POLITICS SEPTEMBER 4, 2008
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Watching the first night of the truncated Republican National Convention, you could be forgiven for thinking you’d stumbled upon C-SPAN coverage of some Veterans of Foreign Wars gathering. Shots of the crowd at the Xcel Energy Center revealed a sea of white faces and gray heads. The only young visages seemed to be those in the black-and-white photographs projected onto the video screen, the ones depicting the brave young men of a distant war--and especially the bravest of them, the man who, decades later, is about to get the party’s 2008 presidential nomination.
The vibe grew even more pronounced when they opened their mouths, conjuring a world of Communists vanquished, Vietnam Vets embraced, big governments dismantled, liberals foiled. It’s the whole greatest-hits collection for a party history that seemed to have ended sometime around the end of the twentieth century--the era that the convention’s Ronald Reagan tribute video narrator described as “our century.” John McCain’s campaign has good reason to write the despised Republican incumbent out of history, but the effect—looking back a minimum of 18 years to find a leader they can celebrate--makes the GOP convention reek of nostalgia like so much Aqua Velva on Fred Thompson’s jowly face.
Even the furious broadsides against Obama seemed dated, replete with Madonna references and accusations of urban disrespect for honest small-town life. In a spawl age, did they have to go all the way to Alaska to find a pol who recently lived in a real small town? And, thanks in part to Wednesday night’s keynote speaker, Rudy Giuliani, those big coastal cities whose elites allegedly disdain the noble residents of Wasilla no longer seem so alien or threatening. Rather, they’re a place for a safe, fun family vacation or political convention.
A political gathering steeped in nostalgia is hardly unique. Evocations of a happy past have long been a potent piece of American political culture. Nostalgic appeals are a way to channel contemporary anxieties. It’s no coincidence that the log-cabin political story became especially popular in the mid-19th century, when industrial revolution and big business were leaving voters worried about their own social mobility. In the second half of this century, Republicans eulogized some half-remembered (or fictitious) small-town America of the 1950s as a way of speaking to voters anxious about crime or sexual behavior or integration. And Democrats traveled the rust belt mistily evoking half-remembered white, ethnic manufacturing neighborhoods of the same era as a way of getting at economic and status anxieties. Promising to bring back either era may be utterly fraudulent, but that’s politics.
The variety of nostalgia that seems to have captured most of today’s Republican party, though, represents something else. Between the video tributes to Reagan and McCain’s ongoing efforts to tie himself to the legacy of Theodore Roosevelt, it’s less an appeal to how voters once lived than to how Republican politicians did. Whatever the late leaders’ biographers may say, talk of Teddy Roosevelt in today’s culture boils down to a simple image of a president taking it to powerful politicians. And Reagan, as Tuesday night’s film showed, represents some mystical combination of smiling, believing, and “standing tall.” The heroes’ purported qualities, in both cases, hew closely to the image McCain wants to establish for himself.
Whether or not voters buy the comparison, the result is to moor this year’s candidate in the past--“a foot soldier in the Reagan revolution,” as Rudy Giuliani put it, but not an avatar of anything new and different. Reagan and TR may have been trailblazers, but by the logic of the convention’s auto-nostalgia, McCain is a mere second coming.
And it’d even be true of he were a first-term Alaska governor whose jowl-free face was new on the political scene. In fact, the variety of reform associated with Sarah Palin, the woman who is supposed to add a dose of the tomorrow to McCain’s yesterday-heavy image, is a perfect complement to the Republican nostalgia of the day. Palin shook things up in Republican Alaska, they say, which sounds like a sign of some new manifestation of the party that has held the White House for 28 of the past 40 years. But how did she shake them up? She didn’t take on the GOP establishment because they were too mired in doctrinaire Reaganism to notice that the world had changed dramatically. Rather, she took them on for deviating from the one true faith. The Elliot Ness-cum-ideological commissar act may be necessary and good and even brave, but it still feels like a glance backwards. It’s not a renovated philosophy for a multiethnic, high-tech, post-industrial century whose residents appear unhappy with Republican stances on major issues. It’s surely not what Roosevelt offered the sclerotic party of William McKinley a century ago.
You don’t have to look far to see what this sort of perpetual ancestor worship says about a party’s health. For decades, Democrats maintained an ongoing political vigil for Franklin Roosevelt and John F. Kennedy, with each election season featuring an increasingly creaky promise to bring back the old magic. It was Walter Mondale who would bring FDR’s happy days roaring back again; no, now Michael Dukakis would carry us back to JFK’s new frontier. They may have meant it, but the embrace still served to underscore their status as a coalition bereft of contemporary animating ideas, at least animating ideas anybody wanted to hear.
The party’s efforts in 2004 offered an echo of the phenomenon. When conventioneers weren’t praising John Kerry’s war record, they were offering bromides about bringing back the good times of Bill Clinton’s 1990s. Even though those good times were just four years gone, and Clinton was wildly popular, it wasn’t enough. Since Barack Obama has already appropriated George Bush’s 2004 Brooks and Dunn tune for his convention, McCain would do well to swipe Clinton’s 1992 ditty for the GOP gathering: Don’t stop thinking about tomorrow. Or else.
Michael Schaffer is the author of the upcoming book One Nation Under Dog.
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8 comments
So funny and so true! But I thought Bush and Cheney were just as pathetic way back in 2000 and they got elected. In 2004 after folks actually could see what these guys were up to they got elected again. Folks, the promise of having your taxes lowered a point or two isn´t worth destroying the Nation. It is time to throw these kooks out of Washington and start the 21st Century. The Democratic ticket is the only sane way to go this time around.
- changethis!
September 5, 2008 at 3:15am
Actually Bill Clinton did blaze a new trail for the Democrats, but the Democratic Party seemed to forget that this year. Obama is another nostalgia candidate.
