They were identical decaplets, split ten times from the same zygote, and hard to tell apart.
Tonight, all ten GOP men who want to be president of the free world, lined up behind tiny podiums as though they were about to play Jeopardy. They vied just as hard as any time-limited contestant on a game show. They were eager to hit the questions running as soon as they were called on by the moderator, Chris Matthews.
But the deciding factor in the presidential race is going to be authenticity, realness with people about real issues. Not just clabber. Tonight, most of the candidates flunked. Most of the men’s responses were caseworked. Most seemed to have rehearsed facts and figures too hard beforehand. Instead of sounding thoughtful, leaderly, unique… if you closed your eyes and listened only to the words, all of the words could have come from any one of them, or all of them. No differentiation.
Except perhaps for Sen. McCain’s suddenly bellowing about being willing to follow Osama Bin Laden to hell, precisely, the gates of. McCain’s rise in redness and volume whilst saying that, was like listening all evening to muzak but then all of a sudden someone had spliced in three bars of a screaming Robert Plant. Startling ‘pounce and blurt’ followed by ‘a flash and then gone’ sardonicus smile.
The most natural sounding were Mitt Romney, Rudy Giuliani and Tommy Thompson… all consummate politicians: old school, deeply experienced as politicos. Regardless of what they say, any pre-planned torque was barely evident.
The one who stumbled badly was Tom Tancredo, giving too long a preamble to answer the question, then failing to pinpoint the year of the Ben Franklin quote he had planned to use. The hook came for him as he stuttered and stumbled, naming the wrong year, correcting himself, sounding rattled and addled. One of those horrible gaffes where “this great quote I want to use to wow you,” overtakes authenticity, and thereby sinks the speaker
It was peculiar too, that in a pack of men, wherein each one professed to be ‘a stand out’ candidate in the GOP nomination race, each one saying in their own way, “I’m the one, I’m the man, the only candidate who is different from all the rest…” all the men were dressed identically…
All were dressed in mourning suits of black and darkest blue, all with moderate lapels. Shirts white and palest blue with short collar points. Their haircuts, all as though cut using the same shallow bowl. Gestures, the same… though the seasoned politicians’ gestures were graceful and relevant to the words being spoken… other men’s gestures seemed fresh from the ‘animated speaking gestures’ course at Dale Carnegie.
The only things to differentiate one man from the next man, were their neckties.
Perhaps one could infer something of the person by the color of their neckwear. Rose red and black striped (Rudy Giuliani), dark green on light green striped diagonal (Chris Matthews), pale gray and pale mauve (Tom Tancredo), moderate blue and white stripe ( Mitt Romney in his nipped at the back of the waist tailored suit ), yellow-orange tie (Senator Brownback), deep purple and pink stripe (John McCain), blue on blue striped (Tommy Thompson), and the heavily symbolic red, white and blue tie (Gilmore).
All the men are smart and all are educated. Perhaps the fault was not theirs, but the questions themselves. The questions asked of the men seemed more like Trivial Pursuit, Junior Edition. I kept expecting Mr. Matthews to ask, Who is the prime minister of Outer Mongolia? What is the difference between a Kurd and a Chechnyan? Who is the president of Myanmar? How are Indians and Pakistanis different? I can almost guarantee that all candidates studied and studied as though for the LSAT, names, places, dates, history, quotes, et al, beforehand, in order to appear knowledgeable tonight.
Too bad it was just a Q and A instead of a conversation. Tonight’s questions and answers went along these ‘old dog track’ lines: What do you think of the war? What about Iran? National ID card? Privacy? Terri Schiavo? Sort of a run down of what media has covered. But not, perhaps, what the people would like most to know.
What if they gave a conversation and everybody came? What if the rules were, no grandstanding in front of Nancy Reagan. What if the rules were you all have to dress as your true inner spirit. And, what if the questions were like the people of this wide country, real, deep, and variegated?
