Last week the UVA Arrow, an alternative student weekly paper here at the University of Virginia, published the following interview (with me!), which I am proud, or at least willing, to bring to your attention.

We caught up with Professor Ceaser at his office, legendary for its disorganization, just as he was returning from teaching his Intro to American Politics class. Inviting us in, he scurried around to remove some papers and books from the chairs, so that we could find a place to sit. After exchanging a few pleasantries, we turned on the ipad recorder. Below is the transcription of the interview, with a few excerpts and edits, all subsequently approved by Professor Ceaser.

Arrow Staff: Some of the graduate students you work with have been talking a lot since last week about your new acquisition—and we’ll be getting to that in a minute. But we wanted to ask you first about what it is like to be a conservative–you have that reputation with the students, you know–working in a university environment.

Ceaser: Well, I have never tried to bring my political views into the classroom, and before I did much writing in the popular press, and especially before the internet existed, few students knew anything about my political inclinations. Some of the students used to ask the teaching assistants about my political leanings, but I instructed them to refrain from answering, advising them, if need be, to resort to their pedagogical prerogative of turning the question back on the students, asking, “Well, what do you think?”

All that, as you know, has changed. Students nowadays do a quick google search and then immediately “out” you on facebook. So I have learned to live with the reputation. As Denny Greene said, it is what it is. Still, I make the same effort as before to be as impartial as I can.

Arrow Staff: And what about your colleagues and other professors? What is your relationship, as a conservative, with them?

Ceaser: That’s a different story, of course. A few years ago, I published an article with Professor Robert Maranto, a well-known political scientist at the University of Arkansas, in which we surveyed the situation of conservative academics in the social sciences. (Ed. Note: The article to which Professor Ceaser is referring here can be found in the book The Politically Correct University, AEI Press, 2009 ). Our conclusions about the limited number of conservatives—the CRD or “conservative representational deficit,” as we called it– come as no surprise.

But we really focused more of our attention on how this situation affected the lives of these conservative academics, who were often subjected to marginalization and penalized in their professional advancement. We noted three groups. The first was comprised of those who became pretty bitter and frustrated, and ended by either suffering in silence, carrying psychological scars one can only imagine, or else bailing out and leaving the academy. A second group consisted of those who while complaining of their status in fact, upon probing—in truth, you really didn’t have to delve very deeply—were found to be quite content. These were personalities who loved to provoke and who found a curious pleasure in being counted as—and counting themselves as—outsiders. Some would even playfully invoke the postmodern label as “others” to describe themselves. Finally, a third group was made up of those who, whether from disposition or calculation, elected to keep a lower profile and avoid confrontation. These were the careerists.

I have always counted myself among this last group, though more, I hope, from disposition than from any utilitarian motive! It’s a matter, so to speak, of getting along by going along, which has always earned me pretty good personal relations with my colleagues. Still, I confess to having a certain admiration for those in the second group–for their sheer pluck and displays of resistance.

Arrow Staff: And you’ve never been tempted?

Ceaser: Uncanny that you should ask. Because it brings me, by a circuitous route, to the acquisition you referenced at the beginning.

I have a confession to make, which goes all the way back to an American studies conference I attended in Europe in 1992, held in the city of Tampere, Finland. I was a Fulbright scholar that year in Basel, which led to an invitation to speak about on the first Gulf War, in which the Americans had expelled Saddam Hussein’s troops from Kuwait. My talk, which failed to attribute the war to American imperialist aims or explain it by the slogan of “blood for oil,” was not very well received by this group. American studies was a discipline devoted to anti-American studies, and none were more convinced in this attitude than the few American who were present. They were bent on dong their little Euro-dance, better to establish their street creds with their hosts.

At the conference dinner, held at Näsinneula (the space needle) in Tempere, I barely spoke a word. During dessert, over cloudberry pudding, the group got around to bantering about the cars they owned (or wished to own). Some made a plea for the Volvo or Saab—we were, after all, in Scandinavia—others swore by BMW, Audi, and Mercedes. A couple of Americans, reaching for subtlety, talked up the merits of the Peugeot. Finally, one European, kindly sensitive to my exclusion, tried to draw me into the conversation: “And you, Professor Ceaser?” Without hesitating, I blurted out “Cadillac,”—not even “a Cadillac,” just Cadillac–and then added, as if to twist the dagger, “El Dorado.” This boorish act brought incomprehensible gazes from one pair of eyes to another, freezing the conversation and putting a quick end to the spirit of playful bonhomie. I lowered my own gaze to my cloudberry pudding…

Arrow Staff: Was it true?

Ceaser: Well, if you mean … I had a Honda. But I could not, somehow, resist the gesture, which was, so to speak, involuntary. And while I cannot deny the fact of my evasion, I confess to having felt strangely liberated …

Arrow Staff: And you think that this….

Ceaser: Listen, if you have studied some French literature, especially some of the works of Andre Gide, you may have heard about something called the acte gratuit, an act that springs forth and makes a person aware of who or what he is, even before he knows it himself. Acting defines essence, or something like that. Well, this was such a moment for me.

Anyhow, about five years ago, I thought I might act on this impulse, but couldn’t summon the courage. I bought a 1997 Mercedes instead, a beautiful car. I took people around in it and showed it off; but the truth was I really didn’t like it that much. Its elegance was too real and understated, so much so that, at least in the interior, it didn’t “look” elegant. What I wanted, what almost every American wants, is the glitz, that touch of bad class. I wanted the faux wooden panel and the artificially induced smell of pure leather. The Mercedes would never indulge me. Check out your Tocqueville! [Ed. Ceaser had no difficulty at this point immediately uncovering a copy of Democracy in America from beneath the rubble on his desk and finding the passage he sought.]

