Conservatives and the Fantasy of the True Mind

Peggy Noonan was on The Daily Show last night, hawking a very Bill Bennett-esque book about "character" and "right living" (because conservatives have such good manners and high morals!). Aside from the fact that Jon Stewart completely *forgot* to ask her about that time she left her mic on at MSNBC and called Sarah Palin's elevation to VP "bullshit," the interview was strictly kid-gloves crap, with Stewart playing his now-customary role as Mr. Nice Guy To Conservatives. This while Noonan went on and on (and on! That bag can talk, now!) about the lamentable loss of civility in American public discourse and how, in general, in a very vague way, without naming anybody at this time when the GOP is full of two kinds of people, bad examples and horrible examples, we must get back on track. Presumably, she meant that we, the voters, should keep Republicans in office because, even though she can't think of any worthy Republicans at the moment, they'll surely appear after election day.

Also, there have been a lot of Republicans in the public forum lately decrying -- as Noonan herself did a few months ago for John McCain -- that the GOP doesn't seem willing to let "Sarah be Sarah." There seems to be some dissatisfaction among the rank-and-file with how Palin has been portrayed, both by the media and curiously, by the McCain campaign. They're stifling her, say the Republican chatters. Noonan, for her part, advocated that the McCain campaign should let "McCain be McCain" so that voters could fall in love, as she did, with the funny, concise, "real" John (not the billionaire heiress-marrying, adulterous, callous, kill 'em all John McCain we see on TV). As though the McCain people have been so great at reining-in their guy so far. Nope, no off-the-cuff remarks by Johnny yet!

The problem here is that this complaint is based in fantasy. You could say that all political partisans, particularly the losers, believe in something of this sort: did many believe that John Kerry's biggest problem was an inability to say "what he really meant"? Yes. And it was. Because, for Democrats, the problem isn't at its root that our philosophy of government is paradoxical or perverse, as is the Republicans'; the problem is that our philosophy is complex and pragmatic. Thus, it takes a long time to explain, on principle, how we would address issues. Kerry, and to a lesser extent, Gore, tried to be as forthcoming as possible instead of doing what must needs be done during a campaign (when, by definition, time is limited): sum it up. But, as a partisan, I thought Gore and Kerry should have been given more credit during their campaigns for "being Al," or for "being John." I also thought they could have been "more" themselves and been proud of it, instead of running from any discussion of their habits or personalities. In the sense of their "true minds," it was less that voters felt they were phony -- though many did -- and more that Democrats, deep down, were always unsatisfied by what Kerry and Gore said. They never ran an issue to ground. They never nailed the answer. They never explained why Democrats have better ideas.

McCain and Palin have a whole different problem. Their fans and would-be voters are livid that McCain's own campaign, supposedly, has covered-up both of their actual selves. This is a bizarre complaint. Republicans, in this case, are not blaming as they have in the past the election system, or the dictates of political campaigns; instead they are blaming the very people McCain hired and who serve at his pleasure for betraying him and his VP.

What is behind this curious conspiracy theory? Bitterness, likely. The dawning knowledge that the GOP is facing an ass-fucking of historic proportions that represents an almost total rejection of everything that Republicans have been proud of for 30 years. It is as if Democrats were suddenly villified for the Civil Rights Movement, the New Deal, and multiculturalism. Oh, that's right. We have been -- by the same Republicans who are now about to pay for making those outrageous charges. As an aside, rot in hell GOP!

Republicans making the "true mind" case base their argument on a fact not in evidence: there is something else to conservatism that hasn't yet been shown (again, over the past 30 years). Unlikely as it sounds, the notion that, at bottom, Sarah Palin and John McCain have some kind of genuine, pure conservative credibility that is so mind-blowingly original and primitive (in the sense that it comes from the source) is attractive in lean times like these. But it's also a fantasy. Maybe it is unsurprising that people who by-and-large accept wholesale the literalness of the Bible and also believe in benevolent ghosts who are either all-knowing or all-powerful (they haven't yet hashed out just which it is), would also get the notion that secret virtue is just waiting to be tapped in Palin and McCain, and that will turn this election around. It's like a Rapture (alert: not in the Bible) for the American voters!

What shall never be mentioned, or even considered by this crowd, is that there probably isn't anything else to modern conservatism. That is to say, Republican ideas have been applied without limits or qualifications for the better part of a decade, and in many ways for at least three decades prior to the unprecedented open-door reign of GW Bush. There isn't any more. Or, as Peggy Lee might've said, is that all there is?

The "true mind" of a conservative is the known mind. To say that there may be some secret ideas out there (or in there, in the cases of McCain's heart and Palin's head) is ludicrous given the history we have to look at. Republicans don't change; times change and Republicans fight the times by attempting to graft moldy notions, a la Bennett and Noonan, onto the present in an attempt to retard the future. In effect, because we are all the products of the triumph, temporarily, of this regressive mindset, let us join now in one voice to proclaim that, sorry Peggy, sorry Republican rank-and-file, but we already know John McCain and Sarah Palin, and we reject them, true minds and all.