Texas governor Rick Perry is the front-runner for the Republican presidential nomination now, at least in the national polls. Undoubtedly that’s the main reason so many East Coast pundits and Beltway wags are making fun of him. He likes guns! He’s from Texas! He talks funny! He’s a — gird yourself now — Christian!
New York magazine and others mock his harmless, Bush-like pronunciation of nuclear (“nuke-ular”). They’re scandalized that he doesn’t go to a golf course to relax, but a shooting range. It’s already a cliché among liberals to describe him as the sort of cartoonish, ignorant cowboy they thought George W. Bush was (though to date, nobody feels the need to apologize to Bush for misinterpreting him).
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And before we bust out the world’s smallest violin — or, I guess, the world’s smallest fiddle — to play the world’s softest sob-song for poor Rick Perry, keep in mind that he plays this game too. When asked to explain the difference between himself and Bush, Perry responded that Bush went to Yale, while he went to Texas A&M.
“In other words,” joked Conan O’Brien, “Rick Perry’s idea of instilling confidence is to say, ‘Don’t worry, I’m not as smart as George W. Bush.’”
Rick Perry’s overt Christianity horrifies many of his liberal critics. Bill Keller, the outgoing editor of the New York Times, agonized recently that “Rick Perry, Michele Bachmann and Rick Santorum are all affiliated with fervid subsets of evangelical Christianity.” Actually, Santorum is a fairly famous Catholic, but that’s tomaytoh, tomahto for Keller, apparently.
“Every faith,” Keller writes, “has its baggage, and every faith holds beliefs that will seem bizarre to outsiders. I grew up believing that a priest could turn a bread wafer into the actual flesh of Christ.”
I hope his current priest doesn’t mind when he calls Holy Communion “baggage.”
Perry’s twang offends liberals who think everyone should talk like Barack Obama, a man of cosmopolitan and learned diction. Of course, Obama pronounces “corpsman,” “corpse-man” — as if our Navy were staffed with heroic zombies. One would think he’d have picked up the right pronunciation during his travels to all 57 U.S. states.
Obama’s gaffes earn no traction the way, say, the last president’s “Bushisms” did. Nor do they cause bowel-stewing panic at MSNBC the way Sarah Palin’s flavorful patois does.
And don’t even get me started on Joe Biden. He could show up at a Russian state funeral in a Speedo and pith helmet, singing the Alvin and the Chipmunks B-sides, and NBC’s Andrea Mitchell would lead with the disturbing reports that Sarah Palin quoted Biden inaccurately on her Twitter account.
Let’s cut through the clutter: A lot of people on the East and West coasts are bigots and snobs about “flyover types.” They equate funny accents with stupidity, and they automatically assume someone who went to Texas A&M must be dumber than someone who went to Yale. Overt displays of religion trigger their fight-or-flight instincts, causing them to lash out irrationally.
My favorite example? When John McCain picked Palin as his running mate, University of Chicago professor Wendy Doniger wrote that Palin’s “greatest hypocrisy is in her pretense that she is a woman.”
When I read such idiocy, it’s impossible for me not to love Bush, Perry, Palin, et al. for their enemies.
But here’s my problem: I find the prospect of another four or eight years of defending these cultural distinctions to be intensely wearying.
My weariness is hardly a major consideration for anybody, but I think it reflects a larger problem. Conservatism is starting to have an identity-politics problem all its own. I think conservatism needs to spend less time defending candidates for who they are, and more time supporting candidates for what they intend to do.
Bush’s inability to articulate arguments had nothing to do with his Texan-ness or his Christianity, but a lot of folks on the right defended him as if that were the case. “He speaks American, don’t you get it?”
To which I’d reply: “No, he speaks badly.”
Perry’s not a bad speaker, and I’m trying to keep an open mind. I suspect I agree with him more than I did with Bush, whose compassionate conservatism I loathed.
Nor do I mind folksiness per se. Mississippi governor Haley Barbour can talk seriously and colorfully at the same time. But this time around, folksiness isn’t a substitute for seriousness, and I have very little patience for those who pretend otherwise.
