McCain’s worst flaw versus Romney’s worst flaw, as seen by Frum

David Frum continues his presidential endorsement decision process, zeroing in on what for him is the “most serious and least surmountable objections to the two Republican front runners.” On McCain, he provides good insights into McCain’s character: “Again and again, McCain seems impelled by his emotions rather than his judgment.” Frum gives several examples of how McCain does things out of anger, not considering probable negative consequences. “It’s one of the oldest rules in political philosophy: Those who seek to govern others must first learn to govern themselves. McCain has not learned to do that. It’s a lethal flaw in a man who would be president.”

That is a succinct and devastating evaluation. But when it comes Romney, Frum’s argument is simply weird. His most serious objection to Romney is that

I don’t understand why he is running for president.

Plainly, he is not motivated by deep political conviction. And yet at the same time he is equally plainly not the needy narcissist type (eg Bill Clinton) who enters politics in quest of recognition and gratification…. Unlike Ronald Reagan, he is not running for president because of a deep commitment to conservative principle. He adopted conservative principles because he is running for president.

And so I am left to struggle with that question of “why”? If I cannot figure out why a candidate is running, how am I to evaluate why I should support or oppose him?

That is Frum’s least surmountable objection to Romney? That he doesn’t understand Romney’s reasons for running? Why couldn’t the answer simply be that he’s a superb manager and policy maker, and he wants to exercise his talents in the largest sphere—which, by the way, Aristotle, famously quoted by President John F. Kennedy, said is the key to happiness?

Thus Frum, having pointed out a truly lethal, utterly disqualifying flaw in McCain, says that Romney’s equivalent of that lethal flaw is that Frum doesn’t understand him! And poor Frum tells us that he is struggling with this great mystery, and can’t make up his mind about whether to endorse Romney until he solves it. It’s less than 48 hours to Super Tuesday, after a presidential campaign that’s been going on for a year, and Frum must stop and plumb the depths of Romney’s soul.

This is a perfect example of how people keep finding the most trivial, oddball reasons to object to Romney. The same triviality is shown by a Frum correspondent who gives as his main problem with Romney (his MAIN problem) the fact that Romney didn’t run for a second term as governor of Massachusetts.

You couldn’t make this up. The next thing you know, people are going to say they can’t support Romney because they don’t like the make of car he drives or the color of the wallpaper in his living room.

However, given Frum’s language about McCain’s “lethal” flaw, I think we can assume that he is going to endorse Romney. I predict that the white smoke will appear at David Frum’s Diary some time before the voting starts on Super Tuesday.

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Getting back to McCain, Frum quotes this excellent evaluation by Yuval Levin at the Commentary blog:

McCain doesn’t actually seem to care about any political “issues” at all. He is moved by honor and country, and this has driven him to be passionately active on a few domestic fronts, but for different reasons than those that motivate just about every other politician. (A misunderstanding of this point has, I think, been behind much of the often excessive distress at McCain’s apparent ascendancy in some quarters of the right this week). And he has not found a way to understand, say, health care in terms of honor, honesty, or character. So even though his campaign has offered a very strong conservative proposal for health care reform, McCain seems incapable of talking about it as though it were even remotely significant.

Posted by Lawrence Auster at February 04, 2008 01:50 AM | Send