by ANDREW LEVINE
Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney’s running mate Paul Ryan. PHOTO/Feministing
We’re approaching a stretch of time when it would be a blessing to fall into a stupor; better that than endure two mind-numbing marketing campaigns — one promoting a corporate ass kisser and drone-wielding devil we know, the other a corporate asshole and devil we’d rather not.
Apologies for not putting the point more decorously. But in this instance, let the language reflect William Blake’s teaching: “as the air to a bird or the sea to a fish, so is contempt to the contemptible.”
Before Mitt Romney chose Paul Ryan for a running mate, there was a slim chance that the election might at least be amusing. If only he had named a certifiable whack job – there were so many to choose from! I was hoping for Rick Perry, but only because Newt Gingrich and Michele Bachmann were too preposterous even for Mitt.
Would that Sarah Palin was back! Last time, she was icing on the cake because the election was already interesting, even for those of us who never bought into “hope” and “change.” It was interesting for what it revealed about race and racism in America at the time. Four years later, we already know all we need to know about that. So except for the chance to ridicule Mormon snake oil – its main fault is that it hasn’t had time to age as long as the more familiar brands — we’re looking forward to a big Nothing. Where are you, Sarah, now that we need you?
Everybody knows the answer: she’s out bilking her celebrity for all it’s (still) worth. Meanwhile, we’re left with an Ayn Rand besotted policy wonk whose most worthy accomplishment to date was driving the Oscar Mayer wienermobile around the upper mid-west – that and supplying the Tea Party with “ideas.” The latter job was, pardon the pun, less taxing.
Romney could even have done something mildly constructive had he chosen Marco Rubio. Not doing so might also have cost him Florida. Now he has a running mate who wants to privatize Medicare and, until he flip flops as he likely soon will, end the embargo of Cuba. These are hardly winning formulae in a state with a huge elderly population and a Cuban-American community still in the grip of gusano fanatics.
With Rubio for a running mate, attention would have had to focus on the criminality (and stupidity) of our five decades long Cuba policy. It can hardly survive scrutiny. But now the anti-Castro lobby will be able to slouch on (sans Fidel) for a while longer — like its big brother, the Israel lobby — until the harm it does becomes so palpable that grudging acquiescence will turn to a degree of outrage so intense that even the most intimidated politicians won’t be able to ignore it any longer. But the time for that is – not yet.
Indeed, the time for anything but falling into a stupor is – not yet, not until after November 6. Romney’s choice of Paul Ryan quashes all hope of salvaging anything worthwhile or even interesting from the 2012 presidential race.
Gingrich’s “charm” is that he presents himself as smart, though he cannot smart his way out of a paper bag; not that it matters since Republican voters aren’t equipped to notice and Republican donors hardly care. With Ryan, it’s much the same.
But unlike Gingrich, whose purported smartness manifested itself in ludicrous but flashy proposals and declarations, Ryan is just a lumbering right-wing wonk, an unimaginative one at that.
Even so, the conventional wisdom, echoed now even by Barack Obama, has it that Ryan is an intellectual leader. Really? How smart do you have to be to figure out how to dismantle the last vestiges of the New Deal and Great Society so that obscenely rich malefactors can become even richer? That’s all the Ryan budget comes to; it’s about “starving the beast” in ways that even the villainous Reagan would never have dared.
To be sure, Obama is poised to compromise away most of what Ryan would obliterate in one fell swoop; he, like most Democrats these days, is on the same page as the GOP. But, as a Democrat, obliged to bring along those who would be most harmed, he has to move slowly and with a certain finesse. That’s what Bill Clinton did, and it’s what Obama did too in his first term.
Ryan faces no such constraints and, as a reactionary, he knows no scruples. Forget about finesse: Ryan would have Congress and the White House “Just Say No.”
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