Death of a Stereotype
Old time TAC alum Jim Antle says just about all that needs to be said about Ted Kennedy here. Jim may be overgenerous to say that Kennedy represented liberalism at its best as well as its worst, but certainly Republicans and Democrats alike found him useful as the archetypal liberal. Now that he’s gone, the Republicans may suffer the more for it since good villains are hard to come by. Senators are best because they stick around so long — Kennedy was first elected in 1962. House speakers are too obscure and transient; they’re fine for short-term direct mail, but you can’t build an ideological movement in opposition to, say, Tom Foley, or even Jim Wright. (Gingrich propelled his career as a GOP House leader by taking on Wright, but that didn’t help Gingrich in the least once he was speaker himself.) Nancy Pelosi makes an effective symbol of Democratic liberalism for now, but she won’t have anything close to the 40-year political lifespan of Ted. Jimmy Carter is the last great rogue left in the conservative movement’s gallery. And he won’t last much longer.
There are, of course, senators well to Kennedy’s left. But Bernie Sanders doesn’t have a high enough profile, and Russ Feingold is too decent. Democrats, it’s true, haven’t had a good Republican figure of perpetual hate for a very long time, maybe since Herbert Hoover. Already Obama and company sound rather quaint when they justify their policies by summoning the shades of Bush, Cheney, and Gingrich. But Democrats have been without an archenemy for such a long time that they’ve become accustomed to lacking one. GOP propaganda still leans heavily on Teddy. Moreover, the Left has more stock villains than the Right: fat-cat businessmen, oil and pharmaceutical companies, tobacco of course. Those can always rally liberals. Republicans, on the other hand, have to tread very carefully in putting welfare queens to the same use. There’s always “anti-American leftist professors” to fall back on, but relying on that stereotype won’t do anything to help the GOP win back college graduates (who now lean Democratic, 52 percent to 37 percent).
Maybe Al Gore will save the conservative movement by making another movie.
I have a good biography at home of Ted Kennedy written by Joe McGuiness entitled “The Last Brother.” I picked it up cheap at a book sale by a local library so you may have to do some digging around it in case you are interested. The main thesis of the book is that Teddy was the family screw up from age one, and because of this, so much of his life was planned for him and so much was done to clean up his own messes that he virtually was a prisoner in own family. Some of his behavior was in many ways a chafing and rebellion against this status. It doesn’t excuse it, just explains it to a certain extent.
Teddy’s tragedy was that he did not die young like his brothers. All the sins of the Kennedy family came crashing down on him. He had to carry all those burdens plus be a knowingly flawed patriarch to the rest of the family. If he had died at Chappaquidick like Mary Jo Kopechne he would have entered the same pantheon too. Instead he grew old and fat. That was his punishment, he could never be what his brothers were, besides being President.
“the Left has more stock villains than the Right….There’s always “anti-American leftist professors” to fall back on…”
If you’re looking for some ideas, here you go:
1) unions
2) abortionists
3) drug dealers/users
4) gays
5) atheists
6) “evolutionists”
7) foreigners
those might work, eh?
I met Kennedy once, in a manner of speaking. While exiting the Dirkson Building, I noticed someone close behind me. Naturally I held the door open for them to catch. Ted Kennedy didn’t touch the door but stepped out in state, as though I was the door man. Not so much as a nod. As he walked off I had to content myself with a “You’re welcome, a**hole.”
Character is everything. Kennedy demonstrated his lack of character at Chappaquidick.
Can’t you get Paul Gottfried on this site to provide some substantive comment? Is it because he has an exclusive contract with Taki-or is
it because he is an actual-gasp-conservative?
You haven’t read Gottfried very closely, Steve, if you believe his views of the GOP and the conservative movement are any more sanguine than mine.
“You haven’t read Gottfried very closely, Steve, if you believe his views of the GOP and the conservative movement are any more sanguine than mine.”
Since I didn’t elaborate, you mistook my meaning. I haven’t voted (I also contributed) since I went for PJB in 2000. Not that I had anything against Ron Paul.
When it comes to electoral politics my pet scheme-which has zero chance of success- is to introduce low.threshold PR to some state legislatures. This would allow grass roots leadership with no connection to the D and R apparatchiks to emerge and challenge the “two party” duopoly. Think Geert Wilders or the VB in Europe.
Have you forgotten Al Franken?
I had forgotten Al Franken. It might take him a while to build up a legislative record, but he’ll suit the GOP’s needs perfectly.
There’s a perfect stock villain for the Right – someone who is quite liberal and proud of it, someone who has a scandal (well, multiple ones) in his past for moral outrage, someone who has a certain feature which by itself is enough to drive many conservatives to apoplexy.
Barney Frank. Sure, he’s not a senator, but in the end, is that important?