“When I arrived for the first time in New York by the part of the Atlantic Ocean called the East River, I was surprised to notice, along the river bank, at some distance from the city, a certain number of small palaces of white marble, several of which were of a classical architecture; the next day, able to consider more closely the one that had particularly attracted my attention, I found that its walls were of white-washed brick and its columns of painted wood. It was the same for all the buildings that I had admired the day before.”

Arrow Staff: Anything else about your dissatisfaction?

Ceaser: One more thing, yes. Most of the students here know about my attachment to the Constitution and to The Federalist Papers, to the point where I have chosen as a license plate, Fed 49, which refers to the essay that calls for veneration for the Constitution. I want the plate to be a lesson to all those on the road, above all to those more spirited and aggressive drivers who tailgate. But it always bothered me–I suspect it must have bothered others–that the plate was not on an American car.

When the Mercedes died a couple weeks ago, another opportunity presented itself. After thinking Lexus for a while, the old urge surfaced. I saw a 2007 Cadillac STS on Craigslist—2007, just so we are clear, was a couple of years before the bail out–and I got to thinking, could I really? Do I dare?

Arrow Staff: So you went out and made an offer?

Ceaser: Not so fast! One doesn’t take a step like that lightly. I broached the matter with my wife. She sensibly feigned approval, only reminding me of the problem of parking a larger vehicle in a residence without a garage. After discreetly checking with the neighbors, she reported the next day that there were some concerns–not that anyone, of course, wanted to interfere with my right of private choice. Still, the car would be on the street….I had received not dissimilar signals in 2008, when I was about to attach a McCain-Palin bumper sticker, and then again last year when I steadfastly resisted neighborhood pressure to put up the “save McIntire Park” signs, a step that seemed to me to cross the threshold from negative to positive intrusionism. [Ed. This refers to a local issue, going on for twenty years, relating to the building of a parkway in Charlottesville.] Since “communitarianism” is an aspect of conservatism to which I am slightly sensitive, I could not dismiss these sentiments out of hand. A universal feeling, whether well or ill-founded, should not be disregarded. Still, these interferences were bringing out libertarian emotions, like Don’t Tread on Me.

Sorry to go on so long. But I also thought that I should vet the idea with my daughter—a UVA graduate with a major in English and film—who is an arbiter of taste…I mean she lives in Brooklyn and is a well-known writer on travel for The New York Post. She met the suggestion of a Cadillac with consternation. After briefly e-quarreling, we made up. I withdrew my intemperate remark about being a euro snob, and she pretended to approve, asking for “pix” (pictures) and inquiring if it had heated seats, a fact I am sure would not be held against a BMW.

Arrow Staff: You mean no one encouraged you?

Ceaser: I wouldn’t say that. One of my sons, who is in business in Richmond, informed me that this model Cadillac was the envy of all real estate agents; and upon learning the color—“radiant bronze”–a former student, and a famous professor now in his own right, let me know that the car earned me the status of “a middle manager at a local bank.” I took great heart from that comment.

Arrow Staff: And the provocation?

Ceaser: Search any faculty parking lot, at least at a university that has pretentions, and you will look in vain for a Cadillac. So yes, the car will—it already has—brought me the anticipated pleasure of leaving my colleagues shocked and stupefied.

Arrow Staff: Thank you Professor Ceaser for taking the time to speak with us.

[Editors note: At this point, Professor Ceaser checked his cell phone to see what time it was and looked up: “Want to see the car? It’s right out back in the lot.”]

Peter Lawler once remarked that the only thing worse than the failure of Lockeanism in America would be its complete success. Under the reign of a decent materialism, man’s soul would atrophy as humans focused on their individual pursuit of comfortable well-being.

Not surprisingly, this position–or some version of it–has earned Peter Lawler the disfavor of many FOLs (Friends of Locke). They have accused him of everything from mischaracterizing Locke’s thought to undermining the settled thoughts of the American republic. One strand of this group has been even more upset. These are the thinkers who embrace the thesis that what ails America results from the progressive replacement of Lockeanism by Progressivism. If only, they say, America would return to Locke and exorcise this demon, the nation would be saved. It’s not so simple, Peter Lawler says. He has raised the stakes in the conflict by arguing that at the most basic level—the level of fundamental anthropology–Progressivism should be considered a variant more than a foe of Lockeanism.

For this provocation Peter has placed himself into a state of nature with the FOLs. And there is no common intellectual superior to which to appeal.

Peter has carried on undaunted, a warrior for the soul, insisting that liberal democracy and the quality of human life will be strengthened, not weakened, by pointing up the problems and limitations of a Lockean world.

Unless Peter had a blog post hidden on his computer, you may not hear from him this morning. He is set to deliver a paper at his alma mater, the University of Virginia, in a room on the historic range, entitled “Walker Percy, Alexis de Tocqueville and the Stoic and Christian Foundations of American Thomism.” The paper pursues and deepens Peter’s theme, as he seeks to elucidate “a theory adequate to the greatness of our Founders’ practical accomplishment.” Such an account would supplement or correct Lockeanism with doses of aristocracy (“stoicism”) and Christianity. The sources Peter discusses– Walker Percy and Alexis de Tocqueville–become his soul mates in this enterprise. And since the South in America has been home to this stoic tradition, with all of its problems and difficulties, his paper also serves as a nice inquiry into the metaphysical regionalism of American life.

