Mitt Romney is surprisingly serious about making a third grab at the presidential brass ring, and I’m not quite sure what to make of that development.
True, a Romney candidacy makes it less likely that we’ll be condemned to yet another Bush running against yet another Clinton come the summer of 2016, and for that alone we might be grateful. But Romney is not exactly a fresh face on the political scene either.
It’s like peering into the refrigerator and trying to decide between leftovers from Monday night or Tuesday night and then discovering that oh yeah, you’ve got Thursday night leftovers too.
You also get the idea that should Romney run, his campaign will be motivated in part by a feeling that he got cheated of something that by right should have been his, that something of course being the presidency. After the 2012 race, campaign insiders depicted Romney as a man in disbelief on election night, so certain that the American people would embrace him over Barack Obama that he didn’t even bother to prepare a concession speech.
A sour aggrievement, of injustice left uncorrected, has lingered beneath the surface of Romney’s public persona ever since. Toss in the sense of unfulfilled familial destiny on the part of Jeb Bush, son and older brother of presidents, and you’ve got the makings for an interesting psychological study.
On the Democratic side, Hillary Clinton of course remains the dominant figure, with unfulfilled destiny issues of her own. I’m not exactly thrilled at that prospect — I’d prefer a candidate more willing to question the status quo and more attuned to what appears to be an entirely new set of challenges confronting the country. Income inequity, climate change, cyberwarfare, technological displacement of workers, international terrorism, a loss of faith in institutions — this is not the America of Ronald Reagan or even Bill Clinton. But you just don’t see that reflected in our political rhetoric, which seems trapped in an earlier decade or even generation.
At the very least, a hard-fought primary process could help the Democrats define who they are for the 21st century, both to themselves and to the country at large. For years now, they’ve gotten away with being “not Republican.” It’s been easy, and thanks to the GOP it has usually been effective. But “not Republican” is also not a direction or philosophy. It’s accurate in terms of what the answers aren’t, but it’s largely silent on what they are. It does not offer the American people a compelling, positive vision of how their country can thrive in a world that is very different from that in which most of us were raised.
But in a 2016 cycle in which Clinton is the Democrats’ presumptive nominee, that won’t change.
It’s like they said in that old song, a song that is now so old that close to half of the American people weren’t even born when it was at the top of the charts. You may remember it — I’m quite certain Hillary does. It goes like this:
“Don’t stop, thinking about tomorrow,
Don’t stop, it’ll soon be here,
It’ll be, better than before,
Yesterday’s gone, yesterday’s gone….”
But yesterday’s not gone at all. Yesterday’s running for president
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