Via Ross, I see that Quin Hillyer was worried about Huckabee on caucus night:
That’s why all year long I have warned people to watch Huckabee — because I knew he was a threat to win the nomination. But if he does, Susan Estrich is right: The Democrats will be dancing on inauguration night, because they will make mincemeat of this unethical, insubstantial, unconservative rube from Hope, Arkansas.
I share Mr. Hillyer’s distaste for Huckabee (though perhaps for some different reasons), but one of the reasons why Huckabee has surprised so many is that I think many of us who are observing the presidential campaign keep expecting substance, policy and reason to enter into the process. This seems more and more to be a terrible mistake, and it seems clear now that it was always foolish to expect that. Also, it is far from clear that an “unethical, insubstantial, unconservative rube from Hope, Arkansas” is such an obvious general election loser. The Republicans may lose this year if they nominate Huckabee, but they are likely to lose in any case. It is the very ephemeral and superficial quality of Huckabee’s campaign on the one hand, combined with the strong attachment different groups of activists have with him, that makes it more competitive and threatening to Democrats, who otherwise will have a monopoly on this kind of rhetoric in a year when voters are responding to it. Criticisms of his economics have tended to take his rhetoric about class and Wall Street seriously, when closer observation reveals that, yet again, there is nothing to what he is saying. His great “populist” appeal is, in the end, as real as Fred Thompson’s populism of driving around in a pickup truck–it is a series of symbolic cues whereby the candidate claims that he is “one of us” who intuitively “gets” what “we are going through.” His latest along these lines is to keep saying that he thinks Americans want a President who reminds them of the guy they work with, rather than the guy who laid them off. That’s a good line, especially if you’re running against a corporate CEO who was in the business of turning around failing companies partly by laying off employees, but it is also utterly ridiculous. If Americans do want that, Americans are fools, but then hardly anyone was ever defeated in an election underestimating the wisdom of the Amercan public.
Where George Bush employed his religion to create a feeling of solidarity with evangelical and conservative voters, Huckabee throws in tales of his hardscrabble youth to show that he comes “from the people” and people seem to believe it. (The more I think about this, the more the entire Huckabee campaign reminds me of Gaius Baltar’s little manifesto against the “new aristocracy” in the third season of Battlestar Galactica, except that Huckabee’s rhetoric is far more vague.) Huckabee refers to “fair trade” in one breath and then praises NAFTA in the next, and laments the woes of the working man as he prepares to make said working man pay a 30% consumption tax on everything he buys. The man’s sheer lack of scruples and his ability to disarm Democratic critics by paying lip service to things they care about are, in fact, electoral gold. Everything that makes him so undesirable and objectionable to principled conservatives is the sort of thing that probably strengthens his standing with the general public.
Lack of substance has determined the leaders of the Republican field for the last twelve months. Fred Thompson may be a serious, thoughtful, well-informed, albeit languid, man, but herein lies his problem: when he was little more than a celebrity candidate who made amusing YouTube videos about Michael Moore, he was king of the world among conservatives who were desperate, in their utter sentimentalism, to find “a new Reagan,” and as soon as he became a proper candidate with policy proposals he ceased to inspire much enthusiasm. (Part of this was a result of his awful campaign style, but the pro-Thompson hysteria ended as all emotionally-driven fads must–in deep disappointment and the discovery of a new, more intriguing fad.) Rudy Giuliani is a deadly serious maniac whose foreign policy ideas would spell disaster for our country, but his preeminence in the field stemmed entirely from vague good feelings about him as a “strong leader” derived from memories of him on 9/11. Romney probably is the best qualified executive and manger in the field, but whatever substance the man has is so Protean in nature that no one knows what form he will take next. He lacks substance, but in a very different way from the rest–he pretends to have deeply held principles and ideas, yet has only had these profound convictions for the duration of his presidential campaign. The GOP field has been dominated by celebrity candidates all along, while the real candidates of substance, such as Duncan Hunter and, yes, Tommy Thompson (who was probably the best qualified of them all and therefore, naturally, among the first to drop out), have languished in total obscurity. The truly odd phenomenon of this election is the creation of a kind of celebrity out of Ron Paul, who has achieved star status primarily on account of his policy views. The same thing has prevailed on the Democratic side, where novelty (Obama) and familiarity/fame have determined the shape of their field since the beginning. The vastly more qualified and prepared candidates on their side (e.g., Biden, Dodd and, I suppose, even Richardson) have gone down to humiliating and ignominious defeat. We may very well complain about the current faddish leaders, but we need to understand that the election campaign has been driven by the media, both liberal and conservative, and focused on irrelevancies and absurdities since the beginning over a year ago.
