The New Neo

In yesterday’s thread about Romney and the conservative message, commenter “kolnai” had an observation about Romney’s conservatism that I found interesting:

I don’t believe [Romney when espouses conservative thoughts]. But I’m going to vote for him.

So what’s the difference? I’m resigned to his inevitability, if not to him.

Why don’t I believe him? Because, to me, he’s not believable. That’s it. He seems like a cipher, a throughput for weird alien forces and focus groups. I guess that can be an advantage if he winds up like Jonah Goldberg said, a transactional guy. But it doesn’t change my opinion of his conservatism. If he genuinely believes what he says, then he is truly a singular creature on this big blue ball. I have never in my life seen someone speak as unconvincingly on behalf of his convictions as Romney (if they are his convictions). That, dear friends, is quite a talent indeed.

We’re humans but animals too. And we have animal ways of inferring the content of other people’s minds based on cues. All I can say is that every single cue ”“ with no exceptions I can think of ”“ that I have received from Romney has not just suggested, but screamed with glass-shattering violence that he doesn’t believe a word of what he’s saying. He doesn’t even know how to believe what he’s saying.

How do we decide whether people are believable or not when they are speaking? For the artificial purposes of this discussion, let’s take away consideration of their past actions. Right now, we’re just talking about their words and their affect, and how we evaluate the truth of the first based on the second. It’s very similar to the sort of thing that trial lawyers call a witness’s demeanor, composed of a thousand or more verbal and non-verbal cues regarding emotion.

We all rely on these signals in our day-to-day existence. I certainly do—and I will continue to do so, despite the fact that research has shown that the vast majority of people are quite bad at spotting liars. Unfortunately, it’s an iffier proposition than we like to think it is.

But back to Romney. I have a different impression of him than kolnai does, although I understand what kolnai’s talking about. I happen to believe Romney (at least, as much as I believe almost all politicians, and maybe a bit more than some). I “read” his acknowledged emotional stiffness as just that: emotional stiffness. He seems earnest to me, and perhaps awkward. But there’s nothing there that I read as dissemblance.

You may disagree. In fact, I fully expect many of you to disagree. That’s okay; judging demeanor is awfully difficult. But while I was researching this post I came across a video that I’d like you to watch. The following conversation took place in 1994, during Romney’s debates with Ted Kennedy for his Senate position. Please take note that, in the very liberal state of Massachusetts, Romney appears to be articulating some conservative thoughts here, and he does it with what I would submit is both sincerity and intensity. Plus, what reason would he have to say these things if he didn’t believe them, since he was running in ultra-liberal Massachusetts?

I’m curious to hear your opinion:

[NOTE: (I realize that now I’m talking about acts rather than words—that’s why this is in a note rather than the body of the post.)

For those of you who might say that Romneycare violated some of these things that Romney says in the video that he’s against, I want to point out that when Romneycare was passed in 2006, twelve years after his debate with Kennedy, Romney was quite consistent in being against those same things; the legislature inserted some of them anyway over his strong objections (and/or his veto; the vote was almost unanimous):

Romney…hated the employer mandate and vetoed the provision that employers of 11 or more offer coverage or face a penalty of $295 per employee. This veto, and seven others aimed at less controversial aspects of the law, were easily overridden by the Democratic Legislature.

Romney considers the Massachusetts plan needlessly gold-plated; he would have pushed for a much cheaper version that allowed minimal coverage options.

He believes the Massachusetts health connector, the insurance exchange which the Obama plan would emulate, has created an excessive regulatory burden, imposing too many requirements on what commercial insurers must offer for a policy to qualify as “minimum creditable coverage’’ under the law. His proposal, to require only a bare-bones policy that covered hospitalization and catastrophic illness, was rejected by the Legislature…

Romney also wanted a way for those of means to opt out of the mandate by posting a bond ”” essentially a promise to pay for future uninsured health care costs. Critics called it a “fig leaf’’ and Romney concedes that few would have taken advantage ”” just as only a handful choose a similar option to post a $10,000 bond rather than buy compulsory auto insurance in Massachusetts.