What Northeastern conservatives don't understand is that folksiness has nothing to do with it.
The flyover country accents are mocked and mannerisms ridiculed when they stand apart from metrosexual demeanors found at Beltway wine-and-brie events.
But to assume speech patterns and swagger are serving as a substitute for action is a misplaced fear by those who spend too much time navel gazing and wondering if they will be mistakenly lumped in with the Neanderthals. Four more years of setting oneself apart from "one of them" in the White House? Of course, that would make any insider weary. The horror of a presidential dinner where tuxedos are worn with boots and the main course is brisket.
Of course, what's missing is the big picture. Behind the words, for both Perry and Palin, there is action. The words, and the accent used when speaking them, are not a substitute but a part of who they are.
If you want another Bush "all hat, no cattle" nominee, Romney and Huntsman will fit your bill just fine. You can even wink when they pretend to understand the Tea Party.
The line in the sand is being drawn. If the "intellectual" conservatives choose to side with Democrats rather than endure the likes of Perry or Palin, you're will see the GOP go the way of the Whigs because conservatives will take their votes to a a third party candidate or simply stay home in November 2012.
Then again, a second Obama term would make establishment-types comfortable because they can spend another four years whining about the decline instead of being weary defending a conservative in the White House who believes Georgetown and Manhattan cocktail circuit prattle is no substitute for action.
"But here’s my problem: I find the prospect of another four or eight years of defending these cultural distinctions to be intensely wearying."
I agree, but Isn't this exactly the reason the left attacks us this way? So we'll get weary (and quit)? Aren't you just saying all this is hard work?
Are you really suggesting that if we would just pick someone who isn't folksy (or religious or whatever) the left will make our lives easy and just stick to the real issues. Really?
I was surprised to learn that Conan O'Brien is one of those people who judges a person's intelligence by the college he or she attended. He must think Barack Obama is a real genius! And Bill Keller, the dummy who believed his priest could turn a bread wafer into living flesh for him to eat, must have attended a "smart" college because he's now a genius who understands all about religion and what motivates others to believe.
Jenna, Catholics believe that the Eucharist transforms the wheat wafer and wine into the body and blood of Christ. It's called transubstantiation and it's a tenet of the faith.
Mock it if you will, but from your previous posts, I assumed you were better than that. You can call Keller a dummy all you want, but not for his Catholic beliefs (even if he doesn't believe anymore).
Actually, I think Jenna was talking about Keller's outlook (he now believes transubstantiation to be false and he must have been a dummy when he believed it to be true). Which is how I interpreted what Keller wrote in his article.
I don't think that she was claiming that the belief in transubstantiation made someone a dummy.
Jonah, even at the end of this column, you still cling to your perception of "folksiness" to describe people unlike yourself, mostly from Texas and the Old South.
We in Texas, when I was growing up in the 50s and 60s, had similar terms to describe the people of the East Coast; their (obnoxious) behaviors and, especially, their (hilarious) speech patterns.
We don't use those terms any more. Lots of those East Coast people have moved to Texas, and we've learned that they are not strange.
Lots of Texans and Southerners have moved to the East Coast in the same period. You are now encouraging people who share your "cultural distinctions" to judge us by what we do, not by our "folksiness." I thank you. That's long overdue.
But why not go one step farther, and ditch the "cultural distinctions" altogether?
PS: The snobbishness of the "elite universities" is of a different order of magnitude. And I think that it is precisely what Gov. Perry was referring to in comparing himself with GWB. But nothing more.
As a Texan who had to fly to NYC for business regularly, I was always thought to be "slow of thought" because of my Southern accent. To which I always replied: "If the South had won the war, we'd all talk this way". Don't know why New Yorker's think that their environs are so superior to other places...I have my opinion of NYC, also.
As for the criticism of Perry, our answer should be "Get over it" not "he talks badly"...folks from above the Mason/Dixon line sound funny to us! Of course, when yankees move to the Great State of Texas, we have to remind them constantly that we don't care how they did things up North.
