GOP 2012: Worst Candidate Batch Ever?
It’s now Conventional Wisdom that this 2012 GOP bunch is the total pits, but objectively, the 2008 Democrats are right in there:
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Winner Division
Barack Obama
—First-term US Senator, spent Years 3-4 of 6-yr term campaigning for president
—7 years as senator in Illinois state legislature
Mitt Romney [projected nominee]
—One-term Governor of Massachusetts [4 years]
—Success in private sector, “rescued” 2002 Winter Olympics [NYT]
Edge: Romney. Governorship counts as executive experience, legislative experience does not, and Romney wins 4-2 anyway. State legislatures are good political training, but so is being mayor of Wasilla. Crash Davis had 247 minor league home runs, which amounted to not much.
[Not Romney-Obama 2012. President Obama knows where the White House bathrooms are now, and this is no small thing.]
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Estrogen Division
Hillary Clinton
—2nd term US Senator
—Former FLOTUS
Michele Bachmann
—2nd term US House of Representatives
—7 years as senator in Minnesota state legislature
Edge: Sen./Mrs. Clinton. Senate beats House by a long way in American electoral history. And although Rep./Mrs. Bachmann is by contrast and to her credit a self-made woman with a state legislature background equal to Barack Obama’s, that counts for squat.
A savvy First Lady understands the presidency far more than the average Congressperson. Me, I’d take my chances on Laura Bush speaking for us on the global stage than, oh geez, Joe Biden. Thank God Hillary’s our Sec of State and Biden’s only the Vice President!
I was riffing on this one, but upon further review, I think most Obama-Biden voters are down with that realization too, better Hillary as Sec of State and Biden as VP than vice versa.
OK, now it gets fun:
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The Criminal Cocksman
The parallels are really amazing. There’s a pattern here:
John Edwards
—One-term US Senator
—Wife sick, another woman
—Up on charges for campaign funds squirreliness [criminal]
Newt Gingrich
—10-term US congressman
—Speaker of the House for 4 years
—Wife sick, another woman
—Nailed on charges for campaign funds squirreliness [non-criminal]
Edge: Newt. Gotta call him by his first name, like Madonna or Cher. To know him is to love him. To get to know him any better than that is to hate him.
John Edwards was and is a non-entity except for his personal corruption, some “Two Americas” blather and some very good looks. Newt is Newt, but John Edwards isn’t anybody.
Now it gets really fun:
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Freak Show Division
Dennis Kucinich vs. Ron Paul
They make exquisite sense on this issue or that and on none of the rest. If 90% of life is just showing up—and it is—90% of our issues are beyond their ken.
Edge: Ron Paul, just because he was an OB/GYN who delivered 4000 babies. If you’d let Dennis to deliver our baby, I would not be your baby mama.
Two-Term Governors
Bill Richardson vs. Rick Perry
Edge: Richardson, who was also Ambassador to the UN and Secretary of Energy. But Richardson also goes into the
Grab-ass Division
vs. Herman Cain
Everybody know the dirt on the late great Mr. Cain, but Richardson has his problems, too. He also gets an honorable mention in the crook division as well.
Edge: Richardson.
In the Un-re-electable One-term Senator category, along with John Edwards, Rick Santorum.
Edge: Santorum, for not being a criminal crook. But neither one could even carry his own home state, so who cares?
In the Whodat Division, John Huntsman & Gary Johnson vs. Chris Dodd & Mike Gravel
Edge: GOP. If every other name in this post got a brain-eating fungus and that’s who was left, Huntsman gets the nod over Chris Dodd the unindicted crook and Gravel, who fits in squarely between Ron Paul and Dennis Kucinich.
Summary: Pretty much a push, and for the GOP, pretty much par for a year with a sitting incumbent. Gov. Mitch Daniels [R-IN] looked like a shoo-in when he decided not to run, and even more now that we’ve seen the rest of the GOP field in action. Unfortunately, some unpretty family history [none of it his fault] led him to wisely decline to run and expose his family to the horrors of the 24/7 news cycle.
In the end, it only takes one; that’s all there’s room for. After shopping from sea to shining sea for a mate, the GOP will marry the boy next door. In November, it’ll be Romney vs. Obama, and most of the rest of the fields of 2008 and 2012 will return to well-deserved obscurity.
[For which this post is destined as well..]
Between this and the Happy Xmas over at Dutch Courage, you are on a roll.Report
Oooops, Tod. I meant to park this down there in the sub-blog. Oh well, here it stays. I can’t wait for the comments. 😉Report
Yeah, those will be fun! But I’m glad you goofed; this is a great front pager.Report
I caucused for Gravel.
They broke my group apart because it had only one person in it.Report
There’s a Sorites problem in there somewhere.Report
“To know him is to love him. To get to know him any better than that is to hate him.”
