Not Your Daddy's Republican Party

Here we are with only two and a half weeks to go before the election and it seems that, for the first time ever, our country will elect a black man to be president. What an amazing turn of events!

Even more amazing though, is what has happened to the GOP. A failed foreign policy, an economy in free-fall and widespread corruption and incompetence are the hallmarks of today's Republican Party. Those old enough to remember an earlier era are scarcely able to believe what they are seeing.

There was once a time, not so long ago, when Republicans were widely regarded as competent and reliable, if a bit boring. They were a party of stolid old-fashioned types who took the business of managing the country seriously. After abandoning laissez-faire ideology in the wake of the Great Depression, they directed their efforts at running the economy (and the budget) more efficiently, rather than trying to reverse the New Deal.

Eisenhower, Nixon, Ford--the quintessential men in grey flannel suits. Their very lack of star-power, however, was part of their appeal. This was especially true after the Democratic Party flew off the rails at the '68 convention. By then, the country had enough of the Democrats' antics and decided to switch over to the party that represented order and stability. The Republicans of that era tended to eschew anything even vaguely radical--a tendency that was reinforced by Goldwater's crushing defeat in 1964. Unlike the Democrats, they were the responsible party, concerned with boring, uninspiring, grown-up stuff like balanced budgets and balance of power. They were, in short, just what the country needed.

Then something happened: fiscal prudence was jettisoned in favor of supply-side ideology, while the "silent majority" gradually gave way to an evermore deranged Christian radicalism. Ayn Rand meets Jim Jones! George H. W. Bush (also known as '41') was the last of his breed; after him came the flood.

I first noticed something was wrong when they swept Congress in the '94 mid-terms. Newt Gingrich struck me as a grand-standing buffoon, who combined a gift for rabble-rousing with a taste for utopian schemes (the two often go together). Still, he was mild compared with what was coming.

Once Bush '43 took office, it was all over. A more spectacular failure would be hard to imagine, and I doubt that posterity will judge him any more kindly than we do. What ever became of Dad's Republican Party? After eight years of Bush (and six years of Tom DeLay), we now have the largest Federal debt in history, and as for corruption, Jack Abramoff could give Tammany Hall lessons!

In addition to all the practical problems Bush and Co. have caused, there has also been a distinct change in tone during campaigns that I find disturbing. Again, I think it actually began with Gingrich, but it has really taken over completely under Bush, with the help of Karl Rove. Nowadays, Republican campaigns are filled with this whiney, bone-headed populism that is so shrill and hysterical that it almost makes me ashamed to be a white man. I can remember when it was the Democrats pushing this angry, anti-government nonsense and I didn't like it then any more than I do now. I find identity politics inherently contemptible no matter whose identity is being toyed with. Bush, of course, was very good at this stuff, whereas McCain can't seem to do it without visibly squirming; but either way, I think it's a bad idea to substitute grievance politics for workable policies--and it's not a pleasure to watch either.

I am first and foremost a Realist; I am under no illusion that this sort of campaigning is ever going to vanish completely. This temper-tantrum populism has been with us since Andrew Jackson and has been an on-again-off-feature of American politics ever since. And so long as it does not interfere with the serious business of governing, I can tolerate it. But a when a party's campaign rhetoric starts to undermine its ability to rule, and when the peddlers of utopian schemes and paranoid dellusions starts to believe their own rhetoric, the inevitable result is trouble.

And that's why I'm pulling for Obama this year.