And G. W. Bush, and Reagan . . .
In Orthodoxy, G. K. Chesterton offers a scenario in which a yachtsman set out to discover a colony for England, got lost in a storm, found land for the colony, planted the British flag on it, and then discovered that he had never left England at all. It may be best to keep Chesterton’s yachtsman in mind when considering Mitt Romney’s new prestige in Democratic circles.
Romney, who will probably be elected to the Senate from Utah in November, is (one might think) a new name in our political discourse. Last month, the New York Times published a nigh-on fawning news piece about the man. “He was warm, self-deprecating, cleareyed about his weakness,” according to news writer Matt Flegenheimer. Aye, and it’s nice that the New York Times arrived at this conclusion, albeit six years too late. Better late than never, I suppose. In 2012, in another news piece, Romney was “bellicose,” “martial-sounding,” “less-than-specific,” and “evasive.”
What changed? Why has the Grey Lady come to publish a friendly piece on the man its editorial board called “guileful,” “ultraconservative,” and “frightening”? And why has Nancy Pelosi come around to believing, as she stated wistfully in 2017, that it would be nice if Romney were president?
None of the Democrats’ newfound nostalgia for political opponents they used to castigate should be particularly surprising to Republicans.
Why, too, does the New York Times’ Mehdi Hasan “long for” George W. Bush? When Bush criticized President Trump in October of last year, a New York Times news piece called Bush a supporter of democracy, a denouncer of nationalism and bigotry, and a defender of the liberal democratic order. Wow. Could this be the same George W. Bush who left office reviled — called a monster and a mass-murderer (“blood for oil”) — by Democrats? That George W. Bush? Why, yes.
None of the Democrats’ newfound nostalgia for political opponents they used to castigate should be particularly surprising to Republicans. As Jonah Goldberg noted at the time, Democrats in 2012 were pining for the 1950s, when Republicans were “reasonable” and “moderate.” Conservatives certainly found 1950s Republicans to be moderates, but liberals thought them dangerous, radical reactionaries. And a Times op-ed last year pined even for “pragmatic,” “moderate” Ronald Reagan (!).
These nostalgic Democrats differ from Chesterton’s sailor in one way, of course: They don’t genuinely set out to find a new land, as they already know that they don’t really want the return of Ronald Reagan, George W. Bush, or Mitt Romney. Their colonial discovery is instead a means by which they can artfully commit a no-true-Scotsman fallacy — “true Republicans wouldn’t have acted like this; where have all the true Republicans gone?” Former Bush adviser Scott Jennings has noted that the whole sentiment reeks of political opportunism. Of course it does — of course it does — and especially for Democratic leaders it goes a long way toward their self-identification as a group of moderates who would also get the good things down were it not for the evil radical conservatives.
The only question that remains, in fact, is the one Democrat Judi Ketteler asked last year in the Los Angeles Times: “I have a soft spot for Reagan. Will my kids have one for Trump?” If liberals suddenly see even Reagan, Bush, and Romney as moderate, then anything is possible in four to eight years — even an opportunistic reconsideration of Trump.
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