OK, thats pretty good. As they say on your planet-
Heh Indeed!Report
Back when I thought this stuff made some difference I never paid much attention to background experience. Just who came closest to representing me, period. Executive experience, legislative, whatever. Who supports people on experience grounds who crap all over their issues anyway?Report
errm, a lot of Singaporeans do, I believe.Report
Willingly?Report
Pretty much. I suppose many hold their noses because the opposition is just worse, (but the Worker’s Party managed to hold on to one single seat constituency and gained one Group representative constituency) That brings the number of opposition voices in parliament up to an all time high since indepedence of 6 out of 88Report
Why, in your opinion? Do they just reason there’s no hope in their views being represented anyway#, or are they intentionally ranking an air of competence over seeking actual representation?
(# – funny thing, that conclusion. Once I reached it I stopped voting for any reason beyond local ballot initiative, on which at least I am directly speaking for myself.)Report
Ideology is overrated, Mr. Psycho. In fact, too much of it is a hindrance to good government. Bill Clinton was a good president precisely because of his competence and ability to swallow his ideology and work with Congress. We got lucky in 1992, that a typically thin field vs. a sitting incumbent yielded a guy who could actually do the damn job.
I adored Bob Kerrey [whose candidacy went nowhere], and have a soft spot for Jerry Brown [I voted for him in the last CA governor election vs. a vastly unqualified Republican], but the 1992 Dem field was nothing to brag about, and Jerry Brown’s mercurial addiction to ideas is reminiscent of Newt’s.
The 1996 GOP field is perhaps the worst of all in recent memory. [I was an Alexander man.] After Buchanan won New Hampshire, the party rallied around Dole to avoid a down-ticket meltdown ala Goldwater 1964, fully knowing he couldn’t beat Clinton.
Not that it’s unimportant, but ideology is the last thing I vote. As noted in the OP, 90% of life is showing up, and 90% of the presidency is non-ideological, just American, just a question of competence and all that entails. The OP was an attempt at objectivity sans ideology: It’s not impossible for an inexperienced pol to be a good president, but it’s damned unlikely. It’s a hard goddam job, the world’s hardest.
Think of it this way: Michael Jordan, one of the world’s most superlative athletes, tried his hand at professional baseball. He did well enough, I suppose, but not really all that well.
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Do you think Obama is more ideological than Clinton? I don’t see it, but this is a case where I could certainly have my blinders on.Report
Of course I do, Michelle, but since BHO’s critics from the left complain he’s too centrist, this has never been a fruitful line of discussion @ LoOG.
http://nymag.com/news/politics/liberals-jonathan-chait-2011-11/
“The era of big government is over.”—Barack ObamaReport
First comparison is messed up because you’re only doing it on the basis of experience. The problem with this set of GOP candidates isn’t inexperience, it’s that they keep saying crazy things and/or have no discernible principles. Obama didn’t have a lot of experience when he was running, but he was intelligent and knowledgable and showed a high degree of common sense and understanding of the issues.Report
Katherine, your opinion is based on BHO 2008’s talk, which sounded reasonable to you. If there’s one thing we agree on around here, it’s the gulf between campaign rhetoric and performance in office. Anyone can talk a good game.
That Candidate Obama’s campaign rhetoric was more convincing than Candidate McCain’s is not in dispute here: the American people are the arbiter of that, and gave BHO 53%.
For the record, I have never bemoaned America’s decision in 2008 as unreasonable, the cranky old white guy who couldn’t talk his way out of a paper bag vs. a chance to repudiate our disgraceful racial history by electing a black man with the visceral appeal of a John F. Kennedy to boot, handsome, articulate.
As a partisan meself, I admit I’d probably vote for the equally underexperienced Marco Rubio, a first-term senator, even over the competent Bill Clinton. I dig Marco’s rap, bigtime. But there is no way I could defend that vote in a forum like the LoOG, which prides itself on reasonableness, or did at one time. I’d be rationalizing my way all the way to the ballot box.
And for the record—again—I could never vote for Michele Bachmann, Herman Cain or Ron Paul over Barack Obama [and mebbe not Newt Gingrich]. I love my country too much, far more than my party. Competence counts. I think Obama stinks on ice, but Newt is an even bigger stinker.Report
True, but is it fair to compare someone who has been President, and thus had the opportunity to abandon his platform, with someone who is only platform at this point? An apples-to-apples comparison would look at them in the same context, either where thynstood during the primaries or what came to pass afterwards. The 08 Dems have had almost 4 hard years to fuck up, which is entirely too long to give a politician and not expect them to seize the day!Report
BSK, I acknowledged infra that BHO has been president now for 4 years, and cannot be compared apples-to-apples to Romney.
[Not Romney-Obama 2012. President Obama knows where the White House bathrooms are now, and this is no small thing.]
On the other hand, we would never toss an incumbent if that were the only criterion. But I give our presidents a lot of respect: JFK said something like you cannot judge a man if you haven’t sat in the Big Chair yrself. The reality of it is surely numbing.
My thx for your courteous and substantive replies on this thread.Report
I was more getting at the inherent difficulty/impossibility of comparing the known and unknown. We cant’t unknow what we already know about Obama and, intentional or not, that is going to indluence our assessment. It reminds me of sports when people compare rookies to establisfed guys. Rooks and prospects are all potential; and while we may know academically the likelihood od unrealized potential, we all tend to assume that they willnreach their ceiling, which is rare.
