“HUMP? WHAT HUMP?”

10/12/11

My overriding reaction to last night’s GOP debate on Bloomberg TV is the same as my reaction to the previous such affairs, perhaps going back long before this campaign season, to wit: we are dealing with a group of carnival barkers and hucksters with a few sincere, accomplished people thrown in presumably for contrast with the people who actually have a chance at the nomination in the crazy politics of latter day America.

A few specific points are worth making as well. First, for years, GOP debates have substituted group worship of Ronald Reagan for serious debate on the issues. Reagan was a decent, though vastly overrated, president, and avoiding offending anyone by getting all slobbery about the man is probably not quite as harmful as falling back on the usual pabulum that is the stuff of political “debate,” but this practice, which goes back perhaps 24 years, was getting ridiculous. Fortunately, the trend of late has been to ever so slightly tiptoe away from non-stop idolization of Reagan. However…

Has anyone but I noticed that Rick Perry has gone beyond verbally figuratively affixing his lips to Mr. Reagan’s hindquarters and has graduated to trying to look like the man? Notice the way Mr. Perry stands, with his head cocked at an angle resembling that which so endeared people to Ronnie. Take a look at Perry’s hairstyle, best defined as Reagan Brylcream, and the “above it all” grin cribbed from the nonchalant (probably excessively so) Ronald Wilson Reagan. Note these things during the next debate and tell me I’m wrong.

Second, the key moment of the debate came when Herman Cain cited Alan Greenspan as the Fed Chairman to whom he would like his selection for that post be most similar. Ron Paul’s eyes rolled. Rick Santorum, the master of substituting parroting Limbaughesque talking points for anything resembling creative thought, immediately flashed an ear to ear grin, sensing blood in the water. Even Mitt Romney, the Party’s ultimate nominee unless something goes very wrong, saw a huge gaffe in Mr. Cain’s statement. I said to my wife “He didn’t say that, did he?” But he did; Mr. Cain expressed admiration for Alan Greenspan.

Loyal readers will remember that, way before it was popular to criticize Dr. Greenspan, in fact, back when everyone in the business world and the press, financial and otherwise, was treating Greenspan with the reverence that potential GOP nominees reserve for Ronald Reagan, yours truly was referring to Alan Greenspan as the most overrated individual in the history of the world. (With the Kennedy clan in contention, that is quite a statement, but I digress.) Now that the scales have fallen from the eyes of lesser thinkers and they have joined me in assigning a large measure of the blame for our financial morass to the Mad Doctor, one would think that Herman Cain, a man of formidable substance and achievement, would be able to read the signs of the times with enough aplomb, and/or know enough economics, to realize that Greenspan was an unmitigated disaster and that citing him as one’s favorite is no way to get elected to anything. This was very disappointing to those of us who have long liked Herman Cain and are warming to the idea of his becoming the GOP standard-bearer, even if such an outcome is, to put it mildly, remote.