I like to imagine that somewhere in the White House is a niche, an alcove or the tiniest of sanctuaries from the demands of politics and the press where the president can go to privately celebrate the major victories which seem to come less and less frequently to this administration as of late.
This undisclosed, undisclosable hideaway — on the roof, or in the centuries-old basement, perhaps — will always be faithfully stocked with champagne, maybe some Kentucky bourbon and a box of the President’s favorite smokes. Some of its recent uses, I will hazard, have occurred in the afterglow of the military successes abroad resulting in the deaths of Khaddafi and Bin Laden. But beyond just a sense of certainty it is my profound hope that President Obama celebrated his personal fortunes this week, bearing witness to the consequences of prevailing hard-line, right-wing rhetoric as the contenders for the Republican nomination one-by-one shoot themselves in the foot.
Snowballing out of control from more on-camera flip-flops by Mitt Romney and from the mountains of testimony gathering to suggest Herman Cain is a philandering oaf, the ruin of the Republican frontrunners culminated in a glorious 53 seconds of sheer childishness during a debate that will surely be remembered as one of the most needlessly catastrophic campaign implosions in American history.
Rick Perry, the culprit, has already received a bittersweet obituary from the leftist mock-commentaries of “The Daily Show With Jon Stewart” and “Saturday Night Live.” It was sweet of him to permanently excuse himself from political sphere in such a memorable inferno, but alas, how we will miss what ample material he gave us! The comedians have had to work harder, the consensus goes, since “Dubya” (a.k.a. former President George W. Bush) left office.
But strangely, the humor we saw in Gov. Perry’s failure to recall the third federal department he would eliminate fast devolved to resentment and pity. We chuckled heartily, but something in our laughter struck a visceral, fearsome chord, and I think it is this: As Perry’s pathetic — literally pathos-inducing — squabble before an unyielding David Gregory came to resemble a child’s resignation to a deserved admonishment from his father, we could glean nothing more from the governor’s face than mere shame, embarrassment and incompetence.
There was no thought of the reality he would advocate, no consideration of the living people whose jobs and livelihoods he would eradicate on the basis of … what was it again? Oops.
What we actually witnessed during that debate, I would submit, was a spectacle inherent to the impossibility of fiscally-responsible, moralistic Republican rhetoric coexisting with the power-elitism, intolerance and obstructionism which has comprised the Republican party’s core values since the defeat in 2008 of their most fair and compromising candidate in decades. Perry’s unwitting self-immolation symbolizes the blundering failure of the Republican platform to forge its sound and fury into anything useful; it reveals its collective consciousness for the reactionary banter it is, and leaves unsatisfied those of us who, like David Gregory, still await an answer on what to do to salvage this government and this country.
It is a generous providence — or perhaps merely timely coincidence — that Perry’s cataclysm comes amid more hypocrisy to the right of the aisle: Tea Party stalwarts Joe Walsh and Eric Cantor were exposed this week trying to circumvent the budget deficit supercommittee to earmark pork to the tune of tens of millions of dollars in transportation projects in their home states — projects like high-speed rail which they have repeatedly denounced as liberal swill in their communications with constituents.
The lessons of this week, I think, are clear, and I think the Republicans would do well to alter their rhetoric to reflect the sentiments of Americans whose sides may still ache from laughter. We needed the laugh, Republicans, but you simply don’t get to drink from the ancient well of ignorance and expect to preside over a country so afflicted by a drought of progress.