As a storm center moved through these Southern latitudes the other evening, it provided quite a light show. The firmament above overflowed, the rain gushed, zig-zags streaked the sky. And a bright metaphor struck, too--a description of an American presidential campaign coined by a French visitor to these shores back when the contending parties weren't called Republicans and Democrats but Whigs and Jacksonians.
The visitor? Alexis de Tocqueville, whose analysis of Democracy in America remains the most relevant guide we have to American politics and culture in general--almost two centuries after he wrote it. Here's how M. de Tocqueville summed up the presidential elections that still shake up the country every four years, like a regularly scheduled earthquake:
"For a long time before the appointed hour has come, the election becomes the important and the all-engrossing topic of discussion. Factional ardor is redoubled, and all the artificial passions which the imagination can create in a happy and peaceful land are agitated . . . . As the election draws near, the activity of intrigue and the agitation of the populace increase; the citizens are divided into hostile camps, each of which assumes the name of its favorite candidate; the whole nation glows with feverish excitement; the election is the daily theme of the press, the subject of private conversation, the end of every thought and every action, the sole interest of the present. Then, as soon as the choice is determined, this ardor is dispelled, calm returns, and the river that had been out of its banks returns to its usual level ... ."
That's a free translation, but it captures the spirit of Tocqueville's words. How little things have changed since his time even though the two parties have different names today--if the same essential character. What a remarkably continuous history we Americans have. (Never mind the late unpleasantness back in 1861-65.)
For now, more than a year before the quadrennial deluge reaches its high-water mark, the great flood of contention is only a trickle in the background of the news, a subject mainly for the inside pages--unless you're one of those pitiable types who follows every meaningless poll and forgettable faux pas of the presidential candidates, declared and un-. There's not yet a hint of the great flood to come. Any more than the mighty Mississippi reveals its full breadth at its source way up around Minneapolis somewhere in Lower Canada, where you can almost step across what will become the Father of Waters far downstream.
Presidential campaign, what presidential campaign? We haven't even heard the overture to the grand production ahead. The flats are still being assembled backstage. What's more, one party already has its candidate waiting in the wings--the inevitable Hillary Clinton--no matter how much false suspense will have to be drummed up before she makes her formal entrance as the Democratic presidential nominee more than a year from now.
Her inevitability is both Ms. Clinton's great advantage and disadvantage as a presidential candidate. Because it means (a) she'll have no shortage of campaign funds but (b) her nomination won't be any surprise. And we are a people who love surprises, whether in our politics or detective stories.
Hillary Clinton can't offer anything surprising by now in the way of scandals, for she's already been at the center of a wide variety of them, whether she was first lady of Arkansas or the whole United States at the time. The disappearing records, commodity speculations, temper tantrums behind the fixed smile, games with emails, a husband who's not just indiscreet about his womanizing but turns it into grounds for impeachment . . . . It's all too much to recount here, or even be of interest any more. HRC need only touch a scandal to turn it bo-ring. By now her scandals past, present and future just fade into one indistinguishable murk.
Hillary Clinton was old news when a bright young hope named Barack Obama--yes, there was a time when he was bright and young, or at least seemed so to the millions--and now she's even older news. Americans do like a little new in our news. But it's hard to see how Mrs. Clinton is going to supply it. The bright, iconoclastic congressional staffer with the coke-bottle glasses faded with the Age of Nixon; now anybody writing about her has to struggle to avoid adjectives like dull, stodgy, old-hat . . . .
Yes, a few other Democrats are offering nominal opposition to her nomination. Like predictable Elizabeth Warren, a cardboard ideologue. Then there's Lincoln Chaffee, one of those indistinguishable New England types who wasn't new even when he was in the news. Think of Leverett Saltonstall, Henry Cabot Lodge, and all those bluebloods going back to colonial ancestors with names like Josiah Quimby.
And this is good old Boston,
The home of the bean
and the cod,
Where the Lowells talk
only to Cabots,
And the Cabots talk only to God.
But their time has come and gone, and to glance over such alternatives to Hillary Clinton's presidential nomination is to confirm its inevitability.
On the other side of the aisle, a profusion of presidential hopefuls erupts in the spring--but more like weeds than flowers. From cranks like Rand Paul and unelectables like Ted Cruz on the right to all-too-familiar representatives of the Republican establishment like Jeb Bush in the middle. As eloquent a candidate and as stirring as his life story, can someone like Marco Rubio appeal to voters who don't already agree with him?
How reach out to the decisive middle of the American electorate? It's a challenge all presidential candidates face. The sheer number of presidential possibilities in the Grand Old Party would seem a good sign, but only seem so. For numbers aren't the same as quality.
But an exception to this dismal rule seems to be emerging--Scott Walker out of Wisconsin of all solid, wholesome, Midwestern places. Why is he the talk of his party this early in the presidential campaign? Because he's already taken the worst that the Democrats and allied interests (like the teacher and public employee unions) could throw at him, one recall election after another. Including a stormy occupation of the state Capitol.
Yet he remains unintimidated. Indeed, his pre-presidential campaign is thriving. The vicious falsehoods, the manufactured hysteria because he's daring to cut bloated state budgets, the whole catalogue of dirty tricks . . . . none has fazed him.
At this ridiculously early, prenatal stage of the presidential campaign of 2016, the idea of a Bush-Walker ticket begins to occur. Even if it might prove a kangaroo ticket: stronger in the hind legs.
Enough idle speculation a year before the campaign has really started. Better to sit back, watch the passing storms light up the night sky, and read another chapter of Tocqueville.
Paul Greenberg is editorial page editor of the Arkansas Democrat- Gazette. E-mail him at:
Editorial on 04/19/2015