Nixon for President? Competence Cuts Both Ways

For the slavering political junkies that have been following this miserable presidential-election cycle since last November, the hysteria of the approaching primary season is something of a relief. People outside of carefully choreographed “town halls” and diner photo-ops in Iowa and New Hampshire are starting to pay attention to the motley band of candidates. This finally gives us a chance to hear what “real people” are thinking, as opposed to the horrid echo chamber created by the 10 1/2 pundits shouting at each other for the past 11-or-so months. It looks like the buzzword for “real people” and their candidates of choice in these last few months is “competence.” Which isn’t necessarily a good thing.

How, you might ask, could placing competence at the top of the heap of “electable qualities” wind up burning those who want it? After all, it’s a longing for return to stability on both sides of the aisle, and, given the dissatisfaction with the past seven years of “ideological” leadership, it’s not hard to imagine wanting a change. As Michael Tomasky of The Guardian said yesterday, even Republicans are playing the capable game against the Bush administration, aiming for “a conservativism that is competent and comparatively honest.”

I can get you a candidate that fits that bill: Richard Nixon.

Granted, there are problems with a Nixon candidacy—lack of pulse chief among them—but consider the hankering for that sort of character: a former vice president, a sharp legal mind capable of surrounding himself with a crack cabinet to solve the foreign policy problems of the day. If the lack of a cohesive ideology in either major party isn’t much of a hint, the way the candidates present themselves is certainly telling of the strength of this “confidence” trend. After all, the candidate that Republicans selected as the one that best embodies their “true values” in a recent poll was John McCain, which is wild to think about to begin with, given McCain’s “maverick” status in 2000 and his implosion this year when he attempted to run as the man whose time had come. Yet McCain places third or fourth nationally in terms of polls, while Rudy Giuliani, a twice-divorced supporter of civil unions and gun control, still outpaces Fred Thompson and his mysterious “I am tall and Southern, so vote for me” campaign strategy.

The Democrats now face a similar situation. Barack Obama, who draws throngs of people whenever he gives a bright-eyed, hopeful speech about the future of the country, is getting whomped by the professionalism of Hillary Clinton in nearly every state. John Edwards’ attempt to be a populist firebrand backfired early on, but his union endorsements and attempts to inject some semblance of gravitas simply haven’t brought any positive attention to his loud, purportedly blue-collar campaign. Nixon’s looking better and better.

Nixon thawed the Cold War (even gaving Brezhnev a brand new car!), ended our involvement in the Vietnam War (well, Congress helped by cutting off his funding, but, you know), opened China, and inaugurated an era of realistic foreign policy that Ford and Carter would go on to screw up spectacularly. If you want competence in that department, as voters so desperately do, Nixon’s your guy. Of course, he also bombed Cambodia and Laos, escalating Vietnam only to have his hands tied when the Khmer Rouge began its genocidal rampage, hit North Vietnam on Christmas Day, massively expanded executive power, and was a paranoid anti-Semite who wound up too drunk to get on the phone with the British prime minister during the Yom Kippur War of 1973. Plus, Watergate.

But hey, if we’re electing purely on the idea of competence, you can’t fault his achievements. You could even make the argument that his decision to visit China in 1972 was the most important political decision of the latter half of the 20th century, fundamentally redrawing the “first and second worlds” at the time. Why wouldn’t you pick somebody like that if you’re looking to get away from the “ideological” worlds of neoconservativism or hyperpopulism or whatever the big bad “-ism” you’re not voting for this cycle winds up being?

Voting on competence alone is just as bad as voting on the basis of “values” alone. Like it or not, the bureaucratic wheel-spinning that goes on in Washington will engulf even the most pragmatic of competent candidates, and the amorality that eventually consumed Nixon will rear its ugly head awfully fast if your candidate of choice isn’t tethered to humanity by some sort of scruple.

The solution? Look at whom your preferred candidate is working with. Who is their proverbial replacement for Nixon’s Henry Kissinger, the go-to guy or girl that gets things done while the president makes empty speeches at this or that dinner/fundraiser/whatever? How would the candidate run their cabinet, or allow him- or herself to be run by it, as with the current president? If you can live with your candidate’s decisions in that managerial regard, you’ve probably found a happy medium for your personal balance between ideology and practicality in terms of a candidate. The fear of an ideologue without substance running this country is well-founded, given the past seven years. But a drive towards competence at all costs could very easily bring us another Richard Nixon.