A good rule of thumb: if you are an informed, educated and serious person, whatever is most hateful to you is probably what the general public will prefer. This is especially true in electoral politics, where being informed, educated and serious often blinds you to what drives and motivates 90% of the electorate. To the extent that these folks become aware of these things at all, it is usually to dismissively declare them evidence of the irrational in politics. But irrationality has always existed and will always exist in any human political order, and expecting anything else, as I often have done, is a great error. Limiting the role of irrationality in politics, while desirable, is hardly possible in a mass democratic regime with an historically illiterate and media-saturated majority. The main flaw in most of the critiques aimed specifically at Huckabee, populists, restrictionists, etc. in recent months and years is the assumption by those making these critiques that they represent the more rational position, rather than one that is equally or more irrational.
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January 6th, 2008 at 3:36 pm
James Newland
That whole last paragraph is golden, but the last sentence is particularly cogent. Well done!
January 6th, 2008 at 8:35 pm
Ian
It seems as though you’re putting distance between Huckabee and “substance, policy and reason…” But, this could be said, by anyone, about any of the candidates - Republican or Democrat. And, the means by which those criteria are evaluated would be biased, at the get go, by whether the “observer” is disposed to see wisdom as residing with “big government,” or alternatively with “We, the People.”
Even the term, “observers,” - as used by the observers, themselves - is usually code for “chattering class,” or those who by family or fortune have more time on their hands which they can call their own. In fewer cases (like my own), the time is a direct result of sacrificing hours which could otherwise be employed toward personal gain.
The term “superficial,” as used in your commentary seems to refer to anyone who dares to vary from the traditional party line. One moment you’re saying that Huckabee’s “economics” populism is being taken seriously, yet then you say it’s as real as someother candidate’s of “driving around in a pickup truck”?
How confused are YOU?!
What sets Huckabee apart is that he’s a Washington outsider with a TRULY populist message. And it’s because the “economics” of Washington-as-usual (tax code modifications by lobbyist/money; congressional spending without responsibility) has not only failed, but are taking us into recession and potentially dire currency failure!
Huckabee is the ONLY candidate who supports enactment of a consumption tax, eliminating a major part of the problem - the income tax system that has been used more for political gain, than for healthful fiscal management. It’s a system that sets up, and benefits, a privileged class (of whom Mitt Romney is a member - together with those members of Congress who look forward to a seeking a nice post-Washington life as a lobbyist seeking preferential treatment for their clients under the tax code, among other things).
However, the problem are those who keep talking out of their backsides who are disconnected from the working world of, God forbid, ordinary working people (who - by slur, or implication, are unable to properly care for themselves and their families without some type of government intervenor - precisely how “liberal” politicians like things to be seen to reinforce their guilty-conscience-laden sense of raison d’etre).
Yes, to such people, a rise of someone like Huckabee who’s plain-talking, with non-neurotic, sensible, compelling ideas, ARE “irrational”; but, of course, the reverse is the case.
January 6th, 2008 at 8:52 pm
Daniel Larison
Mind you, I have been generally far more sympathetic to Huckabee’s supporters than most, understanding as I do their frustration with the GOP establishment, but perhaps I have not been clear enough in what I have been trying to say. If Huckabee were diverging from the “traditional party line” on economics and trade, I would be intrigued and possibly more open to what he was trying to do. My critique of the superficial nature of his campaign is that he makes vague references to “fair trade” but has nothing else to say about this. If he thinks NAFTA was a good idea, as he claims, he is the one spouting the “traditional party line.”
I was saying that the establishment GOP was incorrectly perceiving Huckabee’s “populism” as a genuine revolt against their economic policy ideas, when in fact his “populism” is a superficial symbolic appeal akin to Fred Thompson’s use of a pickup trick. If that reflects confusion, so be it, but I think the point is clear: Huckabee’s “populism” is fake, like Thompson’s, but it is being interpreted wrongly as a real challenge to the establishment’s power. If you think the Fair Tax empowers the common man and weakens the central government, I congratulate you on your optimism. I agree that irrationality characterises the support for the other candidates–that was the point of the post. Of the non-Ron Paul candidates who stand a chance of being nominated, I am least opposed to Huckabee. Perhaps that will straighten things out.
January 7th, 2008 at 11:38 am
Grumpy Old Man
Both Huckabee and Obama represent, among other things, the Revolt of the Voting Cattle–evangelicals on the GOP side, blacks on the Dem side. After years of being taken for granted and fed with scraps from the political table, these groups are being offered someone who is at least to some extent one of their own.
Hill and Bill and George Will are all a-twitter. I’m no acolyte of either, personable though each is, but it’s fun to watch the Clintonistas and the country-club/WSJ GOP up against it.
The Republic is still foundering, but it could be an amusing year, what with the peasants besieging the manor house with their torches and pitchforks.