Unless the Democratic presidential contenders suddenly appeal, or voting for dead men or withdrawn candidates or imaginary parties convinces as indirect means to political satisfaction, the Republican voter will soon choose between John McCain and Mitt Romney. The race hasn't descended to acrimony, exactly, but it is still as cheerless as it was last week, right before Rudy Giuliani discovered that his grin was Cheshire.
John McCain is the curmudgeon whose primary wins at first mystify. He grumbled about deficits and twice voted against George W. Bush's tax cuts. In spite of, or because of, proximity to the white-collar obloquy of the Keating Five, the senator sees corruption where there is instead a First Amendment. McCain is not only openly accepting of illegal immigration, but fervent. Why have Republican voters elevated him? One supposition rests on tenure — it is simply John McCain's turn, voters resign themselves to that. For a corollary, one compares McCain to former senator and presidential loser Bob Dole.
Both men have been senators, were veterans, and endure limiting injuries from war. Neither, if called "moderate," will motivate very many to shake their heads. To conflate them politically, however, misses their divergent natures. The irascible McCain has chosen positions with far more assertiveness than the complaisant Dole — to say McCain is "moderate" means that he holds several statist beliefs, while for Dole it means that he is lukewarm and may simply give in. That may convey authority and consistency for the former but it certainly implies an absence thereof for the latter, and dispatches the analogy. We have the footage from 1996: Senator McCain has not mistaken San Diego for San Francisco, or dived off any dais.
Mitt Romney, the executive, occupies a political space that once belonged to Ronald Reagan. From where does the robust American come? Family and enterprise, the former governor celebrating the first; and advocating, via tax relief, the second. How to stand in wartime? Hold fast, says Romney, turning on the phrase "strong military." What about rightist cultural standards? Yes, yes and yes.
What Romney promises is not necessarily what he has enacted. National Review contributor Deroy Murdock has, for months, compared the candidates. He especially impugned the former governor's contemporary statements and, though with an evident vindictive spirit, significantly so. Corporate taxes, use taxes, identification card fees: all increased. Whence abortion, immigration and marriage laws? Westerly. Romney continues to define himself with negative space. Thus he runs as the conservative, but declaratively, and thus putatively; and perhaps ostensibly. As I said to a friend, over breakfast last Friday, voters face a choice between a reformed conservative and a moderate — but could very well elect the reformed conservative and have a moderate.
Complicating this is the perception of the presidency becoming a tight cynosure of Washington, D.C. — not because it is or could be, but because the men who would inhabit the White House are foremost on the public mind. Abraham Lincoln was a Republican, though not a Radical. Jack Kennedy's first two years in executive office were a profile in legislative washouts, thanks to an adverse congressional wing of JFK's own party. And: Hillary Clinton would have seen socialized medicine promulgated in 1994 if Democrats had wanted it. Between the balance of power is the potential for a beneficial difference in ideology, but recalcitrant caucuses of the GOP are evaluating the party as if they were electing a parliament.
On the other hand, Congress can declare but never administer war. It may be that transnational fascism rising in the Near East — the hostilities already engaged and promising a decade of trials — has decided the ballots in McCain's favor. The senator has called for less, not more, extricable deployments overseas. Almost a year ago, John McCain said unpopular things about unpopular campaigns. At the same time, Mitt Romney said something else. Those statements have been disfigured by McCain, though not wholly. Romney was asked about "timetables" in Iraq, in this case the watchword for check marks for a retreat. He assumed, rightly, that President Bush had a political covenant with Baghdad, and spoke to that end. The question was loaded: did Romney asseverate? Maybe. What he clearly showed was caution, great caution, and not necessarily — judging by his language — out of military deliberation.
John McCain's capture and torture at the hands of the North Vietnamese countervails the left's animation of Oliver Stone's pitiable, disenchanted military stereotype. No more accusations of civilian cowardice, at least. Were a President McCain to send the armed forces into justified peril, with near-certainty could one assume that none would suffer quite like he did. Yet McCain has his own thane's mindset, insulting Romney and begging, for observers, whether his service supplies the cause of derogating those civilians whom he swore to protect — but now obstruct him politically.
Where are the other candidates, the better ones? Popularly defeated by John McCain and Mitt Romney, two men of the imperfection that tends to stifle the ideologues and dreamers. Can the victor be flattered by the could-be vice president? God forbid these two end up as one another's running mate, haughty partners in electoral enterprise.