The Long View 2008-02-02: Better the Sultan's Turban than the Pope's Tiara

ConstantineXI1453-Bust.jpg

Much like Ogier the Dane, Last Emperor of the East Constantine XI Palailogos is considered a Man in the Mountain, destined to return in an hour of great need.

There is also this fascinating comment by John J. Reilly, which correctly anticipated the turn from factional politics that reflect institutional parties towards a politics of a cult of personality and lineage.

Actually, I fully expect that a President McCain would blow up the Republican Party. I would also expect the Democrats to take the contagion. One anticipates some crisis which, if his presidency survives it, would result in his governing with some novel coalition. The fragments from the decay of the parties would prove attractive to each other. They may settle into new constellations that might or might not bear the names of the existing parties. Alternatively, we might enter a period of political organization through "rallies" around individuals and their courts. (That would be the Kennedy, Clinton, and Bush model, disembarrassed of nominal party labels).

Better the Sultan's Turban than the Pope's Tiara

The motto that heads this entry is perhaps the best example on record of Darwin Award partisanship; it perfectly expresses the reaction of the Movement Conservative establishment in the Republican Party to the prospect that Senator John McCain might get the party's presidential nomination. The slogan comes from the very end of the Byzantine Empire:

[The proponents of Orthodoxy over Catholicism do not] recall the acceptance of [papal] primacy by Constantine XII [Constantine XI BIE], last Emperor of the East, or the part papal opponents played in weakening Constantine's position, in the face of the Turkish menace. One recalls the Grand Admiral of the Empire, Lukas Notaras, who declared that he "preferred the turban of the Sultan to the tiara of the Pope." He must have recalled his words bitterly when the conquering Sultan Mohammed ordered him to present his sons as concubines; refusing, Notaras was forced to watch their execution before being put to death himself.

A similar sentiment was expressed on the French Right during the 1930s in the saying, "Better Hitler than Blum," the latter being the Popular Front premier, but I digress.

Contrary to reports, Ann Coulter did not actually endorse Hillary Clinton in preference to John McCain. What she did say was this:

The bright side of the Florida debacle [in which McCain defeated Romney] is that I no longer fear Hillary Clinton. (I mean in terms of her becoming president -- on a personal level, she's still a little creepy.) I'd rather deal with President Hillary than with President McCain. With Hillary, we'll get the same ruinous liberal policies with none of the responsibility. ...At least under President Hillary, Republicans in Congress would know that they're supposed to fight back. When President McCain proposes the same ideas -- tax hikes, liberal judges and Social Security for illegals -- Republicans in Congress will support "our" president -- just as they supported, if only briefly, Bush's great ideas on amnesty and Harriet Miers.

Lorie Byrd has a slightly different explanation for Why...so many Republicans freaking out about John McCain’s primary success:

The strong negative reaction from conservatives is not solely because of his positions on issues, though. The reason so many conservatives are concerned about the prospect of a McCain nomination and a McCain presidency has almost as much to do with the way McCain has taken the positions he has, as the positions themselves.

What got the Bushes where they are today, both in the good and bad sense, is that they are never, under any circumstances, off message. John McCain is always off message. He is sometimes catastrophically wrong. His saving grace is that he has the wit to take "no" for an answer. The national Republican Party does not.

And then there is Mark Steyn. One suspects that, if McCain wins the nomination, Steyn will eventually welcome our new insect overlords. For now, however, he says It's a shame one of them has to win:

The senator is an eloquent defender of the U.S. armed forces. A President McCain will not permit a military defeat in Iraq. But it's not clear to me he has much of a strategic vision for the ideological struggle, for the real long-term battlefield in the mosques and madrassahs of Pakistan and Indonesia and Western Europe. McCain's lead is no evidence of popular commitment to "the long war," and, absent any surprising developments, this will not be a war election.

The Clintons are nothing if not lucky, and Hillary must occasionally be enjoying a luxury-length cackle at the thought of being pitted against a 71-year-old "maverick" whose record seems designed to antagonize just enough of the base into staying home on Election Day. In the 2000 campaign season, running in a desultory fashion for the New York Senate seat, Rudy Giuliani waged a brief half-hearted campaign just long enough to leave the Republican Party with no one to run against Hillary except a candidate who wasn't up to the job.

Again, I have a lot of time for Mark Steyn, but I must repeat my criticism that he is trying to fight Churchill's war with Coolidge's domestic policy. You cannot combat Salafism by offering its adherents tax-free savings accounts. Trust me on this.

We must distinguish Bush Jr.'s outrages against "the base" from what McCain has done or is likely to do. Bush's outrages were usually dispiriting not just to Republicans, but to the general electorate. On privatizing Social Security and on the Supreme Court nomination of poor Harriet Miers, he was extending a handshake to a vacuum, to a constituency that did not exist. That was true even on the open-borders immigration bill, which had some elite support but did not poll well. Conversely, McCain's departures from Movement Conservative orthodoxy, whether wise or not, usually have wide popular appeal.

The exclusive cultivation of "the base" was Karl Rove's strategy. The notion was that a successful national presidential campaign could be based on appealing to a reliable plurality of constituencies rather than to the nation as a whole. It was, oddly enough, the sort of strategy that political parties often adopt in countries with proportional representation. Nonetheless, it won several elections in the winner-take-all United States. Its period of efficacy was limited, however, because it had the serious drawback of disdaining mere governing as a distraction from staying on message. The Republican Party's electoral fortunes are in secular decline because the party is increasingly seen, with reason, as the party of chaos.

John McCain actually is interested in governing; hence the hostility. Success in that endeavor would be an irremediable disaster for the unnatural coalition that holds social conservatism hostage to pro-business (as distinguished from pro-market) conservatism. It would also, though the penny has not dropped yet on this, be a disaster for the unnatural arrangement that keeps the labor unions and blacks and latinos tied to Hollywood and the Aging Billionaires' Club.

Actually, I fully expect that a President McCain would blow up the Republican Party. I would also expect the Democrats to take the contagion. One anticipates some crisis which, if his presidency survives it, would result in his governing with some novel coalition. The fragments from the decay of the parties would prove attractive to each other. They may settle into new constellations that might or might not bear the names of the existing parties. Alternatively, we might enter a period of political organization through "rallies" around individuals and their courts. (That would be the Kennedy, Clinton, and Bush model, disembarrassed of nominal party labels).

There is a Talmudic expression: "Do not force the Messiah." This means, "Do not attempt to create an apocalyptic situation."

Well, maybe just this once.

Copyright © 2008 by John J. Reilly

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