Governing Heads

There have been comparisons of W and Reagan flying around since the latter’s death—some flattering, some not. But one similarity that’s interested me for years is that both project an image—perhaps veridical, perhaps not—of anti-intellectualism. In fact, it was Reagan’s apparently anti-intellectualism against which I think I reacted most strongly when he ran for president in ’80.

These reflections, combined with the fact that Bush ’43 brought with him a coterie of henchmen from the Reagan and Bush ’41 administrations led me to hypothesize that the Republican party may have adopted a kind of network news approach to the Presidency. The networks seem to have realized that attractiveness and likeability are the keys to ratings, and, consequently, they’ve tended to put attractive, likeable talking heads up front while keeping the more serious journalists—no doubt rumpled and bespectacled—out of sight in the newsroom. The Republican party, filled with savvy ad men, has, perhaps, adopted a similar strategy. Perhaps they’ve decided to nominate likeable, attractive, electable dunces, backing them up with a cabal of real, serious policy-makers with bad hair and beady little eyes. The candidate, then, becomes little more than a front man, a governing head who only serves the purpose of giving his back-up men the ability to do their thing, i.e. make policy.

Bush ’41 and Dole don’t fit this mold, and that counts against my hypothesis. But then again, the governing head strategy need not be employed in every election, and many Republicans wouldn’t support such a policy.

On the other hand, neither Bush ’41 nor Dole is considered terribly successful by the Republican establishment. Furthermore, the Republicans have never been able to give us a convincing story about what it is that W is supposed to do, anyway. He’s allegedly the first “CEO president,” meaning that he doesn’t know anything about governing, but he gets to make the decisions anyway. But (as I've noted before) given his demonstrable and even admitted ignorance about both foreign and domestic policy, one wonders what his role in decision-making could possibly be. Either he just rubber-stamps the decisions of Rice, Cheney, and the other real policy-makers backing him up--in which case he is unnecessary--or he doesn’t--in which case he is worse, since we then have a person who doesn’t understand what’s going on overriding the decisions of people who do. And if he’s there just to be a tie-breaker when the experts are at loggerheads, he could be replaced by a fair coin or a Magic Eight-Ball (“Scott, are there any plans to send more troops to Iraq?” “Well, Neil, signs point to yes.”)

So there’s some food for thought. Probably false, but perhaps worth thinking about.