During his happy honeymoon it seemed inconceivable (to outsiders anyway) that anybody less special than Spiderman could topple the newly elected deity. Just think about it. For the previous eight years, America had been behaving – or so we liked to think – like the Germans in patriotic Punchcartoons from the first World War. They were forever roasting babies on spits and flinging grandmothers down wells. Then they elected a gentle blend of Martin Luther King and Gandhi. If it weren't for the pesky 22nd amendment, he could surely govern for life.
Sadly, to paraphrase Harold Macmillan, Obama was, dear boy, rapidly assailed by “events”. They were much the same events that had helped get him elected – floundering economy, stubbornly unwinnable wars – but they just refused to go away. What once looked like caution began to come across like impotence. Now, all the Republicans had to do was produce a halfway respectable candidate.
Well, you can probably see where this is going. It says something about the starting grid of GOP hopefuls that a mildly ambulatory mannequin who belongs to one of the world’s madder religions has begun to seem the only viable candidate. The folk who sketched cigarette commercials in the 1950s generated less frighteningly unreal human beings than Mitt Romney. Amateur embalmers do a better job of making the dead seem quick. Yet, set beside the following pack, he appears to ooze energy and eager intelligence.
Everyone has a favourite. For quite some time Michelle Bachman, a marginally less stupid, considerably more mad-eyed Sarah Palin, trotted at the head of the walking bestiary. Marvel as she claims that The Lion Kingis gay propaganda. Howl as she suggests that many Nobel Prize winners support intelligent design. Scream as she appears to confuse popular actor John Wayne with unpopular serial killer John Wayne Gacy.
Then we turned our attention to Texan governor Rick Perry. He thinks the American Revolution happened in the 17th century. He can’t remember his own policies. He looks like a Bakelite version of the Liverpudlian comedian John Bishop. Can these guys get any more unelectable?
Pizza salesman Herman Cain was put on this earth to offer an affirmative answer to that last question. Words cannot do justice to the spine-chilling ineptitude with which he answered a question on the situation in Libya. Had he stuck carrots in his ears and begun barking like a seal he could not have seemed less like presidential material. Shire horses, cabbage patch dolls, piles of leaves, Silvio Berlusconi: all seem better qualified to lead a major industrial nation.
What’s going on? It is only fair to point out that incumbents do have a decided advantage in US presidential elections and, as a result, better-qualified hopefuls do often sit out elections against such candidates. But there’s more to it than that. Draw lots at a kindergarten – or zoo – and you’d come up with a more impressive bunch than this gang of gaffe-monsters.
Part of the problem seems to come from the yearning in right-wing politics for a candidate who does not seem too clever, too articulate or too elitist. Remember Christine O’Donnell? Last November, the sometime witch gained a degree of renown when running as the Tea Party-approved senatorial candidate in the great state of Delaware.
One of the Irish-American’s most repeated catchphrases – sometimes preceded by a “boast” about not having gone to Yale – was “I’m you”.
Hang on a moment. You’re me? Why is that such a good thing? The last person I want in the White House is somebody in any way like myself.
I want somebody better educated, more stable and less fond of strong drink. We shouldn’t require the president to have a good degree – after all, George Bush went to Yale – but possession of such a document should not disqualify the candidate.
Left-leaning candidates like to think of themselves as being the people’s politicians. But the right has always had a fixation promoting “Ordinary Joes”. While hyper-educated braniacs such as Henry Kissinger and Condoleezza Rice toil in the backroom, unthreatening slow learners in the mould of Ronald Reagan and George W Bush front the operation.
This inclination springs from the American right’s traditional, disingenuous suspicion of government. If you look too like a professional politician then you are in danger of seeming part of the imagined problem. Herman Cain practically boasts about his ignorance on policy matters. “Because you run for president you need to have the answer? No, you don’t! No, you don’t! That’s not good decision-making,” he said recently.
There is an intriguing paradox here. What the American right wants is a person who can become president without becoming president.
After all, nothing establishes your elitist credentials more convincingly than travelling to work in Air Force One.
Where’s Joe the Plumber when you need him?