Friday, August 27, 2004
Ambition To Substance Ratio
Okay, so now Lileks is writing articles that say what I want to say while saving me the keystrokes, thus helping me delay the onset of carpal tunnel. A snippet that cuts to the heart of it:
The reason is almost tautological: John Kerry wants to be president because he is John Kerry, and John Kerry is supposed to be president. Hence his campaign’s flummoxed and tone-deaf response to the swift boat vets. Ban the books, sue the stations, retreat, attack. Underneath it all you can sense the confusion. How dare they attack Kerry? He’s supposed to be president. It’s almost treason in advance.
Exactly. Nor is he the first candidate whose reason for wanting to be President is because he wanted to be President. Think Gore, but that is just for starters. This is what I keep saying, as Deb can tell you.
I don’t mean merely it’s “his turn” as Lileks gets into at the end of the piece, though for the party there is some of that. Dole was a throwaway candidate whose turn it was. The parties do this regularly and hope for the best, but I am convinced they often know full well the candidate will lose and they do it anyway, because it’s “right” or perhaps because competing factions converge on the safe zero.
Kerry is an “always wanted to be President” candidate who also benefits from being the obvious next nominee for the party. There’s nothing to him, but they almost had to do it just because.
Gore was the same, but less of a zero. For both men it’s about ego and power. Kerry rehabilitates Gore by making him look good, reminding us he had actual ideas, opinions, intelligence, and decision making ability, for all he had excess ambition and willingness to engage the Truth Warp Drive to trip into power. Perhaps that will be the story of Kerry in the end, or would have been had Gore not gone visibly insane recently.
Bush 41 had a bit of the same “always wanted” to him, if only because the idea was a kick and it was a great capstone on the resume. Perhaps that’s why his heart didn’t seem into the campaign for re-election; he’d gotten the office as he wanted and then it didn’t matter.
Dukakis was ambitious, and enjoyed power as such, but I don’t think there was anything inevitable or that he spent his life wanting to run for President. It seems more like he saw the chance, had the credentials, took a shot, and dark horsed his way in.
Nixon had at least some of the desire to be President because he wanted to be President, wanted the power and glory. Kerry makes Nixon look more principled and honest than he might otherwise, and there were places Nixon would not go. As I have mentioned before, he deserves huge credit for not contesting the stolen election in 1960. Nor was there anything inevitable about the selection of Nixon as candidate in 1968, though obviously he was the logical choice in 1960.
Anyway, it’s fascinating to look at the races in terms of who each party could logically have run, who actually ran, whether they really had any expectation of winning, and whether a given candidate was all ambition and no substance, or if not, how close he came to having too high an ambition to substance ratio.