If you’re lucky, he will post it.

In grading candidates in debates, don’t let’s forget the rhetorical situation. It’s much easier to appear high-minded when no one is attacking you because you don’t count much, politically, for the moment. That would be Rick Santorum. He performed well enough last week, and he had a fine statement on the Declaration. But in the debate no one was pressuring him or making him respond. Blessed is he who can stand on the sidelines and put himself above the fray. I seem to remember a couple of weeks ago that Rick had some difficulty facing some of the criticisms of his activities since leaving the Senate. So I judge him, for the time being, on a different scale. His task was different, and his situation was different. A good performance, but too many commentators have been too generous.

As for Mitt, in his two races for the presidency the other candidates have had big problems with him, almost personal, for how he hit them unfairly in ads and mailings. They resented his behind the back approach. Except when he demolished poor Rick Perry way back when, putting his hand on his shoulder, Mitt never really showed his tough side in one and one combat. I hate to say it, but people like a candidate who can take a guy down directly when it counts. (Wasn’t that what Newt was promising to do Obama, and wasn’t that fantasy one of the main things that helped fuel his rise.) Men, especially, like a tough streak. And face it, the Thursday debate was pure decimation–and decimation of the candidate who had established himself as the best at debate. The picture counted as much as the words. Mitt simply looked bigger and tougher–and at the same time more reasonable–than Newt. Look for Mitt to pick up especially among men, where he was trailing.

Mitt’s mistakes come against the guys who don’t figure in for the moment. He bet Rick 1 ten thousand dollars when Rick didn’t matter, and he went after Rick 2 for displaying a quality we admire up, at least up to a point, viz. righteous indignation. I’m sure Mitt earned Rick’s personal enmity for that one. Because of all of his advantages–looks, money, smarts, etc.–others are rightfully wary of slights from Mitt, and he manages to deliver them. He has a difficult rhetorical problem of showing that he is tough without at the same time appearing to talk down to someone. Not just the other candidates, but the audience senses this fact as well. That’s a hard balancing act that Mitt hasn’t fully mastered.

Finally, Rick hit the home run, as Peter said, with his Declaration answer. But though it was less effective and less direct, do take a look at Mitt’s statement on the same theme, thirty seconds before. Not nearly as good, but on target. And I think it passes the Lawler test. Here it is:

“And of course, ours is a nation which is based upon Judeo- Christian values and ethics. Our law is based upon those values and ethics. And in some cases, our law doesn’t encompass — encompass all of the issues that we face around the world.
The conviction that the founders, when they wrote the Declaration of Independence, were writing a document that was not just temporary and not just for one small locale but really something which described the relationship between God and man — that’s something which I think a president would carry in his heart.
So when they said, for instance, that the creator had “endowed us with certain unalienable rights, among them life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness,” I would seek to assure that those principles and values remain in America and that we help share them with other people in the world, not by conquering them, but by helping them through our trade, through our various forms of soft power, to help bring people the joy and — and — and opportunity that exists in this great land.”

I just returned from a trip to New Hampshire, where I attended a town meeting with Mitt, at the veteran for foreign wars post in Hudson. Anyone interested in American politics has to have a soft spot for these kind of meetings; they provide a chance to see and judge the candidates “up close” (within 15 yards) in a personal setting. You get to see “regular citizens,” plus a smattering of the national elite journalists who swoop down to cover the locals, usually stopping in for an obligatory chowder or pie at some diner. You know, rubbing shoulders with the natives: Why I’m just a country journalist.

I did a tour four years ago, with Professor Daniel DiSalvo of CUNY, in the week before the New Hampshire primary. We saw almost all of the candidates up close–as well as Maureen Dowd without make up. What a sight that was!

The event at Hudson, as well as the debate on Saturday (and the commentary posted here by the two Peters), led to a few thoughts. Barring that much talked about Newtplosion, the only way to keep the Newtsurge from turning into a Newtsami is to keep the race from becoming, immediately, a two person contest. Funny thing about a two person race; someone has to win. The delegates need to divide among a few candidates, so that by the time of South Carolina the thing does not look to be over. So welcome Ron Paul (Peter L’s theory).

Regarding the debate on Saturday, Mitt said at a press conference in Hudson that his wife told him he shouldn’t be betting, which theologically for him is pretty sound advice. But that gaffe aside, I was not as negative on Mitt’s performance Saturday night as the others–on the basis of what it shows about him as a potential president. One of the key exchanges was on Israel. Romney made the point that as a leader who backs Israel, it’s not for him to spout theory or rhetoric that could be averse to Israel’s interest or prove inflammatory. Newt’s “invented people” goes in that direction, and while he did so speaking “as an historian,” I was judging him as a possible president. Not that everybody is thinking in those terms now. In addition, I thought Mitt’s comeback to Newt’s argument that he would have been a career politician was very funny and very good. Not the stuff that wins an election, but very nice.

Which brings me to the next point. The idea that Mitt Romney (or anyone else) is going to take out Newt in some one rhetorical stroke is highly unlikely. It sets up a standard that, baring some accident, can’t be met. Newt is too skillful a talker for this to happen. An audience has to want to be convinced, a little bit. If someone were to have told you a couple of months ago that Republicans could swallow a candidate that had taken funds from Mr. and Ms. Mac, I would have said impossible. Right now, many Republicans are swallowing just that; so I doubt that a one-liner from Mitt Romney is going to create a defining moment. The notion of the knock out blow is insane media hype. Either, as Pete S. says, people will come around after awhile to thinking that some of the flaws of Newt are pretty serious–or they won’t. Don’t expect a debate performance by an opponent to do this job. Right now, many people look at Newt as one who can administer a rhetorical pounding to Obama–and they want to see Barrack out for the count. Maybe that could happen, but I’m not sure I would nominate a candidate for that reason. As John Marshall might have said, “It’s a president we are electing.”

