Idelogy and Dialectic Continued

The current presidential race could hardly be called a clash of the titans.  While many of us held out great hope for Obama that he would point us toward a humbler and more rational post-partisan politics, but that hope has been frustrated again and again.  There is sufficient evidence that he is open to dialectic, but dialectic takes two, and there is little evidence that his conservative counterparts are willing to engage, as they sat, meaningfully.  Indeed, among his republican opponents, each seems hell bent on demonstrating that their unwillingness to engage is greater than the others unwillingness to engage, a posture associated with an odd notion of ideological purity in the absence of a pure ideology.  Some of the posturing is, well, posturing.  On the list of Romney howlers, however, his suggestion that he was "a severely conservative governor" stands as a case in point.  It has already been noted that "severe," as an adjective, is normally used to modify a negative condition, a disease, as in "severely depressed," and I don't want to add my voice to the chorus.  Nevertheless, "severe" is hardly a word that brings warm feelings to mind -- something more like Scrouge in his counting house -- but even setting that aside, the sense that Romney is slick, disingenuous, may well be a simple observation that Romney, despite his public statements, is much less a tea party ideologue, more a business pragmatist.  With the so-called Romney-care, he had a problem to solve, and he solved it, apparently to wide satisfaction, and if ideological purity came into the discussion, there must have been some real reluctance to sacrifice the successful solution on the alter of ideological purity.  His personal values, his religious and family values, would fall well within the comfort zone of the restorative reactionaries, those who would push the reset button and return us to Leave it to Beaver -- no one familiar with the Mormon faith would doubt his credibility in this domain -- but his public values come forward most sincerely when he stands unapologetic for his wealth and the implicit business pragmatism that created it -- "hey, it's mine, I earned it!" -- that the manner in which he earned it had little or nothing to do with Christian values is of little or no consequence.  It's a different matter altogether.

Rick Santorum, however, is a more genuine conservative, one who would sacrifice almost anything on the alter of ideological purity.  If a political gaff is a time when a candidate inadvertently speaks the truth, his remarks on JFK and the separation of church and state represent a real gaff.  As the New York Times reported it, Santorum "described how he had become sickened after reading John F. Kennedy’s 1960 speech calling for the rigid separation of religion and politics," and then asked the follow on question,  "What kind of country do we live in that says only people of nonfaith can come into the public square and make their case?"   His personal values, one suspects, verges on political apocalypticism, the grand Manichean contest between the satanic forces and the good people of Christian America, a contest that can only be resolved by putting religion (and few would doubt that he is using the term generically, and even fewer would doubt that he is referring to a version of his religion) at the center of public life.  If he has reversed himself, suggesting that "I’m for separation of church and state,” it is not simply political hypocrisy at work, though one suspects some damage control in the face of criticism, but it is also a reaffirmation of his own position as the redemptive candidate, the one who would bring church and state, the one who would bring the personal values of his religion and the public values of the presidency into convergence. 

To be continued.