I don't mean to brag, but...

By Jonathan Bradley in Sydney, Australia

31 January 2012

...we know our stuff here at the US Studies Centre.

This past Saturday, the Sydney Morning Herald asked four people whether politics has "finally moved beyond the personal." The evidence of this purported cultural shift? Newt Gingrich's victory in the South Carolina Republican primary, where he won over a socially conservative electorate despite his multiple marriages and reports that he'd asked an ex-wife for an open relationship.

"Politcians tax us too much, spend our money wastefully and regulate our lives," demagogued "The Libertarian," a.k.a. the Instittute of Public Affairs's James Paterson. "So why do we spend so much time worrying about their personal lives instead of the things that really matter?" Gingrich's success, he posited, was "one piece of evidence that American voters have moved beyond the personal." Voters have moved on, even if the media hasn't.

"The Feminist," Kate Gleeson pointed out, not unreasonably, that the public is more forgiving of the male and heterosexual Gingrich's indiscretions than they might be of a woman or gay man. "The Former Politician" Cheryl Kernot used the forum to urge legislators to restrict free speech by enhancing privacy laws, and and applauded one of Gingrich's self-serving attacks on the media.

Fortunately, "The Academic" — also known as the USSC's David Smith — was on hand to straighten things out:

The triumph of Newt Gingrich in South Carolina reminds us that the politics of the personal is as strategic as any other politics.

Moral outrage is not a natural phenomenon that occurs automatically in response to revelations about politicians' personal lives. It is a political weapon to be exploited or neutralised by those who best understand how to use it. No one understands better than Gingrich how outrage works in South Carolina.

America's "Red" states (conservative, Republican-voting) have higher average rates of divorce and birth out of wedlock than the supposedly more permissive "Blue" states. While conservatives insist on strict moral rules, they know they live in a morally complicated world. Everybody knows and loves people who have "fallen" at least once. Gingrich wants to appear as someone who has sinned and repented, and deserves the forgiveness everyone sometimes needs.

Moreover, he has successfully turned himself into a victim. When CNN's John King opened a debate with a question about Marianne Gingrich's claims that Newt had asked for an open marriage, he called the accusations "tawdry" and expressed outrage that the "elite media" would try to protect Barack Obama by attacking a leading Republican this way. This earned him a standing ovation; he had masterfully implied that an attack on him by his ex-wife was an attack on all conservatives by the vindictive liberal media. During the Obama presidency, Republicans have found no emotion more satisfying than victimhood.

Quite. Gingrich is a benefactor of circumstance and cultural affinity. Let us not forget that personal indiscretions recently claimed the careers of Demcoratic Congressmen Anthony Weiner and Mark Sanford, a Republican and the former governor of South Carolina. (Sanford, you may recall, went missing in the middle of 2009 when he was supposed to be hiking the Appalachian Trail. It turns out he had skipped off to Argentina to have an affair. Until then, he was expected to be competitive in this year's presidential primaries.)

After the jump, the rest of David's response.

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If conservative Christians understand that moral rules are difficult to follow and transgressions must sometimes be forgiven, they have less tolerance for people who want to overturn the rules. This may make Gingrich a more acceptable candidate than Mitt Romney, who has a spotless family life but signed gay marriage into law as governor of Massachusetts. Brad Atkins, the leader of South Carolina's 700,000 Southern Baptists, has also claimed "Romney's Mormonism will be more of a concern than Gingrich's infidelity'', because Christians can forgive infidelity but Mormonism is a continuing affront to Christianity.

"The personal" is a lot more than sex. Gingrich's well-known past infidelities may have lost the power to hurt him, but that does not mean "character" has ceased to be an issue. Testimony from former colleagues could hurt him more than testimony from ex-wives. Grandiosity might be less forgivable than infidelity.

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Dodgy Obama reporting, part II

By Jonathan Bradley in Sydney, Australia

8 November 2011

It was News's editorial silliness that drew my ire in the first edition of this series, but the most recent is a simple case of manufacturing a story where there is none. Witness Sean Nicholls of the Sydney Morning Herald, writing in this past Saturday's paper: 

Judith Guertin recalls it as an otherwise unremarkable conversation between two women taking a summer class at the University of Hawaii in the 1960s.

She and Stanley Ann Dunham were studying textile design and weaving, a subject in which Ms Dunham, an anthropologist, was majoring.

As they swapped life stories Ms Dunham remarked she had tried to visit Australia with a view to seeking an academic posting. But, she told her new friend, there were difficulties because her child was black.

Whatta scoop! Woman once talked about Australia with American president's mother!

But surely the Herald wouldn't print an article based on something so flimsy. Surely Guertin must have known the late Dunham well enough to impart something interesting about Obama's family?

