Yesterday evening I watched a recording of Sunday’s Republican debate in Iowa, which ran on ABC’s This Week show. All the current candidates were there, with the exception of Fred Thompson, who of course isn’t even in the race.
I learned a few things.
The first is that beside being a monumental phoney and most canned politician in history, Mitt Romney can be quite articulate and appears to be fairly knowledgeable on domestic policy questions like health care and taxation. You learn something new every day.
The second is that Rudy Giuliani seems to know next to nothing about virtually every national policy issue — ironically, given his campaign presentation, though not so odd if you consider his actual career in office, he knows more about domestic policy than foreign policy.
The third is just how weak this field really is — something I knew but hadn’t seen yet quite so up close. I can’t imagine that a sentient Republican could have watched that 90 minutes and not been at least quietly aghast. McCain, who is the only person on the stage with real national stature, comes off as a crushed man, almost pained. But the issue isn’t so much that most of them don’t seem up to the challenge of being president. It is more that the political climate and the state of the Republican party in general makes their answers to most questions either off-balance, awkward or completely incoherent.
The discussion of Iraq was the case in point. Only two guys on the stage had anything remotely coherent to say on the subject — McCain and Paul. Brownback was better than the rest, but not by that much. There was actually a relatively lengthy statement on the topic by Tommy Thompson (who’s actually supposed to be a sharp guy) that had to be one of the most nonsensical and factually-challenged things I’ve heard on the subject to date — the highlight was how Iraq has already been divided into 18 separate states so partition into three states is unworkable.
I’m not saying they’re stupid. But watching these forums, you can see that George Bush has left the ideological and policy furniture of the GOP in such a shambles that these guys can’t even find a place to stand or pivot on to an issue of choice.
Then there was the exchange on the nation’s infrastructure and how to get money to repair bridges before they fall into various lakes, rivers and bays. Giuliani, trying to prove his national conservative credentials, claimed that the best way to raise money to repair the nation’s bridges was to cut taxes. This is, I dare say, a caricature of supply-side economics, which admittedly was always something of a caricature in itself.
Romney’s moments of articulateness came in moments when he was pulling the dialog back from digressions into utter fantasy.
Mine is of course an interested view of Republican party politics. But I think I have some basic read on its relative vitality at different points in time. And this struck me as about as ragged and threadbare as I’ve seen. Watching Sunday morning’s Republican debate was like watching a car struggling to get out of idle, with each of the contenders carting out one of more cliches but unable to do much with them. Only McCain and Paul are willing to say anything about Iraq. When Giuliani gets asked about Iraq he carts out these complete non-sequiturs about how the Democrats refuse to use the phrase ‘Islamic terrorism’.
