So we have the two best posts in the entire land on the merits of these two reasonable hopes for the Republican future.
John is right that Cruz is a highly accomplished legal scholar and, I can add, a former student of Robby George that Robby is bragging about. He will be a key piece of evidence a Republican officeholder can be a conservative and an intellectual. He actually would be the perfect running mate for Romney, but of course nobody could say it was his time. It’s easy to see why the Tea Party supported him, but his wisdom and judgment have roots that predate that movement by a lot.
McDonnell has been a good and very classy governor of Virginia. Pete is right that he has the right mixture of social and economic content in his message, and he’s a cagey campaigner. But, unlike Cruz, he’s not that smart. I like the fact that he’s a white, CATHOLIC guy from Virginia. But he still comes off as a standard white-guy Virginia Republican. He’d be okay as a VP choice, surely better than Portman or Pawlenty. But not only is he no Cruz, he’s no Jindal. A Romney victory depends on Mitt looking much more competent than Obama.
August 2nd, 2012 | 10:02 am
“He will be a key piece of evidence a Republican officeholder can be a conservative and an intellectual.”
1. I am violently opposed to the notion that this argument needs to be made. Even attempting to do so is conceding that a truly crazy assertion has even the slightest merit.
2. I am even more violently opposed to the notion that citing Ivy League credentials is the way to make this asinine argument. That’s nuts. We cannot continue to propagate this disgusting notion of government as a credentialocracy rather than a true meritocracy that is a major reason for the decline of America over the past half-century.
3. “unlike Cruz, he’s not that smart.” ACK. You’re killing me here…
August 2nd, 2012 | 12:54 pm
Brian in re #2, when Cruz’ Ivy League credentials are Robert George’s classes at Princeton, you’re dealing with a horse of a different color. George is one of the most conservative, fair-minded, and sharp teachers in academia, definitely not one the ordinary shills who teach Con-law classes at Ivy league schools
August 2nd, 2012 | 12:57 pm
Brian, I like your spirited response. But CJ is making the point I thought I was making–the man really knows stuff. McDonnell really doesn’t impress me as all that smart.
August 2nd, 2012 | 1:38 pm
You know McDonnell better than I, but he has found the rhetorical sweet spot for appealing to persuadable suburban voters from a position of economic and social conservatism and he has turned out to be a pretty good governor in a swing state. Brains matter a lot to me, but my sense is that he comes off better on television than Jindal and he will offer a somewhat smaller target for Democrats. They will still go nuts if McDonnell is picked, but McDonnell has shown that he can not only overcome, but turn the tables on those kind of attacks.
I think Romney is hoping that the combination of economic conditions and not stirring up any unnecessary controversy constitutes looking more competent than Obama and that argues against Jindal.
There is some reason for that point of view, but Romney has some weaknesses. I don’t see how Romney’s tax cut plan is defensible given projected deficits. That maybe isn’t the biggest POLITICAL problem in the world since it basically offers something for nothing with the details to be worked out later (it will be a bigger challenge or governance if Romney is elected and has to deal with reality.) Romney’s premium support Medicare plan is a bigger problem since it involves transforming and cutting a program that is popular and a large constituency desperately depends on. The challenge is to focus on how Romney’s promised cuts are better than Obama’s promised cuts. Not so easy since the mainstream media will try to frame the issue as Romney’s cuts and ending Medicare vs. Obama’s :)
On the other hand, Portman has played the Democrat in Republican presidential debate prep since 2000. He knows Democratic arguments backwards and forwards, and there is something to that. By all accounts he is a very smart guy.
There is also something else to consider. The Democrats and their media allies will go extra insane if the Republican VP is not a white male. Some of that is the reptile parts of their brains reacting to the possibility that that Republicans might make gains among groups Democrats need. Some of that will be seeing the nonwhite/female VP as an illegitimate/traitorous member of their group. Some of it will be the sense that such a Republican is an exotic and therefore fair game for characterizations that would be racist or sexist when applied to a Democrat. Some of this is subconscious and the hysteria would be epic. THAT IS NOT A REASON TO AVOID PICKING A WOMAN OR NONWHITE. The Democrat (and allied media) overreaction would actually be an opportunity. Remember that Palin did just fine until the McCain campaign overdid the culture war themes, and the financial crisis and the interviews. The hysterical reaction to Palin made her convention speech a bigger hit than it otherwise would have been. The problem is that the Romney team might consider the certain hysterical Democrat reaction a reason to stick with a white male when some other candidate might otherwise be a better fit.
For which would be the most cautious pick I’d rank them:
1. Pawlenty
2. Portman
3. McDonnell
4. Jindal
My personal preferences are Jindal, McDonnell as first and second and I can’t make up my mind between Pawlenty and Portman.
August 2nd, 2012 | 2:06 pm
Dr., please forgive this aside, I am reading a book for review in a foreign journal titled, “Metaphysics: The creation of hierarchy,” by a brillian young scholar, Adrian Pabst.
You may find it of interest as it deals with a refocusing upon the author’s unique analysis of the Greeks, Christian Neo-Platonists and certan elements of modernity and seeks to illustrate certain conceptions that define a ‘mediaiting relation between unity and diversity.’
August 2nd, 2012 | 4:16 pm
Portman is the best cautious pick.
While he is “associated” with Bush, there are clear limits to the “taint” of the brand. In fact wholesale rejection of all the Bush derivatives for all eternity also gets Dr. Lawler who served on the Council of bioethics. Not to mention that the “Bush” brand ends up working like the “Harvard” brand. We are just dancing cluelessly around accreditation and puffery.