Back to Mitt, my impression from seeing him in person is that, while he has not been a politician of conviction, right now and as president he would follow a conservative line. The core of his policy would be the reduction of the overall percentage of government spending as a percent of GDP to 20% (from 25%) while also increasing slightly the percent that goes to the military and without asking for a tax rate increase. I believe that is what he would seek to do as president, so the question becomes simple vis a vis Newt: do you think this plan is enough now to qualify as a conservative, and do you think Mitt would be better able to (a) win the election and (b) more likely to succeed in moving the county most of the way to this goal. Mitt does not present this program as a hate government guy, or from a set of libertarian theoretical postulates. He was asked at one point about Americorps and a few other things. Instead of saying that these are a priori no nos, he argued that, get ready, a lot of things some might like are just going to have to be reduced or cut to bring government in line with what the country can afford and sustain; and that the failure to meet that goal now leads to a dire threat to American strength and to the continuation of a working capitalist system. He adds a pretty strong moral argument for the right and justice of liberty, including in the economic realm, i.e., no Obama “fairness.” This isn’t the red meat that some would like. But this is where I think he is and where he would want to go. To me, it’s pretty close to the Ryan direction.

Mitt’s problem, besides not having been a conviction conservative all along, is that he is not exactly a man of the people. To his credit, he does not try to be, like John Kerry in 2004. It wouldn’t work anyhow. He is well-spoken, has a sense of humor, and conveys earnestness, competence and sobriety; but he lacks the common touch that say, Mike Huckabee, has. He can’t touch the hearts of his audience, though I do believe that he can–and in this meeting did–convince people of a deep commitment to the country, and–to speak in conservative terms–to the essential free America we have known. His patriotism will have to suffice. Mitt did fairly well with an audience in New Hampshire, but many in New Hampshire  are used to seeing this type of individual around. No question, it would be tougher for him in a place like west Tennessee–though not against Barrack Obama. Mitt is not going to  be beloved by the country western crowd–he’s too sober for that–which is not to say that they couldn’t grow over time to respect him. That’s what tolerance is all about.

The campaign for now is a waiting game. There is little that Mitt Romney can do by himself to turn the tide. Yes, he has to avoid bad bets and perform at his best. But right now the outcome is not really in his hands. He can only hold on and wait to see what the electorate decides about the other fellow. That’s just the way it is sometimes.

Let’s begin by stating the positive point for Newt Gingrich. He might not, as Pete Spiliakos says, prove ten foot tall in debate, though he is approaching ten foot wide. But he is quite effective in expressing whatever idea he happens to be developing at the moment. He talks in terms that seem understandable. On this score, he has few equals. But, as Pete point outs, the ideas he is developing at any moment may be very different from the ones he developed at another moment. How long can he play Houdini? Ron Paul’s ad in Iowa attacking Gingrich is one of the more compelling I have seen. It will be interesting to see whether, given its source, the ad will prove effective.

The problem today in the GOP remains, so to speak, structural. The anti-Romney slot is large, and Romney has not (yet) succeeded in bringing a portion of those voters into his camp. He has been running against himself and, so far, not winning. So someone has kept popping up in that slot, from Trump, to Perry, to Cain, to Newt. Newt has a couple of qualities that the others do not, but those currently supporting him are not all that enthusiastic. Take a look at the Iowa polls, and see how ambivalent many are about his suitability for the presidency.

This leaves many in the GOP with a dilemma: back someone they consider to be deeply flawed (Newt) or resign themselves to someone whom they recognize generally to be fairly competent, though not, so to speak, their cup of tea (Mitt). Imagine how conflicted some folks must feel supporting  Newt Gingrich, given not only his personal liabilities, but the way he has made his living over the past decade. This, compared to a candidate whose only personal failing seems to have been to have tried a beer, but did not swallow.

How will this dilemma be resolved? One way would be to walk the plank with Newt. Another would be for voters to conclude that they can live with Mitt Romney, who could actually gain credibility by fighting his way to victory; he would emerge as the Tim Tebow of the political world. Another still would be to go back to one of the others in the field, one of the Ricks (Perry or Santorum), Michele, or–George Will’s beau ideal of a statesman–John Huntsman. Yet another is that, failing a convincing run by Mitt, the collective forces in the party–pundits, voters, some delegates, political leaders–will “draft” a candidate in the slot Newt now is occupying. That slot may be defined as someone acceptable to populist conservatives while also respected by the rest of the GOP, and even to many independents. The tragedy to date in this election, which is rightly declared as one of the most important in our history, is that there are more than a few in the GOP who meet this test; they are just not now in the race. Tim Pawlenty once vied for this slot (why did he drop out?), but he was not exactly a hit as a candidate. This leaves the likes of Paul Ryan, Jeb Bush, or Chris Christie. If Mitt Romney cannot pull off a convincing act in a reasonable time, it is not impossible that the draft scenario will come into play. It will likely assume the form of an agreed “team “(president and vice-president) that will be solicited as a unity and savior ticket. Never mind that those on this list said they would not compete for the nomination; they would not, in effect, be competing in the usual sense, but would be responding to a groundswell. When party and country call, no patriot can fail to answer.