Now we have The Word from the sweaters-knotted-around-necks, loafers-sans-socks crowd. You wish Perry was more "serious"? Because he doesn't sound like WFB?
Here's a newsflash for you, Jonah. The Telepromptered Obama (as opposed to the off-the-cuff model) sounds wonderfully intellectual. It was his "brilliance" that got him elected, remember? (Well, that and his race-baiting.)
This kind of nonsense is what keeps me from spending more time reading NRO. Performance, patriotism and ideas are what matter (or should matter) in politics. Wistful little boys who wish Perry was "more like one of them" sound as vapid as ultra-liberals sighing over the creases in a candidate's pants.
It seems to me that those on the left and right coasts of this Country are much more worked up about plain spoken messages than those of us here in flyover Country. We just chose not to obfuscate our message with obtuse language and verbose statements. We actually don't care if our candidate is hirsute. We prefer our folks to say what they mean and mean what they say. Kapish?
The first thing to get straight: If someone had interrupted Obama, "57 states? Is that how many there are?" Obama would reply, "Did I say 57? Sorry -- I meant 50, of course." If you asked Michele Bachmann, "Did you mean Concord, New Hampshire?" she'd either say "Of course!" or sit there thinking for a moment, wondering whether, by the tone of your question, she had gotten something wrong, and then reply, "Let me get back to you on that." Same with Palin on similar things, e.g., the reason why she was stumped by "What do you read?" is because she doesn't.
In other words, there's a differece between misspeaking and simply being ignorant.
Are you kidding me? You are no position to assert anything about the intelligence level of Obama or anyone else for that matter. You cannot offer any evidence other than your own biased assertions. I will compare Palin and Bachmann's resumes to Obama and Biden's any day of the week.
"In other words, there's a differece between misspeaking and simply being ignorant."
No, MikeB, that's not persuasive. Would Obama have corrected himself about the number of states? One would hope and assume so (although he has never offered an explanation, and it was a bizarre instance of misspeaking). But I don't think there is any argument that he didn't know the pronunciation of "corpsman," and he uses bad English all the time (e.g., he frequently says "to Michelle and I" or other such solecisms). And language is supposed to be his great strength!
Bachmann, on the other hand, misstated the location of an important historical event. Too bad, but would Obama have done better? I'm not at all sure that he would; his intelligence and education have been absurdly inflated, and he has never displayed any particular understanding of history. (Or geography: How about his seeming belief that Afghanis speak Arabic?)
Bachmann goofed, but overall she seems highly intelligent. She almost surely has an IQ higher than that of Mr. Genius and appears to be better read as well.
Yeah, and if someone had interrupted Obama and asked, "Corpse-man?" Obama would have replied, "Yes, corpse-man."
You are right. There is a difference between misspeaking and being ignorant. Not knowing how to pronounce "corpsman" when you are reading from a teleprompter falls under ignorant.
Of course Mike, in your oh-so nonpartisan manner, you are a constant example. Now just to be clear, if you asked Mr. Obama why he was sitting in Reverend's Wright's church for 20+ years listening to that nonsense or chumming with a domestic terrorist and other Marxist zealots he'd say .... what exactly?
MikeB, any thoughts to how one accidentally says "57 States"?
It's like saying "I'm happy to be visiting here in the great state of West Dakota"
We've all said "50 States" a zillion times - it's an ingrained habit. Have you ever yourself, or heard anyone else, say the number of states incorrectly?
Mike, they don't hand out degrees in tax law from prestigious universities to the slow-witted. I know you guys had the nepotism argument to tell us why Dubya's Ivy League credentials meant nothing, what will you come up with for Bachmann's?
Bachmann's shortcomings are putting her mouth in gear before her brain, and at least one instance involved a mistake from her speechwriter. But you can't help yourself with the stock liberal condescension:
"Well, everyone just KNOWS Bachmann's missteps are genuine stupidity, but everyone just KNOWS Obama simply had a flub." It's just gospel to you. Who said liberals don't operate on faith?
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