Not only was Portman good at role playing Al Gore, this capacity to moot a wide range of the ideological spectrum is good for a number cruncher. So far as I know Portman did not put out any really bad numbers. Unlike Daniels.
Also rather than saying something like McDonnell doesn’t impress me as “smart”, why not say that McDonnell is the embodiment of the Bush taint.
The whole McDonnell budget surplus is good because the Va economy is solid (which is why a budget surplus is good in the first place). But it is also Bush like, because in the end it is based upon numerical manipulations, or letting your advertising people control and collude with your economists and lawyers.
In other words if you are a political advertising person and your teleology is simply getting a good number out of the surplus then prolonging a labor dispute with the board of regents at UVA is a great way to cook the accounting books. Certain payments for the retirement system don’t have to go on the books. Also you have manipulations of the fiscal year, requireing early payment of sales taxes, a surplus because you count 13 months of revenue (from some sources) in a year?
McDonnell is a bit gimmicky, one reason he might want to leave VA and take up the white house is that it is fairly easy to project that 2013 will be a bad fiscal year for VA.
Then of course the marketing people can say, wow look a republican leaves and a democrat comes in and all of a sudden there is a deficit. The marketing people can also say, look a democrat comes in and “bails” out the public employees, (which would actually just be paying the 620 million plus interest that they stalled in negotiations, and kept off the 2012 books)…
“I don’t see how Romney’s tax cut plan is defensible given projected deficits. That maybe isn’t the biggest POLITICAL problem in the world since it basically offers something for nothing with the details to be worked out later (it will be a bigger challenge or governance if Romney is elected and has to deal with reality.)”
Lets just call this POLITICAL problem “marketing”, and then we can call the details policy, and then we will have a much better idea of what went wrong in the Bush administration (maybe).
August 2nd, 2012 | 6:17 pm
John, McDonnell has had a surpluses of over $100 million dollars for all three of his years as governor. You would think manipulating the fiscal year would have caught up with him. He also doesn’t have to worry about reelection because he isn’t eligible.
“Let’s just call this POLITICAL problem
marketing”" Let’s call it whatever you want, but I don’t see how Romney’s tax plan survives sustained analysis of its impact on the deficit. Then again maybe it won’t really get that kind of analysis or it won’t sink in because “tax cuts for just about everybody” sounds good. The details is that both the Obama and Romney budget proposals are based on total fantasy and, even if Congress were to pass whatever they wanted, those proposals would not be sustainable. The Romney proposals were almost pretty good before his big tax cut announcement. Obama’s just raises taxes, proposes (ultimately) centralized cuts to Medicare, and still leaves us on the road to a debt crisis in the 2020s.
“So far as I know Portman did not put out any really bad numbers. Unlike Daniels.” The Daniels numbers were fine given the time period he was asked to estimate for. http://douthat.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/03/03/mitch-daniels-and-the-iraq-war/ The problem wasn’t the answer, it was the question. And it was a question that the Democrats answered the same way as Daniels. You can (and should) argue that the foreign and defense presumptions of Bush were wrong, but the OMB doesn’t get to rewrite those.
The Bush budgets weren’t all that big compared to what we’ve had under Obama but the Bush domestic discretionary spending increases are one of the things Republicans are trying to get away from (unlike say Bush’s positions on abortion or judges) so Portman is more of a problem on that level. Portman also lacks Daniels’s record as a spending cutter over two terms in a state house. You are right that Portman accurately projected the deficit increases that occurred during his time at OMB. That might be more part of the problem than the solution. Now Portman could rightly point out that the budget deficit he projected was far smaller than any of Obama’s and that his 2007 deficit projection was the first one in which Pelosi was Speaker of the House…and well that’s really in the weeds isn’t it? Pawlenty doesn’t bring any of those problems. He does bring up Obamneycare.
August 2nd, 2012 | 8:07 pm
“He will be a key piece of evidence a Republican officeholder can be a conservative and an intellectual.”
For another 2012 candidate who meets these same criteria and incidentally also has tea-party support, check out my guy Tom Cotton. He’s running for the House seat in Arkansas’ 4th district
August 3rd, 2012 | 9:15 am
The cautious Romney won’t win unless stuff gets much worse in some way in our country. But McDonnell, I’m starting to agree, is best of the cautious choices. Jindal is sort of the opposite of Palin, and I think less risky than even Pete thinks.
August 3rd, 2012 | 9:53 am
Bob McDonnell is as battle tested as any of the candidates, having to put up with the Washington Post’ s incessant attacks.
McDonnell may not be as intellectually accomplished as Jindal, but he is savvy, hardworking and tenacious.
One drawback: he is short in stature, and voters seem to prefer taller candidates.
August 3rd, 2012 | 12:18 pm
Bob Cheeks: Thanks for the tip on Pabst, who does look rather interesting. As he is a Radical Orthodoxical, though, it looks like his politics and economics would make most of you FT dudes apoplectic.
August 4th, 2012 | 12:12 pm
HT, I’m loving this book, every page is a learning experience. So far I’ve found Pabst to be rather ‘Voegelinian’ in his broad view of philosophy.
Would you be kind enough to link me to Pabst’s work and perhaps a dictionary, I’m not finding the definiltion of some of his language in my Phil. Dictionary. He seems close to Stein who was close to Aquinas.
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