Weekly Column
Indiana’s Republican governor Mitch Daniels shook up the presidential race when he announced that he was not going to run. He cited his unwillingness to place his family under the harsh media spotlight given its spotty past.
“The interests and wishes of my family is the most important consideration of all….Simply put, I find myself caught between two duties. I love my country; I love my family more.”
It is tragic that an intelligent, qualified politician felt he had to choose between his family and his desire to be president. However, Daniels has no one to blame but his own party – which has become a bastion of intolerant, blue-nosed “family values” scolds. The GOP’s grotesque impeachment trial of Bill Clinton set the stage for presidential campaigns that would become more about personal lives than polices.
The end result of our puritanical politics is that few candidates can measure up under intense scrutiny. Any blemish is wildly blown out of proportion and human beings are dragged through the mud to the point where running can lead to ruin. For many, including Daniels, the pain wasn’t worth the gain.
Daniels probably made the right move given his wife’s tabloid-ready past. According to the Washington Post: “His wife Cheri filed for divorce in 1993 and moved to California to remarry, leaving him to raise their four daughters in Indiana. She later divorced again, and she and Daniels reconciled and remarried in 1997.”
While this story isn’t pretty, it is life. Many people, through no fault of their own, find themselves in similar messy situations. And this is precisely why it has always been destructive for the Republican Party to politicize what should be private family matters. Since the early 1980’s the GOP has forced candidates to essentially declare: “Vote for me because I sleep with my opposite sex spouse and no one else.”
Aside for the idiocy of focusing on drivel at the expense of real issues, it has turned the GOP into the party of hypocrisy, or would-be hypocrites, who are afraid to aspire to higher public office lest their dirty laundry be exposed on the Religious Right’s clothesline.
This dynamic has undermined American politics because one of the nation’s two major parties can’t attract “real people” to run. To be a presidential candidate, one has to be a robotic born-again Ken Doll like Tim Pawlenty or clean-living empty suit like Mitt Romney. Or, the flip side is we get shameless, amoral hypocrites, like Newt Gingrich, who are so consumed with ambition that they’d drag their families through hell to reach the Oval Office.
Meanwhile, relatively normal people like Mitch Daniels — who actually seem to love their families and don’t consider them political props — are dissuaded from running. While I don’t support Daniels politically, it is sad that the GOP has created a political climate where human beings can’t actually act human and sexual McCarthyism is the order of the day.
Now that Daniels is out, I predict that Sarah Palin will soon announce she is running for president. She must be somewhere in the tundra looking at the shabby crop of contenders and think: “I can beat them.” Of course, she’s correct and if she chose to run, I’m fairly certain that she would get the nomination. Surely, Palin would get off to a fast start in the conservative Iowa caucuses and her chances are quite good in South Carolina.
(Now that Daniels is out, I would not be surprised if Jeb Bush was tempted to throw his hat into the ring.)
In order to secure the GOP nomination in 2012, one has to pretend to be crazy (Tim Pawlenty) or actually be crazy (Michele Bachmann). Until the Religious Right’s stranglehold is broken, the Republican Party will consistently produce weak presidential candidates who perform well in the primaries and look extreme in the general election.
There was a very good discussion about this on Bill Maher’s show the other night. The guest from MSNBC was talking about how for the Republicans, it’s the race to the bottom, and that’s surely true for a party which, for awhile, actually treated that spray-tanned monstrosity that is Donald Trump as a serious candidate. (Of course, tanned monstrosities have appeared in the past, for instance, from January 21, 1981, until January 20, 1989, but I don’t believe that monstrosity was aware of spray tanning.) I say let ‘em eat each other up. Let ‘em devour themselves with their “I’m holier than thou” orthodox b******t. All that will mean that Barack Obama will have an easier time winning another four years and, not unimportantly, filling another couple of Supreme Court seats. And after that (whisper it) perhaps we can get a real Democrat in there. (I didn’t say that; to paraphrase the classicist who is Newt Gingrich, any news report quoting what I said in the previous sentence is a falsehood.)
They don’t seem to have a problem with Palin’s out of wedlock grandchild and the fact that the baby-daddy Levi Johnston posed for Playgirl, even though we didn’t get to see any of the good stuff.
There is no traditional family. Who created this myth that has people yearning and clawing at some “happily ever after” that has never existed? Life is drama, impulsive/emotional action & consequence, hardship, perseverance, and love. I’d be more supportive of a person who made overall good choices in shitty situations, than one who never encountered one (or more likely, covered it up and hopes it stays that way).
I’m surprised there isn’t a republican-suicide epidemic: “Oh no, I’m tarnished; my life is over. I’ll never be respectable if I’m actually human and not a moral-compass machine of righteousness.”
[...] Sunday, I wrote in my weekly column: “Now that Daniels is out, I predict that Sarah Palin will soon announce she is running for [...]
Wayne Besen’s comment and conviction is simply sick: “It is tragic that an intelligent, qualified politician felt he had to choose between his family and his desire to be president. ” article above. Personal convictions matter. Not fault, but broken family and re-united and re-integrated show human response to charity. After State of the Union, Mitchel is very unfounded of his claims. Plain inadequate. As for Obama, He has a lot to think about and should never relate to Catholicism in any way, it should be erased his link with catholic experience. if he pushes abortion agenda into the Catholic entity > IT WILL NEVER BE CONDONED. So much for that and other immigration reforms left behind. I am am talking about REAL IMMIGRATION REFGORMS, that will really make justice to all.