Very Quick Thoughts On Bain And The Primary System

1. Josh Barro (who I believe once interned for Romney’s campaign for governor of Massachusetts) has a must read on Bain and Romney.

2.  Very interesting set of comments by Peter and commenter Art Deco in the below thread on Bob Dole and 1996.  My take is that, given Clinton’s political skills and the conditions of 1996, there was no Republican who was going to beat Clinton in 1996.  I suspect that Lamar Alexander would have done slightly, but not decisively, better than Dole. 

At one point Art Deco writes “the fact remains that Republican voters nominated someone like Sen. Dole, because that is who was willing to run .”  If Romney gets the Republican nomination, that could be his epitaph.  In his New Hampshire victory speech, Romney said “It could be worse? Is that what it means to be an American?”  Sometimes it is.

3.  On paper, this isn’t an especially weak Republican field.  You have a very successful businessman turned governor of a state that is dominated by the other party. You have an ex-Speaker of the House who helped end the longest period of continuous one-party rule in the history of the House of Representatives.  You have a two term member of the House of Representatives turned two term Senator of a swing-state that tilts somewhat toward the other party.  Not bad.

And yet the first man has never evidenced stable political principles (unless short-term political advantage be called a principle), the second man is unprincipled and possibly mentally unstable, and the third (despite his electoral record) seems to lack the ability to play at this level.  None of them seem even close to having the combination of principle and competence it would take to make the case for reforms that match the scale of our looming fiscal problems.  But one of them is going to win “  because that is who was willing to run .”

So why were these people the ones who were willing to run?  There are lots of explanations, some structural and some incidental, for why the GOP field is this way.  Here are two (though they are hardly exhaustive):

a) For a nonincumbent, running for president is now a full time job at for least 17 months before the presidential election.  The demands of running a ”real” campaign (in the sense of doing the fundraising and organizing it would take to actually win the nomination rather than just getting publicity) means that someone doing a real job in the year before the presidential election year cannot both do their job and devote enough attention (this to include getting up to speed on national issues) to running for president.  The media ecosystem has developed in a way that (especially in the early stages of the nomination race) favors flamboyant demagogues over prospective presidents, making the race an even bigger grind than you would think from just looking at the length of the process and further discouraging serious, principled, and emotionally balanced people from running for office.

b)  We got unlucky.  If Mitch Daniels didn’t have his marital issues, we have a better field (which isn’t to say that he wins.)  If Louisiana has its elections for governor in 2010 instead of 2011, we might well have Bobby Jindal running for president and we have a better field.  Is Mike Pence kicking himself for not running?  We just had a perfect storm.   

I lean more toward the second explanation.  The race has exposed pathologies in the center-right media ecosystem and among center-right constituencies.  The fact that Herman Cain ever topped the polls (based on softball interviews and glib debate performances) is disturbing, but he crashed and burned and would have done so even if the sex scandals had never come to light.  He had a run in the polls, but he never even won a primary.  Same thing with Bachmann.  I’m not saying the system is working.  I’m just saying we need to keep some perspective – and especially historical perspective.  Jesse Jackson won presidential primaries and Bachmann didn’t.