Posted on 03/08/2012 6:24:52 AM PST by Brices Crossroads
Wall Street Journal editor William McGurn, a former Bush White House speechwriter, argued in an article Tuesday that Mitt Romney is no worse off now than Ronald Reagan was at this stage of his historic 1980 campaign. He compared these two races and also tried to show that President Barack Obama is the heir to Jimmy Carter.
The Romney camp would probably welcome these comparisons — but it’s more a theory in search of facts. There are indeed some similarities, but the differences are far more striking.
Both Reagan and Romney did begin as frontrunners, both stumbled. Romney’s outcome is still unknown. But other than the fact that Carter was a tougher politician than Obama, that is where the similarities end.
Reagan was fervently opposed by corporate America, Wall Street and, yes, The Wall Street Journal, in the lead up to the 1980 campaign. As much as Romney is fervently supported by them now. In 1980, Corporate America preferred former Texas Gov. John Connolly and Amb. George H. W. Bush to Reagan, the maverick populist.
Indeed, when Reagan announced his candidacy in late 1979, the Journal asserted “for political packaging, we do not need to turn to a 69-year-old man.”
The words “populist” and “Romney” don’t often collide in the same sentence.
The issues in 1980 were far more consequential than today, just as the differences between Carter and Reagan were greater and more divisive than the differences today. Romney and Obama, as well as Carter, have a far greater belief than Reagan in the state’s power, goodness and redistributive powers. Even after he was head of the federal government for eight years in Washington, no one ever thought Reagan was part of the establishment — the manor to which Romney was born.
From a cultural standpoint as well, Romney and Reagan stand poles apart. One born rich, a son of the Ivy League, the other born in poverty, a son of the Prairie League.
The issue of Soviet communism loomed over the 1980 debate, though the struggling economy and rampant inflation ranked as most important to the American people. The world is a far less dangerous place today than 31 years ago, and the economy is in far better shape.
Reagan understood acutely the connection between the spiritual America, the economic America and the defense of America. The vitality of the people has to be restored so they could again believe in the future — and so begin rebuilding America’s defenses and resolve. With this muscular foreign policy, Washington could face down Moscow.
Today, we worry about the potential for one Iranian nuclear device. In 1980, Reagan had to worry about 10,000 Soviet nuclear devices.
Romney is championing the federal marriage amendment — one of the most anti-conservative, harebrained notions ever cooked up by the borderline geniuses of the GOP. We don’t know how Reagan would have reacted to this proposal. But we do know he believed deeply in the dignity and the privacy of the individual.
Consider, in 1978, Reagan opposed Proposition 6 in California, which would have banned homosexuals from teaching in the state public schools. Voters turned it down — and its defeat was credited to Reagan’s opposition.
Reagan’s 1980 campaign produced few negative ads. Even when he was under assault in the primaries, most Reagan ads featured the Gipper talking into a camera about the benefit of his radical tax cuts for individuals. The tagline: “We have to move forward but we can’t leave anyone behind.”
The ads producers, Jeff Bell and Elliot Curzon, dubbed the commercial, “The Good Shepherd.”
Unlike Romney, Reagan had 30 years invested in the conservative movement and was beloved by most of the GOP base. Romney has no such wellspring of support. Even those conservatives who support him do so guardedly, defensively.
Romney seems largely a product if his consultants and handlers — doing and saying what they tell him. Reagan, however, had men around him who saw their job as amplifying his message, not submitting it to focus groups.
There is also a difference in the fundamental character of the two. Though I have never met Romney, I’ve worked with politicians going on 40 years now, and he seems like a man who is very unsure of himself.
But Reagan, whom I worked for and with, appeared to me — and millions of others – like a sunny man who was very sure of himself. So confident was he and other successful aspirants, they spent their time talking about and to the voters and not about themselves.
Perhaps most revealing, as the campaign has progressed, Romney has not “grown” as is often the case but is looking more opaque and ill defined. John F. Kennedy, Reagan and Obama all enlarged as men in their quests for the presidency. As they moved closer to the Oval Office, the more people thought about them, the more people thought of them.
So I will hope for a Newt/Santorum alliance, that Santorum starts to pull votes from Romney, or that Romney implodes.
The smartest thing would be an alliance, I don't think Romney goes down without that.
If it's Romney, I'm going for the "drink half a fifth of good decent scotch before going in to the voting booth" affect.
Yeah everybody but you will be responsible for an Obama victory, including me when I vote against Obama and you stay home. Go figure.
I am nearly as old as Rush, and I can tell you that in 1980 the culture war was not nearly as loud as it is today, with the exception of abortion. But in 1980 there was no war on Christmas, or a big push for faggot "marriage", faggot Boy Scout leaders, faggot soldiers, "Fisting Basics for Third Graders" in the government schools, or concentrated efforts by the atheist Democrats to demean the traditional family unit and drive Christianity from public view, etc..
America has come a long way in the past 30 years.
Congratulations, Democrats.
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