[NYTr] Bob Herbert: Rambo and the GOP

[All the News That Doesn't Fit]

sent by Ed Pearl 

The New York Times - Dec 1, 2007
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/12/01/opinion/01herbert.html

Rambo and the G.O.P.

By BOB HERBERT

I don't know if children should be allowed to watch the Republican
presidential debates.

There's so much talk of violence and mayhem as the solution to our
ills. The candidates seem so eager to flex their muscles and engage the
nation in conflict: Let's continue the war in Iraq. Let's show them
what we're made of in Iran. Let's round up those immigrants and ship
'em back where they came from.

It's like watching adolescent boys playing the ultimate video game,
with no regard for the consequences. Rudy, the crime-fighter and terror
maven, says he's tougher than Mitt, who actually had illegals working
on his property. Mitt begs to differ and says he'd like to double the
size of the Guantánamo prison.

Are we electing a president or a sheriff?

Representative Tom Tancredo of Colorado wants to stop all immigration,
legal and illegal. Too much immigration brings problems, he said. Among
other things, "it makes it difficult for us to assimilate."

(The bludgeoning of logic is yet another form of violence coming out of
the debates.)

We've got the thunderclouds of a recession heading our way. We're in the
midst of a housing foreclosure crisis that is tragic in its dimensions.
We've got forty-some-million people without health coverage. And the
city of New Orleans is still on its knees.

So you tune in to the G.O.P. debate on CNN to see what's what, and
they're talking about - guns.

Former Mayor Giuliani, once a gun-control champion, has swallowed the
party's Kool-Aid straight from the packet, not even bothering to mix it
with water. "People will be allowed to have guns," he said. "I'm not
going to interfere with that."

It can be scary for small children to watch the former mayor of New York
morph into Wayne LaPierre on national TV.

I'll concede that it's difficult to have a thoughtful exploration of
complex issues in a format that allows a candidate just 90 seconds to
answer. But the Republicans, far more than the Democrats, go out of
their way to present themselves as 21st-century Rambos - a childish,
cartoonish posture that solves nothing and can easily lead to tragedy
in a world that is in fact quite dangerous.

You'd think that a presidential campaign would be the perfect venue for
a serious discussion about Iraq, the greatest foreign policy debacle in
the republic's history. But even John McCain, who frequently seems as
if he is the class of this G.O.P. field, followed up his comment about
appeasement allowing Hitler to flourish with the following simplistic
reference to Iraq:

"I just finished having Thanksgiving dinner with the troops, and their
message to you is, the message of these brave men and women who are
serving there is: 'Let us win.' "

How is that helpful or enlightening? What does he mean by "win?" And
win at what additional cost to human life and other resources?

The Republicans running for president are embarrassed to mention George
W. Bush. But with few exceptions - Mr. McCain's principled position on
torture is one - they want to continue Mr. Bush's failed, often
belligerent and sometimes sadistic policies. (On immigration, an issue
ripe for demagoguery, most of the howling G.O.P. pack has sprinted away
from Mr. Bush, preferring a more macho, politically exploitive
approach. Mr. McCain is again an exception.)

The incessant drumbeat of brute force as the favored solution to
difficult problems serves to normalize state violence to the point
where we hardly notice it. Before his widely reported crack about Jesus
being too smart to run for office, former Gov. Mike Huckabee talked
proudly about the tough challenge he faced in "carrying out" the death
penalty in Arkansas.

"I did it more than any other governor ever had to do it in my state,"
he said.

The Republican Party has won a lot of elections in recent years. So
maybe this crop of candidates knows something about American voters
that many us would rather not acknowledge, that too many of them are
small-minded, fearful, bigoted and too shallow to recognize policies
that are against their own - and their country's - best interests.

Or maybe that's not the case at all. Maybe this lot of Republican
presidential candidates is misreading the public, and placing its bet
on the wrong side of history.

I hope it's the latter. Maybe voters in the early primaries will
deliver the message that a more thoughtful, insightful, inclusive and
constructive style of campaigning is desired.

Maybe then we can finally get issues like torture off the table (Mr.
McCain and Mr. Romney had a testy exchange over waterboarding the other
night) and squarely address the concerns so many voters have about the
deteriorating economic climate here at home and America's diminished
standing abroad.