“Nothing is more killing in politics than boredom.” Newt Gingrich, January 2008

Newt (the irrepressible) hit on something four years ago: closing down the nomination race too early–however much a top contender might prefer that result–is probably not in the best interest of the party. For good or ill, the nomination process today is structured as a marathon; for the race to end almost before it begins would leave voters uneasy and journalists with too much free time, which can only lead to mischief. So it is best for the tie being for the contest to remain where it is: unresolved.
As for the sport of odds making, a few weeks back I opined (partly to highlight a point) the following: Romney 80%, someone else in the field of active candidates 3%, and 17% for a candidate not now active (e.g., Ryan, Jeb etc.). The thinking was that Romney was the only really viable choice of the lot–and that if he could not really pull out a strong plurality (go through the primary schedule and do the math), an ongoing brokering process involving the people, internet, delegates could “meet” and at some point put someone else forward, so to speak. I imagine that the option would probably come as a ticket, with the presidential and vice presidential nominees being paired. Again, an unlikely though not impossible scenario.

Has Newt’s surge changed the odds? The three percent was really only a “shock” number (At the time, the alternatives to Mitt were Herman Cain and a just rising Newt.) As for wondering about either of those two becoming the nominee, I suppose I was still somewhat “stuck on virtue,” seduced by those rhetorical passages in The Federalist that speak of the Founders’ expectations for the selection process (admittedly, a very different process than the current one). Here’s a couple of them: (a) “their votes will be directed to those men only who have become the most distinguished by their abilities and virtue, and in whom the people perceive just grounds for confidence” (Fed. #64) (b) “It will not be too strong to say, that there will be a constant probability of seeing the station filled by characters pre-eminent for ability and virtue” (Fed. #68). (Well, maybe it is a little strong!)

In any case, if you set aside the risk that certain candidate weaknesses will become more evident over the campaign, it is better that it should continue. Romney’s new line that he will have to “work for the votes” is something that would certainly be good for him; he’s a person who would only gain by doing more to connect with the voters: That which would not kill him would only make him stronger. Plus a real challenge helps to build up the organization. Newt will no doubt confine himself mostly to the studios, where he performs so well, launching a self-proclaimed new big idea at a rate of one every five minutes.

So for the moment, fasten your seat belts. It may not be so boring. And after all, what else is a blog for?

On thanksgiving, just a few hours before black friday, i invite you to read a (longish) essay on gratitude, just published in the Policy Review. It has a section on the holiday of thanksgiving, and it previews, without exactly predicting, President Obama’s omission (according to news reports) of any mention of God in his address this year, which marks a first for Thanksgiving proclamations.  You can find the article online at http://www.scribd.com/doc/73413436/Policy-Review-December-2011-January-2012-No-170 Go to page 58 and read away

i put this in the standard, and some have already been calling 911. It is analysis, not advocacy….

If, as most pundits now believe, Mitt Romney has the inside track for the Republican nomination, he is the first GOP candidate in more than a generation not to be syntactically challenged. Just look at the list of the party’s choices since Richard Nixon, whether elected (Ronald Reagan, George H. W. Bush, George W. Bush) or defeated (Gerald Ford, Robert Dole, John McCain). Whatever other attributes these candidates possessed, facility in extemporaneous exchange was not one of them. None of these men could be counted on to handle a challenging question, let alone always keep noun and verb somewhere near their rightful places.

This deficiency took a psychological toll on the Republican faithful over the years. Hours before a presidential debate or a major interview or press conference, Republicans, nerves frayed, would begin beseeching heaven that their candidate might escape disaster. Could he get through without denying that the Soviet Union dominated Eastern Europe (Gerald Ford in 1976) or leaving some imaginary figure, a century hence, wandering aimlessly down a California coastal highway (Ronald Reagan in 1984)?

With Mitt, at last, Republicans can sleep easy. Agree with him or not, this is a man who’s not about to be stumped. Romney’s verbal repertoire even extends to a capability that Republicans had forgotten still existed: nuance. Romney displayed his adeptness in the New Hampshire debate three weeks ago when parrying a challenge about the complexity of his 59-point plan from Herman Cain. Without hesitation, and with no hint of condescension, Mitt explained “that simple answers are always very helpful but oftentimes inadequate.” Not exactly an answer that Bob Dole would have come up with on the spot. And he showed that he could stand up for himself as well, going toe-to-toe with Rick Perry last week in Las Vegas in the epic battle for the microphone.

Romney’s debate performances the first time around, in 2007-08, were not always so well honed. To his credit, he used his four years of practice to master the craft. This kind of hard work and discipline in an executive may be exactly what the American people are looking for this time. Besides, the simple truth is that there are few absolute naturals in this business.

The template for Republican verbal inadequacy was established before the Nixon era by President Eisenhower. Ike became known from his press conferences as one of the English language’s great manglers, to the delight of reporters bent on depicting him as some kind of fool. This view of Ike prevailed for a time until presidential scholars, led by Fred Greenstein, began to point out that not only was he a demanding taskmaster of the written word—he had prepared speeches for General MacArthur in the 1930s—but his imprecision was sometimes deliberate or studied. “It is far better,” Eisenhower once noted, “to stumble or speak guardedly than to move ahead smoothly and risk imperiling the country.”

