The best moment of the Republican Convention several weeks ago wasn’t Sarah Palin’s rousing oration. It was John McCain’s sober speech at the end, particularly his acknowledgment of how political leaders of both parties, Republicans and Democrats, had failed the American people.
McCain’s searching message, however, was eclipsed by the collective voice of the audience. During the proceedings, that voice came through loud and clear in three monotonous syllables: “U-S-A, U-S-A, U-S-A . . .” Time and again, a few delegates started the cheer and it spread to the entire hall in seconds. It threw me back to the mid-90s when the U.S. hosted the World Cup in 1994, and in a sports bar in Atlanta with the games on big screens, a group of half-aware 20-year-olds around a table dove into the chant every time a U.S. player got his foot on the ball.
There was something unreal about the sound. Patriotism is fine and noble, but did its expression have to take adolescent forms? The Republican Party was and is in serious trouble. Some of its most powerful figures have sunk into ignominy and ended up in courtrooms. A sitting president has unprecedented low ratings. Republicans may face a filibuster-proof Democratic senate. And here they were in the convention hall acting as if juvenile enthusiasm would dispel the problems.
For a few days, the choice of Palin seemed a stroke of brilliance, and the more the commentators ridiculed her, the more the ticket inched upwards in the polls. Then the market tanked, and Palin looks more and more like a bad fit. In fact, while at the gym yesterday I caught a moment of Palin on television speaking to an avid crowd and watched the same tactic unfold. I wondered what she would say, but she stopped and offered the audience a “surprise.” Hank Williams Jr. strolled forward, and Palin declared that he would lead everyone in a rendition of the National Anthem.
I turned away. (I’ll leave it to commenters here to correct me in case I’ve misrepresented the moment.) Peggy Noonan in The Wall Street Journal explained why this weekend:
“But we have seen Mrs. Palin on the national stage for seven weeks now, and there is little sign that she has the tools, the equipment, the knowledge or the philosophical grounding one hopes for, and expects, in a holder of high office. . . . For seven weeks I’ve listened to her, trying to understand if she is Bushian or Reaganite — a spender, to speak briefly, whose political decisions seem untethered to a political philosophy, and whose foreign policy is shaped by a certain emotionalism, or a conservative whose principles are rooted in philosophy, and whose foreign policy leans more toward what might be called romantic realism, and that is speak truth, know America, be America, move diplomatically, respect public opinion, and move within an awareness and appreciation of reality. But it’s unclear whether she is Bushian or Reaganite. She doesn’t think aloud. She just . . . says things.”
The Republican Party is going to need a new cohort of thinkers and policy figures to alter its identity, and it’s going to take a long time. All the conservative principles are scrambled, and the things that united social conservatives, free market conservatives, neoconservatives, libertarian conservatives, and cultural conservatives have diminished. If the Republican Party doesn’t rethink its principles and policies, all it will have to count on is the infighting and incompetence of the other party in the zeal of its ascendancy in two branches of government. This is an unhealthy condition for both camps.
(Illustration incorporates a photo by Flickr user peasap)