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Ms Guertin, 66, a retired postal worker, remembers Ms Dunham as ''quite charming'' but says she did not really get to know her.

Ah. But can the Herald wring anything more from this stillborn story?

She remembers she had plans to travel to Australia and speculated it was for more than a holiday, given her degree.

''So she probably wanted to go work on a dig or study there. She would be interested in the Aborigines, I'm sure.''

Probably. I'm sure.

In fact, apart from a clarification that the reported conversation occured as the White Australia policy was being dismantled, Nicholls doesn't even delve into the most interesting part of the story: Whether, within many Australians' living memory, a white American woman would have had trouble getting an Australian visa if she an African American child.

The shoddiness is a shame, because the same edition of the Herald had a smart preview of the 2012 election — now fewer than 365 days away. 

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Scoping the GOP field

By Jonathan Bradley in Newcastle, Australia

17 March 2011

I enjoyed Lesley's portrayal of the Republican presidential field as a bunch of penguins shivering at the edge of the ice. Republicans confidently predicting that the water's fine and Barack Obama will be an easy beat are a bit harder to find in recent months. Karl Rove and Mike Huckabee are some of the high profile conservatives warning the president's opponents of the steep task before them.

One problem facing the GOP, and this is probably the reason for the reticence of the field, is that there is no obvious challenger for them to either rally behind or oppose. Ross Cameron's op-ed in today's Sydney Morning Herald effectively sketches out the hopefuls, but explains better why some won't win than who will. He correctly dismisses Sarah Palin and Ron Paul from contention, and though I believe he's too hasty in proclaiming Mike Huckabee's comfort in his Fox News role, the outcome will be the same whether Huckabee runs or not: the Arkansan won't win the nomination. Cameron also correctly identifies the flaws with Tim Pawlenty (boring), Mitch Daniels (uncharismatic — and I'd add unpopular among the religious right for the "truce" he called for on social issues) and frontrunner Mitt Romney (insincere). He predicts Newt Gingrich will get the nod, which is audacious, but that's OK. I'm fine with audacious predictions, so long as they're not absurd.

The problem for the Republican party is that it's really easy to come up with reasons why each of their candidates will not win the nomination. Jonathan Bernstein's rebuttal to Gingrich-boosters, for instance, is ferocious:

However, the idea that absent his divorces Newt would be a strong candidate is just silly. First of all, Newt's severe lack of popularity predates his second divorce and remarriage; he was terribly unpopular during most of his years as Speaker. So we're talking about someone who has been out of office for over a decade and wasn't popular nationally when he was in office. Not to mention that capturing a presidential nomination without rising [above] the House hasn't been done in over a century, anyway.

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But second, and probably more to the point -- Newt Gingrich is a snake-oil salesman, and he was fully exposed during his run as Speaker. It's possible that Zeleny is correct that "Rival Republicans marvel at his deep well of ideas, his innate intellect and his knowledge of government," but unlikely that those marveling Republicans would include those who served with him in the House in 1995-1998. That's among the reasons they were prepared to toss him out when he saw the jig was up and quit ... As a presidential candidate, Newt is...well, he's less of a joke than Donald Trump, but more of a joke than Sarah Palin has been (unlike Newt, she has a solid, enthusiastic faction devoted to her).

At the end of last year, Bernstein also cautioned against dismissing candidates like Pawlenty. Nate Silver's dismissal of the former Minnesota Governor, however, is convincing:

The other potential flaw is in assuming that name recognition itself is something exogenous from candidate quality. In plain English: the fact that a candidate hasn’t been very successful at getting voters to recognize his name is often a sign that he is an unremarkable candidate.

Mr. Pawlenty has not exactly been invisible. In 2008, he was the governor of the state where Republicans held their convention, and was widely speculated upon as John McCain’s vice presidential nominee — indeed, he was used as something of a decoy, before Mr. McCain picked Ms. Palin. In 2009, he played a key role in the state’s contentious recount between Norm Coleman and Al Franken. In 2010, he’s gotten a ton of face time on national television because of his interest in the Presidential race. But voters don’t seem much to remember him — or they don’t seem much to care.

You can effectively knock off every contender out there if you continue in this fashion. One smart point Cameron's article makes is his comparison of the GOP field in 2012 to that of the Democrats in 2004. The left was united then in its desire to keep George W. Bush to one term, but it never enthusiastically cohered behind any of the many contenders — all of whom seemed flawed in some vital way. In the end, John Kerry won more or less by outlasting his opponents, and the party eventually tried to warm itself to him. I don't think Gingrich will be 2012's John Kerry, but someone will be. That someone will probably have some significant flaws. But as Donald Rumsfeld might advise his party: You campaign for an election with the candidate you have, not the candidate you might want.

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