Rod Dreher

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Romney, the Republican Dukakis?

By Rod Dreher • October 29, 2011, 7:39 AM

So says George F. Will. Excruciating for Romneyites to read:

Republicans may have found their Michael Dukakis, a technocratic Massachusetts governor who takes his bearings from “data” (although there is precious little to support Romney’s idea that in-state college tuition for children of illegal immigrants is a powerful magnet for such immigrants) and who believes elections should be about (in Dukakis’s words) “competence,” not “ideology.” But what would President Romney competently do when not pondering ethanol subsidies that he forthrightly says should stop sometime before “forever”? Has conservatism come so far, surmounting so many obstacles, to settle, at a moment of economic crisis, for this?

13 Responses to Romney, the Republican Dukakis?

bob c says:

October 29, 2011 at 8:50 am

Typically, George Will is like fingernails on a chalkboard for me, the very definition of a priggish defender of “the Empire”. Also, when he debate prepped Reagan as a journalist in 1980 with pilfered debate books, it forever made me see his sanctimonious statements as spin spin spin.

Will may be onto something – even a broken clock is right twice a day – but there is a twist. Dukaksis was the quant technocrat, who crnch reams of numbers & wonks you thru a 738 slide PowerPoint. Mitt is the practice lead at the consulting firm – data is friction to him, bullets in his pitch. His banter is like buzzword bingo.

Dukakis knew tax increases were part of the only path of recovery from the Reagan orgy. Mitt knows there a whale of a client exists in the America media-industrial complex and he will pitch the kitchen sink to bill as much as he can.

There appears to be no policy core to Mitt. For Dukakis, policy was data morphed into governing.
Grumpy Old Man says:

October 29, 2011 at 9:59 am

A pretty good fisking on ethanol subsidies. Romney’s like Gertrude Stein’s Oakland–no there there.
Sheldon says:

October 29, 2011 at 10:00 am

Will is not a big fan of data. Witness his columns on global warming. The big problem for conservatives, especially these days, was brilliantly articulated by Stephen Colbert at the White House Correspondents’ dinner in 2006: “Reality has a well-known liberal bias.”
Cannoneo says:

October 29, 2011 at 10:20 am

Yes, this comparison does a great disservice to Dukakis, despite their shared incapacity for generating enthusiasm on the national stage.

Dukakis was an honest and consistent liberal technocrat, but also one who, if you listened to enough of his speeches, lived in service to a real moral vision. In person, in small audiences, his humility, faith in the power of the public sector to do good, and the sincerity of his concern for others’ wellbeing, are still genuinely moving to behold.

bob c makes a great point when he contrasts that with Romney’s MBA hustle. Utterly different worldviews and styles.

Dukakis’s supporters here in Mass. have always felt a great unfairness in the smearing as “elitist” a man who rode the trolley every day to the governor’s office from the neighborhood he grew up in, picking up trash along the way.
Hector says:

October 29, 2011 at 10:58 am

Yeah, speaking as someone who grew up in Dukakis’ Massachusetts, he really was pretty good, as politicians go. He was the victim of a nasty character assassination campaign, just like Kerry sixteen years later.

Before anyone trots out that ‘Willie Horton Furlough’ canard, the furlough program was initiated by a Republican governor, and had nothing to do with Dukakis.

And yes, he did ride the trolley to work every day, and Bostonians loved him for it.
Hector says:

October 29, 2011 at 10:59 am

And for the love of Pete, isn’t it time we had a president who cared about data and competence? We tried electing a back-slapping frat boy from Texas, and it didn’t seem to work very well.
bob c says:

October 29, 2011 at 11:36 am

Hector, there are many shortcoming to the Obama administration. But tagging them as not caring about data and competence? Like criticizing the Cardinals for not having enough power in hitting or pitching.
Pyrrho says:

October 29, 2011 at 12:09 pm

Dukakis was an honest and consistent liberal technocrat, but also one who, if you listened to enough of his speeches, lived in service to a real moral vision.

The same could be said of Paul Tsongas, who was a friend of the family. (He went to high school with my father.)

Never forget, ye who live west and south of the Hudson, that it was two such New Englanders, George H.W. Bush and George Mitchell, who laid the groundwork for the budget surpluses of the 1990s.

(This is not an endorsement of Romney, by the way. In fact, my town would become the site of the summer White House if he’s elected president, and I’m not sure I want that to happen.)
Hector says:

October 29, 2011 at 12:26 pm

Re: Hector, there are many shortcoming to the Obama administration. But tagging them as not caring about data and competence?

Oh, Obama has plenty of competence, and cares about data. What he doesn’t have is the moral courage to actually make unpopular decisions (like, say, raising taxes, doing something about global warming, cracking down on Wall Street, or telling the Libyan War advocates in France and Britain to take a flying leap).
JParker says:

October 29, 2011 at 12:36 pm

“Dukakis’s supporters here in Mass. have always felt a great unfairness in the smearing as “elitist” a man who rode the trolley every day to the governor’s office from the neighborhood he grew up in, picking up trash along the way”

Yeah the ’88 campaign, even by the debased standards of today, was really a piece of work. Lee Atwater managed to convince enough people that the blue-blood sitting VP, the son of a Senator who was born in Connecticut and who vacationed in a compound in Maine, was more “salt of the earth” than the upper-middle-class (at best) son of a Greek immigrant who, despite being governor, dressed and acted like an accounts manager.

the campaign mainly consisted of, if I recall, Willie Horton, flag burning, Dukakis looking like a dork in a tank and endless talk about how awful it was that D. didn’t rip his podium to pieces in rage with bloody calls of vengeance after he was asked an awful “hypothetical” question about his wife being raped. Just appalling. the worst campaign of my lifetime, still.
Russell Arben Fox says:

October 29, 2011 at 5:11 pm

JParker,

The campaign mainly consisted of, if I recall, Willie Horton, flag burning, Dukakis looking like a dork in a tank and endless talk about how awful it was that D. didn’t rip his podium to pieces in rage with bloody calls of vengeance after he was asked an awful “hypothetical” question about his wife being raped. Just appalling. The worst campaign of my lifetime, still.

I completely agree. There’s been bad stuff tossed around in recent elections–the weird hysteria over Palin was often indisputably ugly, and I have no doubt a goodly amount of deplorable stuff will be hurled against Obama next year. And going back a ways, there were moments of real slime in the Clinton and Reagan years also. But Bush-Dukakis in 1988. Just appalling (particularly because it was so very thoroughly undeserved by anyone involved).
Fr. J says:

October 29, 2011 at 6:45 pm

Well, that’s hardly fair to Governor Dukakis. I mean, I’m pretty sure Dukakis actually believed what he said. Maybe Romney is more like the Republican John Kerry.
Hector says:

October 29, 2011 at 6:57 pm

Re: Maybe Romney is more like the Republican John Kerry.

I’m pretty sure that Kerry believed what he said. Bill Clinton might be a better example. Then again, Clinton won twice, which just goes to show that the American electorate tends to like smarmy hypocrites, as long as they look and talk like a frat boy.