Across the aisle, meanwhile, Adlai Stevenson, the Democratic candidate in 1952 and 1956, spoke like an intellectual. The intelligentsia, the cheapest date around, embraced him as one of their own, beginning a love affair with the Democratic party that has endured ever since. No matter what the truth, the thinking classes, with the sophisticated journalists following obediently behind, have regarded the Democrats as their kind and most Republicans as dunces. Republicans’ verbal struggles provided just enough cover to make the charge plausible.

Nixon stands as the exception. An articulate speaker, he was usually at ease handling difficult questions. But even Nixon caused Republicans much mental anguish. No one could know when his suppressed feelings of inferiority or self-pity might come bubbling to the surface, as in his promise to the press, after losing the California governor’s race in 1962, “You won’t have Nixon to kick around anymore.” Nixon prided himself on being an accomplished debater, and he showed as much in the first-ever televised presidential debate against John F. Kennedy, whom the media were already touting as a great intellect. Nixon was judged to be victorious in surveys of those who listened on radio, though the opposite was the case for TV viewers. The simple fact was that Kennedy was handsome, while Nixon couldn’t get a clean shave.

It has added no luster to the history of American rhetoric that the institutionalization of presidential debates, which began in 1976, featured a matchup between Gerald Ford and Jimmy Carter. Neither man was a Churchill, though Carter, an engineer by training, could be precise almost to a fault. (Certainly no one in 1976 would have suspected that Carter, in retirement, would publish a book of poetry.) Ford was another matter. He spoke slowly and deliberately, but he managed nonetheless to jumble his syntax and leave his phrases dangling. Smooth he was not. Perhaps to his credit, he could not talk and chew gum at the same time.

Ronald Reagan remains the most intriguing of the Republicans. Known today as the Great Communicator, he was superb in the set speech. At any given moment, he could also shine in debate or extemporaneous speech with a great quip or a beautiful one-liner. But even his admirers conceded that he was never one to be concerned with mastering all the details. And they worried continually at what he might come up with, as in his remark in 1981 that “trees cause more pollution than automobiles” (a claim that scientists more than two decades later discovered to be not entirely off-base). Reagan’s weakness in this mode of communication was seized on by his opponents, whose efforts to depict him as a simpleton knew no bounds. Liberal intellectuals, who in this era were less taken than they are today with the intellectual prowess of Hollywood stars, repeatedly belittled Reagan for gleaning his deepest thoughts from the scripts of B-movies. Yet as in Eisen-hower’s case, historians in the decade after Reagan’s retirement discovered that he had read widely and for years carefully crafted his own speeches.

The post-Reagan era has served only to confirm the weakness of the Republicans’ extemporaneous speaking skills. George Bush père was never thought unintelligent—he had served in posts demanding intellectual ability, like ambassador to China and head of the CIA—but fluent in speaking he was not. He was a chronic assailant of English syntax, and his victory over the more articulate Michael Dukakis owed nothing to his skill at debating or answering questions. Bush’s fate four years later was to encounter a man, Bill Clinton, who was one of the more gifted talkers in American history. A Rhodes scholar, a quick study, and a master of every dossier, Clinton could talk intelligently, or seem to, about almost any subject. (His problem, if he had one, was that he could not stop talking.) To put Bill Clinton four years later in the ring with Bob Dole was an act of rhetorical cruelty. Master of the one-liner, Dole unfortunately found himself in situations where it was necessary to string together a second and third line.

George W. Bush was much better in both debate and spontaneous exchange than his critics made out. He clearly bested Al Gore in the debates in 2000, though this was more the result of Gore’s own implosion than Bush’s skill; and he held his own against John Kerry, whom the liberal media had built up as an intellectual giant. Still, Bush’s mispronunciations, for example of “nuclear,” and his neologisms, like “misunderestimate,” became the constant fare of late-night comedians. It was no plus for the intellectual distinction of the president that his press secretary, Scott McClellan, defended his deficiency, noting that “Al Gore had perfect diction, and we still beat him. We’ve got a different kind of diction, it’s a good diction.” Far more important, no one listening to Bush would ever say that he could express his thoughts with ease. The joint press conferences he held with Tony Blair were painful displays of how much this deficiency hurt him. Blair, in full command of the language, could express what Bush could only hint at.

Much the same was evident in the Obama-McCain debates in 2008. John McCain could be sharp and concise in many matters of foreign affairs, but when it came to articulating his views on economic issues, he could not cover his weaknesses. To say it was a struggle would be charitable. Obama might not have been quite the master that some expected him to be, but even so, the contest was unequal.

Many centuries ago, Aristotle analyzed success in political persuasion along three dimensions: logos (the quality of argument), pathos (the power of emotional appeal), and ethos (admiration or respect for the character of the speaker). Barack Obama in 2008 enjoyed the trifecta. He was universally lauded for his keen intellect, his mastery of the details of policy, and, in debates, his reasoned style. (Joe Biden, surely qualified to judge, later opined that Obama had a “brain bigger than his skull.”) He could speak in informal settings like an intellectual, even an academic, as in explaining in one of the Democratic primary debates that he and Hillary had a “philosophical difference” on health care—that difference, incidentally, being over the requirement that citizens purchase health insurance, which Obama then “philosophically” opposed. As for pathos, Obama had it to burn, launching an inspirational appeal to hope and change that captured the imaginations of millions worldwide, from humble urban dwellers in Cairo to sophisticated postmoderns in Paris. Finally, Obama was thought to have the makings of greatness, from his perfectly creased pants to his vision of a new future for America and the world.