- Paul Spengler
September 5, 2008 at 10:52am
“Party of Roosevelt & Kennedy” Versus the “Party of Lincoln, Roosevelt & Reagan.” --It is, and has been, a “nostalgia” campaign year. However, it’s nostalgia for fabricated images of Lincoln, the two Roosevelts, Kennedy and Reagan (all of whom polls show are the most popular presidents, and why not, after almost 20 years of a new batch of pseudo-hagiographical biographies and essays). Reagan is interesting due to the last eight years of propagandizing the ‘Reagan in the image & likeness of G.W. Bush’ (now being reformed, and refined, by the McCain campaign, into God knows what?). --Hey, even a “nostalgia” campaign year for the near-recent past as well: McCain himself, since his new use of his POW story in his acceptance speech. And let's not forget 'working-man hero' Joe Biden, either. --A “nostalgia” campaign year mostly on the basis of Orwell’s maxim: ‘He who controls the past controls the future. He who controls the present, controls the past” (not because it's from Orwell's novel, 1984, but because it sum up perfectly the kind of "nostalgia" being engaged in.
- p.
September 7, 2008 at 1:52am
“the effect-looking back a minimum of 18 years to find a leader they can celebrate--makes the GOP convention reek of nostalgia like so much Aqua Velva on Fred Thompson's jowly face.” --Obama-Biden “looking back:” John F. Kennedy (1961-63), Franklin D. Roosevelt (1933-45), Abraham Lincoln (1861-65). --McCain-Palin “looking back:” Ronald Reagan (1981-89), Theodore Roosevelt (Setember 1901-March 1909), Abraham Lincoln (1861-65).
- p.
September 7, 2008 at 2:51am
“McCain's campaign has good reason to write the despised Republican incumbent out of history,” --Not just the incumbent president. Executive Branch: Republican for eight years, 2001-09; Congressional Branch: Republican for six of eight years, 2001-09; Supreme Court: 5 of 7 Supreme Court Justices are Republican-presidents appointees.
- p.
September 7, 2008 at 2:58am
“write the despised Republican incumbent out of history,” --Not entirely. It was interesting to hear McCain do a public ‘confession’ of the republicans’ having failed (which he broadened to both major parties): “We lost.” “Rather than reform government, both parties made it bigger.” “We lost their trust and valued our party over our principles. And we’re going to change that.” [my notes]. McCain’s theme was to get back to the principles of the party, that he claims were only corrupted later. So, a party reform platform, like McKinley (carried on by Teddy Roosevelt). McKinley ran on a progressive liberal reform platform. McCain, per his acceptance speech, is running on a return-to-principles reform platform.
- p.
September 7, 2008 at 3:05am
“It's surely not what Roosevelt offered the sclerotic party of William McKinley a century ago.” --Now. This is an example of a "Nostalgia Trap," in the Orwellian sense that I mention above. --This statement is quite backward. It is the Republican party today that is best described as sclerotic. The republican party at the time of the McKinley administration was undergoing major reforms. The charge of sclerotic would have been leveled at the Democratic party under Bryan. McKinley was Liberal and an advocate of eugenics. McKinley defeated Populist-become-Democrat William Jennings Bryan. Roosevelt was McKinley’s Vice President (Hence T.R. becoming president upon McKinley’s assassination). Obviously McKinley’s party was T.R.’s party. Teddy moderated McKinley’s liberal-progressivism with a dose of populist rhetoric and policies adopted from the defunct Populists, and new American socialist party, growing in popularity, while dropping any mention of the eugenics that McKinley was so fond of. Liberal economics went out, of course, with the second Roosevelt. The term liberal underwent a redefinition, circa 1933-70. Liberal economics didn’t return until the Reagan Administration (under the euphemism “supply side”). Eugenics remained popular primarily in the liberal-branch of the Republican party (wealthy New England WASP-Rockefellers wing). The term eugenics fell into disuse after at since 1945, due to NAZI Germany’s eugenics programs, especially as implemented in its forced labor (concentration) camps. After 1945, the primary element of the eugenics movement publicly advocated for was “Birth Control;” broadened to “Population Control” by the 1960s. Eugenics advocacy didn’t shift from the liberal-branch of the Republican party to the Democratic party until after the reformed, post-Goldwater Republican party, and the New-Left Democratic party (circa 1970-2005). The shift to an anti-eugenics (by-then-dubbed Pro-Life) rhetoric in the Republican party didn’t really begin until the 1976 presidential nomination elections, due to Ronald Reagan. By 1980, the republicans had adopted the pro-life rhetoric and were re-introducing liberal economics principles. The liberal economics were re-introduced and implemented during the Reagan Administration. The pro-life rhetoric received some token attention while remaining primarily only rhetoric. Now it seems that “Human Development” is the favorite euphemism: With the whole of the eugenics program being implemented, from 1965 onward, from contraception, to abortion, to experimentation upon human beings, to sterilization, to euthanasia (via a variety of euphemisms: “Choice,” “Right to Know,” “Reproductive Rights,” “Right to Die”. . .). At any rate, it was McKinley, the republican, who was Liberal and pro-eugenics, while it was the Democratic party under Bryan that was populist, pro-family, its members overwhelming opposed to eugenics, and seen as sclerotic” by the popular press of the day. --From his acceptance speech, it would appear that McCain is styling himself as The New Man, as a result of his POW “experience,” and The One to begin moving the corrupted Republican party toward a return to its “principles.” --Therefore, the question is: What principles, precisely, is John McCain referring to that have been betrayed and that the Republican party needs to return to?
- p.
September 7, 2008 at 4:21am
The difference is, he includes vision.
- youmightberight
September 7, 2008 at 5:14am