Retrospective, the Beginning
What I'm going to try to do is examine how it is that Romney so totally blew his candidacy. Yes, I know, it's two days yet before he gives his speech, but he has decided to give "the speech", and so it's all over, and I just want to figure out why.
I start by trying to understand my personal dislike for the man. Almost entirely my emotions are instinctual, so to put them in an order of force requires some introspection.
The first thing is he just seems fake. It's a powerful queasy, greasy feeling. No other candidate raises that feeling, not Hillary, not Edwards. Hillary I see as a socialist who wants power who will lie. Edwards I see as a simple man who will lie who wants the lime light; he would be stunned to paralysis if he actually became president. I don't like either one. Hillary I fear, neither makes me queasy.
The next thing I see in Romney are the flip-flops. This is a judgment that has some intellectual aspect, but not really, because I don't see those flops as simply political calculation, I see them as evidence of a man who is comfortable where ever he might stand, because no stance on any position deeply either supports or violates any basic value he has. I see his soul as that of a committee. Whatever consensus can be achieved though discussion is fine with him, that becomes his position. If it can work, it's okay, not because it's the best he can get, but just because it "works". It's not hard to see how this could be a disaster, both in foreign policy and within the liberal culture of Washington.
I think that's it for my purely instinctual --or mostly instinctual-- responses to him. What's left is analysis. I don't need analysis to know he makes me feel creepy, but I would like to know what it is that's in fact so creepy.
I start from the premise that all men have basic values. Even the purely cynical manipulation of the political can bespeak a basic value, that of attaining power and advantage. But advantage isn't in all people basic. Jimmy Carter, for example, seems motivated simply by the desire to believe himself righteous. Harry Reid seems merely to hate Bush, whether effectively or not. Nancy Pelosi is a half-step above him, in that her motivation seems to be to defeat Bush, something that at least demands some rational calculation and some sense of the of the political calculus surrounding her. These are not good people, I don't like them, but at least I have some sense of what makes them tick. They don't make me feel queasy. Mitt makes me feel queasy.
I just can't see what motivates Mitt. Clearly he's motivated, he's accomplished a lot, but I just can't see what value it is that pulls the strings. That I can't see it at all indicates that he hides it very well. What I do see is the lifetime skill of a kind of dissemble. It express's every statement and gesture. That's why he comes across as so fake. Because he is. It's an achievement.
Now, if you must dissemble so completely it must mean that you're never relaxed, not in public. You know that the public would never be comfortable with you as yourself. So...? Here is the leap. I suggest it's because not only is he a Mormon but he actually believes that stuff. In so believing he is separate from the Judeo/Christian culture of this nation, and of the West. Believer or nonbeliever, we have all been formed by this same culture. With a nonbeliever I'm in conflict, but I know the man. He's basically the same man as myself, only I accept and he rejects. With a man of a different culture though, I'm at a loss, I simply never understand him.
And I emphasize this is analysis. I don't know if it's correct. But if a man consciously of a different culture struggled mightily to at least seem of this culture it would explain why he came across as seeming a little different. Fake.
I do know I want a man in the White House who is of the same psychological and philosophical structure as myself, at least in terms of two-thousand years of Western history. I can somewhat understand that man. I don't want somebody outside of that history. I think the only man who could be outside of that history would be a man deeply committed to an alien theology.
But then this is only analysis.
I start by trying to understand my personal dislike for the man. Almost entirely my emotions are instinctual, so to put them in an order of force requires some introspection.
The first thing is he just seems fake. It's a powerful queasy, greasy feeling. No other candidate raises that feeling, not Hillary, not Edwards. Hillary I see as a socialist who wants power who will lie. Edwards I see as a simple man who will lie who wants the lime light; he would be stunned to paralysis if he actually became president. I don't like either one. Hillary I fear, neither makes me queasy.
The next thing I see in Romney are the flip-flops. This is a judgment that has some intellectual aspect, but not really, because I don't see those flops as simply political calculation, I see them as evidence of a man who is comfortable where ever he might stand, because no stance on any position deeply either supports or violates any basic value he has. I see his soul as that of a committee. Whatever consensus can be achieved though discussion is fine with him, that becomes his position. If it can work, it's okay, not because it's the best he can get, but just because it "works". It's not hard to see how this could be a disaster, both in foreign policy and within the liberal culture of Washington.
I think that's it for my purely instinctual --or mostly instinctual-- responses to him. What's left is analysis. I don't need analysis to know he makes me feel creepy, but I would like to know what it is that's in fact so creepy.
I start from the premise that all men have basic values. Even the purely cynical manipulation of the political can bespeak a basic value, that of attaining power and advantage. But advantage isn't in all people basic. Jimmy Carter, for example, seems motivated simply by the desire to believe himself righteous. Harry Reid seems merely to hate Bush, whether effectively or not. Nancy Pelosi is a half-step above him, in that her motivation seems to be to defeat Bush, something that at least demands some rational calculation and some sense of the of the political calculus surrounding her. These are not good people, I don't like them, but at least I have some sense of what makes them tick. They don't make me feel queasy. Mitt makes me feel queasy.
I just can't see what motivates Mitt. Clearly he's motivated, he's accomplished a lot, but I just can't see what value it is that pulls the strings. That I can't see it at all indicates that he hides it very well. What I do see is the lifetime skill of a kind of dissemble. It express's every statement and gesture. That's why he comes across as so fake. Because he is. It's an achievement.
Now, if you must dissemble so completely it must mean that you're never relaxed, not in public. You know that the public would never be comfortable with you as yourself. So...? Here is the leap. I suggest it's because not only is he a Mormon but he actually believes that stuff. In so believing he is separate from the Judeo/Christian culture of this nation, and of the West. Believer or nonbeliever, we have all been formed by this same culture. With a nonbeliever I'm in conflict, but I know the man. He's basically the same man as myself, only I accept and he rejects. With a man of a different culture though, I'm at a loss, I simply never understand him.
And I emphasize this is analysis. I don't know if it's correct. But if a man consciously of a different culture struggled mightily to at least seem of this culture it would explain why he came across as seeming a little different. Fake.
I do know I want a man in the White House who is of the same psychological and philosophical structure as myself, at least in terms of two-thousand years of Western history. I can somewhat understand that man. I don't want somebody outside of that history. I think the only man who could be outside of that history would be a man deeply committed to an alien theology.
But then this is only analysis.
posted by mouse at 6:11 PM
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