any news from the Scranton Branch.
I’m not really interested in the heathen Democratic race involving the Hillary-Bill-Barack handicap match (refer to last week’s scruffy-looking columnist). What I am interested in is the long shadow of Reagan, and the one Republican who does not seem to be dominated by it.
Barring some sort of cataclysm on Super Tuesday, Senator John McCain will basically be the presumptive presidential nominee of the Republican Party.
Here’s a guy who was never really a Reagan Republican and some would argue is barely even classifiable as conservative. He’s also the GOP’s only shot at ever seeing power again in the foreseeable future.
Why? Two reasons: Reagan’s greatest hits are no longer playing in the modern world, and the rest of the GOP candidates will get stomped in a general election against either Senator Clinton or Obama.
Let’s examine my first point: The platform built for the GOP in 1980 no longer holds up. How do you do ward off a recession? “Tax cuts and refunds” is the same answer any member of the last three Republican administrations would give.
The only problem is that the tax refund-based stimulus package really didn’t stimulate anything the last time President Bush tried it because people were basically too nervous of the economic situation to spend any money. Oh yeah, it didn’t really work in the ’80s or ’90s either.
Let’s turn to foreign affairs. To end the Cold War, former President Reagan basically bankrupted the commies by heaping huge amounts of money into defense spending.
The Soviets were conventional enemies susceptible to reason, not like the religious nut-jobs we are fighting today. The global war on terror (not to mention Iraq) is a whole new ballgame. We’re not playing Hold ‘Em with Gorbachev anymore: Spending alone will not win the war on terror.
The United States has serious problems-both at home and abroad-and the same tactics that Republicans have been using for the last 30 years are in desperate need of change. The next president has to have both innovative ideas as well as the ability to unite Americans behind those ideals. That brings me to my next point.
Look at the rest of the Republican field. Rudy has endorsed McCain. Huckabee is an evangelical’s dream with no shot in the general election. Ron Paul is a true constitutionalist but is also-undeniably-crazy. Romney is intolerable to many Independents and has angered many conservatives with his flip-flopping on guns, abortion, healthcare and pretty much anything else he reads polling data on. McCain is the only one who can stand up to Clinton or Obama.
The presidential campaigns so far-especially on the Republican side-have seen a disturbing lack of fresh political thought. McCain is the lone Republican with ideas appealing enough to match the genuine charisma of Obama or the neatly re-packaged Clinton 2.0.
If and when McCain becomes the Republican nominee for president, he has got to stick to the Independent political philosophy that got him branded as a maverick in the first place.