It is no secret that Obama has lost ground on all three dimensions. Until recently, many who disagreed with him still liked or admired him. Now even that is beginning to fade, as his opponents have come increasingly to regard him as arrogant and duplicitous. More important, over the last few months even some of Obama’s supporters in 2008 have started openly questioning his preparation for the job and his competence. “What people say when he is not in the room,” Mortimer Zuckerman told the Wall Street Journal in an interview published on October 15, “is astonishing.”

Obama’s pathetic appeal has both changed and diminished. A soaring rhetoric of unity has given way to a bitter politics of division. Anger has replaced hope as the dominant emotion. There is no lift left. It may be on the dimension of logos, however, that Obama has suffered most. People do not doubt that he is smooth and articulate, though they have wondered at his addiction to the teleprompter. But they have come to dismiss the logic or reason of his arguments. Both in the health care debate and in the debate on the deficit, more and more are convinced that his figures just don’t add up, and—going back to character—that he knows they don’t add up. His cleverness is fooling no one.

And Mitt Romney? His candidacy today has impressed many who once counted him out or wished him out. He has won the admiration, sometimes grudging, of many doubters for the way he has thought through every issue and is able to express his views. No one is pretending that he is an inspirational candidate, and he has not made the mistake of trying to be. Travel the byways of Iowa and New Hampshire, and you won’t see very many “I love Mitt” signs. Nor is his full character held up as a paragon. Nothing in his biography is truly stirring, and the various evolutions in his political positions do not make him a hero as a leader of conviction. His strength on the dimension of ethos lies in his steadiness and the probity of his family life and personal character.

The shape of the Romney campaign is now clear. His bet is that conservatives will be satisfied that he is conservative enough to be their standard-bearer; that Republicans will want a candidate who can go up against Obama in debate without a handicap; and that the American people generally, having had their fill of charisma and inspiration, will be looking for competence attached to sound judgment. The era of world historical leadership is over, for the time being. Now is the moment not for the narrow manager but for the sound CEO, someone ready and prepared to step in and run the country.

While Carl was dipping into the subtleties of Bowie and Peter was off somewhere
blogging, I was doing my duty as a citizen of the association, attending its meeting.
And here is my comment, also found in this week’s Standard.

While most Americans spend their Labor Day weekend savoring the last moments of
summer vacation, political scientists are normally hard at work at their annual
association meeting, held this year in Seattle. This event is usually a rather sedate
affair, with scholars debating such recondite subjects as “Bayesian approaches to
political research” and “The political‐theological problem in Xenophon’s thought.”

But this time things were a little different. A dissident group of members challenged
the American Political Science Association’s governing system, asking for some
modest changes to the constitution to institute competition in the selection of
officers and the governing council. The dissidents billed their proposal as a small
step toward democratization. Imagine, then, their great surprise when defenders of
the status quo, who included some of the leading political scientists in the nation,
instructed them in no uncertain terms that devices like competitive elections,
labeled “procedural democracy,” counted as next to nothing in comparison to
“substantive democracy.” Substantive democracy meant “diversity” as computed by
race, gender, and ethnicity.

Without going into details — who would care? — the association’s current form of
government might most accurately be described as a cooptocracy. A nominating
committee, appointed by the association president, proposes to the membership a
slate of nominees for all of the officers and representatives to the council. (The
president at the Seattle meeting was Professor Carole Pateman of UCLA, known best
for her work Participation and Democratic Theory.) The nominating committee’s
slate can be challenged by candidates nominated by a petition process from the
members; but the way things normally work — and always, now, for the officers —
“elections” take place with only one person “competing” for each slot. Only in the
case of council representatives have the dissidents put up alternatives in recent
years, winning a few seats.

The change advocated by the dissidents was to require the nominating committee to
name two candidates for each position. Democratic theory would suggest, they
insisted, that this limited competition would increase member interest and
participation in elections and afford an opportunity for an occasional candidate to
raise a substantive question. Professors Gregory Kasza of Indiana University and
Rogers Smith of the University of Pennsylvania led the way in arguing for the
importance of elections as an integral component of anything resembling
democracy, with Smith, a leading theorist of democracy in his own right, wondering
what signal would be sent to our students if the nation’s political scientists rejected
electoral competition.

Hold on there, Professor Smith. The responses came fast and furious from a legion of
defenders of the coopt‐ocracy. Such stalwarts in the profession as former presidents
Theda Skocpol of Harvard and Henry Brady of Berkeley pointed out the indignity of
asking great scholars to stand in competitive elections and invoked the old
conservative saw that “if it ain’t broke don’t fix it.” But the nub of the case for
defenders of the status quo was that elections do not enhance, but limit democracy:
The key to democracy is found in the assurance of diversity, not of views but of
physical characteristics.

One self‐described Latino speaker said it will be time enough to permit procedural
democracy when certain groups are assured, at some point in the future, of their
proper overall representation within the association. Until then, the great beast of
the mass of political scientists cannot be trusted. (It is rumored that certain group
caucuses own the privilege of naming candidates whom the nominating committee
slates, making the system one of managed diversity.)

Political scientists today generally consider themselves an empirically minded
group, less impressed by airy theoretical speculations than by attention to “hard
data.” On this dimension, the cooptocrats possessed a clear advantage in the debate.
The association’s treasurer, Arthur Lupia of the University of Michigan, one of the
profession’s most decorated methodologists, introduced the only real evidence. In a
lengthy speech, he proposed to answer the question “How have competitive
elections changed the council?” Analyzing the cases over the last six years in which
competitive elections for the council resulted in dissidents defeating the nominees
proposed by the nominating committee, Lupia generated a table, which he read in
full, that bears close study. It compares the diversity attributes of the victorious
dissident candidates with the diversity attributes of the candidates proposed by the
cooptocracy, but not elected.