But the principle mattered to him, and the failure of the Legislature to agree still rankles…

And as for those on the economic margin, Romney thought that no one, however poor, should get insurance for no cost at all. He advocated a small premium, even a few dollars a month, for the neediest, but the Legislature balked.

Today, under the Commonwealth Care program, about half of the 160,000 receiving subsidized coverage pay no premium because their incomes fall below certain federal poverty level guidelines.

“When you give something away that is entirely free, people don’t value it as much as they should,’’ Romney said.]

Commenter “gcotharn” writes that Peggy Noonan wants Romney to give a fuller picture of his thoughts in order to woo the Republican establishment, but gcotharn (who thinks that Romney needs to win the “first principles” conservatives as well) says:

My creeping suspicion of the problem, with Mr. Romney giving a fuller picture of his thoughts, is that Mr. Romney’s thoughts are less sophisticated and less wise than, say, Governor Perry’s thoughts. And we saw how far that got Governor Perry. In fact, let me restate: my suspicion, of Mr. Romneys shallowness, is not creeping, but rather is a runaway herd of wild horses. Mr. Romney reminds of Barack in this way: Mr. Romney is doing his best to impersonate a blank slate. He sees no reason to reveal who he, in actuality, is not. As in: a person of philosophic depth.

Later on he quotes Noonan as adding that another problem is:

…[Romney’s] insides are unknown to them. They don’t know what’s in there. They fear he hasn’t absorbed any philosophy along the way, that he’ll be herky-jerky, unanchored, merely tactical as president.

I agree that’s the perception of Romney. But I don’t think it will be changed by any speech or further elucidation of his principles. That’s because I’ve seen him state conservative principles many times and it’s either ignored or treated as a lie or rejected for other reasons.

For me to go into examples of this right now would be to expand this post to book length, and it’s already going to be plenty long. So suffice to say that other examples aren’t hard to find. My point is that conservatives and many “establishment Republicans” already don’t trust Romney, and there’s virtually nothing he can do to change that.

Why? Both groups don’t like him much because of what they perceive as his wooden personality, his slick “Ken-doll” near-perfection in the physical realm, and the fact that he was governor of an ultra-liberal state and had to make major concessions to that during his administration. Everything he says is now filtered through the prism of his personality and that particular history, which sticks in their craws and makes them doubt his conservatism. But in my opinion, the more he states that conservatism, the more many people who already distrust him may say, “Look what a hypocrite he is, on top of everything else!”

You might say that with a candidate so flawed, why nominate him? And a year ago I’d have agreed. But a year ago I thought a host of other people I thought would be better candidates would enter the fray. However, as we all know, they didn’t, and I have very little doubt that the flawed Romney is the best of the even-more-deeply-flawed candidates remaining (and I’m not going to debate that issue in this post either, for that afore-mentioned length reason).

But at least one of those Romney flaws for conservatives has the paradoxical quality of appealing to many independents. No, I’m not talking about his personality—although his looks are a draw for some women in particular. No, I’m talking about the fact that Romney was able to function as the governor of liberal Massachusetts and to work for the most practical (and, actually, the most conservative) solutions possible at that time for that state and that legislature.

Independents like a practical man who shows a bit of flexibility, rather than a doctrinaire ideologue who will not budge no matter what. Most “first principles” conservatives would probably prefer the latter. And that is one of the paradoxes inherent in national elections.

“Ah, but what about Ronald Reagan?” you ask. “Now, there was a man who could state conservative principles and appeal to independents at the same time. All we have to do is find someone like that.”

Well, another Reagan might be nice, but good luck in finding one. Not this year anyway, for sure. Sometimes I think that Ronald Reagan’s presidency hangs like a millstone around the necks of conservatives. Or maybe that’s not the right analogy. Perhaps a better way to put it is that the situation resembles that of a person who had a wonderful marriage and then the spouse died, and he or she is looking for another spouse as close as possible to the first one (or to memories of the first one). But that can be a futile quest, and a dead end.

There’s a notion on the right that Reagan’s great strength was his ability to elucidate conservative values in a way that people could understand, follow, and admire. I’d love to take the time to go back and look at Reagan’s addresses and see where he did that, and then look through many of Romney’s speeches and see how they measure up. Maybe some other time; certainly not now or that book will be written again.