I think there is also a difference between perception and reality with candidates. Obama paintes an impressive figure to most… He was tall, in shape, relatively young, a great orator… All things people go gaga for. I had/have questions myself about his experience, but most ignored that. Romney himseld has a lot of ‘presidentiality’ about him and I think both candidates presented as stronger than reality would dictate.
I’d give the nod to the Dems only because I think Hillary was the best of all of them and by a wide margin (though Huntsman intriques me but I just dont’t know a lot about him). And the Dem race quickly became a two horser with both candidates being serious contenders, though I might being falling victim to the same hindsight bias I described above.
Or maybe I’m thinking too seriously about what was mainky a humorous post. Probably the sports fan in me.Report
True, candidates lie and dissemble in primaries. In the 2008 Democratic primary, Clinton and Obama were motivated to demonstrate intelligence and understanding of the issues, and largely did so. In the current Republican primary (and the 2008 one), candidates are motivated to show their loyalty to the base, leading to Romney warmongering not only against Iran but against Venezuela and Cuba, supporting torture, and pledging to double Guantanamo. Whether he’ll actually start wars, reinstitute torture or double Gitmo may be another matter, but I’d rather err on the side of caution and assume he’d do it if it got votes, as “votes” seems to be his sole motivating factor thus far.
Given the choice between a primary in which the candidates are compelled by voter preference to demonstrate intelligence, and one in which they are compelled to demonstrate madness, I would consider the former to be better.Report
Katherine, you bring up some good points, but I wonder how much of the GOP primary thrust is due to the kinds of questions they were asked in the multitudinous debates? I believe voters would prefer intelligence too, but the questioning and dissembling got off on the one foot and never seems to have recovered. The “debate” between Huntsman and Gingrich at least had intelligent discussion but as a debate it was a bit of a snoozer.Report
I’ve been thinking a lot recently be about the “ideal” experience a President would have. Policy is a larger concern, mind you, but experience often directly relates to the ability one has to see his policies through. My primary thoughts have been on thdifference between Congresspeople and Governors, especially since these are the two primary pools it seems candidates come from. On the Congresspeople’s side, you have their experince in Washington, working at the federal level. For governors, you have experience as an executive. I’m leaning toward the latter more recently, not because of any specific, real world issue, but just because that seems to be right. The same sentiment seems to be advocated here. I’m curious what the historic data says… Which group has fared better as president? I’m too young to have a sample size of in-the-moment knowledge to prove worthwhile, so I’m curious what the elder gents and ladies think?
I’m also curious about how VPs fare, since it would seem they’d habe a blendod the two…Report
Even if you just go with the on paper consensus opinions, it’s a mixed bag. Since the birth of the ‘modern’ presidency (FDR):
VP – Bush Sr., Nixon, LBJ, Truman.
Governor – Bush Jr, Reagan, Clinton, Carter, FDR,
Congresscritter (w/o any of the above) – Obama, JFK, Ford
None of the above – Ike.
While there’s definitely some intrinsic factors, there’s also a whole lot of extrinsic factors that determine whether or not a Presidency is ‘successful’ . That said, a good deal of the success in one’s job (as in life and love) – comes from having the ability to not fish up a good thing.
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About two or three governors actually do things. Texas (by virtue of their legislatures working 25% of the time or so…) and California (by virtue of their legislature being completely incompetent and overruled by the voters).
Ideal “experience” is LBJ. Because he had a shit-ton of “paybacks” all racked up, and twisted gadzillions of arms to get his way.
Hillary didn’t have that, Obama didn’t have that.
I want someone smart enough to know how to cut deals, at an advantage and at a disadvantage.
Many corporations can get you that, many professions…Report
Romney may lose the nomination, but it’s easy to see how he can’t win election.
All Obama has to do is run enough ads of “In his own words” items from Romney previously, and the right-wing kook Tea Party base – which is all that’s left of the Republicans thanks to 4 years of “RINO Hunting” – stays home on election day.
Obama, unlike Romney, won’t even have to blatantly lie about the clips to do it. All he needs is this right here contrasted with Romney’s current words.Report
This seems to me to be Romney’s biggest problem (aside from being a Mormon in a party with a strong evangelical base). Whatever points he gets for competence and managerial success are compromised by his constant shape-shifting. I doubt he believes much of what comes out of his mouth–he’s just saying it to appeal to the Republican base. He’d be much more at home, and much more honest, if most of the Republican base were composed of businessmen and technocrats as opposed to religious social conservatives.
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agreed. that and he looks too polished, like he is a slicked up slimeball. Huckabee at least looked authentic (even if he sounded wired up)Report
Well done, Mr. Van Dyke.
Merry Christmas to you and yours!Report
I’m amused. Happy holidays to you TVD.Report
And God rest ye merry as well, gentlemen. A little warm & fuzzy down on the sub-blog.Report
3 years POTUS trumps Mitts 4 yrs Gov.Report
Thanks-a-mundo for the blog article. Wonderful.Report