GOP mustn’t spurn academic pedigree

By Robert M. Eisinger

Mark Sanford’s episodic apologies raise more questions than they answer, not about South Carolina, but about the short-term future of the Republican Party. No doubt the pundits will continue to dissect his semi-coherent rhetoric ad nauseam, much as Sarah Palin’s bizarre July 3 “I am not a quitter” resignation speech received more than its share of airtime.

Mary Matalin described Palin’s move as “brilliant”; similarly, one should expect sycophants to describe Sanford as brave and courageous. But don’t kid yourself. The GOP is in trouble. Why? Because they have no idea whom to trust as they venture forward in 2010 and beyond.

Already there is discussion about what Palin will do now that she’s resigned from office. Conventional wisdom already has provided us with platitudinous phrases about Palin’s next course of action. She will “put together a team” to assist her in “studying the issues.” Such banalities are uttered with alacrity and ease, but they underscore a larger problem for the Republicans. Why must any public official need to learn about how to think about politics in the first place?

Sanford similarly had an opportunity to resign with grace and dignity, but opted to seek to repair relationships with his constituents as he tries to heal self-inflicted wounds. He apologizes and then states, oddly, that his apology is insufficient. Enough already. It hurts to watch a man of his stature repeatedly err as he desperately tries to do otherwise.

Palin and Sanford are popular for a reason. They provide conservative straight talk. But the Republican Party deserves better; it needs intellectual coherence. The problem with these Republicans is that they have drunk the proletariat punch. They cannot reconcile their fallible behavior with their conservative tradition, and therefore resort to pithy phrases. In short, they have abandoned erudition for talking points. Once the party of Harvard and Stanford graduates, the GOP faithful now downplay pedigree as hoity-toity irrelevance. But it is this demagogic dismissal of intellect that is undermining them.

Former New Hampshire Sen. John Sununu (MIT and Harvard) is rarely mentioned in GOP circles as a rising star, even though he is well versed on energy policy. Ohio’s Rob Portman’s (Dartmouth and the University of Michigan) impressive résumé surpasses Palin’s by leaps and bounds. He should be on all the daily television shows, instead of the usual suspects who pervade talk radio and television. Similarly, Tom Campbell (University of Chicago and Harvard) can boast of unparalleled academic bona fides. He is running for governor of California, but critics suggest that his libertarian positions on abortion and gay rights may make him vulnerable to social conservatives who will likely vote against him in the primary. Georgia’s Newt Gingrich (Emory and Tulane) is a man of ideas, arguably because of his scholarly interest in modern European history. Mitt Romney — with his Harvard law degree and M.B.A. — would be wise to boast of his academic credentials as he pursues a 2012 presidential run.

Why the scholarly silence among the Republicans? Perhaps such talk does not play well with the GOP faithful. Focus groups data probably show that swing voters who go to church and like NASCAR think that the words “Ivy League” and “Ph.D.” are tantamount to “liberal” and “out of touch.” Worse yet, it is possible that the GOP cognoscenti have not conducted any focus groups. Instead they have embraced populism to the point where they are woefully ignorant of an alternative philosophy. Republican leaders understand the concept of smaller government, so long as it is conceptualized in bulleted talking points. They quote Ronald Reagan, but not Edmund Burke. The intellectual underpinnings of smaller and smarter government have been replaced with incoherent ramblings and public confessions. The result — Sanford now sounds like Paula Abdul.

Republican leaders (Newt, where are you?) should tell the masses that Phi Beta Kappa is not a frat house. The conservative in me cringes when I hear Sanford, not for his misdeeds or indiscretions, but because of his apparent ignorance about his own politics. He would be wise to resist any temptations to speak about himself, and instead read Plato’s “Apology,” and any tragedy by William Shakespeare.

Robert M. Eisinger is the author of “The Evolution of Presidential Polling,” and is the dean of the School of Liberal Arts at Savannah College of Art and Design.