Two political humorists hurl darts at President Willard Inc.: a contrast in styles

"Mitt Romney looks no less presidential today than he did at the start. But none of the others has come close to making himself plausible."

-- Fred Hiatt, in a WaPo column,
"Where are the serious Republican candidates?"

by Ken

Stop, stop, guys, you're killing me! Still, I think it's useful to recognize that there are two very different kinds of comedy styling at work here.

Sure, there's something immediately tickling about broad, knockdown slapstick like Paul Noth's New Yorker cartoon, but won't most serious connoisseurs of political humor have to prefer the dry, almost inscrutable wit of WaPo Editorial Page Editor Fred Hiatt? Most of us probably had to read this quip of his multiple times before bursting out laughing. Oh, Fred, you're a killer! Why, just getting Willard Inc.'s stage name and the word "presidential" in the same sentence -- such comic genius!

The rest of Fred's column isn't quite as side-splitting, though it has its moments. After burbling inscrutably for a while about the 2012 GOP presidential field, he settles on the startling proposition that "on all available evidence it was and remains a weak field" and repeats his earlier-asked question: Why?

Surprisingly, given that it is, after all, Fred Hiatt, he actually comes to roost on a point of sorts. Oh, it's nothing that people on our side haven't been pointing out since the "field" started taking shape, but apparently for the politically retarded, it's a discovery: that a serious candidacy is impossible under the current GOP ground rules.

It could be the luck of the draw. Every first-grade teacher will tell you that some years are better than others.

It could be that more serious presidential candidates, sizing up the incumbent in 2009, when serious campaigns had to begin, decided, not illogically, that President Obama was likely to win. Let someone else be the John Kerry of the Republican Party. Come back in 2016.

It could be that the process has devolved, for some, from daunting to repellent: the number of millionaires whose egos must be stroked on the way to raising $1 billion, the smears from unaccountable political action committees, the dwindling media interest in substance, the Twitter-paced cycle that makes the Clinton war room look like something from the vacuum-tube era -- it may be a quadrennial bar to many people of quality.

It could be that serious people looked at the decisions that will have to be made in the next four years and concluded that the job would not be much fun. Taking charge in an era of rising health-care costs and an aging population doesn't seem, at first blush, a road to popularity.

But in another year, that challenge might have motivated top-flight people. After all, the country's travails offer an opportunity for fundamental reform that a true leader would jump at -- to reshape the tax code, say, to encourage things we like (working and saving) and discourage things we don't (burning oil, gas and coal). Such big things could be done, for political and substantive reasons, only in a bipartisan fashion.

For their own reasons, Obama and the Democrats haven't seized that opportunity. But why have visionary Republicans shied away?

The nearly forgotten candidacy of Tim Pawlenty offers a clue. Once upon a time a conservative governor from a swing region with a record of working across the aisle might have gained traction.

But in a party that has come to loathe compromise, Pawlenty didn't have the gumption to run on his record, and he couldn't sell himself as less nice and more ideologically pure than he really was. When he couldn't bring himself to be mean to Romney in an early New Hampshire debate, he was finished.

The Republican ideology of no new taxes, ever, is a straitjacket. But even more dispositive is the conviction that reaching across the aisle is weak and treasonous.

Until that conviction fades, politicians who want to get things done, and would know how to strike deals in the nation's interest, may stay on the sidelines.

Just two things, Fred:

(1) Uh, Tim Pawlenty? (I don't know if the Jeopardy judges would accept that as being in the form of a question, but to me it's the question about ol' T-Paw.)

(2) If you have names and addresses of these alleged "politicians who want to get things done, and would know how to strike deals in the nation's interest," there are dozens of right-wing commentators and wingnut bloggers who'd be only too happy to broadcast them in hopes of having their followers, er, deal with them, personally, if you get my meaning.


UPDATE From Howie

Wouldn't it be funny if Huntsman withdraws and endorses co-religionist and fellow hereditary multimillionaire Willard Romney? Ha, ha, ha!... guess he didn't want to keep embarrassing himself by losing to Colbert! As for endorsing Romney, this week he called him "unelectable" and told ABC News that he doesn't see a "reason to trust" Romney and that Romney is "completely out of touch." I bet he doesn't mention any of that in his endorsement speech tomorrow-- nor Quetzalcoatl. And remember this from just a week ago: "Governor Romney enjoys firing people. I enjoy creating jobs." I wish I could be at the endorsement speech. I hear Romney is boycotting it. Maybe he should give it in Mandarin so it doesn't sound as bad.

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