A new GOP frontrunner?

In the aftermath of NR’s endorsement of Romney, Paul of Powerline opines:

For some time, Rudy Giuliani has justifably been considered the Republican frontrunner, though not a terribly convincing one. As Giuliani continues to slip slowly in the polls, I’m beginning to think that Mitt Romney can now claim this (perhaps dubious) distinction.

A female reader replies:

Wheeeeeeeee!

I think the reason cons stayed away from Romney is that so many of their fellow cons were pumping up Giuliani and making him seem inevitable and he was the only one and in general pushing him down everybody’s throats.

Meanwhile Romney, like the religion to which he belongs, continues to elicit a wide range of reactions. At Commentary’s blog, Contentions, Noah Pollack says that in the latest GOP debate, Romney, unlike the sleepy McCain and Giuliani, “was commanding—articulate, confident, indeed Presidential,” while a commenter calls Romney “a programmed, tergiversating robot.” This striking disagreement in perceptions of Romney parallels the debate about Mormons in general that we’ve been having at VFR: Are Mormons exceptionally together, well-functioning people, or a race of Stepford Wives?

The reader explains it this way. Mormons, she says, are like astronauts. Astronauts don’t have a lot of inner life and emotion, and we don’t expect that of them, but they are highly competent, upright, and dependable.

- end of initial entry -

Matthew H. writes:

You wrote:

“This striking disagreement in perceptions of Romney parallels the debate about Mormons in general that we’ve been having at VFR: Are Mormons exceptionally together, well-functioning people, or a race of Stepford Wives?”

I think it was in the 1952 presidential campaign that someone asked Robert Taft’s wife if she thought her husband was a “common man,” which, at that time, was code for “he’s not an elitist egg-head.” She replied to the effect that, as he was first in his class at (I believe it was) Harvard Law School, no, in fact, he is not a common man. If such accomplishment was enough to raise eyebrows fifty years ago, it is enough to virtually disqualify a candidate today.

Of the most plausible Republican candidates, one of them, Mitt Romney, stands out as “exceptionally together” and “well-functioning.” He does not appear to have any sort of “history,” nor does he seem to have fallen for any of the distractions to which so many others of his and succeeding generations (i.e., Clinton & Bush, to name but two) have been so vulnerable. No divorce, no drugs, no kinky sex, no alcoholism, no “youthful mistakes,” etc., etc. (Attach additional sheets as needed). Man, we are given to think, this guy’s weird!

Far from being a disqualification from the presidency, Romney’s clean act is one of his strongest credentials. (Though not the only one. After all, Jimmy Carter seems to have been a straight arrow too, but was also an idiot.) What would we do with someone like George Washington, a man who, in his own lifetime was internationally regarded as perhaps the most noble figure of the age. Granted, it was an age in which nobility was a recognized virtue. What would the current electorate make of a Robert Taft or even a Dwight Eisenhower or Adlai Stevenson? Could not every one of them, by current standards, be labeled as “Stepford” men, as just a little too perfect because they were serious men who set out from their youths to accomplish serious goals and whose resumes, for that reason, did not contain any redactions?

We live in an America where one candidate must apologize for a staffer’s mentioning that her opponent is an admitted former drug user. Naturally, a “middle-aged Ken doll” like Mitt Romney is bound to stand out. While Romney’s manifest character is not a sufficient qualification, the fact that it is no longer seen as a necessary one is very disturbing. The fact that good character seems out of place in a presidential candidate says a lot about this nation in 2008. That the decidedly heterodox Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints is one of the few communities where such character is vigorously nurtured and whose members are renowned for being “exceptionally together” and “well-functioning” says more about the decayed state of most other American Christian sects than it does about the supposed “Stepford” nature of Mormonism. To be clean-cut and honorable were formerly considered American traits. Now they are seen, even by Americans, as something alien and suspect.

Posted by Lawrence Auster at December 13, 2007 07:32 PM | Send