And I’ll also skip the part of this post where I list some of the things Reagan did, both as governor of California and president, that went against those values and principles; I’ve done that before and so have others. And don’t think I’m saying he didn’t have those basic conservative values, and that they weren’t elucidated at times, and that it didn’t matter at all when he did. But he didn’t always follow them; he was a practical man, as well.

I think Reagan’s rhetorical statements of conservative principles meant a lot to some people, especially the sort of people who read blogs, and that it did inform many of his decisions, too. But I also think that most people did not gravitate to Reagan and vote for him and then revere him and respect him because of those statements of values. You politics geeks may not like it, but most people make voting decisions based on other reasons.

Reagan had an unusual combination of attributes besides those values, and the ones that appealed to a lot of voters were personality characteristics he projected: calm, optimism, strength, decisiveness, trustworthiness. It didn’t hurt that he was very good-looking in a grandfatherly way, but not too good-looking either. He also was an actor, and had learned to speak well and convey the affect he wanted to convey (he was mocked for that by his enemies, but it was a stupendous skill). In addition, he had a record of executive accomplishment to point to, and little personal baggage other than a prior divorce, which hardly meant anything in the face of his long-term and solid second marriage.

Plus—and do not underestimate this fact—the public was heartily sick of Jimmy Carter. Without this factor, Reagan wouldn’t have had a chance of election, for all his pluses. And without a record that was basically positive during his term as president, it all would have been so much hot air. Most people want to see results, too.

Flash forward to the present, and Mitt Romney. There are some seeming similarities between then and now: a handsome ex-governor candidate facing a liberal president who’s become unpopular in his first term, as well as an economy with grave problems. His record and his personality are different, however, as are his strengths.

For those who would like Romney to elucidate conservative principles more, I’d like to know which ones you want to hear that he hasn’t mentioned already. Romney has written an entire book entitled, “No Apology: The Case for American Greatness.” I haven’t read it yet, but you might want to if you’re interested. But it wouldn’t take too long to familiarize yourself with Romney’s stump speech. Part of it goes like this:

President Obama boasts that he will “fundamentally transform” America. I want to restore America to our founding principles.

I believe that our founding principles are what made America the greatest nation in the history of the earth.

Among those core principles is what the founders called the “pursuit of happiness.” We call that opportunity, or the freedom to choose our course in life. That principle is the foundation of a society that is based on ability, not birthright.

In a merit-based society, people achieve their dreams through hard work, education, risk-taking, and even a little luck. An opportunity society produces pioneers and inventors; it inspires its citizens to build and create. And these people exert effort and take risks, and when they do so, they employ and lift others and create prosperity.

Their success does not make others poorer. It makes all of us better off.

President Obama sees America differently. He believes in an entitlement society.

Once we thought that “entitlement” meant that Americans were entitled to the privilege of trying to succeed in the greatest nation in the world. Americans fought and died to earn and protect that entitlement. But today, the new entitlement battle of this president is over the size of the check you get from Washington.

President Obama has reversed John Kennedy’s call for sacrifice. He would have Americans ask, “what can the country do for you?”

Just a couple of weeks ago in Kansas, President Obama lectured us about Teddy Roosevelt’s philosophy of government. But he failed to mention the important difference between Teddy Roosevelt and himself. Roosevelt believed that government should level the playing field to create equal opportunities. President Obama believes that government should create equal outcomes.

In an entitlement society, everyone receives the same or similar rewards, regardless of education, effort and willingness to take risk. That which is earned by some is redistributed to others. And the only people who truly enjoy real rewards are those who do the redistributing””government.

The truth is that everyone may get the same rewards under that kind of system, but virtually everyone will be worse off.

President Obama’s entitlement society would demand a massive growth of government. To preserve opportunity, however, we have to shrink government, not grow it.

It goes on in that vein. Let me repeat: that’s Romney’s stump speech—not a one-shot deal, but his basic message, although the details and exact words may change now and then.

Now, how many of you believe he means it? I do. Will he be able to execute it as president? Darned if I know. But I think he has the best chance of doing so of all the Republicans now running.