Loose Change

Michael Kinsley weighs in about the meaning of the Iowa primary election. The commentator offers a meditation on political "change." If this is (fair & balanced) punditry, so be it.

[Copyright © 2008 Alan Dye]
[x NY Fishwrap]
Stirred, Not Shaken
By Michael Kinsley

If it’s a question of “experience” versus “change,” change will win every time. Hillary Clinton, of all people, should have known that. Doesn’t she remember 1992? That was when her husband made “change” his mantra and chanted it all the way to the White House. This year, Mrs. Clinton tried to suggest that Barack Obama does not have enough experience to be president. He hung her experience around her neck and chanted the change mantra himself.

An Obama presidency would, in fact, be a huge change in all sorts of obvious ways. Yet on the Republican side as well, there is talk of change. Of course it is trickier with a sitting Republican president. But that hasn’t stopped one of the candidates from seizing on the word and using it as the centerpiece of his campaign.

It’s not the candidate you would have guessed if you haven’t been listening to them: it’s Mitt Romney. Nothing better illustrates the mystical power of “change” in American politics, and its malleability, than its selection by the expensively engineered Romney machine, even though the word doesn’t seem to apply in any way to the man or his campaign.

It’s hard to say what Mr. Romney’s campaign is really about. He would clearly do or say anything or its opposite to become president. But, in general, he seems to be trying to make himself as conventional a Republican as possible, calling for tax cuts blah blah blah, supporting President Bush 100 percent on Iraq, shedding any aberrant views on abortion or gay rights that he may have picked up by accident in Massachusetts.

He radiates conventionality, with his “Leave-It-to-Beaver”-and-then-some family and his good looks straight out of “Mad Men,” the TV series about Madison Avenue in the early 1960s. (I was a few years behind Mr. Romney at a small private high school in Michigan. He graduated in 1965 and looks exactly the same now as he did back then.) If anything, his message ought to be stability: things do not have to change.

Mr. Romney’s actual mantra is “change in Washington,” but that is no more helpful in the logic department. He is not campaigning for Congress. Bragging that he will bring “change in Washington” is either a purposeful insult to a sitting president of his own party, or it means nothing at all. Clearly, it means nothing at all.

Of the two leading Republicans, it is Mike Huckabee who is the more obvious agent of change, for his party and the country, with his ambitious plans for destroying the economy with a national sales tax and his Democratic-sounding attacks on wealth and privilege. But Mr. Huckabee has let Mr. Romney steal the word from him.

The appeal of “change” as a cri de coeur is that it sounds dynamic without committing you to anything in particular. Any slogan shared by Barack Obama and Mitt Romney is going to be pretty meaningless. Not only can voters give it any meaning they wish, it can have different meanings for different voters.

Best of all, being the candidate of change in some vague and meaningless way gives you cover to come out for stasis in most of the particulars. Americans say they want change, and think they want it, but there is room for doubt. The candidates of real, serious change, like Dennis Kucinich or Ron Paul, are going to be dropping like petals. And no wonder: they are scary. Change is scary.

What are the candidates actually promising? As often as not, it is protection from change. They will not muck around with your Social Security. They will make sure that you don’t lose your health insurance — and that you will always be able to keep your own doctor. The world is changing fast, but they will protect you from any dire effects. They won’t let the country get flooded with poisonous toys from China or workers from Mexico or (a Mike Huckabee offering) terrorists from Pakistan. A fence, that’s what we need. A fence to cower behind, to keep out change, or at least to slow it down.

There is nothing contemptible about a reluctance to change. Most of us have it pretty good in this country, and can’t be blamed for wanting things to stay that way. For that to happen, though, will require some wrenching changes. The list isn’t surprising, or really very long, compared with the list of our blessings. We need to use less energy and borrow less money. We need to fix our schools and reform our health care system. We need to end a stupid war.

Is this what people mean when they demand “change”? Are these things what the candidates have in mind when they promise to deliver it? If so, great. But all of these (except, maybe, ending the war) will require some changes that are unpleasant. We as a society have shown no tolerance for unpleasant changes, and politicians have shown no enthusiasm for trying to persuade us that they might be necessary.

If all you want is happy changes, you really don’t want change at all.

[Michael Kinsley is a political journalist, commentator television host, and liberal pundit. Primarily active in print media as both a writer and editor, he also became known to television audiences as a co-host on CNN's "Crossfire." Kinsley has been a notable participant in the mainstream media's development of online content. Currently, Kinsley is a columnist for Time magazine.]

Copyright © 2008 The New York Times Company

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