Table I

Year     Elected Write In Cand             Not Elected Nominating Committee Candidate

2004    White American Male             Asian Male from India
2005    White American Male             Asian Woman from Taiwan
2006    White American Female         White Male from Canada
2007    White American Female         Black Male from Benin
2008    White American Female         African‐American Male
2009    White American Female        White American Male
2010    White American Female        White Female from Israel
2010    White American Male             White Female from Germany
2010    White American Female        African‐American male
*Data from Arthur Lupia, University of Michigan.

Interpreting the result, Lupia observed, “In nine of the ten cases [I counted nine],
competitive elections led to the council being more white or less international than
it would have been under the nominating committee’s recommendation. . . . From
the perspective of racial, ethnic, and international diversity, the actuality of these
elections is difficult to support.”

This evidence, cited time and again, appeared to have a decisive impact on the
outcome of the debate. It was so impressive that on my return from the association
meeting, I immediately convened a panel of graduate students at the University of
Virginia to further mine this rich data set and allow it to speak in all of its nuance.
The heated objection of one panelist — that Lupia had buried the fact that the
dissidents promoted more gender diversity (six females instead of three!) — was
duly noted, but quickly set aside. Other panelists pointed out that there were several
factors in play here, not just gender, so the full matter could in fairness only be
determined by a more rigorous statistical approach that assigned weights to each
variable. The resulting “Diversity Index” the panel constructed adopted the
following weights. For gender, a male received a (‐1) designation, a female (+1); for
race, White (‐1), Asian (+1) and Black (+2). Country of origin provoked some
discussion, but in the end, in accord with the spirit of diversity’s concern for
reversing the domination of hegemonic countries (and their allies) over oppressed
nations, the panel decided to accord a (‐2) to America, (‐1) to dependent American
allies like Taiwan and Israel, and up to a (+2) for the former French colony of Benin.
For each entrant on the table it became possible to calculate a single diversity score
[t = R(race)+O(origin)+G(gender)]. For example, to take the outliers, a White
American Male (WAM) was scored at ‐4, while a Black Benin Male (BBM) rated an
impressive +3. The White Female from Israel netted ‐1. When the totals for the
dissidents who were elected were compared with the totals of the candidates from
the nominating committee who were defeated, the panel had little difficulty
concluding that the cooptocracy had, if anything, understated the strength of its
case. These were robust findings in every sense of the word.

The wisdom of social science was happily confirmed at the association meeting.
Leaving the hall, I saw a smiling set of past association presidents being
congratulated by their coopted beneficiaries. Substantive democracy had prevailed
— by an exercise of procedural democracy, no less.

Where Did the Master Orator Go?
Jim Ceaser (also on commentary contention site)
07.26.2011 – 12:23 PM
Can an American president call for a speech on prime time television to talk about the weather? We came fairly close to a test of this proposition last night. Americans, who have been hearing almost daily from the president over the last couple of weeks, were now bidden—should one say summoned?—to listen to him in an official Presidential Address, a format that is normally reserved for solemn or important announcements.

Barack Obama pronounced a speech that contained nothing new, and certainly nothing important. The single “action” he called for was to urge Americans to light up the switchboards of Republican members of the House to compel them to support his approach, which includes tax hikes, to address the debt crisis. Apart from the unseemliness of the president trying so blatantly to impose his will on a co-ordinate branch of the government, this plea was completely irrelevant. From the moment talks about of a grand bargain ended last week, Congress–including the leaders of both parties in both chambers–had agreed to move beyond a plan that contains “revenues.” The president, of course, knew this, just as he knows that in the end he will likely sign such a bill.

The real aim of the speech was accordingly to position himself for the next election as the great compromiser and to paint the opposition as extreme. It was a political speech in the guise of an official presidential address.

Will it work? Will the president appear in the public’s eye—and appearance is what this was all about—as a larger figure after this speech than before? There is reason to think that he will not. Obama spoke for fifteen minutes, three times longer than House Speaker John Boehner. But many will think that John Boehner had three times the better in the exchange. Obama displayed all of his rhetorical prowess, his grand style and his characteristic eloquence. The subject of his speech, in line with almost all of his big speeches, was himself—in this case, how he alone is a figure above mundane politics, a Great Compromiser in the midst of a three ring circus. (Other speeches in the past, for example, had Obama as the one voice of civility in a climate of political incivility, or the one post-partisan in a world of partisanship.) All the elements were in place for one of those larger than ordinary mortals’ performances, but the gambit seems to have fallen flat.

Nothing is more difficult from a rhetorical standpoint than to pronounce a speech that follows immediately upon a presidential address. The president holds all the advantages—the setting, the dignity of the office, and, of course, the personal recognition. He has no need to introduce himself. Almost all of the respondents in these jousts have been bested, sometimes disastrously, with the most favorable result being a draw. Boehner’s performance stands out as the exception. His address was simple and direct, while the president’s was mendacious; his was earnest, while the president’s was self-serving; and his was about the crisis, while the president’s was about himself. Obama strove mightily to get above politics, but failed. Boehner did seek political positioning and succeeded.

Obama, the master orator, has now been defeated on his own chosen ground. Will this leave the emperor without his clothes?