For a time it was confusing about which century the debate was being held in; this one, or the last one: One of the GOP candidates averred that “…we won cold war through our industrial base.” I often think when I hear things like that, that said person must think all the rest of us are still living down on the farm chewing a stalk of wheat, without TV or radio, and that we’re all slow readers who can barely get through the Deere catalog.
Funny thing, if you ask many of the people who were once forced to endure the Soviet bloc, they think they are the ones who fought back and toppled the stranglehold their dictators had on them. They think they are the heroes who won ‘the cold war.’
Another GOP Candidate when asked what amounted to Miss America questions about how one would like to save the world… he said, “I would guarantee I would never abuse habeas corpus.” Um, does that mean you believe it is now being abused? and would that also mean you currently are abusing habeas corpus by not demanding an end to detention of those who have now been held for years without charges and without court hearings?
I did like Senator McCain’s admitting that we are currently paying millions more for battleships than they are worth. Where I come from, we call that corruption and extortion and bunco and racketeering. He called it ‘pork barrel,’ which makes it seem almost alright. But to most of us, to pay $400.00 for a $4.00 hammer, well it seems like an approved form of insanity… even though most of my old country family people sincerely believed that senators and congress people really did read the four-bazillion paged budget (every line) and hold each line item up to scrutiny.
I also had to laugh at Mr. Romney’s answer when Mr. Mathews asked him if the Roman Catholic Church should deny communion to pro-abortion politicians. Mathews (a Catholic) asked, “What would you say to the bishops?” Romney (a Mormon) almost snapped at him: “I don’t say anything to Roman Catholic Bishops …they can do whatever the heck they want!†It was olio time at the Reagan Library.
However, Mr. Matthews should have asked instead about pro-abortion politicians, adding at the end, “What would you say to the Mormon elders?†Now that would have been electrifying television one way or another.
Throughout the debate, I found my mind wandering through, as my dad kept saying the first time we drove his big 49 Chevy through Iowa… ” all the corn and corn and more corn” of the ‘debate.’ I look at the audience instead. There was this one middle aged guy, honest to gosh, who looked like Barney Google with the Goo-goo-googley eyes. And Mr. Google is smiling and smiling, his nose reaching almost to his chin. It’s a great smile.
There was a woman with bangs looking bored beyond bored. Two dowagers peered over their glasses and sucked their cheeks in, looking all Bette Davis and Joan Crawford, and thoughtful. They’re the ones I wish Matthews had asked the questions to… I just have a hunch, we’d been treated to some larger than life thinking… better than the smaller than life stage performance of most of the men most of the night, tonight.
Thompson, Romney, Giuliani, McCain have the cojones and the fire in the belly for running. Tom Tancredo might stay in for a bit but he has hemmed himself in with a moraine of quotes that show he is a one-issue guy: borders. The rest did not very well distinguish themselves this evening, but there is yet time.
I just keep wondering, what about a Bette Davis kind of women for president? Imagine the Harry Trumanesque posturing. And how about a Joan Crawford kind of dame for VP… surely there would be a continuous need in the House and in the Senate for the wondrous line that Crawford delivered upon assuming control of Pepsi-Cola in the sixties… a line that I had for years practiced to perfection in the mirror before going into some severe battles in the workaday world…
Miss Crawford was at a board meeting of Pepsi-Cola, and the male board members were patronizing her and had, behind her back, plotted to diminish her influence. She was onto them however. She leaned on the long conference room table, looked every man in the eye, and hissed
“Don’t ‘f’ with me fellas,
this aint my first ro-day-o.”
A VP should at least be quotable, don’t you think?
‘Authenticity Missing Factor: The GOP Presidential Candidates Debate’© 2007, Clarissa Pinkola Estés, Ph.D., All Rights Reserved, is printed here under Creative Commons License by which author grants permission to copy, distribute and transmit this particular work under the conditions that the use be non-commercial, that the work be used in its entirety and not altered, added to, or subtracted from, and that it be attributed with author’s name and this full copyright notice. For other uses, contact copyright holder.